d.i. wine and dine

homemade peanut butter

2012-02-10T20:10:00.000-07:00

I made peanut butter for the first time! It wasn't even my idea, it was my friend Julie's. Seeing as we are both named Julie, our future peanut butter business should probably be called PB&J&J.

We roughly followed Alton Brown's recipe: nuts, honey, salt, oil, food processor. The flavor turned out really good though we had to add quite a bit more oil than the recipe called for to get a decent texture. Maybe the nuts I chose weren't fatty enough? Let the experiments begin!

maple caramel corn

2012-01-31T21:31:00.000-07:00

Happy Valentine's Day 2 weeks early!! If you've got a crunchy locavore lover, I'd recommend making them maple caramel corn. Note: you could also make maple caramel corn any regular day of the week.

I used a recipe that I got in the mail from my friends Kate and Ben. You'll have to find one on the internet. My friends' recipe calls for popcorn, maple syrup, honey, butter, vanilla extract, salt, and black pepper. In terms of local ingredients, I was able to use local popcorn and local honey. The maple syrup was not local BUT it was connected. It was harvested from a friend's parent's property back in New Hampshire. How cool is that?!

pumpkin soup with dollap of refried black beans

2012-01-29T19:25:00.009-07:00

Here's a soup that is really good for those cold winter dark days! It is a basic pumpkin soup dressed up with a dollop of black beans that I re-fried myself. The main ingredient was a small "pie pumpkin" that has been sitting on our counter since we got it from our Isabelle Farm CSA in October. Good job holding in there, little pumpkin! I would also like to note my excitement about getting to use our very own coriander seed that we grew in our garden this past year.

Ingredients:
pumpkin
frozen green chile
frozen corn
onion
coriander (garden!)
carrot (not local)
turmeric (not local)
cumin (not local)
ginger (not local)
black pepper (not local)
salt (not local)
oil (not local)

I roasted the pumpkin in the oven, scraped it out and cooked it with the other ingredients. I like making refried beans from scratch by frying cooked beans in oil with spices and mashing with a potato masher.

vegan curried vegetable pot pie

2012-01-16T13:04:00.002-07:00

For added inspiration, the hosts of Dark Days Challenge are posing smaller themed challenges (one-pot meal, valentine sweets, vegetarian meal, breakfast) within the larger challenge of eating local, sustainable food in the middle of winter. This week's themed challenge was to create a one-pot meal and because I love my cast iron skillet and I love that you can pan fry with it or bake with it, I decided to do both with it. I also decided to use coconut milk which is a very non-local choice, but it makes this dish vegan. Who knows, if I did the math, it could possibly have less of an environmental impact than dairy. Has anyone done the math?

Filling Ingredients:
2 potatoes, diced
1 red onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 oz. mushroom
1 c. frozen peas
1 c. frozen corn
black garbanzo beans, boiled
canola oil (not local)
salt (not local)
black pepper (not local)
1 T. sweet curry powder (not local)
1 T. hot curry powder (not local)
dash of apple cider vinegar (not local)
1 (14oz.) can coconut milk (not local)

Dough Ingredients:
whole wheat flour
cold water
canola oil (not local)
ground flax seed (not local)

Unfortunately, I ended up having a few extra dishes to clean up: a small pot and mixing bowl. The small pot was for boiling the garbanzo beans but that was an easy clean. I had to use a mixing bowl to mix the dough. I also used the mixing bowl to pour out the cooked filling while I laid out a bottom crust though you could easily go with just a top crust.

barn owl saison

2012-01-13T18:53:00.001-07:00

This marks our 6th homebrew! Yes, I know, we are very leisurely homebrewers. Most people who are into homebrewing seem to have a new batch of beer going at all times. C'est la vie, we do what we want. An avid homebrewing friend of ours gave us the recipe for this saison (complete with all his notes in the margins). For those who are unfamiliar with this style of beer, it tends to be a little tarter and a little spicier than your average pale ale. The old timey version was a really low alcohol beer brewed in the winter for summer farm workers to stay hydrated (think 3% abv compared to bud light which is 4% abv). Boring! Modern home, craft, and mirco brewers aim for saisons with a higher alcohol level (5 - 8% abv). Cheers to that!

grace

2012-01-12T17:14:00.001-07:00

we are thankful for the food
for the hands that grew it
and for the hands that prepared it
for our friends and for our family

local wheatberry bibimbap

2012-01-10T19:40:00.002-07:00

This is a mostly local version of the signature Korean dish bibimbap. The major deviance is using wheat berries instead of rice. Although more chewy, they make a nice, hearty substitute for rice. The egg is faux-poached (fried with a lid). Overall, this is a very satisfying meal and most of the main ingredients were attained locally!

Ingredients:
wheat berries
carrot
red cabbage
shiitake mushrooms
tofu (locally produced, not locally grown)
bean sprouts
egg (unfortunately not local)

Ssamjang (sauce, from the excellent Maangchi):
4 tablespoons of soybean paste (miso or Korean-doenjang)
4 tablespoons chili paste
1 tablespoon sugar (raw cane sugar)
2 green/spring onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice wine or mirin
1 tablespoon soy sauce
water to make desired consistency (about 2 or 3 tablespoons)

local whole wheat crepes with peach butter

2012-01-02T11:11:00.000-07:00

Man, I am so impressed with these crepes. Whole wheat, no eggs, no milk, no problem! They still come out soft, flexible, and delicious, especially with homemade local peach butter. Adapted from this recipe.

Ingredients:
1 c. whole wheat flour
1 flax egg (1 T. ground flaxseed + 3 T. water) (not local)
2 c. water
1 T. honey (for sweet crepes)
1/8 t. salt (not local)
oil/butter for frying (not local)

Directions:
Mix up the flax egg and then add water, salt, and honey, mixing well. Then add the flour and mix well. I used an immersion blender and it worked well. Pour the batter on a oiled pan on medium, spread the batter thin with a spatula and cook until golden brown, then flip and cook some more.

Comments:
Participating in the Dark Days Challenge has been a nice way to challenge myself to try to make things more local. It always brings up interesting questions. In the case of these crepes, I replaced the egg with ground flaxseed, which is not local (but could be since I've seen it growing in gardens around here, although I imagine processing it would be time consuming). If I had chickens, I'd be putting eggs in everything. But I don't. So, weighing other factors, like cost, humaneness, energy intensity of transportation, ground flax is the clear winner.

As a side note, I took the opportunity to experiment with pour-able crepe crackers. In my cracker experimentation, I thought it would be cool to try a pour-able cracker recipe, so I didn't have to trouble with rolling out the cracker dough. So I poured a big, thin crepe and put it in the oven:

They were fine, but not as satisfying as actual crackers. They took a lot longer to bake, and didn't really save much work. Still, pretty nice with cheese and mushroom pate:

creamy parsnip soup

2011-12-26T09:07:00.001-07:00

Local food in the middle of winter while traveling for the holidays?! That's crazy! That said, while we were in Chicago, we managed to find a few fairly local ingredients at Whole Foods without exerting too much effort. And that my friends is huge because when I attempted a local diet just four years ago while living in Chicago, I could not find any local produce at Whole Foods even during the middle of summer! So yes, we celebrated by making a rich parsnip soup.

