Going light

Things here are going to be a little light for a bit. I decided my new years resolution was to go through all the recipes I have saved and make them all. I have a system. I read my food magazines and cut out the recipes I like then recycle the rest. Once I make a recipe it is either permanently filed if it is good or trashed if it is bad or not something I would make again. Right now I have 112 recipes saved from magazines and 45 bookmarked recipes. That may seem easy, just 2-3 recipes a week, except I have subscriptions to Saveur, Food and Wine, Cooks Illustrated, and the Diner Journal, not to mention the food blogs I read regularly. I probably save at least 20 recipes a month and I usually make about 5 right away, so now I need to step up my game and get caught up.

I am not going to make any of my saved desserts. Those I am more selective about saving. I have been making desserts since I was five so I can read a dessert recipe and know if I am going to like it, I haven't gotten that good at savory recipes. I am also waiting on some of the recipes for certain thing to come back in season like asparagus, sunchokes, fresh tomatoes, etc. I will probably document some of them, but the purpose of this blog is for recipes we love and I don't know if we love these yet so they will only make the cut if they are really good.

Wish me luck.

my to-do list

Gone surfing!

We are in Hawaii for a much needed vacation. Be back... soon-ish.

Happy birthday!

Apparently I am late to the party. I didn't even realize it has been a year that I have been documenting our dining habits. Oy vey! Thankfully it is still fun and I won't be stopping anytime soon as I am always finding new 'favorite' foods for my kids.

Happy New Year

Well 2011 is done and 2012 has started. I am still thinking about what recipes I want to put up here next. I realized that what I have been documenting lately is really about eating in season. It is all stews, potatoes, crockpot meals, etc. They mostly look a little like bowls of mushy stuff, but they sure do taste good especially when it is super cold outside. So I will just ask that you forgive the lack of color and 'freshness' over the next month or so. It is what it is.

Putting up

I wanted to document what I put up so far this year. I think a lot of people are into canning, but putting up is a little different. If you change your mindset from preserving to surviving then you are putting up. It is really thinking about taking the summer bounty and putting it away for winter. Not just via canning, but also freezing, cold storing, drying, etc. The idea isn't to supplement what you buy at the grocery store or the big box store, but to feed you through the winter with the grocery store supplementing your pantry. Now don't get me wrong I am not feeding my family with what I put up, but I am definitely trying to move in that direction. So far we haven't bought tomato products, pickles, jams, kimchi, or sauerkraut at the store in at least three years. I have been reading sharon astyk's blog for about 6 years and I get a lot of inspiration in how to live with low impact. I really wish more people would start looking at their freezers, cupboards, and cool garages as places to store local food that they themselves can, freeze, buy in bulk, etc. Just this little step saves so much in terms of food miles. As they say, think global, eat local. I know so cliche, but I had to.

So here are my canned pickles, jams, fruit, tomatoes, and harissa; my frozen stock and applesauce; and my lacto-fermented kimchi and sauerkraut. This doesn't include the 4 quart bags of frozen blueberries from spring, the 4 pint bags of frozen squash blossoms from our garden for soup, the half bushel of frozen roasted chiles separated into 8 ziploc bags for using until next summer, the seven jars of jam already eaten, the 4 jars of jams given away as gifts, the two pints of pickled peppers I made this week, the 20lbs of tomatoes I am planning to can still, or anything else I am going to put up in the next month and a half left of the farmers market and our CSA.

 

I like painters tape since it doesn't leave sticky residue

From the side with the husband

Recipes

I may have mentioned this before in a previous post, but this time I think it needs a post of its own. Besides I don't have any pictures of things I have been making to put up yet, but my new computer is on it's way. It took me much longer than I thought it would to decide on a computer to buy, hence the delay. So back to recipes. 

Do I use recipes, yes mostly for cakes and other sensitive baked goods or for the first time I am trying a new recipe. The rest of the time I wing it. I am of the school of thought that if you want to learn how to cook, then you just have to do it. If you always follow a recipe you will never make mistakes and then you will never learn. We learn through failure, not through repetition. If I use a recipe on this blog I will cite the source, otherwise I am not using a recipe and just using my intuition and memory. 

It is very useful to learn to cook this way, because making tomato for four can be easily scaled to tomato soup for twelve without much effort. It also allows things to change, grow, and evolve. If I don't have an ingredient on hand I may substitute and find out I like it much better. And to be honest 85% of the time I am following a recipe for the first time I modify it. I can't help it, I have a problem. I like to own my work and that allows me to be a better cook. Try it, you will come to love it. Meanwhile if you do want a recipe from the site I can vaguely type something up that should come close.

Please excuse the hiatus

So, the other day I realized my computer ate my lovely pictures of canned whole tomatoes, the beginning of tomato jam, the beginning of black bean burgers, and a few more things I had decided to make in a two day time span. See it is September and the cool weather has me jumping into cooking projects like no tomorrow. But then alas disaster, the pictures just weren't there after downloading them. Some of them were, some of them weren't. Sigh, I will manage. 

But wait it's not over yet. Not two days later my hard drive crashes. Now my files are on their way to Alabama to be rescued. My computer is on it's way to the recycle bin, this was my third hard drive. Granted I have had the computer for almost six years, but still it is time. A new computer will be had, but I have to find one that we can afford. So for now we will take a little break. You can look forward to pickles, tomato jam, black bean veggie burgers, and whatever else I cook between now and then. Any suggestions on an awesome laptop are welcome.

