Cabin Fevers

daphne on October 12, 2009

Ahhh, Monday.  Delightful wonderful peaceful Monday morning. Two children, up and out of the house before 7:30.  And my sentence has been lifted.

I’ve been under lock-down.  House arrest. For eight eternally long days.  No, you’re right. I shouldn’t exaggerate.  Why just the other day I was allowed out to bolster our stock of Children’s Tylenol and decongestants.

I wouldn’t dream of complaining.  Nope. Not me.  After all it’s just the flu.  The feverish, coughing, whining, icky flu.  In the scheme of things, it wasn’t all that bad.  At the very least it is over.  And just when a shimmer of bright lining hovered within reach, when sanity seemed possibly to be lurking around the next bend; just when it seemed safe to let the children venture out of each other’s company and into the world at large, this happened–

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You can’t hear it, but that’s the sound of Mother Nature laughing as she dumped snow all over my plans to air out the children.  By which I mean dangling them by their germy little ankles in the branches of our glorious autumnal trees where a gentle clarifying breeze might blow on through.   Breathtaking, right?  As in, they will be so busy gulping in lung-fulls of fresh air that they will have no voice to complain that so-and-so spit on me when she brushed her teeth and SHE TOUCHED ME and ahhhhhhh, I’m so over house arrest.

Breathe in. Breathe out.  I can do this.  If Mother Nature throws me freezing temps and whiny children, I just have to reach a bit deeper into the old parenting tool box.

And so we made a cozy fire.

And drank hot cocoa with little marshmallows.

And I let them make their own baguettes.

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Before you toss too much credit my way, I should confess that this bread is not only delightfully tasty and good at distracting unruly children, but it’s also unbelievably simple to make.  It’s a one-bowl, no kneading kid-pleasing kind of recipe.  I got it from my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day cook book.  Don’t be alarmed; I’ve come a long way since my initial attempts based on a hastily transcribed recipe from my mother resulted in that Not-So-Consumable Crusty Shards of Glass Bread.

Here is the basic recipe.

And just 20 minutes later, we had our warm, aromatic results.

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I also had two smiling children, mouths so full of homemade bread that their ability to bicker was drastically reduced.

And like the softly whirling, sparkling twinkle of the fresh falling snow, peace, sweet, silent peace, at last descended upon our home.

Crusty homemade bread

daphne on October 11, 2009

Ingredients

  • 3 cups of lukewarm water
  • 1 ½ Tablespoons yeast (less at altitude.  I use 1 1/4) T)
  • 1 ½ teaspoons salt
  • 6 ½ cups of all purpose flour

Directions

This makes enough for about 4 loaves. The dough can be refrigerated and used as you go, so you can have fresh bread for dinner anytime.

  1. In a large bowl of very large tupperwear add the water, yeast and salt.
  2. Mix in the flour, using a wooden spoon until the dough just comes together and is uniformly damp without dry patches.
  3. Cover loosely and allow to rise for 2 hours.

Baking Time—

  1. Dip your hands in flour, and generously dust your work surface with flour.
  2. Pull off a chunk of dough—about a softball size makes 2 medium sized baguettes, or a nice round loaf.
  3. Manipulate the dough into the shape you want, incorporate enough of the flour so the dough is not sticky.
  4. Put it on a baking sheet, dusted with corn meal or another granular flour.  Let it rise another 20 minutes.
  5. Preheat oven to 450 , with an empty broiler tray on the lowest oven rack. ***NEVER USE A GLASS CASSEROLE INSTEAD OF A METAL BOILER TRAY.  YOU WILL END UP WITH THIS NOT-SO-TASTY RECIPE INSTEAD!
  6. Put the bread in the oven, and pour one cup of water into the boiler tray.  Let bake for about 20 minutes—less for thin baguettes, more for thick round loaves.

Pizza and French Fries at Casa Your Place

daphne on October 6, 2009

You know what you should do for dinner tonight?  Pizza!  As in, you should make a pizza.  I know, I know, juniors got a soccer game and juniorette has gymnastics and the coupon in the junk drawer is calling out to you in that lovely sirens’ song:  Come on, call the pizza place. Order in, again.

