I love my new oven!
April 4, 2012
I actually accomplished half of my move-to-London-sometime-before-I-die action plan involving this year’s income tax refund. I got a new stove and I love it! (I’ll get the refrigerator next year.)
Now I admit, it wouldn’t be hard to improve on the old one. It probably dated back twenty-plus years to when my building was redone in the condominiums it is today. The guy from whom I bought my place did a nice job getting it in shape, but during my tenure the old stove did nothing to promote itself. It had two interrelated issues. The oven door handle kept coming unscrewed on one end and falling off, but to resecure it tightly enough, the inside panel of the door got misaligned.
No longer so. Happy days are here again.
The new appliance’s initial selling point (other than its very newness) was its flat top. It seems like such a duh for an electric stove. But now that it’s delivered, installed, and in use—oh boy! The bonus of the flat stovetop is that it’s a much more practical staging area for putting the groceries away.
It’s true, it’s just the most basic, least expensive Kenmore model, but by golly, it’s awesome! I’ve been trying to restrict myself to synonyms of awesome, unless something truly warrants that adjective, because it is quite overused these days. I know a lot of what I’m experiencing is, again, by sheer virtue of its newness and the improvements in technology in the ensuing years, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable!
Though the delivery guys arrived at the very last moment of the stated delivery window, they were very professional and competent. I didn’t actually have any cooking planned until twenty-four hours later, so for the first while I merely gazed lovingly at the flat top. But since then, I’ve had several private moments of joy.
The oven door has a window. The oven has a light inside it. Not only does the light go on when I open the door, but there is a switch with which to turn it on if I simply want to watch the paint of my baking item dry.
The burners operate with traditional physical dials, but the oven is controlled by beepy electronic buttons. Baking temperature, check. Preheated indicator, check. But wait! THERE ARE TWO SPEEDS OF BROILER! You read that right. There is HI broil and LO broil! And as if that weren’t enough, there is an on-board timer. How did it know that I was about fed up with my crappy wind-up egg timer? My new stove is the captain’s chair of the Starship Enterprise!
I haven’t seen it. It’s new to me.
And it’s AWESOME!
A month minus meat, mostly
April 2, 2012
Meatless March* was largely a success. I had intended to update weekly with what I ate, but what I ate turned out to be far less exciting than I hoped. I had had visions of amazing homemade creations involving quinoa and tofu, but in the end I was lazy and let someone else do the cooking most of the time.
Going into the month, I knew I would make an exception for the Lagunitas beer dinner that I had prepaid $65 for before I made the meatless decision. I also had prepaid for a sushi-making lesson. But fish and shellfish is a grey area for a lot of people (and even poultry), so I didn’t feel as “guilty” about that one. That was a lot of fun (sushi in the first two photos MADE BY ME!), except for what I should have realized would be the forced social, introduce-yourself-to-your-neighbor aspect, which I should have anticipated as it was a Living Social Adventure, but that’s a whole other tangent.
Anyway, other than the above two situations, my only “cheats” were with Smack Shack food truck Lobster Mac & Cheese mid-month (it’s my very favorite thing that they make), and a salmon burger a couple of days ago that was a photoshoot prop for a recipe book my work colleagues are producing.
I gave myself those two fish/shellfish items because at the Lagunitas beer dinner, I sat next to a self-professed “non-meat eater’ who does, in fact, eat birds and fish. Other than the welcome charcuterie (which involved beef tongue and pork “balls,” the content of which to this day remains ambiguous), the main courses were tuna and duck. So according to some sources, that was mostly not a cheat either. My mom never served asparagus or peas for texture reasons when I was a kid (asparagus is now just about my favorite vegetable), but we often had beef tongue and I view it as a treat.
But I digress.
Breakfast was usually two eggs, cheese (usually chevre), greens or tomato, and an orange. A couple of times a week, I got a Bruegger’s bagel and cream cheese, with my orange.
Lunch was more diverse, and yet not. Other than a few salads that I packed, some regulars developed. Chipotle veggie burrito bols appeared several times, as did the tasty Greekish concoctions from Trieste Café on the ground floor of my office building. Falafel Friday became a favorite theme, and Omar also makes the best chocolate cake in the world!
