What's Cooking as the Year Ends and Begins

Tourtiere - French Canadian meat pie

I asked friends to share some of their New Year's Eve and New Year's Day epicurean traditions on Twitter and Facebook. Saying goodbye to the old and blessing the new can bring out deep and complex traditions of delight.

One of my fondest New Year's memories was when I was living across state in Menasha. A friend, born and raised in Europe, invited us to share a meal of New Year's lentils for luck. Beyond the warm friendship and sharing of a meal, the subtle flavors she coaxed from the lentils brought them from legume to legendary. 

I blogged about our tradition last year - cassoulet shared with friends.  What else are people preparing?

Cheryl: We are having a New Year's Eve homemade pizza, and a New Year's day breakfast. Jim calls the breakfast a "lumberjack breakfast;" I don't know why. (Eggs, potatoes, onion, cheese, ham or sausage or Canadian bacon, sometimes breadcrumbs, all together in a skillet.)

Melissa: Homemade pasta for New Year's Eve and homemade pierogis for New Year's Day....oh,and Bailey's cookies on New Year's Eve!

Ally: On new year's day, everyone I know eats black-eyed peas for luck. I've been informed that this is very southern. :)  My grandmother also insists on collard greens!

Jennifer Ann (in response to above):  SUPER Southern. This WI girl had never heard of such a thing until she married a Texan. Oh, a Cuban friend of mine makes us eat 12 grapes at midnight (1 for each clock-stroke) and you make 12 wishes!

Roxane and Steve: Venison/veggie stew and Bloody Mary's with our own pepper infused vodka. 

Meagan: Collard greens, black eyed peas & ham on New Years are a Southern tradition for luck & prosperity. I'm slow-cooking a soup with collards, peas and a crunchy bacon garnish...hopefully it will trick my husband into liking greens!  

Sue: Some day I'm going to get a taste of that cassoulet! But I do have my jar of herring ready for the stroke of midnight!

Stacy:  We do tourtière on New Year's Eve.

I can't help but want to share in all that delightful food. Happy New Year, my friends!

 

The Power of a Made Meal

For the past ten days, both Lloyd and I battled a seasonal flu that had us down low.  Low energy, low appetite, low brain, low motivation.  At the same time, our refrigerator was not staying cool  - we had to keep it closed as much as possible to maintain safe food temperature. So we were limited in food at hand while we had repair folks out twice over five days fixing the problem.

Canned soups became the food of necessity. And we got tired of them very quickly.  After five days, with a refrigerator fixed, I finally had enough energy that I could stop relying on a can opener.  We started eating the real food we love again.

We had purchased a small bundle of pork from our CSA and with our final delivery of potatoes and onions, our first home-cooked meal after a week was scalloped potatoes with ham. I used an old recipe from Betty Crocker, a carefully used mandolin, parts of a ham steak and plenty of potatoes and onions.

It was comfort food from both our childhoods - a welcome homecoming back to making our own food again. It seems like a small thing, but the moment I could summon the energy to make a meal of real food again made me feel immeasurably better.

For the past few days we have been able to make our own simple meals again - pancakes, lambburgers, cooked carrots, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, scotch broth, roasted fish, pasta with our own sauce. We feel the comfort of familiar flavors and believe in the healing that a meal made with our hands from scratch makes possible.

 

The Art and Play of Candy - The Recipe

After our family history and a bit about the process, here is the recipe and sources! We keep the house cool during the process (65F or less) so the chocolate can cool without streaks.

Turtles
2# small pecans (Trader Joe) 
2# small unsalted, unroasted cashews (Weavers Country Market, Fall Creek, WI)

Spread nuts on parchment paper-covered rimmed baking pans (I use six 12"x17" pans purchased from a restaurant supply store).

2# Wilbur milk chocolate (in blocks) (Weavers Country Market)
2# Wilbur dark chocolate (in blocks) (Weavers Country Market)

Caramel (from Pearl Vonyx, a neighbor from our childhood)

Mom's beat-up old 2 c. measuring cup
for the syrup. Gotta use it!