As your friend I’m telling you, don’t do it.

Trust me. In the time it takes you to rummage through that drawer for a coupon that we both know has expired you could have made your very own gourmet pizza.

Really, you can do it.  You need a little convincing?  No problem.  Let’s start out with some visualizing.  Close your eyes (nope, that’s no good. Open your eyes and keep reading.)  Good.  Now, let’s count to three.  In English. Or Spanish.  Or Japanese.  Heck use your fingers, whatever it takes to get you to say this:  I CAN make a tasty healthy pizza in this dinky old kitchen of mine.  YES I CAN.

Here’s the thing.  Making your own pizza means not only do you get to eat pizza, which is yummy, but you also get bragging rights, as you should creating something so pretty and tasty and healthy and homemade and all.   And lest we forget, coupon or no, it’s cheaper to make it at home.

Excellent.  Glad to have you on board.  So you can make your own pizza.  Dough and all.  And it is QUICK AND EASY CHEESY and the kids will eat it and you will be elected king or queen of all you survey.  Good–now click over here, grab the recipe, and start those ovens.

Wait a minute.  Welcome to America.  What good is pizza without french fries?

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Let them eat fries, I always say.  Homemade fries, that is.  You may still not believe me about the easy pizza, but trust me, it really doesn’t get any simpler than this.   And with the mounds and mounds of potatoes we got this year, my kids have packed up and moved to french fry town.  Where, it just so happens, I was crowned Queen.

Next up: Homemade twinkies! They’re easy, low-fat, and packed with antioxidants. Oh, and they’ll also do your laundry and make the beds and complement you on how thin you look in those super cool new jeans.

No, not really.

Smash it! Mash it! Turn it into Juice!

daphne on September 20, 2009

There was an old vibrantly stunning woman,

Who lived in a shoe the suburbs,

She had so many children melons,

She didn’t know what to do wanted to hurl them off the roof for a satisfying splat.

Watermelon has never been my favorite fruit. It’s ok.  It’s fine in a fruit salad if someone else has cubed it and dealt with all the wrangling of the thing and the resultant sticky elbows. But frankly a 20 pound piece of food represents more of a commitment than I’m willing to make.

Thanks to the CSA, I was at my watermelon-y wits end.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was sighing and mopping my brow and wringing my apron strings when all over a sudden help arrived–

Yes, ladies it’s true. I was at a loss until Jack Lalanne came along.  Not in this form, exactly. Climbing that mountain barefoot and naked and waiting 50 + years for my melon distress would have proven too much even for that manly man.  Nope, this is the form that Jack Lalanne took when he came to my rescue. My neighbor’s Jack Lalanne Power Juicer—

While I was absorbed with the complex assembly of Mr. Lalanne, the girls and Dave determined that, based primarily on the fact that our actual apple tree didn’t fruit, the “not crab” apple tree could play the part of a real apple tree this year. The fruit was beautiful,

but despite the new marketing campaign it still tasted like bitter dirt which in my book is a dead giveaway.  That, and the greenish tint to its hard flesh. The children were not deterred.

Acadia quickly put on her cowboy boots, a halter top, and a wrap-around skirt and clamored up the ladder. What? It may not be a real apple tree, but we would never consider wearing anything less to a harvest.

As it turns out the tart “not crab” apples provided a nice balance to our juice plans. Here, some of the fruit awaits it’s fate–

The girls, along with Mr. Lalanne, made short work of 50 pounds of watermelon and 100s of “not crab” apples.  At the end of the day our melon problem had been solved. No more melons.  However, we now had a bit of a juice problem.  Gallons and gallons of juice.

There was green juice

And pink juice

And green juice with a pink stripe

And pink and green juice with penny loafers and little alligators with their collars up.   Wait, wrong decade. For a minute there I was transported back to seventh grade.  That’s just how powerful Jack Lalanne can be.

