kinds of mania

when at the market remember how fleeting your time will be. especially in the mountains where growing things have merely a moment, and not an age as in the wetter places.
when at the market buy peaches, by the boxful. sometimes you can get 'seconds' which are ugly but lovable. toss them with ginger (ground and fresh) the smallest half of a scotch bonnet pepper, lemon, cinnamon and vanilla and enrobe them in a buttery cloak of dough: call it a pie.

and don't forget that sometimes there's a woman at the market who can't decide if she's a farmer, an herbalist or a potter. and so sells clutches of tiny carrots, fierce knobs of garlic and great armfuls of herbs tucked into pottery she's made during the week. sometimes this woman will sell very small vessels. neither cup nor vase. too small for drinking, too big for gulping. get some of these. they will find their purpose. probably in your kitchen.

don't feel you are too good for the melon-monger either. if he tries to sell you a soft, shy honeydew looking melon with little drags of green brush marks all over its cheeks, let him put it on the wobbling scale and charge you an arm an a leg for it. pay an arm and a leg for it because it is called a snow leopard (!!!) melon and eat a slice of it no matter what you think because you are eating a snow leopard melon slice.

spread your herbs out on the kitchen counter. the ones you bought at the market. also the ones from your parents farmyard. swoon over the herbs, smell your hands, chew the stems and decide it is important to make salsa verde at once.

when you are done look around your kitchen. inspect your crisper and cabinets. eye your empty market bags, look around the kitchen swiftly, grab your keys, dive into the car and carry on. never resting, tirelessly diving into the markets racing against the tipping sun until the frost closes its teeth on the year.

the nightshade problem

tomato season opened a few weeks ago. and then it seemed that tomato panic ensues. as it always does. heirlooms for 4 dollars a pound, three, two, one fifty?? we get up with the sun and stuff all of our canvas sacks into the car and hurtle down into the valley to the markets. any markets. as long as there are tomatoes we can buy. the uglier the better. the more cracked. the more lopsided;  the heavier and more fragile the better. we learn what the tomatoes want in the car. especially when we go to scoop them onto the counter and find we have transported tomato puree in the lower most layers. we evolve. we come prepared with downy pillowcases to swaddle the fruits. we tuck them into tall mason jars and throw them around more bravely. we line them up like pirates with loot and get giddy seeing all the colors, seeing the gold and red shaded light go swimming off their sides and across the kitchen counters.
when you are confronted with many tomatoes you know the time is swiftly on its way out. even as it opens. and so the best thing to do, we decide, is to try to keep them as still as we can. glistening in oil, studded with bruised garlic cloves, showered with basil, sprinkled sparingly with coarse salt and roasted until just before they threaten to collapse. in a cool oven. preferably in tiers. so the smell of summer warms and blooms in a kitchen that may already be threatening to crisp and snap into fall.

razzes

went berry picking here a few weeks ago.
strange and beautiful.
strange to drive for so many hours, out of the crowd, out of one valley and into another, out of density and familiarity, out of the grid. into the rural places of the southern valley. flats ribbed for stretches with rises, fields burnished gold, crispy brown, emerald green, the alive and the recently departed side by side. off the highway, out into roads built to loop pasturelands, the houses seemed to respond to maps already laid out for them. none of them asked for their own place, houses but up against irrigation ditches and manure banks. the fine new faux stucco, the cobbles glued up against plywood framing, stilts of gleaming white cement, and a dirt front yard. sometimes tricyles. sometimes car bodies. the strangest juxtapositions.
the raspberry patch comes up directly to the road in a neighborhood that slants up towards the hills that cup Utah Lake. manicured lawns across the street, speed boats and dirt bikes at tight and rigid rank.
the raspberry patch itself is beginning to succumb to the decent of fall. brown and blown vines drooping. everywhere collapsed fruit, languid wasps, the sticky carpet of leaves and berries and dust between the rows. but! here and there! the gleam. a jewel bright fistful of berries bobbing beneath dead cane. the time we spent looking. it was time spent foraging really. modern day gleaners with milk cartons tied to our waists, seeing what we could pick off of summer and keep greedily while the sun is
still high.