Supper often involved pizza because it’s easy to do meatlessly and still feel like you’re getting enough to eat. Supper also often involved black bean burgers. Let’s add this up, I think I had five different ones altogether. Republic, Acadia, Groveland Tap, Longfellow Grille. Hmm. Maybe there were only four. Acadia wins far and away, no competition, for best black bean burger. The right combination of moist, holds together, and flavor. Republic’s mushroom open-faced sandwich came in second, though I’d like to see about twice as much of it.
Honorable mention goes to Kieran’s Irish Pub, where I had some amazing wild rice and cheese stuffed mushrooms. The salted tofu was and wasn’t what I was expecting, and was really good with the spicy tomato jam.
I also survived a visit by my mother, who would never consider not having meat for the evening meal. I was a little disappointed that she only ate one of the Bruegger’s Everything bagels that I got specifically for our breakfasts. I, on the other hand, did not avoid the bagels. Lunches, I kind of sidestepped. Suppers I got through by going half-and-half on a pizza, and then by making a hotdish into which it was easy to add chicken and pasta for my mom and tofu for me, with plenty of leftovers for a subsequent meal.
So today, April 1st, I had initially thought I’d go out (to Butcher and the Boar, then to Saffron) to break my meat-fast. Then, the weather was supposed to be outstanding, so I thought I’d just grill a steak at home. Then my new stove was delivered and I decided to broil rather than grill, just to use it for the first time. I still included salad and vegetables.
However it happened, I ate a chunk of meat today!
* I decided to do Meatless March for one reason which followed another: I often don’t eat meat for days at a time, unintentionally, because I like beans and tofu and stuff. When I heard some other people talking about giving up meat for March/Lent, I thought, Oh, I can do that, no prob.
Getting ready to get ???Bossy???
March 26, 2012
Yesterday, Bossy Acres, the entity whose CSA (community supported agriculture) I bought into for the upcoming summer, held an orientation coffee meet-up. I was eager to learn about my first-time vegetable venture, but I was also excited because my mom is visiting this weekend and I knew the presentation would be a good information exposure for her with regard to my switch-over to the co-op/organic/free-range, etc.
My parents will never come over to the organic side because they’ll never be able to get past the greater cash expense. But I was glad that my mom could hear a third-party talk about it. Karla, she at least recognized your passion for farming. But in the end, all she keeps saying is, “I remember when Carol Koehn did that and she ended up cooking head lettuce because there was so much.” I said, thanks for the positive reinforcement.
Well, everybody has their opinion. I sort of tried to convince my mom with taste, the taste of delicious, organic butter. The two things about my switch-over that have stood out are how much thicker the brown egg shells are, thereby necessitating a much firmer whack to break them, and how incredibly much more flavorful the butter is. People joke about eating sticks of regular butter. Free-range butter actually merits the declaration!
So the Bossy info session was, I thought, very exciting. It was fun to hear Karla extoll the virtues of returning vegetable scraps for her worm beds, and funny to hear Elizabeth interject the well-timed joke about the business end.
We voted on which of three varieties each of tomato, pepper, and melon we thought Bossy should grow (ironically, the only one of my votes that won was for the melon, which I care about least). Then, we sampled fare from their CSA add-on partners. Beez Kneez sent along tastes of their regular clover honey and their less usual buckwheat honey to try. My mom got really excited about the buckwheat honey but again balked at the cost when I asked if I should get some in the summer. I might get it anyway and give it to her.
Barkley’s Bistro had dog biscuit samples to send around. I liked the peanut butter ones. See the thing is, they’re all natural, too. Bossy Acres grows the vegetable ingredients. Barkley’s informed us that the biscuits were basically what they’d make for human consumers but because their market is canines, they leave out the added salt and sugar. Fine by me! The lamb ones were pretty good, too.
Bossy’s final add-on partner is Moonshine Coffee. That’s the one that I might actually get in on. And they contributed a jar of beans for each of us to take home. I made some of the coffee this morning, the Brazilian beans. Pretty good indeed, even though it was a fairly light roast and I usually prefer very dark roasts.