We drank some juice.  We sent some juice to the neighbors. We spilled enough on the floor that Kira may remain routed to that spot for a couple of years.  We filled pitchers and loaded up the fridge.  Then we pretty much hit the juice wall and so we froze whatever we could fit into ice cube trays.

And muffin tins.

And plastic cups.

And toilet paper rolls.

And old dolly heads.

Noooooo! Not My Squash

daphne on September 8, 2009

The same deluge that’s been teasing out the ragweed and the thistles in miserable numbers has been working wonders on our garden.  Instead of popping out with one of two nuggets of goodness, vines are bursting forth in clusters of fruitfulness.  I should be pleased. I should be grateful.  But I’m sulking.

Sure, the tomatoes are tantalizing

And yes, the raspberries are remarkable,

And I suppose we are enjoying the piles of purple potatoes,

But it’s not enough.  Remember Big Bertha?  That feminine nugget on which I pinned all my butternut hopes and dreams?

She is no more.  She was my lone female, and now she’s gone before the bees even had a chance to do their business.  It’s not good.  There comes a time in every woman’s life where she has to draw the line.  She has to say Enough is Enough.  That time, my friends, has come.

Incensed, I marched inside and called the extension program over at Colorado State University and left a message about the peculiar gender trends taking place in my back yard.  Surely there is a PhD student out there just waiting to tackle my plight, restore balance to my backyard, and write an award-winning thesis to boot.

Surprisingly, no student was readily available, so I spoke instead to a master gardener.  Now perhaps under other circumstances she’s a decent human being.  But good intentioned or not, she had the audacity to suggest that perhaps my soil was nitrogen-heavy.  Or phosphorous-light.   She doesn’t even know us and here she casually insinuating that my garden has a chemical imbalance?  Pah-lease.  At least she didn’t second the opinion of her colleague, the scientist who gently offered that some squash, not necessarily mine, but some do show hermaphroditic tendencies when they get toward their terminus.  Really? You want to go there, do you?

It was hard to hear at first, but I am nothing if not a caring and nurturing mother gardener.  And so I will ship off a sample of my sweet innocent, albeit potentially imbalanced, soil.  I’ll send it out there into the science world to be judged.  I will do whatever my baby needs to be make it in this cold, dark, mean world.  Especially if that means my garden is happy.

Because if my garden is happy, then I am happy.  Mmmm, I am just about as hungry happy as a clam with a mouthful of my favorite butternut squash pasta. Have you tried this ambrosia of a dinner yet?  It is time. It’s delicious. It’s easy.  It’s wonderful.  And if the squash gods aren’t shining down on you, it’s ok.   Someone, somewhere is having success growing the gourds.  Pick one up at the farm stand.  It’s even, gulp, worth a trip to the market.

Peachy Keen

daphne on August 27, 2009

I haven’t asked them directly, but I think there’s a chance that my parents–and I say this with deep respect–don’t like peaches.  Perhaps my memories are tainted by that fateful rhubarb incident, but I don’t know.  Inundated as I’ve been lately with the juicy orbs, not one childhood image of a peach comes to mind.  Sticky pools gather at the elbows of my own ecstatic peach-eating children.  We have been contentedly working our way through recipes thick with the tantalizing fruit, yet not one rings a personal bell.

Without peaches to pave the way down memory lane, I’ve got a bit of lost time to recover.  And so I baked this incredible cake.

It’s so wholesome looking I had no problem calling it lunch and serving it to my friend Leslie.  I spruced up a recipe from Gourmet magazine called Stone Fruit Tea Cake, which sounds rather British and unappealing, don’t you agree old chap?  I call mine Shortbread Cake with Peaches and Berries, which is much better and as long as the children aren’t around, it does make the perfect lunch.

Leslie, on loan to me from pioneer days, stopped by to teach me how to can peaches yesterday, a full day before Gourmet magazine’s Can Do approach to canning landed in my inbox.  I am cutting edge, in a pioneering sort of way of course.