no fine plans for the loot. thirteen pounds of berries, slowly slipping into juice and pulp. but we are undaunted. froze them up flat in the freezer to pull out on a dreary day in February where something bright and alive will stir us all from the deepest places.

clean and light

in which panchakarma is undertaken, well, attempted....

made kitchari again today because the first try was such a let down. boiling it for 10 minutes instead of 45 left the vegetables palatable and with texture and the rice soft, the mung dal was slightly firm but in some ways that was a more appealing way of eating it. the entire dish is meant to be soothing, warming and easy on digestion. read: mushy, bland and without much textural variation. all goals of a luminous clean form aside, and in keeping with the mantra that the cleanse should fulfill and the food should taste good, i thought that tweaking the formula to make it soothing and easy to digest as well as good tasting was not too far a deviation from acceptable.

humble foods for soothing a tired traveler

there has been homecoming, home leaving, home-getting-back-to and home-with-which-we-will-begin-to-visit-less-frequently. with the summer's whirlwind of social this-and-that, trips, house guests and the like our little pack over here hasn't had its usual high summer equation that combines panes of sunlight, shady patios, sighing aspen leaves, late breakfasts, quietude, painting and book reading to render that deeply nourishing summer sloth that we all look forward to and need.  it sometimes looks like this:

of course we've certainly had more than enough adventures and for that we are grateful and certainly more worldly and wise.

but sometimes we ache for simplicity, solitude and a lack of vagabondage.  and these kinds of times, when we awake late in the morning and spend time slowly pressing coffee and turning records on and off the turntable, the best kind of food is the very plain and the very soft.

these crispy little ingots were inspired by this (as i have previously said) but also from here where their funny little edges and accompanying explanation were the clincher in trying them out. (it's possible that i'm always a sucker for a bright and fierce young woman, living alone and trying to make her way through life through the filter of the kitchen. that seems an almost guaranteed methodology for revelation.)

 

the best part about these, for me at least, is the forgiving nature of this kind of potato cake. you start with a base of mashed potatoes, roll it about in egg and crumbs and fry it. very little can go wrong as the frying is not what cooks the potatoes (as this happy medium of just-right-temperature oil can sometimes evade a kitchen lady despite having her thermometer and somewhat sensitive stove dials). you can get fancy- or not. you could, say, fold in leftover bits of grilled salmon, preserved lemon and tarragon. or browned onions, flecks of cheddar cheese and a good coarse grinding of black pepper. you could more subtly spruce things up with a knifepoint of raw garlic and the finest veil of chopped herbs. ad nauseum. we went the route of digging up the strata of the vegetable bin to those growing things that were in direst need of metamorphosis. and it was a tasty, humble venture. especially with good, velvety scrambled eggs.

infinitely adaptable potato croquettes

(adapted from Nigel Slater's potato cakes with taleggio and chard (from Tender, Volume 1) and from Rachel Eats' potato croquettes)

1 pound potatoes

1/2 stick (4 T butter)

pinch salt

half bunch kale (stems removed)

1/3 - 1/2 cup taleggio, fontina or gouda finely diced

small milk bowl full of bread crumbs (to which you have added a grinding of pepper and a little salt)

small milk bowl into which you have broken 1 egg and whisked it slightly, maybe thinning it with water if it seems too thick)

oil for frying 

*bring a small pot of salted  water to boil

*while waiting scrub and quarter the potatoes

*when  boiling, plunge the kale into the water until bright green and tender, about five minutes. run under cool water to stop cooking, squeezing out water, chop finely and set aside

*boil the potatoes until quite tender

*pass them through a food mill or mash by hand with the butter and season with salt (pepper wouldn't hurt)

* into the potato mash stir the kale and the cheese. 