Finally, Karla and Elizabeth sent home with us a box of their famous microgreens (are they famous yet? I assume they are!) as well as a dirt-box of pea shoots. Yummy breakfasts will ensue for the following week, because I will fold brown, lightly scrambled eggs over chevre, topped with Bossy microgreens.
I can’t wait for the harvesting season!
The night in food: Lagunitas beer dinner
March 16, 2012
Beer dinner hosts, take note. The Blackbird Café hit it out of the park. This was without a doubt the best beer dinner I’ve been to. I don’t think it really matters that it was Lagunitas (though, Sean, Tony, Karen, your wonderful beer obviously enhanced the experience). Blackbird was just amazing. I was a little hesitant to buy into the $65 cost and would be again because as you may know, I live paycheck to paycheck, but my faith had been established with a previous wonderful Lagunitas dinner and this time I was rewarded with something even better.
Brewery people who I know, this isn’t about your beer versus their beer. You know I love you all. This was about utterly fantastic vittles in a really interesting space that was comfortable to hang out in. I should have taken some pictures of Blackbird Café itself. But I immediately became focused on the food.
So here is the visual report. Chef Chris Stevens, so, so delicious. Everything.
Meat & Greet / Pils
Yay, a pun worthy of the English to start the night. I didn’t take any of the olives or other vegetables that were available because, being a victim of my self-imposed Meatless March, I zeroed right in on the meat. THE MEAT. I enjoyed smoked salmon, beef tongue, and “pig-head balls.” Heh. The balls were the tastiest things of the night, even though in general, I try to avoid deep-fried things.
Because of Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern, I have become much more enthusiastic about trying “weird” stuff. But my mother often served tongue when I lived at home. I was excited to have some.
Warm Dandelion Greens / Maximus
I harvest dandelion greens from the yard for my rabbit when they’re in season, and every time I do that I think that I should just throw some into my own salad, too. But I never do, so I was excited to have them served to me by a fancy restaurant chef. They’re really bitter! But fortunately the bitterness was offset by a delightfully sweet poppyseed vinaigrette.
Bonus Mini-Course: Watercress Soup with Creme Fresh
Served in a cute, tiny, espresso cup! It reminded me a lot of a spinach soup that I make. Other than the opening charcuterie, it might have been my favorite of the evening. Really good.
Seared Ahi Tuna / IPA
One of the things that I’ve come to love in recent years is when non-beef meat is (un)cooked rare. I’ve always loved a bloody steak and raw hamburger (hey, I’ve lasted this long, don’t judge me). I’ve learned that other flesh varieties are also better when cooked less rather than more.
More Bonus Mini-course: Celery Root Soufflé
I hate to say that both of the two unannounced mini-courses did their best to steal the show. So, so good. Who doesn’t love fluffy, puffy stuff?
Duck Breast & Confit / Imperial Brown
With Brussels sprouts hash, parsnip puree, and crispy onions up top. I love Brussels sprouts, and one of my favorite side dishes is a “fake mashed potatoes” made from pureed cauliflower with butter and half-and-half. The whole course, again, sooo good.
Bent River Camembert & Harissa Cashews
By this time, my tablemates were feeling a little full or didn’t like the cheese or didn’t like the nuts. I won. First, because I had been eating too much bread all the way along, I dipped my fork in the Camembert then stuck a cashew on the end. Delicious. Perfect. Then I braved a couple more slices of the bread.
Burnt Caramel Pudding / Imperial Red
Gingerbread crumble + cardamom cream and shredded ginger on top, in a jelly jar that matches the beer’s Mason jar? GET OUT! I absolutely would not have needed to polish off this delicious dessert. I wasn’t allowed to take the jelly jar home, but I did take the Mason glass home. Now I have two!
Sean, those were some good stories you told. And I understand why you go to the Blackbird every month — they’re amazing!
Maybe I mentioned this already in my Meatless March introductory entry. Because I have decided to deprive myself, ALLLLLLLIWANTISMEATMEATMEATMEATMEAT. But for once in my life, I am actually engaging in some willpower. I know it doesn’t happen often, so don’t fall off your chair.
