Eat your View

Last night I enjoyed beans from my own garden! Granted, it was only 2...but they were delicious. It was the first food from my own garden that I had grown from sead. You would have thought that I birthed these beans as excited and proud as I was. My garden is going crazy! I have zinnias in vases all over my house and basil out the...well, you know.

I need these things. I need to grow things and create life and beauty.

Now, if only I could get those damn chickens!!!

garden photos to come soon. Also coming soon: thoughts on sugar and ADD and society. they are brewing in me...

cooking angst

I'm going to admit something here that just might get me banned from the blog. I don't really like cooking. (GASP!) I'm a pretty good cook, and I do it several times a week. It's just that day in day out I don't really enjoy it. First I have to clear away the dishes that I forgot to do earlier in the day to make room for all the dishes I'm going to dirty up tonight. Then I spend about an hour chopping and stirring. (Have I mentioned this is after I got distracted by my book so that supper is running desperately late?). Then my mad genius husband has a brainwave five minutes before it's ready. Taps foot. Gah! Forgot the broccoli! Another 15 minutes to get some veggies steamed. By now with one thing or another it's a quarter til nine, the kitchen is an absolute wreck, and we haven't eaten yet. It's enough to make me wish for fish sticks and mac 'n cheese. No this doesn't happen every day. There are plenty of times when Allen is the hugest help to me when I'm running behind and need an extra hand. But, you get the picture. It happens enough. Question is what to do about it. I'd say the first answer involves not making homemade potatoes au gratin and meatloaf for the same meal without a LOT of planning first -especially if bacon and fresh garlic is involved. I don't know how you make meatloaf, but in this household there's some serious veggie dicing going on when meatloaf is in the offing. Other thing -be more aggressive keeping the kitchen clean. Clean kitchen = happy cook. Finally though, I'm going to make a point of cooking more things just for fun -bean salad, muffins, homemade lemonaid- anything fun and tasty.

much needed dirt time

I just spend some much needed time in my garden. I have been out there every day, watering and checking on things, but today I got good and dirty. I finally got some of the flowering plants that I bought at the Botanical Gardens into the ground.

I am having so much fun watching my little garden bloom. My lemon tree has lemons, my strawberries will probably turn red and ripe this weekend (when I am out of town!), and my beans are just ready to come out. It is a new experience to grow some of my own food and I am hooked. I have always had a few little herbs, but nothing like this. I think that I will be able to put my tomatoes outside in a week or so. Then things will really be going! I can make an entire salad out of things that I have growing back there. My vases are also going to be full of cut flowers come summer. Brown eyes susans, columbine, Cosmos and Zinnias...so pretty!

How is your garden coming?

Cast iron heaven

Allen's grandmother recently passed on some of her cast iron that she's not using/doesn't have room for anymore, and I'm in cook's paradise with them. I don't know what it is that makes using cast iron so enjoyable. Maybe it makes me feel more in touch with my past; maybe cast iron is just more fun. I couldn't really say. It's certainly more picturesque. Last night I sauteed up some shitake mushrooms with green onions, garlic, and lots of butter to go with Allen's steak, and those mushrooms surely did look wonderful resting in that small black skillet with a wooden spoon poised ready to serve. Almost made me want to eat some too. lol. I'm not a mushroom purist. They're wonderful with cube steak simmered in gravy or in marinara sauce but not so much alone.

I'm still getting used to how cast iron cooks though. It holds and tranfers heat differently from stainless steel. I found that out while cooking some steaks on my griddle pan last night. Since I was tired of making a mess of my everyday pan I decided to go ahead and try my griddle. First, I've smoked up the apartment more than once, but that perfectly seared surface is still barely eluding me. Second, what might be medium rare in a stainless steel pan is more like medium well on a cast iron griddle. If you're good you're supposed to be able to tell doneness by the resistence when you poke the surface of the meat, but I'm not quite there yet. I still tend to go by the clock. Hint, if your cast iron pan is smoking hot, 1min 30sec per side is a tad long for medium rare steaks. They were still good though thanks to a little help from Jaden at Steamy Kitchen and her wonderful instructions for turning cheap steaks into outstanding steaks. Yummy. I can't wait to do some more practicing in the upcoming weeks.

Great Article

In light of CJ and my new CSA membership, I found this article particularly interesting. It is from Time Magazine on eating locally. Also see The Eat Local Challenge here. Looks interesting.

My seeds are in the mail!!!