Ingredients:
parsnips (from Wisconsin)
onions (from Wisconsin)
mushrooms (from Illinois)
butter (arguably from Wisconsin)
heavy cream (arguably from Wisconsin)
white wine
lemon juice
water
thyme
garlic
ginger
nutmeg
salt
pepper
radish sprouts for garnish (from Illinois)

Cook the parsnips, onions, etc and blend. Add the cooked mushrooms after everything is blended. Garnish with radish sprouts.

homemade lip balm

2011-12-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

I made these lip balms with a friend. It's super easy! We heated up apricot oil, beeswax, honey, alkanet root for color, mica for sparkle, and rosewater for fragrance. Then we poured the mixture into tins. I am giving them as x-mas/solstice presents! Happy holidays!

HaHo

2011-12-19T20:43:00.001-07:00

Eric and I went to the Denver Handmade Homemade Holiday Market back on December 10th. We saw it advertised through the Denver Urban Homesteading group which is a group I keep meaning to check out...

The HaHo Market is really interesting because it seems to successfully subvert legal blocks on cottage industries. It does this by requiring that anyone who attends the market be a member. Conveniently, membership is free and registration laptops are set up at the entrance. There is a little check box at the end of registration that says "By signing up for this free membership you acknowledge that nothing at this market has been approved by the health department or regulated in anyway and that you assume all inherent risks." Not sure how people might be able to apply this tactic in other states (maybe consult a lawyer), but its something to look into if you really want to sell your jam that was cooked in a regular kitchen rather than a commercial kitchen!

sweet potato patties

2011-12-17T12:02:00.002-07:00

The last batch of farmers market sweet potatoes I bought spoiled pretty quickly. This batch stored just fine. Strange... Anyways, I was compelled to use these sweet potatoes in a comforting, colorful meal. Why? To somewhat compensate for the week I spent sitting through non-stop meetings and to slightly make up for the darkness I encountered every time I set foot outside. So, there you have it! Orange, yellow, green, and purple! And vegan! And mostly local! (thanks Self for freezing spinach and corn this summer)

Sweet Potato Patty Ingredients:
1 1/4 lb. sweet potato, pealed, cubed, boiled, mashed
1 T. honey
1 T. margarine (not local)
1 t. salt (not local)
1 t. cumin (not local)
1/2 t. corriander
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 c. frozen spinach, thawed
1 c. frozen corn, thawed
1/2 a small red onion, diced, caramelized
2 eggs worth of Ener-G egg replacer (not local)

Mix it up, refrigerate, shape patties, and pan fry in oil.

Sweet and Sour Cabbage Ingredients:
1 small purple cabbage, sliced thin
honey
apple cider vinegar (not local)
salt (not local)

Basically just steam the cabbage in honey, vinegar, and salt.

local cheese and homemade crackers

2011-12-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

We picked up 10 lbs of local wheat flour (Farmer John/Butte Mill) and some cheese (Windsor) at the winter farmers' market last weekend, so I've been working on perfecting cracker making with local ingredients. I've been using a recipe from the New York Times, minus the sesame seeds, as a base recipe:

Ingredients
1 1/4 c. whole-wheat flour
1/2 t. salt (not local)
5 T. olive oil (not local)
4 to 5 T. water, as needed

Directions
Mix the flour and salt in a bowl, mixer, or food processor. Add olive oil and mix. Add water and mix. You should be able to form the dough into a ball. Roll out the dough as thin as you can (I roll out on a flexible cutting board and then transfer to a baking sheet, then I roll out more with a small, maneuverable rolling device). Then perforate the dough into cracker size pieces with a pizza cutter--don't worry about actually separating them, that will happen on its own when baked! Bake 10-15 minutes at 350 F or until crispy.

This is a great base recipe for cracker experimentation. As is, the crackers are great for eating in soup or with cheese, dips, jam, or local mushroom pate. And if you add flavors like dried basil and fresh garlic, the crackers are great on their own too. If you add sesame seeds and sesame oil as in the original recipe, they taste like those sesame sticks found in bulk bins. I'm planning on trying a nut yeast version sometime as well.

And yes, this counts as a meal; we ate cheese and crackers for dinner!

sourdough baguettes

2011-11-30T17:32:00.005-07:00

My sourdough baguette recipe is still a work in progress. Last time my dough was too wet causing an unshapely loaf, this time it was too dry causing a dense crumb...

I should clarify that we are not doing the Dark Days Challenge full-time, just a minimum of once per week, and that these are not local flour baguettes. Though we do have access to local whole wheat flour so I am sure at some point I will post a picture of a local loaf!

honey glazed carrots and a november salad

2011-11-28T18:00:00.007-07:00

We're starting things off easy peasy for the Dark Days Challenge. Though to be honest, my original plan was spoiled - literally. I had planned on making matang, a Korean candied sweet potato, but the sweet potatoes that Eric picked up last weekend from the farmers market did not survive the week. I was pretty bummed so I took myself on a walk. During said walk I realized that I could just make honey glazed carrots instead. When I got home I cut up the carrots, steamed them for about 5 minutes, then coated them in honey and cooked for a minute. Since I steamed instead of fried, I didn't get the crispy matang effect but, hey, it was good anyway.

And as planned, we threw together a simple local salad of tender mixed greens, goat cheese, and homegrown counter-ripened tomatoes. The only thing not local about this meal was homemade vinaigrette!

boulder, colorado - 150 mile local food radius

2011-11-27T19:12:00.006-07:00

For each person "local" can mean a different thing. For you it could mean a region, a state, a set number of miles from your home, a town, or even your own backyard. I personally think that it's a worthwhile lifestyle experiment to set a limit and test if you can live within it for a little while (a few years ago we did a month long experiment of local eating with only a few exceptions). It reveals where your food supply systems might be broken. Like maybe there are laws getting in the way of local, small dairy farmers. Maybe you live in a grain growing state but you can't buy any local grain because it makes more sense for agribusinesses to ship everything across the country to be processed, over processed and shipped back to you. It's interesting to see how the invisible web around you is working. And on a more positive note, a local eating challenge helps one truly appreciate an occasional orange that's been flown across the country.

Anyway, for the sake of the Dark Days Challenge, the winter time rule-of-thumb definition of local is a 150 mile radius. The image above is what that looks like for us here in Boulder.

dark days challenge!

2011-11-27T09:28:00.002-07:00

We signed up for the Dark Days Challenge! For the next four months, we will be posting once a week about our locally sourced, home cooked meals. It should be a wintery adventure!

potato leek soup

2011-11-26T11:52:00.001-07:00

I was excited to find leeks at the last farmers market. I usually think of them as a springtime plant, but there they were. And the weather is perfect for soups like this!

eric's super vegan stuffing

2011-11-25T08:55:00.001-07:00

Stuffing is one of my faves. I think this stuffing came out really good. The secret? frying the bread cubes in margarine. Also, I used two types of bread--one a cranberry walnut bread--for added interest and texture.

Ingredients:
10 c. bread cubes (4 c. cranberry walnut, 6 c. sourdough/white)
at least a cup of margarine
a few stalks celery
1 carrot
1 small onion
1 apple (granny smith) (diced into small pieces)
1/2 c. dried cranberries
1 c. walnuts
2 t. sage
2 t. thyme
1 t. salt
black pepper
2 T. apple cider vinegar
2 c. veg. broth
1 T. vegetarian mushroom oyster sauce
sugar (for candying walnuts)

First, make your bread cubes. Then melt 1/2 c. or so of the margarine and fry the bread cubes until they are crispy and golden (you may have to do this in two batches).