Here is the accounting of the first full week. I was hoping to have had time to prepare food at home more but I have eaten out a lot, and kind of made the same thing or a variation thereof when I did manage to make it myself. Oh well. I make the things I make because I like them. I’m really diggin’ the quinoa at present.
Saturday
Folded over egg thing w/quinoa et al
Baja Sol veggie tacos
Pizza Lucé tri-pepper pizza
Sunday
Folded over egg thing w/quinoa et al, grapefruit
English muffin, orange
ww tortilla tofu quinoa pizza thing
Monday
eggs-chevre-sunflower shoots, orange
Real Meal Deal veggie sub, chips
refried bean pizza
Tuesday
eggs-chevre-sunflower shoots, orange
Acadia black bean burger*, orange
quinoa pizza
Wednesday
eggs-chevre-sunflower shoots, tomatoes, orange
Acadia veggie melt
quinoa+chevre
Republic black bean burger w/mushroom, Swiss
Sawatdee tofu pad tai, cream cheese wontons
(oof)
Thursday
Sawatdee tofu pad tai (leftover)
salad w/tofu and orange
ww tortilla+pepperjack
Groveland Tap veggie burger
Friday
Bruegger’s Everything bagel+cream cheese, orange
D’Amico fresh mozzarella salad, caprese panini (more toasted than the one last week), chips
Longfellow Grill garden burger w/salad
*Due to this whole Meatless March thing, I have been trying everybody’s veggie burger. Acadia Café, you hands-down have the best with your amazing Black Bean Burger. None of the others come close! Republic, you have good flavor but it doesn’t hold together. Longfellow Grill, yours was pretty tasty, too, but it all squished out of the bun by the time I was half-finished.
Oh no, no snow!
March 10, 2012
It obviously doesn’t come as a shock to anyone that we’ve had a mild winter this year. As you may recall (and if you don’t, please review here), last winter was quite a different story.
I don’t do a lot of necessary driving in my car, so snow or no snow it’s not usually too much of a deal to me. Having said that, it kind of seems like when it does snow, three out of four times it’s on a bowling night. But maybe that’s just me being overly sensitive because I don’t do a lot of necessary driving and when I do drive, it’s noticeable when the conditions are less than optimal.
Regardless, my party line is that if it’s going to be cold, I think it should snow. But this year, I don’t even get that. It hasn’t been cold and it hasn’t snowed. We’ve had about three inches altogether so far. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. We’ve had about ten. I haven’t looked it up but I think that’s pretty close to the truth.
Last night I dreamed that I was biking over the crest of the Rocky Mountains. Though it was Todd with whom I had been discussing biking every day in April and he mentioned he was “Riding the Rockies” in June—May?—June?—May?—you’re not missing the Small Batch Revival, are you?—it was actually Jon, Christine, and Chris who were my cycling companions in my dream. And it wasn’t the Rockies, but a mash-up of Rib Mountain in Wausau, Wisconsin (okay, Granite Peak, whatever), and Lutsen Mountain up Duluth, Minnesota-way. It was “Riding the Rockies,” but all I wanted to do was get to a roadside motel, such as the Big Orange Moose place in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and have a Hacker-Pschorr, which I enjoyed when I got stranded in Mauston, Wisconsin, last year.
But I digress.
The point is, it has been unseasonably warm this year. That’s something you’re probably almost as sick of hearing about as the running commentary on the “front-runner” in the Republican presidential-nominee circus.
I continue to digress.
Because of the warm temperatures, when I heard about a bike-every-day-in-April challenge I thought, oh, I can easily do that. In the non-winter season I do bike to work every day, and the challenge will get me out on the weekends, too. Though I prefer to walk home from work because it’s a very relaxing interlude, I can’t overlook the time savings of riding my bike both in the morning, when I would catch a ride on the light rail or the Number 7, and in the afternoon when it’s thirty-five minutes for the walk versus ten for the bike ride. Also, the downtown-traversing bike ride is a whole lot more stressful. But, because of the warm temperatures this year, I anticipate that I’ll start biking earlier, such as in April. Or on Monday.