I am hosting Easter Dinner at my house Sunday. Mom, sister, brother (6 years old), grandma and her 'friend" (boyfriend!). In my TINY apartment. Yikes! I will let you know how it goes. I am planning on making a lot of it outdoors if weather permits, and it looks like it will.

Have a Hoppy Easter!!!

When it's good, it doesn't seem so bad

I didn’t have to get far into Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, a book by Thomas McNamee, before I began planning my own pilgrimage to the Berkeley restaurant. Now, only days after completing it, Elisa and I have have subscribed to a community-supported agriculture farm and are looking forward to cooking with locally-grown, seasonal vegetables ourselves.

OK, I can’t give Alice Waters all the credit. Elisa and I started talking about this weeks ago. And honestly, I may never have done it if she hadn’t done the research, the phone calling, the math. But I am very excited that she and I will be splitting this local produce without increasing our grocery bills!

We’re joining Grow Alabama, and our plan (which we’ve been told is just enough for two single people) works out to just $11 per week. I spend about $100 on groceries monthly, and half of that is produce, so I feel good about this new venture.

Cooking seasonally has also been on my mind lately. I’ve slowly started to attempt figuring it out, just by paying attention to cost. (Did you notice that Publix’s asparagus recently dropped from $3.99 a pound to $1.99?) And The Cook and The Gardener, a cookbook by one of my favorite food writers, Amanda Hesser, focuses on seasonal recipes divided by months.

Bring on the leeks, the cabbage and the snap beans. I’m ready.

I heart real butter...or how does Giada stay so darn skinny?

Am I the only one who notices that as I cook more and really enjoy eating more, my waist gets larger? I thought that cooking good food and really enjoying food, not eating just to eat is not supposed to do that?
Once I realized that regular cream cheese is 167 times better than reduced fat, and "I can't believe it's not butter" pales in comparison to real, rich butter...well, the weight has come too. Now, don't misunderstand me, I realize that I am not overweight. But, if I keep gaining like I have been the past few weeks, I soon will be.
Yes, I am eating more vegetables. Yes, I am eating more whole grains. I just happen to be adding avocados to my salads and tons of olive oil to my grains. Then there is the muffins I can't stop making, and the cookies that cry out to be tested. Plus all the pasta dishes that I discover every day.

Is this a phenomenon that others have experienced as well? I have even started walking or riding my bike to the grocery store, so as to stave this off (plus, walking really limits what I can by as I have to be able to carry it all home).

I am not planning on changing my eating habits...I am cultivating a love for food, and if that means a size bigger, so be it. Women are designed to be soft and rounded. We really are. It is just our stupid culture that has Lindsey Lohaned this out of us (Yes, I just made Lindsey into a verb!).

I don't want my posts to be about weight, but as I was preparing for my shower to rinse the dirt that was coating my knees, feet, hands, ears (how? how?)from my gardening, i took a look in the mirror and was surprised at what i saw. Maybe it wasn't the dryer that made my jeans too small. Maybe it was the creme fraiche on my morning muffins.

The girl who cried freezer! (or the awesome thing that is Grow Alabama)

Having just found out about this wonderful program called Grow Alabama I must admit that I'm particularly bemoaning my lack of freezer space. Grow Alabama is a program that works to make in-season, locally grown, all-natural/organic fruits and vegetables available on a weekly basis. If you look on their website they have a harvest chart of when certain fruit and veg will be available throughout the year. Their boast is that every delivery is 48 hours away from the field. My challenge with this sort of program is learning to eat seasonally. Being a former hamburger second helper I'm still learning to eat my veg. Tomatoes better be in a sauce. Squash better be hiding under a lot of something else. If I had to pick three vegetable to live off they would be onions, carrots, and broccoli. However, Grow Alabama wants to tantalize me with freshly picked bok choy, ripe eggplant, turnips, persimmons, and okra. My ideal solution? Load up on vine ripened tomatoes, just plucked apples, fresh leeks, and delicate mushrooms and start prepping them for the freezer. Imagine. My own diced tomates with chilies. My own apple butter. My own sauteed mushrooms waiting in the freezer for the perfect steak dinner. My own pasta sauces. Unfortunately my freezer is small and would never stand for it. Never. I'm already storing beef in my in-law's freezer as is. Still, if you have a freezer, or you enjoy the challenge of eating in season I really sugest you check Grow Alabama out. It's local, healthy, and a thrifty (or so it seems) alternative to the various Whole Paycheck establishments popping up across the nation.

Hmmmm, I wonder how much a freezer really is.....