*form into little cakes using two large spoons, rest to cool on a parchment lined cookie sheet for about a half an hour (this is an important part, don't rush them!)

*bring a few inches of oil to temperature in a heavy bottomed stockpot or skillet. the optimal temperature for this is 350 but the general visual clue is a 'shimmer' on top of the oil. you can also put the tip of a wooden chopstick into the oil and if a myriad of bubbles form instantly around it that's the go-ahead.

*while the oil is heating dunk the cooled potato cakes into the egg and then into the seasoned bread crumbs

*fry the cakes until golden on each side, turning frequently. depending on the size of the cakes it should take about 3 - 5 minutes.

*drain briefly on kitchen paper or a paper bag

*eat at once!

*perhaps with an egg

food vs. loneliness

i have commandeered this little house. or, alternately, the little has has commandeered me.  regardless of whose hands clutched who the truth is that The Love of My Life is off doing his purest life's work- holing up in unchartable wildernesses as he does every year about this time leaving me to wrangle the small and the furry into the wilds of our own and to decide how best to spend my solitary time. for the most part i do this by spending time in the kitchen making stuff, or working with my paints or conjuring science experiments

being alone is a good thing, and something i look forward to very much. it is important to disengage from our time knitted with someone or something(s) to reconnect with your own routine, rhythm and innate desires. for me those things are usually food or food-related, making or making-related and body or body-related.

the difficulty is that most of the joy i derive out of concocting in the kitchen has to do with bringing spoonfuls over to those preoccupied with something different to let them taste, or to put down something beautiful and plain in front of them that makes their face light up.

and so, when i embarked on making chocolate yogurt cake (which seems like a funny irony, those two words being together) i enjoyed most all parts...

 

but when i got to the last part, the part i reserve for others (mostly because i don't enjoy it myself), i realized that being alone can be well, lonely, sometimes...

and so i tried something that was more purely my-kind-of-snack (bread related, you know). and this cheered me a little bit...who would have thought, pizza on the grill? incredible!

 

dog snacks

these guys

enjoy staying with their 'grandparents,' who, luckily, live very nearby. likely the best part about staying with the grands is the spoiling they get in the form of milkbones. a glut of milkbones. at the drop of the hat. and this novelty is probably contrasted all the more because no such nonsense exists in our house. not because we do not love to dote on them (they get spoiled in mileage over here) but because there is something decidedly unromantic (the mass production of dog treats), exorbitant (paying upwards of ten dollars for animal by products and the flattering of the Corn Industry), and downright confusing (what, exactly, goes into these things?) and so, because there is ample time and the ingredients are simple and because those guys are so deserving a little guidance from this lovely blog the long talked about task of "making dog biscuits at home!" has finally come to fruition...

      

           

         

       

they do not, of course, look particularly appetizing to a person, but the dogs seem more than pleased to come sliding and clattering over the slate floor to receive them. the novelty! cookies at home! they say.

homemade dog biscuits

(adapted from 17 apart's master recipe)

preheat the oven to 350 and paper a baking sheet

in the bowl of a food processor grate:

1 apple

2 medium beets

3 carrots

and set aside.

wipe out the processor and process until smooth

1 banana

1/4 cup of peanut or almond butter

add the grated mixture as well as

3 cups of flour (i used half buckwheat half wheat)

1 cup of cornmeal

1/4 cup neutral oil (i used coconut)

and pulse until the dough forms a ball and begins to roll around the inside of the food processor.

if the dough is too sticky sprinkle in more flour or cornmeal by the tablespoonful, if it is too dense and floury add warm water.

roll the dough out (i did this between two sheets of parchment as the beets made the dough fairly sticky) and cut into desired shapes.

bake 30 minutes and turn the oven off. turn the biscuits over and let sit in the cooling oven another 30-45 minutes. biscuits are done when they are dry to the touch. don't rush this part as the dryness of the biscuits allows them to keep without furring over with mold.

et voila!