Look at this forecast for the next week. Tomorrow I will take my bike over to the neighborhood shop and top off the air in the tires. How can I resist the lure of these temperatures?
Snow emergency? This whole winter has been a false alarm.
It???s expensive being green, or is it?
March 5, 2012
I was originally going to call this post “The hippiefication of Kelly” but that was two months ago when the events I’m about to recount occurred. Since then, I’ve come to believe that that would be a bit disrespectful of all of the people working hard to be kind to this planet and the creatures on it, when what I really mean is that I’ve made a lifestyle choice that’s completely different than how I had been conducting myself.
Maybe not completely completely different, but definitely a switch. What happened: I bought into a CSA and joined the co-op.
I had been thinking about both for ages, particularly a CSA (community-supported agriculture, for those of you who are unfamiliar with what the acronym stands for, as I was). Each summer I admired the good-looking produce that my boss would bring for lunch and thought how nice it would be to have non-mass-produced vegetables, particularly tomatoes. Then she would tell me what she paid for her CSA and it was a non-starter.
On and off I had thought that maybe I should at least shop at the co-op. I eat a lot of fresh produce and of course I’d rather it wasn’t genetically modified and/or slathered with xyzticides. More recently, I had been subtly influenced to begin thinking more earnestly about the animals I eat by the Twin Cities’ food truck revolution of the last couple of years. Many of them source only local, happy ingredients, including meat, and that wheedled its way into my brain.
Add to that two final “straws.” A friend of a friend went off to farm school for a year. She’s living on a small, working farm with a group of other like-minded students. They do everything from ground to table, including animal husbandry, harvesting crops and animals, felling trees and constructing, everything. Reading her accounts of how connected she has become to the animals and earth has been no small influence. Thanks, Amber!
Around the same time that Amber went off to farm school, I watched the documentary “Food, Inc.” which should be required viewing for anyone who eats. Anyone who eats. I know that the food industry is just a giant factory, but seeing video and reading statistics made it a whole lot more tangible. Yes, I’m appalled by how the animals are treated, but what was really eye-opening is how evil corn is. Corn. I’m not going to preach here (much). You can look up the movie and watch it for yourself. It was horrifying to learn how the “circle of life” applies to factory farming of both plants<–and–>animals. “Circle of profit” might be more accurate. And the poor animals, being forced to eat things (corn) that they don’t naturally eat.
So all of this finally kicked me in the pants to take the actions of conscience I knew I’d been wanting to. Providentially, my friend Rob S. posted a link to Bossy Acres, the new CSA that he joined. I looked them up and it seemed like it was meant to be. They had half-shares at a price point that I felt I could manage. A week later when I got paid, I trotted over to the Seward Co-op and bought into that, too. I felt good about myself.
Then I shopped for the first time.
I’ll freely admit that it’s been a shock to my wallet paying for organic produce, grass-fed/free-range meat, and regional cheese. If I used more pre-prepared (processed) items, I think it wouldn’t be as great a cost difference. But I eat the fresh stuff. My bills have easily been half-again to twice what I’d pay at the mainstream grocery store. Surprisingly, it doesn’t bother me too much when I think about what I’m supporting and the real cost-benefits to the planet and the creatures we inhabit it with, including our fellow humans.
Meatless March: can I do it?
March 3, 2012
I think I love meat too much to permanently give it up. And now that I’ve made the decision of conscience to go organic, free-range, and local, I feel better about the animals I eat. Nevertheless, inspired by others who were talking about it earlier this week, I have decided to join in Meatless March (except for a couple of prior dinner commitments which will involve meat).
I like plenty of non-meat proteins—cheese, beans, tofu, quinoa, nuts, olives, to name a few that I can think of off the top of my head—and this won’t really be that different from how I eat normally. I was, however, kind of funny at the co-op tonight how much I really wanted to buy some meat just because I knew I couldn’t. Because I couldn’t and because I was shopping hungry. So I compromised with a veggie frozen pizza that looked delicious with its roasted eggplant and zucchini slices. And a small serving of macaroni and cheese from the hot bar that was a little past its prime but sang a tempting song to my rumbling tumbly.
I’ll check in weekly with what I’ve been eating. Tomorrow I can start making stuff myself for a more balanced approach. Stay tuned!