Second, cook the celery, onion, and carrot in margarine until soft. Add the sage, thyme, salt, and pepper, followed by the fried bread cubes, cranberries, and apple (diced into small pieces). Mix well.

Break the walnuts into pieces and toast them in a little bit of oil, adding sugar so they get caramelized. Add half of them to the bread cube mixture, and save the other half to sprinkle on top.

Heat up the vegetable broth and add the apple cider vinegar and mushroom sauce, mixing until dissolves. Pour this over the bread cube mixture and mix until the broth has been soaked up by the bread cubes. Transfer to a baking container. I used two loaf pans, which kept the whole thing from drying out too much, yet allowed the top to get nice and crispy. A casserole dish would work fine also.

Sprinkle the rest of the candied walnuts on top and bake for 15-30 min at 425°F.

kolaches

2011-11-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

Haha, they look like eggs.

This was my first time trying to make kolaches, a Czech pastry. I have fond memories going to a Czech bakery with my parents to get kolache. They didn't quite come out like I remember them... These have apricot filling. Julie had made the Polish version before, which is called "kołacz", and is basically the same thing, just a different shape maybe; it seems ka-lotch-key is just a generic Slavic word for cake.

winter white sangria

2011-11-13T14:26:00.001-07:00

We cooked up this winter white sangria from "Some Like it Hot: 50 Drinks to Warm Your Spirits" by Holly Burrows and Katie Walter. It involves white wine, sugar, orange slices, lemon slices, and thyme heated for half an hour. I look forward to trying other recipes from this book. Yay for chilly weather and warm mugs!

celeriac

2011-11-12T07:47:00.001-07:00

Pretty ugly tuber, eh? We made soup with it following this food network recipe. It was decent. Don't know that I will rush out to buy another celery root...

kofta balls

2011-11-10T19:48:00.003-07:00

One of the things I miss about living in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois is Monday night all-you-can-eat Krishna dinners at the Channing-Murray Foundation/Red Herring. I recently made vegetable kofta balls, which were frequently served at the dinners. Here is the recipe I used: Baked Kofta Balls. Basically it is grated vegetables, flour, and spices. I was really surprised at how well the balls held together without any eggs or egg substitute. Along with grated cauliflower, I chopped up some sauerkraut that Julie made recently, since we didn't have any cabbage. I'm sure any vegetable will work—I plan on trying it with winter squash.

perennial gifts

2011-10-30T19:46:00.000-06:00

A fellow community gardener gave us some of her perennials—a gift that keeps on giving! As part of our end-of-season tasks, we cut them back and are drying them:

Chocolate Mint

Hyssop

And we're also drying coriander:

fried green tomatoes with red beans and rice

2011-10-28T17:40:00.001-06:00

As predicted, we made fried green tomatoes. They were good, but you know what's better? Fried red tomatoes... I don't know why Southerners pick premature tomatoes in the middle of the growing season just to fry them up. I am most certainly one who eats this dish exclusively as an end of season novelty. Next time we make these, I plan on improving the flavor of our corn flour batter by sweetening it, making it extra spicy, and perhaps adding curry.

To round out this fried green tomato meal, we made none other than - - - red beans and rice!

Red Beans and Rice Ingredients:
1 c. brown rice cooked in 2 c. vegetable broth and a splash of olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 green pepper, diced
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 t. Creole seasoning
1 t. parsley
1 t. thyme
1/2 t. sage
2 (15 oz.) cans kidney beans, drained
dash of liquid smoke
salt and black pepper to taste

Saute the onion, celery and green pepper until the onion is translucent. Add the spices and cook a little longer. Mix the veggies with the rice, beans, and liquid smoke.

unripe tomatoes

2011-10-26T07:14:00.000-06:00

We picked 10 pounds of lingering green tomatoes off our plants (4 heavy producers, 4 light producers, 2 non producers). Just in time--there's now 6" of snow on the ground!

Now begins the quest to find uses for these 10 pounds of unripe tomatoes. We will definitely bread and fry some of them. Leave a comment if you have a favorite way to eat unripe tomatoes!

Here's round one: Green Tomato Cake!

third time's a charm: sauerkraut

2011-10-23T09:02:00.009-06:00

Hopefully. And I am hopeful.

The first time Eric and I attempted to make sauerkraut was about 4 years ago in the basement of our college rental house. We were super psyched about the endeavor. We were just getting into local food and making things from scratch. We attended a workshop about fermentation that demonstrated making sauerkraut, soy sauce, hard cider and miscellaneous other things like horseradish. Confident in our abilities to follow the simple recipe, we headed home to slice cabbage thin, coat in salt, pack tight in a container, cover with a weight, and let the fermentation happen. I don't remember exactly what went wrong. We may have waited too long or the basement might have fluctuated too much in temperature, but a very terrible smell emerged from the basement. We told our roommates that it must just be a stage in the process of sauerkraut making... Eric's grandfather, after all, complained about growing up with the smell of fermenting sauerkraut in his bedroom because there was no other space for it in their small flat. So we kept waiting and waiting but no edible magic came of the situation. Clearly we just messed up.

I did not think again about attempting to make sauerkraut until 2 years later when we met a stranger from CouchSurfing who was bike touring across the country. He was an anarchist, activist guy who was super into fermenting and was convinced that we needed to give sauerkraut another chance. So we did. It went well I think. But for some reason I thought that I should can it since I was just getting into canning at the time. The canning process dried out the sauerkraut a bunch and, duh, it killed all of the healthy, living enzymes. Never again!

Here's hoping for a delightful third batch of sauerkraut!
(we used the Wild Fermentation recipe)

community supported agriculture: season summary 2011

2011-10-22T11:23:00.005-06:00

Another CSA season draws to a close... It certainly was a good one! Thank you Isabelle farmers!

chili that is green

2011-10-19T06:12:00.001-06:00

The definition of "chili" is kind of weird, right? First, there are chili peppers. Then there is the chili (con carne) that I grew up with (with beans and tomatos). And then there is green chili (chili verde), common to New Mexico and Colorado (at least), which seems to be a sauce more often than a standalone meal.

Anyway, my intent when creating this recipe was to make something like the chili I grew up with, but make it from green things instead of red things. Hence "chili that is green." And also of course, to make it sin carne. The result is something that actually more closely resembles a split-pea soup or gumbo than a chili, but it has some heat to it, and tastes pretty good.

Hominy is really good. Really good at creating islands of interesting texture. Also, liquid smoke is so key.

Ingredients:
Margarine or oil
2 medium onions
2 1/2 c. dry split peas
3 c. okra
2 c. roasted green chiles, peeled and chopped; to taste
1 1/2 c. hominy
1 1/2 c. edamame
1 bulb garlic
1 tomato, green or yellow
1/2 c. celery (optional)
water

3 bay leaves
1 1/2 T. oregano
1 1/2 T. cumin
2 t. coriander, ground
2 t. coriander, whole
3 t. liquid smoke
½ t. filé powder (optional)
1 T. salt
black pepper to taste

chocobean chili

2011-10-18T20:46:00.001-06:00

Like Eric said in the previous post, we had a vegetarian chili cook-off for my birthday. It was by far my best birthday ever! Why? Because my friends are awesome! We had 10 delicious entries with a whole lot of variety in style. This chocobean chili was my contribution.

inspired by this recipe
Serves: 15

Ingredients:
6 c. cooked black beans (2 3/4 c. dry)
---
3 red onions, diced
2 large yams, cubed
4 red bell peppers, diced
1 head of garlic, minced
olive oil
2 T. salt
---
2 (28 oz.) cans of crushed or diced tomatoes
2 c. red wine
3/4 c. chili powder
1/2 c. sugar
1 (7 oz.) can chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, minced
2 T. ground cumin
2 T. oregano
1 T. paprika
3 oz. bakers chocolate, shaved

Cook the beans. Toss the second batch of ingredients (red onion - salt) into a large pot. Cook over medium heat with a cover on for about 15 minutes. Add the beans and the third batch of ingredients. Reduce to a simmer for a minimum of 45 minutes.

happy birthday julie!

