3 posts tagged “vegetable”

I've launched full swing into the No Sheep swap: Contacted my downstream pal, and started plotting accordingly.
There have been Discussions of color preferences and the like, and I've come up with yarns to send her. The June skein is winging its way to me as I type: The other has not yet been ordered, but I know exactly where to find it.

I just hope she can read my chicken-scratch when her first skein + note arrives.

Life... Is.
I'm a little irritated at life in general for the moment. Work was unnecessarily bothersome today, and I'm cranky and tired and seem to have lost three hours this evening without noticing -- Darn those Sims 2 fansites, eating my life.  This also means that I don't have time to play Sims, since I tend to do it for several hours at a time.
Clearly, I sacrifice too much of my life to the computer and the wondrous thing that is the internet. Sigh.

I have three tomatoes in my garden, just growing to visible size in their place on the vine.
That makes me happy, at least. Now, if I could only figure out how to prevent the blasted little field mushrooms from popping up in the pots like unwanted dandelions...

I have things cooking in my head again: I'm in a making mood, probably partly at fault from my recent (compulsive knitting / dye experiments / interest in spinning / gardening).

Every once in a while, I forget that I honestly love to cook.
Starting a vegetable garden has reminded me, though. I don't have anything save ten (count 'em, ten!!) tomato blossoms at the moment (one of which has clearly pollinated and is in process of changing from flower to fruit), but I'm already gleefully bouncing on my toes and waiting for the moments the first round, green fruits begin to show: My Cherokee Purple heirloom plant is new and still getting used to its pot, so its main purpose at the moment is to just get up and grow.

I honestly cannot wait for that heirloom to blossom and produce tomatoes. Cannot wait. I want to try them and come up with even more weird-color food, since if I'm honest, I enjoy cooking more when the colors don't match the expected. I am utterly in love with blue potatoes, and since I've found that my local Whole Foods does indeed carry them at cheaper per pound than the variety mix at Trader Joe's, I'm revving up to hit the produce bins for scalloped purple-blue potatoes. (And yes, it's going to look weird, royal blue potatoes peeking up from inside orange cheddary sauce, but I love doing that sort of thing. Weird colored food rules!) So. Rose-purple tomatoes to go with my purple-tinged blue potatoes? I cackle with glee.
And contemplate all sorts of summery tomato-based meals. I stopped at 101Cookbooks.com to check out the 1000 Layer Lasagne that went up Thursday morning, and while looking at her homemade ricotta recipe, I hovered the mouse over the image at top and found the next recipe was an heirloom tomato tart. And then I went hunting for anything involving specifically heirloom tomatoes, and found her cheesy heirloom paninis.

Wow. If I wasn't hungry before...
I anticipate a lot of homemade foccacia, caprese, and tomato-based recipes this summer. I think I may even delve into things like making tomato sauce and stewing tomatoes from scratch if the plants produce enough... After all, we know the hazards of gardens: You end up with more than you know what to do with, and your friends and family will only take so many. ;)
Seriously. Found the best foccacia I've had in ages at the Whole Foods of Doom, and it was not only crisp and garlic-parmesan-y, but had quarter inch tomato rounds pressed into its top and sprinkled with basil and oregano...
Which means I can do that, easy.
Also, the idea of making my bagels, slicing them in half, and making it into a cheese and tomato sandwich and then sticking it in the toaster oven for a little bit.... Sounds like heaven to me!

So, yes. I've been poking thoughtfully around the comments in the 101Cookbooks.com recipes and it's led to some interesting sites: The one holding my interest at the moment is a page on making cheese -- and while I'm honestly contemplating dragging my little college fridge out of storage to set up as a cheese making fridge for the blue cheese recipe, the one that really has me grinning like a fool is the recipe for fresh mozzarella from a gallon of milk.

Home grown tomatoes. Fresh mozzarella. My friends are right, I do need to start growing my own basil: I'll have myself a caprese garden at this rate. And there's just something satisfying about knowing where the things came from, as opposed to buying things from the store.
I'm still gleefully hunting up tomato recipes online: I really ought to hunt through my vegetarian and four-ingredient cookbooks for more ideas -- after all, the four-ingredient cookbook is where I picked up a favorite puff pastry tomato 'pizza' recipe, and that's pretty delish.
At that, I have a cookbook called Tomato. I think that just might be a good resource for tomato recipes. Who knew?

Also: It's Saturday, which means to bagel, or not to bagel, that is the question...
So I went to make some bagels. I made my last batch of bagels with King Arthur's white whole wheat flour, and it wasn't bad, but they were a little more dense in flavor than I'd have liked. No problem, but I decided to go half and half with the all purpose and wheat if you're going that route again, see if that resolved the issue.
I think I used too much water or something this time around -- the problem with attempting to do recipes from memory, honestly -- because the dough was sticky like mad. I ended up pulling it out of the bread machine and adding more flour by hand: It still doesn't feel right for bagels, though, and the proportions were probably close enough to pull off a foccacia instead... So I went crazy, kneaded in about half a tablespoon of dried 'italian herbs' (as the bottle proclaimed -- probably a mix of basil, oregano, parsley, possibly more). It's currently rising on a silpat, and I'll be sure to pat it out into my baking pan and start doing the olive oil / garlic topping.
Fresh bread. Nothing really like it, even if it wasn't the first thing I'd intended.

Dinner is made.
It contains no cat.

...No meat either, though it wasn't by design.

I'd set out intending to have some of the frozen bean selection I'd picked up from Trader Joe's and chicken in a nice wine sauce, but after I'd started the beans a' boiling, I discovered that the fiance had used the last of the pre-cooked chicken last night with dinner, and it was going to take more than two minutes to finish the chicken like I'd wanted.

First thought: Feck.
Second thought: Well, I've got a well stocked kitchen. What else can I do?

There was Tequila behind the cupboards, milk in the fridge, stone-ground mustard and peppercorns in the pantry, and I knew where my starches were hidden.
Perfect.

Drain and olive oil the hell out of the beans: It's already got a nice color mixture, since this particular offering from Trader Joe's has the world's loveliest thin green beans, wax beans to match, and baby carrots. Eye it, add minced garlic cubes from their home in the freezer, stir. Let it start to sizzle and splash in about a quarter cup of tequila. (Don't worry, I didn't use the GOOD tequila for this.)
I can smell the almost-tart of the tequila, so I temper it with a splash of milk. It's boring that way, so add two teaspoons of the stone ground mustard and stir well. Smell: It needs pepper. Pick up the grinder and pepper the hell out of the thing 'til it smells right to me, and then stir more.

I let it start to bubble and add a generous pinch of my tapioca starch, since the stuff works perhaps a little too well sometimes: It turns out to be the perfect amount for sauce, making me wish I'd measured it. Stir until sauce-ish and serve.

Mmm, tasty.
And the carrots and beans taste so sweet when contrasting with the sauce.