• 3 1/2 sticks of salted butter
• 2# light brown sugar
• 2 cups Karo syrup
• 1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
• dash (or more) salt - this is my secret - I go towards the more so my caramels aren't as much sweet as interesting!
• 1 T. vanilla

Melt butter over medium heat. Add the rest of the ingredients. Stir constantly for about 45 minutes until the temperature reaches 247F. Let cool for a few minutes. Then drop small amounts of caramel on the nuts, using a spoon or candy funnel. Cool completely.

Chocolate

Cutting the chocolate blocks

Melting the chips

Hand dipping the chocolate onto the caramel pecans

Chop into small chips and place in small metal pan. Put the pan in a non-reactive skillet with 3/4"-1" of water held at just below simmer (keeps the chocolate at a temperature of between 110-112F). Add water when necessary. Stir chocolate until melted, pour onto a marble and temper (push back and forth over the surface of the marble) to 87F for milk and 89F for dark. Using spoon or hand, drop chocolate onto the cooled caramel-nut clusters. Cool and pack into boxes or tins, using wax paper or parchment paper between layers.

And that's how a batch of turtles gets done - an hour to make the caramel and get it on the nuts. An hour to cool. Two hours to chop, melt, temper and dip. An hour to cool. An hour to pack.  Then a chance to test the result and decide if these little beauties are good enough to give away (YES!!).

Each and every time I repeat this annual holiday ritual, my mom is close to me in thought and heart. I hear the echoes of the laughter, the chatter and the warmth of my sisters and aunts and cousins who worked at the prodigious task of making the candy. Each sweep of my hand and squeeze of chocolate brings back a sense of home and holiday. And I am so grateful for this beautiful skill my mom shared with me. Happy holidays!

The Art and Play of Candy - The Process

In the last post, I talked about how I got to be a candy maker.

Whenever I do something so infrequently, I worry that I will have lost the knack of it. But somehow, making turtle candy always comes back. My hand remembers. That and the sheets of brief notes that document the process and history of our candy journey. Mom learned long ago not to trust her memory, and daughter of my mother, I rely on these previously written jottings.

Candy making is an adventure. Each year something is introduced into the formula - a better way to melt the chocolate; a new source of nuts to buy; a "never-buy-that-brand-again" epiphany; an introduction of an instant read thermometer or a way to keep the sticky caramel from clinging to the pan (line them with parchment paper!).  The early notes from the eighties, written in my Mom's tiny handwriting - how many pounds and what kind of chocolate and nuts - include who came to make candy and how many days the candy was made. Notes on temperature, clues on sources for ingredients and even prices might show up in each yearly paragraph.

For us, candymaking is about tradition but also innovation and experimentation. How would those dipping chips work (not so well)? What if we first did a batch of caramels to wrap and then did the batch of caramels for turtles (oooh, that was a keeper in terms of kitchen efficiency and helper energy)? What is the perfect temperature to make sure the caramel isn't too sticky of too hard (I know!  Who could believe how many times that has changed!!)?

One such innovation? In the last post, I described how mom and helpers would use spoons to drop quarter size dollops of hot liquid caramel onto the nuts spread over the pans. This was quick and almost frantic work. Once the caramel was done, we had about fifteen minutes to work with it before it began to stiffen and harden. We had to wait a few minutes to begin because it was too hotly runny to set. So it was a race to get it onto the nuts in distinct small pools and not burn ourselves or have it harden too much to slide off the spoon.

A casual conversation one year about how Al poured the caramel at Seroogy's (through a big funnel with the flow controlled by a wooden stick) led us to our biggest innovation. That and a visit to the Vanilla Bean, a Madison candymaking and baking supply store which stocked this helpful tool. Pouring the caramel into this little white funnel with a ball-ended stick let us quickly - and safely - drop just the right amount of caramel on the nuts by quickly lifting the stick up and down to control the caramel flow. It was lightning fast.  From three or four people pouring the caramel, one can easily do it.  While a small detail, it took alot of the unpleasant labor from the day. Oooooh. Innovation!

Stirring the caramel

This year's fun was provided by our new instant read thermometer, an unexpected addition. I usually use two other methods - my old candy thermometer and our cooking timer/temperature probe. I use the stove time probe to get a general sense of the temp but have never trusted its accuracy in candymaking where a few degrees difference in temperature means a batch of candy lost. The candy thermometer was the final arbiter of caramel doneness.  I could rely on the probe to beep when we were near the right temp and use most of my 45 minute caramel-stirring time playing games, daydreaming or reading.