2011-10-18T20:15:00.000-06:00

I made Julie this vegan rainbow cake for her birthday, using a vegan cake recipe from our friend Susan and batter coloring instructions from Omnomicon.

Here it is in all of its frosted cloudy glory:

Sorry no slice shots--it got eaten too fast!

Also, we had a veggie chili cook-off, so chili recipes are forthcoming!

herbed dumpling soup

2011-10-10T21:43:00.000-06:00

We made this soup. Our noses ran in a good way while we ate it. Though I have to say that I was a little underwhelmed by the dumplings, but that's probably because I'm holding a grudge against them since I am now missing a bit too much of my pinky nail. Remember kids, knives are dangerous. But really, next time I am going to make garlic time bomb dumplings!

pumpkin molasses chocolate chip cookies

2011-10-09T16:17:00.000-06:00

And then the temperature dropped and I realized that summer is on its way out. I had sensed it was coming. The trees have been dropping crunchy leaves on the sidewalks for a week or more. Then yesterday it rained a cold drizzle most of the day with snow falling up on the mountain peaks while everyone in the grocery store crowded in the baking aisle. Hence the cookie post.

For the record, I initially intended to make plain old molasses chocolate chip cookies based on Joy the Baker's recipe, but you know tis the season for adding pumpkin to things.

Yield: 3 dozen cookies!

Ingredients:
3 c. all purpose flour
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder
1 t. kosher salt
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. ginger

1 1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/4 c. blackstrap molasses
1 c. melted butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 t. vanilla extract
1 c. pumpkin puree (from a pumpkin)
2 c. chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine the dry ingredients (flour through ginger). In a separate bowl, mix together the granulated sugar and molasses. Then cream the sugar and butter for 3 minutes. Mix in egg, vanilla extract and pumpkin puree. Slowly add the flour mixture. Fold in the chocolate chips. Chill the dough for at least 20 minutes. Shape rough balls and drop onto a greased cookie sheet. Sprinkle with a little bit of coarse salt. Bake for about 8 minutes or until golden.

Next time I make these I will try using chocolate chunks instead of chips and leaving out the baking powder so that the cookies are a little less puffy and a little more photogenic.

chiles rellenos (beer battered collard fusion) with salsa fresca

2011-10-04T20:34:00.001-06:00

Oh hello, here are some stuffed poblano peppers aka chiles rellenos. I followed the nice instructions at Macheesmo. I filled them with soft white cheese and (liquid) smoky collard greens, battered them with an Oktoberfest beer, egg and flour batter, and topped them with a tomato, avocado, and cilantro salsa fresca. What a great time of year!

If the skins on the peppers are thin enough, don't worry about getting them all off. Also don't worry about the peppers breaking while stuffing; they are pretty forgiving once you batter them. Seam side down!

crabapple liqueur

2011-10-04T06:01:00.002-06:00

A year and a half ago I wrote about how I had made several pints of (no-pectin-added) crabapple jelly that didn't gel. I tried adding more sugar and, frankly, that just made them into a thick candy syrup. This was fine for oatmeal and pancakes, but not so good for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Now, inspired by the liqueurs class, I decided to add some vodka and water to what is essentially a thick simple syrup with crabapple flavor to make crabapple liqueurs. I added star anise to one jar and rosemary and sage to the other. Now maybe this everlasting crabapple sugar stuff will finally get used up.

coffee liqueur

2011-10-03T19:04:00.020-06:00

We were actually planning on starting a coffee liqueur before the liqueur class that Eric mentioned in the previous post, but the class motivated us to do it asap. We changed the proportions of the recipe a bit compared to the class example. In particular we went with whole coffee beans rather than ground and increased the amount since the have less surface area. Hopefully straining will be easier at the end. We used 1/2 c. whole coffee beans bloomed in 1 c. hot water and then mixed with 2 c. sugar and 2 1/2 c. vodka. We will let the coffee beans soak for a month or longer if it needs it and shake it up once a day if we can. Then when a month is up, we'll filter the liqueur and optionally let it sit another month for more flavor development. We'll see about that last optional step...

rowanberry bitters

2011-10-02T21:47:00.000-06:00

I recently participated in a class put on by Sophia Rose on making mulled and infused wines, cordials, and liqueurs. We tasted many delicious concoctions, but one of the most interesting things we did was make bitters. Commercially available bitters often contains gentian, but we used rowan, or mountain ash berries since they grow around here and are sometimes used for bitters. The trees are very common--I've often wondered if the berries were edible.

To make the bitters, just infuse gin or vodka with macerated berries. We used vodka, but will probably add in some juniper berries to make it more gin-like.

Here's a great booklet with many other uses for rowanberries.

2011 great american beer festival

2011-09-30T20:47:00.002-06:00

Craft beers are AWESOME! We had the pleasure of sampling many such beers last night at the Great American Beer Festival. Apparently there were more than 450 brewers with over 2200 beers to choose from!? Yikes. We hardly made a dent in that spread.

My most memorable beer was the Bloody Beer from Shorts Brewing Company which is brewed with tomatoes, dill, horseradish, peppercorns, and celery seed! I also enjoyed a very bubbly champagne-like Saison by Pelican. Eric reports that his most memorable beers were Port Townshend's Yoda's Green Tea Gold (tasted like genmaicha), a Chai Stout, Elysian's Avatar Ale (a jasmine IPA), and MateVeza's Morpho (hibiscus, bay leaf, mate, and no hops).

utah vacation

2011-09-28T12:52:00.006-06:00

We just got back from vacationing in Utah! The scenery is so different and dramatic there... Our primary destinations were to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park. Along the way, we also stopped at Hanging Lake, Colorado National Monument, Fisherlake National Forest, Capitol Reef National Park, Boulder UT, and Goblin Valley State Park.

Hiking Angels Landing at Zion was definitely a highlight for me. So was eating blueberry pie in Boulder, UT. And of course, so was spending quality time with Eric Wilson and Francois Fransqueezedoodle.

garlic rose relish

2011-09-14T21:22:00.000-06:00

Whenever talk turns to garlic, as it often does, the Stinking Rose garlic-focused restaurant in San Francisco inevitably gets mentioned. When it does I tell the story of how my table finished off a whole jar of the "Garlic Rose Relish" that sits on every table, got it refilled and had some more. It is delicious. But then we all felt sick and had to go track down some ginger ale to soothe our aching stomachs.

I remember talking to the owner about the recipe. He said they use parsley (as opposed to basil) because it is cheap. It's all about the garlic anyway.

You can add some purslane for a boost of omega-3's if you're into that sort of thing. As I said, it's all about the garlic anyway.