The beauty

As you might have read I consider my stove to be the beast, but I consider my toaster oven to be the beauty. Now for some reason cook's illustrated panned my toaster oven, as the controls were too complex. Given that my four year old can use it without being able to read, I am not sure that is accurate. I love this thing. We ditched the microwave in favor of this convection toaster oven. It really doesn't take more than a minute or two longer to heat my leftovers and I can do all sorts of fun things, like dehydrate, convection bake frozen fried food, and like right now in the heat of summer—not turn on the oven.

I roasted leeks today for about an hour at and my kitchen wasn't hot at all. This little baby lets me beat the heat without a grill. I can't say enough about it. It did take us a bit to master the toasting only because we had to find the right rack configuration, but not only is my kitchen cool, but we are saving energy. If I need to heat up something frozen, I don't need to crank up the huge oven, I just pop it in. As a mom of three I use the timer function all the time. The timer on my oven just rings, this turns it off and given the small size, the heat drops fast, which means no more overcooking food while trying to mediate between a four year old and a six year old. Truly a good buy and I am no longer nuking my kids food.

the delonghi

Yes, I did not set the clock. I am obsessive with clocks being off in my house and every month or so I have to go around and synch them all. One less clock, one less synch.

Mi cielo - chile con queso

This would absolutely be my last meal. I am originally from southern california and I lived in NYC for seven years, so by necessity I had to learn how to cook good mexican food. But there really is no comparison to this. I mastered mole, arepas, tacos, tortillas, frijoles, chile rellenos, you name it, I cook it, but these are so elusive, no matter how many times I tried I could never get them just right. It must be the fresh ocean breezes wafting in through the open air dining area. And yes I know everyone already knows about la super rica, but very few of you seem to be getting chile con queso arguably one of the best dishes on the menu, even for meat eaters. We know, we have turned many a carnivore onto these, once you have these you will understand. So if you happen to be in santa barbara, stop by the corner of milpas and alphonse and order this. Oh and their horchata is also pretty tasty.

roasted poblanos, melted cheese, just made tortillas,
and pico de gallo - my heaven on earth

The beast

Another non-cooking post, but this one is all about my kitchen. See we are renters and we moved 4 states away while I was pregnant to a house I found on craigslist with no pictures at all (the landlord doesn't own a digital camera). It is actually an awesome house on an awesome street, but it has an electric stove.

I have managed to live my whole life without having to cook on these things. Two years in and I still can't turn on the right burner. I am still constantly burning myself because the burner is only red if I have it on high, otherwise it looks innocuously cool. And my food, I can't tell you how many times I have turned the stove off only to have it be just shy, which means either super low, or more often than not, I just set my perfectly cooked spinach to high and walked away. It is only the telltale smoke and burning smell that sends me running back to the kitchen. I have vowed never again.

We did look into having a gas line run the 6 feet under the crawl space from the water heater to where the stove is, only to find out we needed city permits and all sorts of crazy that would drive the cost close to 1k, not including the cost of the gas stove that if I happened to actually be purchasing for myself would umm, be very, very expensive, did I mention we are renters. Not a home improvement I am going to pay for. We already had to convince the landlord to pay for grounded outlets so our computers didn't explode, he certainly wasn't going to spring for the gas line after that. So, please don't judge me for that crazy thing I have to cook on. I know plenty of people cook much better food on even worse.

It even looks ominous

Husbands

I love my husband but...

Classic opening right, there is a reason I do the cooking. My husband can read a recipe, but he can't interpret it. So anyways, my kids love this salad my eldest came up with. It is grape tomatoes, a can of stick 'em on your fingers black olives, and a bag of croutons. It's actually quite good. When they make it, it is just the three together. When I make it, I split the tomatoes, salt them, add a little tasting olive oil and a splash of red wine vinegar, then the olives and I let it rest a bit. I put on the croutons right before servings and more often than not I throw in a handful of arugula. The other night my son requested the salad, we had everything but croutons. I sent my husband to the store for croutons. This is what he came back with. I kid you not, he thought the word dressing was referring to salad dressing. God love him.

so yes, we had mashed potatoes, stuffing, mushroom gravy, and un-roast
for dinner the next night

What am I doing here?

I thought I would just state for the record why I started this blog. No I don't want my own cooking show or a small cult following of rabid vegetarians. I started this blog because I have three very young kids and I am extremely morbid. What if something happens to me tomorrow? Who is going to make their favorite tomato soup? Salt and pepper grilled cheese sandwiches? Who will teach them how to make all the yummy things they love? I will. 

Now my husband can cook, he just isn't passionate about it, so it is good, but rarely fantastic. I, however, live first for my kids and second to cook. I love cooking. I blame my dad, he made everything from scratch, every sauce, every marinade, every meatball, every pie and crust. He was an awesome cook. He taught me that if you don't make your own you go down to the italian deli and buy fresh pasta. If you want to eat good food you find the tamale stand, the hole in the wall bbq pit, the diner with the best burger. He had a nose for finding the best food without trying, I thank my lucky stars every day that I inherited that from him. Ask my husband I know how to pick them, and pick them blind. My dad's parents were also great cooks, but they always made fun food for us grandkids - tacos, potato pancakes, homemade spaghetti, trips to baskin robbins, you know what grandparents are supposed to do. My mom can also cook, she just rarely did while I was growing up. I ate lots of chef-boyardee, tv dinners, and soup. I can remember some good food, but I never remember her cooking. I started to teach myself how to cook the basics in junior high school. Her mom taught me how to make desserts - cookies, cakes, pastries. She had lots of bridge parties and I had lots of little yummies.

That is it in a nutshell. For me cooking = love. I love my kids and with or without me they will learn how to cook with love.