My initial thought was that a pot that big should hold nothing but succulent lobsters, but then I remembered that we were fresh off the covered wagon and putting up our reserves for the harsh winter ahead, so I pushed away thoughts of tasty crustaceans and pulled out the peaches.  I gave them a quick boiling bath followed by a dunk in icy water.  They practically slipped right out of their skins.

We then sliced them, and soaked them in a citric acid bath (more soothing than it sounds) to prevent browning.

Next we added the slices and syrup to the jars, and while they steamed away stovetop,

we strolled through the gardens (still feeling a little British from our lunch I suppose) where I selected a much healthier snack for my unsuspecting children–fresh chard, tomatoes and sage.  I swear they’ll be thrilled (as long as I don’t let on about my own choice for lunch.)

We also dropped in on the squash vines.

So lush, so healthy looking, and yet still sporting only one tiny female.  As I watch squash in other gardens already ripening to the size of mini coopers, I worry that mine is not destined to become much of a meal.  Sad, but true, I have gourd envy.

The sound of the timer called us back to the homestead, where we pulled the 12 jars from their bath, stacked them up nice and pretty, and gloated.

We’ve got another CSA delivery today; is it selfish to hope for more peaches?  After all, we are down to a sole uncanned peach, and I am already craving more of Dave’s Outrageously Good Salsa, with ripe peaches and tomatoes straight from the vine.  Not to mention that lunch time today holds no promise of cake. How am I going to lure friends over for lunch without a cake?

In conclusion, let me paraphrase my winsome teenage self–this fruit is totally awesome.  It’s psychedelic.  It’s peachy keen, man.   There are many, many ways to enjoy a peach, so what do you say Mom? Dad?

You lived the 60s.  Give Peach a chance.

Dave’s Crazy Good Peach Salsa

daphne on August 27, 2009

This salsa fresca is unbelievably good.  This version is medium-mild, but you can always increase the number of jalepenos if you like it hot hot hot.  The key here is using ultra-fresh ingredients.

  • 2 c diced tomatoes
  • 1/2 c diced yellow bell pepper
  • 1 large diced, peeled peach
  • 1/4 seeded and diced jalapeno (more or less to taste)
  • 1/2 c chopped red onion
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
  • 1 tbls lime juice

Add all ingredients together and toss lightly.  Put it in the fridge for about an hour and serve cold.  The extra liquid can be drained off before serving.

Welcome to the Jungle

daphne on August 10, 2009

We put in some time in the garden this weekend, and I think I finally understand those people who think slapping bugs and pulling weeds is relaxing.  It was delightful. I sat myself down in the wet dirt and wrestled with the overgrown jungle in our backyard.  There was no traffic concerning me.  I didn’t have to worry about finding a smoke-free room with two beds somewhere on the safe side of some random town.  After weeks out on the open road it was terrific to be hemmed in by strawberries plants in the midst of staging a coup to overtake the yard and towering 6 foot high raspberry bushes.

Also standing strong was the rhubarb.  Back in June, as we were getting ready to leave town, I judged it done and planted squash right on top.  But clearly I was premature in writing off the rhubarb–

Before I get all puffed up about the glorious successes in our garden, I admit one major disappointment.  Though the vines of the pumpkin, the squash and the cucumbers are gorgeous thick twists heavy with flowers, I worry that when push comes to grow, they will not produce.  NO FEMALE FLOWERS.  AGAIN. Now, I like hanging with guys as much as the next sorority girl, but I’m begging for a nice nerdy science guy out there somewhere willing to explain why inside the house I make all girls, but outside the house it’s one bachelor party after another.  Please?

At least I have some producers to appease me while I ponder the infinite questions of vegetable sex.  Our tomatoes did just fine without us.

Even the rainbow chard that I thought would never show poked it’s head up.  In our absence the bugs had a feast, but at least I can feel good knowing that the little critters received a healthy dose of vitamin-rich antioxidants.

We got potatoes! These truly were the easiest things to grow.  I stuck one rotten looking spud in the ground, cruised around the nation for a couple of months, and Wham! Bam!  French Fries Ma’am!