Ingredients:

1 bunch	Chopped Parsley
1/4 c.	Chopped Garlic
2 T.	Vinegar
1 t.	Salt
	Olive oil to cover

plus basil, purslane, etc.

1. Mix parsley, garlic, vinegar and salt.
2. Add oil to cover ingredients, stir.
3. Cover and store in refrigerator.

Recipe from The Stinking Rose.

This stuff is good on anything.

zen and the art of wheelbarrow maintenance

2011-09-10T19:43:00.001-06:00

The two communal wheelbarrows at our community garden plot were in need of repair: flat tires, loose and rusty hardware, and wood handles that gave me splinters just looking at them. So I took some time to fix them up today. I stained the wood to protect it, greased all the hardware and axles, and inflated the flat tires. So gratifying to get things working again!

One of the tires was tubeless, which seems to trouble many wheelbarrow enthusiasts, including me. I tried applying dish soap to the bead and a compression strap (belt, bungee cord, or rope would work too) around the circumference to press the bead to the rim, but it still didn't hold air. I ended up using some silicone adhesive sealant leftover from another project around the rim (rubber cement may work also). In conjunction with the compression strap, this worked!

Installing a tube would have been a last resort solution.

roasted red pepper spread

2011-09-09T20:17:00.001-06:00

I don't exactly know what to call this besides "roasted red pepper spread." But it is really good:

paprika peppers from our CSA, roasted on a grill or in an oven
garlic
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
honey
salt

Just like the Baba Ghanoush, I just chopped everything up by hand and mixed with a fork.

rack that wine

2011-09-09T19:11:00.002-06:00

We racked our Malbec the other night (gently siphoned wine out leaving sediment behind). We don't have two carboys so we have to do carboy to bucket and back to carboy. And our carboy is 5 gallons instead of 6 so we put 1 gallon in a separate jug. Not ideal, but Julie's making it look easy with the Auto-Siphon (thanks Jen and Stacey!).

let the canning begin!

2011-08-28T20:24:00.004-06:00

I am determined to fill all of our canning jars in the next month. It is easy to let the peak of the growing season slip by since it doesn't last all that long here. On top of that, I am trying to make this happen while holding down a 40 hour a week job, hosting visitors, hanging out with friends, taking the dog on walks, and enjoying the great outdoors. Hence the reason I am the crazy lady who husks a whole lot of corn in the dark.

baba ghanoush by hand

2011-08-26T23:40:00.000-06:00

I'm loving all the eggplant we're getting in our CSA. I've always made baba ghanoush in a food processor, but I just came across this method of making baba ghanoush just with a knife, and it's the best I've ever had!

Ingredients:
1 large eggplant
1/3 c. tahini
1 T. lemon juice
handful of fresh chopped parsley
salt and pepper
2-5 garlic cloves
olive oil
dash of cayenne

I roasted the eggplant (cut in halves) in the oven (450F) until soft. After it cooled for a bit, I chopped it up and mixed in the rest of the ingredients.

P.S. I think using coarse kosher salt really adds to things like this or on tomato slices; as long as it can dissolve and not be crunchy, it makes the saltiness come in bursts.

potato skillet

2011-08-24T23:43:00.003-06:00

We had this simple yet satisfying medley of CSA and garden veggies for dinner tonight. It consisted of home fried potatoes, zucchini, peppers, and garlic cooked up in a skillet and then topped with green onion, cheddar cheese, and fresh tomatoes.

wassermelonenbüffel

2011-08-23T21:27:00.000-06:00

You know the story about using all parts of the buffalo...well, we did that with our watermelon:

First: dehydrated watermelon slices. This is pretty energy intensive and impractical since watermelon is 92% water, but the dried watermelon slices make very sweet fruit leathers.

Next, I pickled the watermelon rind. I just cut off the dark green skin and soaked in salt water (1/4 cup salt per quart of water) overnight. They taste like salty cucumbers--really good! I used the recipes from Dave's Garden and pick your own dot org.

Finally, we roasted the seeds that I picked out.

P.S. Best watermelon recipe I've ever had.

bringing in the tomatoes

2011-08-23T20:30:00.000-06:00

We've started bringing in the tomatoes. For the record, the Amana Orange have been doing the best, although they have been cracking. Still delicious though! I'm a little disappointed in our four Roma plants--how do you get them to ripen all at once? I'm not sure if they are determinate or indeterminate...

lunch on the summit

2011-08-23T12:39:00.003-06:00

I did my first fourteener this weekend! Which is surprising because I have lived in Colorado for three years now and if you know anything about Coloradans, they love to talk about doing fourteeners. You can see said fourteener (Mount Bierstadt) in the sunshiney picture above. Don't believe the picture though, we got hailed on twice.

For lunch at the summit, me and my co-adventurers ate english muffins with cheddar cheese, red pepper jelly, and basil!

chila: the original gluten free pancake

2011-08-20T11:34:00.001-06:00

A friend had us over for dinner last night. She is bravely transitioning into a life free of gluten (wheat, barley, rye, etc) and since we like a good challenge, we offered to make a gluten-free flat bread.

But it actually turned out to be a crazy easy endeavor - thank you internet! No, we did not recreate naan with all kinds of alternative flours (rice flours, potato flour, xanthan gum, tapioca starch, and so on) because there already exists a traditional Indian pancake called chila (or cheela or cheelay) that is very simply made of chickpea flour (aka garbanzo flour or gram flour)! Here is the recipe that we used.

garden defender

2011-08-17T18:28:00.001-06:00

I've seen several grasshoppers on our chard as well as potato beetles on our tomato plants. I remember hearing somewhere that praying mantids are good for eating garden pests such as these, so when I saw a mantis on a bike rack, I gently transported it to our garden to hopefully eat some of those baddies.

hail storm

2011-08-17T18:14:00.000-06:00

There was a big hail storm yesterday. At first I was worried about our tomatoes. It turned out that all the large tomatoes were fine, but a bunch of the still-green pear and cherry tomatoes got knocked off their vines. We'll have to pickle them or something. The real damage was to the chard, as you can see above. This compelled me to harvest much of the chard: a total of 5 lbs.

This much chard fills up our 16 quart pot. I'm getting pretty good at quickly blanching and freezing large amounts of chard:

Rinse a large handful in a large bowl or bucket.
Chop with knife.
Put in pot with a few inches of water.
Steam until soft, stirring often.
Rinse in cold water.
Put in freezer bags (in sheets for breaking later)

the hard truth

2011-08-07T18:33:00.000-06:00

Seen at the Boulder County Fair... I enjoy the brutal honesty of this poster.

bread and butter pickles

2011-08-07T13:13:00.001-06:00

Another year of pickles. We used the recipe for bread and butter pickles from the Ball Blue Book of preserving. Last time, there were too many onion pieces in the way, so we did fewer, larger, pieces of onions.

6 pounds of chard!

2011-08-07T10:10:00.004-06:00

We planted chard in our garden because we read it could keep producing all summer long unlike spinach or kale. It has definitely met our expectations--it just keeps coming back--and it looks so good. We just harvested 6 pounds of it, blanched and froze it.

