Eating
We love breakfast food. Carrot Cake Waffles by Willow Bird Baking, Dutch Pancakes–the family recipe, and Whole Wheat Banana Pancakes by Alice Waters. Alice Waters. I love her recipes. And next time I’m in San Fran, I mean to go to Chez Panisse, her culinary baby. This is a variation on her Pancake recipe in the Art of Simple Food. What? You don’t own it? Go immediately to a store, or the interweb, and acquire this. It will change your world. Her recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes with my twist: 3/4 cup whole-wheat flour 3/4 cup unbleached white flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt In a separate bowl mix: 2 egg yolks (You gotsta separate them, and get them as separate as possible. I use the egg shell as my dividing helper.) In a large measuring cup, measure: 1 3/4 cups buttermilk (If you don’t have any, see this list of substitutes for buttermilk, here.) Whisk the egg yolks with milk. Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the buttermilk mixture, and stir until just mixed. Add: 6 tablespoons butter, melted Stir well. In another bowl, beat egg whites until they form soft peaks, then fold them into the batter. If the batter is too thick, add more buttermilk. Add a few bananas sliced up into the batter. Spoon the batter onto a preheated griddle, cooking a single pancake first to see if the griddle is the right temperature. Cook until the underside of…
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Thousand Hills Beef from the coop? Kale from the garden? Shallots? Garlic? Tomatoes from the garden? Dinner! 1) Burger recipe. Two pounds Thousand Hills Beef from the coop. A big bunch of shallot diced up. Garlic too. Kosher coarse ground salt. Freshly ground pepper. Mix it up with your hands. Form into patties. Get that grill hot. Grill until tender and when pushed, feels like the meat on your hand between your thumb and first finger. I know this thanks to my dad loving Anthony Bourdain. Nummy. Done to perfection. Heirloom tomato from our garden. Delish. 2) Kale chips. My girlfriend over at LouLou Ingredients has a fabulous recipe and introduced me to kale chips in the first place. See her post here. AA planted copious amounts of kale so it’s been in our smoothies & chips all summer long. And cooked at 425 for 5 minutes: 3) Kiwi for dessert. Num. Quick, healthy, and easy dinner. Toddler-friendly too!
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My fabulous hair stylist at Salon George is the owner of a beautiful salon in Saint Paul. She also happens to be a gourmet chef. Of course while she masterfully fixes my hair, we talk about life, family, and most importantly: food. She gave me a great Lebanese sauce that can be everything from salad dressing to drizzling over veggies prior to roasting to whatever. The garlic is what gives it a nice distinct taste. I added 1/2 cup oil (EVOO if you’re using it all right away, canola if it’s going into the fridge as EVOO hardens up!) & 1/2 cup lemon juice together. And ground 2 cloves garlic into a paste with about a big big pinch of salt in the mortar with the pestle (one of my favorite kitchen utensils). Then added garlic & whisked. Tah. Dah. Add freshly ground pepper if you so like. Quinoa made easy-peasy: 2 cups chicken broth & 1 cup rinsed quinoa, bring to a boil, then simmer until all liquid absorbed (circa 20 mins). Add raw diced veggies of any variety, toss with dressing, add a little freshly ground pepper. Convince your husband to do the hard work of grilling up some Wild King salmon, and you have a nutritious and delicious meal. NUMMY! We eat quinoa at least once a week, with beans, with veggies, with eggs, with anything. It’s a wonderful grain with a complete protein strand (unlike other grands) and is from South America. I get the big bags of…
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So I was the skeptic, I’ll admit it. Somehow I envisioned AA’s seed-started garden as a small assortment of very very small plants. Instead, we’re living in our own CSA. Check out the beginning photos of our new garden here {Our New Garden Part 1} and our grand plans for it here {Prepping for Your Garden: When Is It Too Early To Plan?}. Yeah, I’m always writing about compost and how great it is, so check these posts out too if you need a little inspiration on turning your kitchen scraps into your garden’s dream boat (what’s that phrase about one man’s trash being another’s treasure? Literally.) here {Our Compost Is Lovely} and here {Composting for Beginners}. A girlfriend asked about our garden yesterday, and I realized I’ve been meaning to publish this post. So here’s the lowdown. And yes, girlfriend, it is funny when people ask about aspects of our lives based on what they read on the site 🙂 Funny in a good way! 1) Tomatoes: not from seed, and my only part of the garden. I am so glad AA has taken on most of the garden, but my little loves in the ground are these 9 or so tomato plants. Can’t wait to have some tomatoes!! I took these photos last week, and the little tomatoes are ALREADY forming. So these photos are out of date, and under representative of the glory of my tomato patch. AA has planted rouge watermelon in MY tomato patch!!! He…
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We keep this enormo strainer under our sink for containing the compost indoors. And it gets full pretty quickly. I’d recommend keeping your compost covered to avoid fruit flies (we use an aluminum pizza pan that also has holes in it)–ours is improvised, but you can easily purchase an actual indoor compost pail at Target or on Amazon, or whatnot. Here’s our post on composting for beginners from last summer: here {Composting For Beginners}. What we’ve learned since last year is that compost is truly amazing insofar as it builds on itself, and springtime means lots of compost for your garden. So the second year in means a lot more fertilizer for you. I also learned that I wish I had an indoor composter during the winter. Can we say worm farm? Vermiculture! My eldest sister and her partner have a vermiculture compost in their condo. Pretty intense stuff. Note, Nina is following AA like a hound dog because she desperately believes that the compost holds treasures for her. Our big old compost pile, when you dig in a little, has beautiful beautiful compost. On the surface, it looks like we abandoned our produce scraps. Which I suppose we did. AA unearthed over 40 gallons of compost for the beginning of our gardening this spring. Ah-mazing.
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Nina’s been watching our every move outside this spring, and ensuring that SuperBoy doesn’t get hurt playing around. She’s 135 pounds of love. And he loves her. Our pets are part of our family (2 dogs, 2 cats), so it’s wonderful to see how much fun SuperBoy can have goofing around with her. See evidence of their love, here. In other outdoor news, AA has become a regenerative gardener. He’s replanted the stalk of romaine lettuce & celery. I had no idea this would result in a life-bearing plant. Reduce & reuse! So maybe we will never have to plant celery again? Or romaine? Or other vegetables? This was done at the suggestion of one of his sisters. Thank you, sis-in-law! There are more ornate ways to do it, but he simply dig a little hole in a pot, and planted the lower stalk of the vegetable. Add water and sun. 🙂 See a few articles on this here at Empress of Dirt and here at 17 Apart.
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