And finally, after 7 weeks of gifting our CSA share to the happy, healthy Redfern family, we finally got our hands on some local, farm-fresh veggies

We started with the eggplant. According to Dave, a self-acclaimed afficienado, the eggplant parmesan I made that night was the best he’s ever eaten.  I take full credit, gracefully.  Though real credit is probably due to the fact that the eggplant was the freshest we’ve ever had.  Freshly-picked eggplant–ours was picked 24 hours beforehand–is much sweeter and holds far less water.  The less water in the eggplant, the less of a bitter aftertaste.)

The Eye of the Tiger

daphne on July 19, 2009

Just in case you’ve been wondering, the song looping in my head these days is Survivor’s Eye of The Tiger. It’s become a favorite of Kira’s for jump rope warm-ups.  What worked for Rocky also happens to be perfect for an eight year old girl heading to the Junior Olympics.

Practicing your routine is no walk on the beach.  Or maybe it is if you happen to take that walk upside down.

Not even a picture-perfect day on the beach in Amagansett stopped Kira from practicing.  She cartwheeled and hand-standed her way through her routine on the sand, pausing here and there to build castles, dig holes and jump in the enormous waves with her sister.  Now all I’ve got to do is convince those Olympics folks that the beach is a better spot to host the games. (Though I don’t doubt, as the nice lady at the chamber of commerce promised, that Des Moines is indeed delightful this time of year.)

Grandma has become quite the jump rope enthusiast. In addition to providing a lifetime supply of garlic for her granddaughters,

she leased the use of a racquetball court at the gym down the street, where Kira has been diligently jumping for about an hour every day.  For the record, so has coach mom. I don’t want to brag, but I can hang with her for about half an hour without collapsing into a pathetic heap. Maybe not Olympic-material, but it’s something.

The nice people at the gym have been watching Kira come and go for the past month with curious looks on their sweating face, so Kira indulged them with a preview —

I’ve been fielding lots of question about this sport, and though I’m no expert, here’s how I think it will go down at the big competition in less than two weeks: Kira is competing in 6 events; 3 individual and 3 with her partner.  These include Speed–how many single steps she can do in 60 seconds (think Rocky;) Power–how many times in 60 seconds she can turn the rope double for every single jump, and the freestyle routine.

Big plans aside, Kira unwound with some family time on the sailboat.  Just the wind, the waves, and the time to ponder some really deep thoughts.

Grid, Shmid…We Can Do It All On Our Own

daphne on July 14, 2009

Thanks to Grandmother’s garden, we need never go hungry.  I have eaten more than my fill of salad greens and herbs and snap peas, though they have yet to convert me into a beet lover. (Yes, I know all about how delicious they are.  Now run along and enjoy them and leave me out of it.)  Despite reaping the rewards of a garden well-equipped to feed 976 vegetarians for twenty two years, we felt like we needed a little more.  Lucky for us Grandma’s sidekick was up to the task.

That’s a seven and a half pound fluke being hefted by Grandpa Mikey.  And yes, seven and a half pounds of fish is so big that it pushed all but Grandpa Mikey’s forearm from the frame.

There are a million ways to prepare fresh fish, but it really doesn’t get better than fried.  Here’s how we do it.  Even my kids beg for seconds, and they’re barely bigger than that fluke.

Fresh fish offers more than a great meal.  If you’ve got a retired surgeon on hand, you can use the carcass as a lovely stained glass window.

That’s Grandpa Mikey: world-class fillet master, and a talented boat builder to boot.  Last year he built an adorable little sailing dory for his grandchildren.  Dave took Kira and nephews MJ and Evan for a row around the bay sans mast.

This year Grandpa is trying his hand at kayak-building.  I may be biased, but I think he’s pretty darn good at it.

Grandpa also pulled some strings and entered the girls in a marine naturalist camp. They strolled the beaches, collected specimen, and learned all about life in, on and around the water.  If you have been wondering how to tell the difference between male and female fiddler crabs, Kira is your source (hint: she told me that the males have one big claw.)

All questions about hermit crabs or star fish should be directed to marine expert Acadia.

Fun fact of the day:  A baby oyster is called a spat.