But one problem...I got a terribly itchy throat after the process. This happened last time we processed a lot of chard too. This time, I realized I must have ate a piece of chard leaf raw. The itchy throat seems to be due to the oxalic acid on the leaves (also in beets, spinach, lambsquarter, wood sorrel (oxalis), and other greens in different amounts, but I've only gotten the reaction from chard). So watch out! I tried gargling an antacid (tums) to counter the oxalic acid and that seemed to help.

summer squash sandwich with a side of beet chips

2011-08-03T12:06:00.008-06:00

I like a man who can cook! Good thing Eric qualifies!

old news: cocoa beans

2011-08-02T17:31:00.000-06:00

No, no, I'm not saying that cocoa beans are boring. I am saying that it has taken me awhile to post about my cocoa bean adventures.

About two weeks ago, Eric and I roasted, shelled, and ground a handful of cocoa beans with our friends who brought the fermented beans back from their travels in Costa Rica. I loved tasting and smelling the different phases in the process! Since we lacked official chocalatier equipment, we wound up with fine chocolate crumbles rather than a smooth chocolate bar, but nonetheless it was super tasty and nutty!

backpacking in collegiate peaks wilderness

2011-08-02T12:56:00.004-06:00

Backpacking is amazing! This past weekend we went backpacking in Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. Unlike a day hike or a hectic vacation, backpacking lets you really escape your regular internal dialogue. Plus you will likely find yourself immersed in stunning scenery without another soul to be seen.

making wine

2011-07-24T09:43:00.003-06:00

Here at d.i. WINE and dine, we finally got around to buying and brewing wine from a kit. Years ago we made a pretty basic tasting wine from grocery store grape juice. This time we sprung for a wine kit from the local homebrew store. The kit cost $95 and should produce about 30 bottles of wine. That means that each bottle will have cost us about $3. Not a bad deal at all. And as you'll see below, it was super easy to do - easier than mead or beer making.

First step (optional but highly recommended) invite your friends over!

(that's our friend Peter)

Then sterilize your brewing equipment,

add warm water to your brewing bucket,

and add packet of bentonite.

(bentonite!? weird)

Pour the grape juice into the bucket.

And try not to spill.

Otherwise your dog will try to help you clean up.

Add a bag of oak chips.

Add a bag of grape skins.

Then measure the specific gravity. Pitch the yeast. Put the cover and airlock on the brewing bucket. Wait a week for further instructions.

free flowers!

2011-07-24T08:51:00.001-06:00

A fellow community gardener had a ton of these flowers so she gave some to us!

massaged kale salad

2011-07-21T12:57:00.002-06:00

You're looking at a massaged kale salad. Nothing too crazy going on here, but it is tasty and timely nonetheless (especially when eaten on a back stoop).

accidental worm tea

2011-07-16T17:05:00.002-06:00

We had been meaning to make worm tea to apply to our garden. Well, we got some accidentally. We must have been making the smoothies we feed to our worms with more water than usual, because the tray that catches extra water had a lot of brown liquid in it, when usually it is dry. I guess that's a nice feature of our wooden worm bin--it self-regulates if it gets too wet.

I wonder about worm tea vs. directly applying worm castings. Castings are easier, and probably slower-reacting, but can introduce seeds.

strawberry-rhubarb compote

2011-07-16T16:47:00.000-06:00

Here's all of the strawberries we harvested recently. I picked anything that was red--all pretty small and most super/sickly sweet. Since it wasn't worth making jam with such a small amount, I made a strawberry-rhubarb compote (just added a little bit a sugar). I like it because it isn't too sweet and you don't need pectin. We enjoyed it on some vegan pound cake from the freezer that we made a while back.

a recent garden harvest

2011-07-16T16:33:00.001-06:00

Just a snapshot of a recent harvest from our community garden plot: chard, arugula, peas, purslane, and strawberries.

rhubarb white chocolate cookies

2011-07-15T13:23:00.001-06:00

Our community garden neighbor offered us fresh rhubarb from her garden plot. Of course we said yes. Then, for whatever reason, I was driven to make rhubarb white chocolate cookies. They turned out sweet, buttery, and subtly tart - a welcome break from piles of veggies.

huevos motuleños

2011-07-11T13:22:00.003-06:00

Inspired by a recent meal at Blue Sky Cafe, Eric planned on making me huevos motuleños for breakfast on Sunday, but we slept right though breakfast and were out and about for lunch. In the end, we ate breakfast for dinner and proclaimed it a date night!

As you can see, Eric's version of the dish has blue corn bread and beans topped with a poached egg, avacado, feta, cilantro and a side of fried banana and scalloped home fries.

aloo mattar

2011-07-09T17:49:00.001-06:00

We are swimming in peas from our garden so we made this classic Indian dish of potatoes and peas.

bike touring

2011-07-07T17:16:00.004-06:00

For the 4th of July weekend Eric, myself, and 6 friends loaded up our bikes with camping gear and rode from Twin Lakes to Maroon Bells. Our route took us right over Independence Pass on Independence Day weekend! The ride was about 55 miles one-way with a climb of 4500 verticle feet!! I still am amazed with myself for accomplishing this.

lemon infused vodka

2011-06-24T16:11:00.006-06:00

Also known as - - - limoncello. I personally associate limoncello with the summer I spent in Rome studying architecture and urban planning. Eric, however, thinks that limoncello is "probably the most cliche liquor for 'foodies' to talk about making." Great.

We made limoncello! Oh my god! It was so exciting and amazing! We put lemon peel in a jar of vodka! Actually, we did stray a bit from most of the recipes we found online. Instead of zesting the lemons, we peeled them with a vegetable peeler, hoping to make candied lemon peel with the leftovers later.

As for all of that fresh squeezed lemon juice that needs to be utilized? We threw together these lemon poppy seed muffins. There still is a lot of juice left though... Maybe we'll make lemon curd next.

pasta with fava beans, butter lettuce, and roasted pistachios

2011-06-22T17:14:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, when you have a large volume of lettuce, you start daydreaming about cooking it down. Well I turned my daydreams into reality. I searched the internet for cooked lettuce recipes and landed on this one: pasta with peas, asparagus, butter lettuce and prosciutto. Since we’re vegetarian, we subbed out the prosciutto for roasted pistachios and the chicken broth for veggie broth. And since we didn’t have all the veggies on hand, we substituted the peas for fava beans (brought to us from NM) and just left out the asparagus.

chamomile

2011-06-22T06:09:00.001-06:00

A bunch of German chamomile is growing in the pathway at our community garden--thanks Wendy for spotting it! There's a rule about keeping the paths clear of "weeds" so I did my part. It smells so good--chamomile is my favorite.

In hindsight, I should have only picked the flower heads instead of cutting off half the plant so that it would recover faster, but you can't beat walking home with a bouquet of beautiful and useful flowers.

what is a weed anyway?

2011-06-21T06:00:00.000-06:00

Ralph Waldo Emerson says a weed is a "plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered." In weeding our garden, there's just a handful of unwanted plants that I keep recognizing. One is purslane, a succulent edible that you often see growing in sidewalk cracks. I've also seen it featured in salads in fancy restaurants. Here it is growing out the side of our raised bed:

...that's probably a $20 salad right there.

So I've been leaving it in the garden if it isn't crowding other plants too badly. I just learned from Wikipedia that:

As a companion plant, Purslane provides ground cover to create a humid microclimate for nearby plants, stabilizing ground moisture. Its deep roots bring up moisture and nutrients that those plants can use, and some, including corn, will "follow" purslane roots down through harder soil than they can penetrate on their own. It is known as a beneficial weed in places that don't already grow it as a crop in its own right.