Thursday (yesterday):
breakfast: sesame bagel, honey-walnut cream cheese, orange.
lunch: fresh mozzarella salad with romesco, Caprese panini, potato chips
supper: leftover sausage frozen pizza, orange
Friday (today):
breakfast: waffles, butter, syrup
lunch: falafel sandwich, chocolate cake
supper: macaroni & cheese, veggie frozen pizza, orange
Expanding my horizons: commercial kitchen volunteer
February 29, 2012
I just got back from a meet, greet, and get informed session about volunteering at Kitchen in the Market, the commercial kitchen space within the Midtown Global Market. If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time you know I love to cook, and while I don’t have any delusions that I’ll suddenly become a chef or anything remotely close, I thought this opportunity to be support staff for cooking class events (both public and private) would be an interesting something different to do.
It was billed as an information session to enlighten us as to what they look for in volunteers and what we as volunteers might expect. It turned out to be a little mini-class in its own right.
As soon as we arrived at the space, we were offered KITM’s “signature” champagne cocktail—glass drizzled with liquor, champagne poured, a few drops of bitters—after showing proper ID—”I don’t care if you look 112 or 12”—before anybody even said a word (an informational word, that is). Champagne? Okay, this is already fun!
There was presented actual information for a few minutes before we broke into three groups to prepare snackens for immediate consumption.
I was in the vegetables dipped in vodka then dipped in flavored salt group. I chopped the radishes with, I have to say, surprisingly, a rather dull knife (ahem). White=sea salt, orange=spiced/hot salt, grey=smoked salt.
Another group prepared delicious guacamole, which also contained a bit of the smoke salt and smoke something else which I don’t remember what.
The final group prepared a pomegranate-quincekumquat salsa. Well, I didn’t hear its official name but that’s what I’m calling it. And I think those orange, citrusy but bitter slices are quince, right?
All accompanied by a glass of wine whilst we chit-chatted amongst ourselves and with the KITM folks.
Volunteer duties include patron interface, food prep assisting, wine carafe and glass filling, clean-up (dishes and mopping), and the like. You know, I’ll give it a whirl. It seems like something that could take me down some unexpected path that jolts the routine of my life, and that would be exciting.
The blues for my shoes
February 26, 2012
I have come to the sad conclusion that my new blue shoes are what have been causing my right knee to be limpingly sore for the last few weeks. (Edit: Ha! I just realized they’re blue suede shoes. Moving on …)
Years ago I had plantar fasciitis in my foot. It was awful. After I had been sitting for a while, I’d need to take several steps before I could put weight on it without pain. Once it was warmed up, it was fine. If I had to get up in the middle of the night after my foot had been disused for hours, it wasn’t unusual for me to actually whimper on the way to the bathroom. In that regard, at least, my knee has been different. Resting it at night improves it. But during the day when I’m up and about, it’s a near constant aching and soreness. Bending it to step up or down stairs is the worst.
I had kind of been assuming that my right knee’s trouble was a side effect of aging and bowling. Why? Because my left knee and hip have been more frequently complaining during the twenty-four post-bowling hours. But here’s the rub. That discomfort reliably clears up by the end of the following day. And it’s only slight discomfort, not out-and-out pain of my right knee. And the other rub is that my sore knee is not my sliding knee. It ended up not quite adding up.
I pondered the problem further. I realized that the soreness had developed after I got the new shoes a few weeks ago. It’s true that when I was trying them on in the store, I knew they were a size or two too large, but I liked them so much that I bought them anyway. They seemed comfortable enough and I had been wearing them and walking in them with gusto.
But I couldn’t ignore the coincidence of the timing. So last weekend I resolved to not wear the shoes for a week to test whether they were the culprit. The inescapable answer is that they are. I was hopeful during the first few days because my knee didn’t not seem at all improved. I thought my beloved new shoes were off the hook. But in the last couple of days I can’t deny that my knee has hardly caused notice at all.
I’ll look into inserts or fancier orthotics so that I can wear my new shoes again, but for now I’ll have to stay with my tried-and-true oldies but goodies.
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 