Another common weed in our garden and around town is mallow (malva neglecta):
I'm not sure if it is a beneficial companion like purslane, but it is a demulcent, so I've been picking it to make into a mucilaginous tea, which was nice when I had a sore throat recently (it's also an ingredient in the Ricola cough drops I bought recently).

chard au gratin

2011-06-19T20:16:00.006-06:00

Our community garden newsletter had a recipe for this chard au gratin. It involved two pounds of chard, a béchamel sauce, goat cheese, and garlic-dill bread crumbs. Such creamy goodness!

freezing spinach

2011-06-19T20:11:00.000-06:00

I froze some of the spinach from our garden so we can enjoy it in the winter. After picking and rinsing it, I chopped the spinach roughly, steamed for 2 minutes, quickly transferred the hot spinach to an ice water bath, removed the cooled spinach from the water bath, removed as much moisture as I could (with a salad spinner if you have one; we don't yet so I spun the wet spinach in a tea towel round and round over my head), spread the spinach out in a freezer bag, and put it in the freezer.

oatmeal raisin cookie stout - bottled and ready

2011-06-18T18:35:00.000-06:00

We've started to enjoy our Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Stout, the making of which was documented in the homebrew video we posted a couple months ago. Just in time for stout-weather, right? Actually it makes very delicious beer ice cream floats, especially with ginger ice cream!

visitors!

2011-06-17T19:36:00.010-06:00

Our friends Wendy and Mikey from Holy Scrap Hot Springs visited Boulder recently. And boy, did they rack up a lot of good guest karma! In addition to cooking meals and walking dogs, they brought us some awesome wildcrafted tinctures and teas, which you can find in their store.

Sesame and François had lots of fun together:

What chill dogs...

And what a great thank you/goodbye present...it's amazing what joy six pints of ice cream brings!

(made locally too)

kale chips

2011-06-16T12:04:00.003-06:00

Here's of shot of the kale going into the oven. Where's the shot of the final product? Well unfortunately, we gobbled up the cooked kale chips before I could take any pictures.

We've actually been making a lot of kale chips recently. We've cooked them in the oven at a low temperature for a classic crunch. We've cooked them in a dehydrator for a chewier texture. We've flavored them by simply tossing the prepped kale in olive oil and salt and we've flavored them with more pizzazz by using ingredients like maple syrup, nutritional yeast, and cayenne. Do whatever strikes your fancy. It's a great way to eat a lot of green matter while still feeling like you're snacking and being unhealthy.

are we crazy?

2011-06-13T17:10:00.011-06:00

Yes we are. But we always knew that.

This time we are crazy because in addition to having our very first garden, we decided to continue with our participation in a CSA (community support agriculture). We will have veggies coming out of our ears!

If you're unfamiliar with CSA's, all we had to do was find a local farm that offers a CSA, pay upfront for an entire seasons worth of veggies, and begin collecting our weekly installment of veggies this week! CSA's benefit farmers because they provide cash early and reliably. They benefit participants because you share in the bounty of successful years and you develop a more personal relationship with the farmer.

This year we got a CSA with Isabelle Farm. We had planned to continue with Pachamama Organic Farm but they couldn't deliver to the Boulder farmers this year meaning that we would have to ride our bikes out to the farm once a week - quite a commitment. Ah well. Based on our first week of CSA produce from Isabelle Farm, we should still have an excellent year of CSA veggies!

warm crop transition

2011-06-13T12:51:00.002-06:00

As we've mentioned, we've been harvesting a lot of arugula, lettuce, and radishes. I think it turned out to be pretty good timing; the arugula was bolting and the radishes were beginning to get pithy--just in time for warm crops to be planted. We planted 10 tomato plants (4x Roma, 2x yellow pear, 2x Amana Orange, 1x Czech, 1x mystery) with water walls for cold/hail protection.

lessons learned for the spring crops:

-if seeds don't sprout when you expext they should, don't hesitate to replant
-using row cover seemed to help get seeds started in colder weather
-carrying jugs of water 2 blocks to the garden before water is turned on is a pain but worthwhile in getting spring plants established
-don't plant crazy amounts of arugula! plant more spinach instead
-bush sugar snap peas are growing better for us than the pole/climber version
-chinese rose winter radishes grew way too much foliage; plant more globe radishes next year (though the globe radishes had a low germination rate)

strawberry net

2011-06-10T07:05:00.001-06:00

I built this net structure to keep birds away from our strawberries, which have been beginning to ripen. I think a rigid chicken-wire cage would be easier to work with--the net gets caught on everything and you have to pull it taught so it doesn't sag down in the middle.

We'll see how this strawberry thing goes--we might cut back on the area next time. It takes up a lot of space in our limited 100 sf.

balls! spinach balls!

2011-06-07T17:29:00.006-06:00

We had a ball themed supper recently with friends. Everyone made and ate ball shaped food. It was a ball. (hah) One of our friends made spinach balls that were so good we had to recreate them for dinner. The basic idea is to mix together cooked spinach & onions, bread crumbs, feta cheese, eggs, and spices. Then you roll the mixture into balls and bake. The end.

broccoli rabe

2011-06-06T20:38:00.009-06:00

What is broccoli rabe anyway? It's certainly not broccoli... It's more like kale or mustard greens. I suppose you eat it when you want to sound interesting or when you're eating so many greens that even a change in name sounds appealing...

Well, who cares, it was delicious. I followed a recipe in Veganomicon entitled "spicy tempeh and broccoli rabe with rotelle (pasta)." I would do it again. The tempeh flavoring was stellar. If you want the recipe, you should go to the library!

arugula pesto

2011-06-06T12:42:00.002-06:00

Yikes! We harvested a ton of arugula! We have been eating it on sandwiches and in salads. We have been giving it away to friends. Now we are condensing it into arugula pesto (arugula, walnuts, parmesan, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt) and freezing it for convenient use at a later date... I like to make life easy for future me. =)

jardin esplodin

2011-06-01T20:58:00.002-06:00

Our garden has been exploding in the past week. I've harvested two bunches of arugula and one of oak leaf lettuce, which is so delicious!

But the thing that looks the most monstrous in the garden is our radishes ("Chinese Rose Winter")--on the left in the photo. I'm a little disappointed that even though the leaves are at least twice the size of the regular "Early Scarlet Globe Radishes" (on the right), the roots are the same size or smaller. I know, the greens are edible, but not as enjoyable. Next year, I think I'll skip the Chinese Rose Winter radishes.

Left: Chinese Rose Winter; Right: Early Scarlet Globe

drip irrigation

2011-05-18T20:05:00.003-06:00

We got drip irrigation system in, just in time for days and days of rain! We're using branches of drip-a-long (6" spaced holes) coming off of a 1/2" diameter main line. For our 100 sf, we spent under $100, including timer, pressure regulator, brass splitter, connections, and tubing (some I found in a freepile!). These compression fittings are pretty nice compared with the barb and hose-clamp type.

By the way, watch out for Gilmour brass splitters. I was about to buy one because it was the only one that was all-metal including the valves, but then read on the package that it contains lead--and to wash your hands after handling--yikes. So I went with an almost-all-metal one instead.

Also, we harvested our first radish....yesssss!

the porch

2011-05-17T12:14:00.007-06:00

Our friend had this great idea to start a restaurant, except on a really small scale. Think custom menu for two people on his apartment's porch and open just once a week. Brilliant!

Eric and I were the first customers. We agreed in advance on Mexican food but wanted the details to be a surprise. When we showed up for our meal, we were greeted with margaritas, chips, salsa, guacamole and of course hugs, smiles, and a warm kitchen.

After plenty of chatting and relaxing, we ate our main course - vegetable enchiladas with a homemade enchilada sauce. So good! And for dessert we ate arroz con leche (mexican rice pudding). Delicious! Thank you friends!

open-faced spinach melts

2011-05-13T12:41:00.006-06:00

When I went to the farmer's market on Wednesday, it was raining and turn out was low. The devotion of the people who showed up to sell in the rain made me more compelled than usual to buy produced goods like these locally made chips and salsa which we enjoyed last night for dinner with friends.

Guess what else we had for dinner! Let me give you a clue. For our first dinner with friends we had spinach soup, for the second we had wildrice and spinach casserole, and now for the third we had... that's right, something with spinach. It actually turned out to be really delicious open-faced spinach melts (homemade kalamata olive bread, garlicy local spinach, local mushrooms, carmelized onions, and gouda cheese).

And for dessert, we ate vegan vanilla-lemon-orange poundcake. We used the recipe in Veganomicon. I couldn't get my hands on any rhubarb to make a sauce for the poundcake. Maybe this weekend I will be able to...

garden update

2011-05-12T12:11:00.001-06:00

Well, it's been 5 weeks since we planted. The bush peas and radishes have been doing the best. Spinach and chard were slower to start, but are coming up now. We'll have to take germination time and percentage into account in the future. Experience!

Speaking of experience, we've been helping get a shared garden plot going at our UU church. We roto-tilled and planted last weekend. It is interesting getting exposed to different styles of gardening: traditional rows vs. densely packed "biointensive" at our plot, roto-tilling vs. double-dig at our plot, wisdom of experienced gardeners vs. reading books for our plot.

Well, the rain's been coming all at once for over 24 hours now--hopefully we get a break soon!

straw bale transport

2011-05-05T19:43:00.001-06:00

I split a straw bale with a friend...just another bike trailer glamor shot.

spreading the love

2011-04-30T13:30:00.010-06:00

I am on a new mission to invite people over for dinner. I'm hoping to make it a regular habit, like once a week. So watch out, you may be next!

For the inaugural event, Eric and I made a creamy vegan spinach soup (spinach, sunchokes, scallions, carrots, roux, soy milk, spices) and a millet polenta with home canned tomato sauce. Our friends brought peach crisp made from frozen peaches harvested from a family tree.

Yay local, seasonal, organic, vegetarian food! Yay community!

vegan earth day dinner

2011-04-23T18:30:00.004-06:00

Breadworks, a local bakery and cafe, hosted a vegan Earth Day dinner! It was a nicely informal event with a bring your own wine policy. The tasty vegan food and community-centeredness made me nostalgic for uber-hippy-vegan-makeshift-restaurants-in-basements (ahem The Red Herring of Urbana, IL) BUT I shouldn't dwell too much on the grunge that Boulder lacks. Instead I will note how impressed I was with the number of people there. Boulderites know that a delicious meal does not need to involve animal products. Cheers to that!

And in case you're wondering, they served lentil soup, potato and kale enchiladas, mexican millet, jicama salad, and chocolate banana bread pudding. Yum!

millet: it's what's for dinner

2011-04-17T08:43:00.005-06:00

Colorado grows over half of all millet in the U.S. As people who are always on the look-out for more local grains, we were excited to learn this fact from a piece on Colorado Public Radio. Millet has long been used for food around the world (roti flatbread is made from millet flour and couscous was originally made from millet), but has been mostly known as a component of birdseed in the U.S.

I made a mexican-flavored millet stew loosely based on this recipe. It turned out so, so creamy and tasty. The bursts of coriander are my favorite. We used: millet, veggie broth, beans, corn, frozen roasted hot pepper, parsley, garlic (all local), as well as cumin, coriander, onion, oil, and topped with salsa.

backpacking

2011-04-13T13:49:00.005-06:00

We went on a 15 mile backpacking trip this past weekend to Rattlesnake Arches in western Colorado. The desert canyon views were stellar. I felt like I was in another world.

homebrew video

2011-04-04T12:25:00.004-06:00

Our friend Ted Burnham made this short video about home beer brewing. It stars none other than... us! I love the editing, especially the sound editing. But don't follow our steps exactly - we mistakenly put the malt extract in before steeping the grain. Oops!

first farmers' market of the year

2011-04-03T14:55:00.004-06:00

Saturday marked the beginning of the farmers' market here in Boulder! As you can see, we brought Francois along for the adventure. This was his first ever bike trailer ride (at the precautiously slow speed of 4-8 mph). We didn't know what to expect but he did remarkably well. Still, I am going to keep my eye out for an enclosed kid trailer so that on future trips I can have a little more peace of mind that he won't bail on us.

Although the produce is still fairly limited, the weather was perfect for meandering the market aisles. We managed to pick up spinach, amaranth grain, blue corn flour, eggs, and cheese.

seedlings!

2011-03-31T16:40:00.002-06:00

the ultimate gift of possibility

2011-03-31T12:58:00.001-06:00

For our wedding back in September, our friends Pat and Fawn gave us an incredible gift - a well organized box of gardening seeds! We literally shrieked with glea when we opened it. Just think of all the possibility! Not to mention that the seeds came in a beautifully refinished box... The bittersweet part is that the seeds were from Pat and Fawn's gardening adventures in Illinois. They had to leave them behind because they expatriated to the Netherlands. Ah well, at least those glorious seeds filled with hope and potential are being put to use in our garden whilst eternally emitting warm fuzzy feelings...

planting

2011-03-29T21:03:00.009-06:00

This past weekend we got our garden plot started. We started by loosening the soil using the double-dig method. We then amended the soil with the three bags (~9 cu. ft.) of compost that we picked up the previous weekend. Finally, we planted seeds for peas, radishes, arugula, lettuce, spinach, rainbow chard, broccoli, and mesclun (lettuce mix). In addition to all of those fresh plantings, we inherited a strawberry patch and a few onions in our plot! Thank you previous gardeners!

To get ready for summer planting, we started seeds indoors for tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, broccoli, basil, and other herbs.

Since we are new to gardening in the ground, we've needed to find good information from websites and books. The Boulder Culinary Gardeners' website has an excellent Boulder/Denver planting guide. We have read a few different gardening books as well, including How to Grow More Vegetables and Square Foot Gardening. I like the detail and explanations in How to Grow More Vegetables. What's your favorite gardening book or resource?

tool school!!

2011-03-24T12:08:00.004-06:00

As part of Boulder's ReSource Tool Library, a Tool School has started up! They are offering interesting classes that cover things like how to build a cold frame, a top bar bee hive, an andirondack chair, a backyard pizza oven, and the list goes on. So if you've needed some structure and guidance to get those DIY projects of your dreams started, sign up for a class with this wonderful community organization!

bulk compost

2011-03-20T11:52:00.002-06:00

Time to start prepping our community garden plot! Growing Gardens, the organization that manages Boulder's community gardening system, had a truck load of compost delivered to one of the the bigger community gardens in Boulder. They sold the compost by the wheel barrow. We ended up with 3 wheel barrows of compost which we bagged and hauled across town with an eGo carshare car. Did I mention how beautiful the weather was?