Tools of the temperature trade

But this year, my old dog candy thermometer lagged 8 degrees behind the probe and I knew I was in trouble. I grabbed the instant read, popped it in and got a close reading to the probe. Saved! I also used the instant read thermometer to see what temperature my tempered chocolate was. I never used a thermometer for this, just the feel of the chocolate and look of the drips. I was delighted to find the temper at a perfect 87F. Cool!

So, in the process, I get a chance to wrap myself in tradition and experiment like a mad scientist.  No wonder I look forward to candymaking each year.

In the next post, the recipe!

The Art and Play of Candy - The Story

Holidays are not just times for friends and family together, but also a time of more baking and making from scratch. Somehow, these seasons of thanks and traditions call even the most die-hard processed food eater back to try a recipe remembered and treasured from childhood.

It is definitely the season for sweet treats from scratch. Cookies, cakes, candy and sugary delicacies that take extra effort and time are labored over and served or given as gifts with delight. Some people have a huge range of goodies they make.

I have just one, really. I make turtles - homemade caramel with hand-tempered and dipped chocolate over pecans or cashews - carrying on the tradition I learned from my mom.

Pull your chairs up to the fire, my friends, and let me tell you the tale of how someone who.does.not.like.sweets. became the torch-bearer for a family gastronomic tradition.

We did not always make turtles in my family. We made caramels, popcorn balls, fudge, peanut brittle and cookies of all sorts around the holidays.  But turtles didn't enter our lives until after one of the saddest days our family experienced.  My dad died unexpectedly at the age of 51 in September, 1971. Mom had been a homemaker and active volunteer, and coach, caregiver and general for us seven kids, three of whom were still at home when we lost Dad.

With no employable skills and mourning her sweetie, it was a tough few months. A family friend who owned a small candy shop asked Mom if she was up for helping during the busy holiday season. Mom was grateful for a chance to earn money for the family to supplement the life insurance and social security (dad worked at a factory so additional income was high priority to make ends meet). And so began our journey towards turtles.

Mom packed candy the first year she worked. The mad-house busy season for candy shops is October through Valentine's Day...sometimes extending to Easter. All hands on deck.

By the next year, the owners needed help hand tempering and dipping chocolate and so mom's apprenticeship began.  The Seroogy's tempered and dipped their chocolate the old-fashioned way - on marble, manipulating and smoothing the pool of chocolate back and forth by hand (muddy-gush!) over and over until it reached it's just right temperature to dip the candy in - too hot and the chocolate would be streaked with grey (the dreaded "charlie"); too cold and it "set up" in gnarly and ugly lumps, undippable.

Candy at mom's house in the 80's

Making candy with  Auntie Lu in the mid-80s

Within a year or two, in addition to the candy we traditionally made at the holidays, hand-dipped nuts and turtles were introduced into our holiday sweets-making repertoire.  By that time we older siblings were out of the house - married and starting families, in college, in jobs.  Mom invited us back for candy-making days that turned into parties with an aunt or cousin sometimes joining my sisters and me. I was hooked.

We would make two batches of caramels and wrap those 300-400 chewy tidbits and make two batches of caramel to make the 800 or so turtles plus chocolate covered nuts. It was an all day job - starting at 8 or 9 am and continuing through the day until the last turtles were cool and boxed at 8pm. We ate soup at lunch and one of us would pick-up a carry-out from Kroll's, a local burger joint, for supper.

Tempering by hand

Mom did all the tempering and dipping. We kids spread the nuts on the pans, used spoons to pour a quarter-size dollop of hot caramel onto the nuts and kept the double boiler full of melting chocolate so mom didn't have to pause in her dipping - we would just add more melted chocolate to her marble, while she held up one chocolate covered hand and announced with a laugh and a twinkle in her eye, "Nickle a lick!".

Her time at Seroogy's brought her to master level at tempering and dipping. Just by the feel of the chocolate cooling from hot to perfect, and the look of it dripping off her hand in thin strings told her when the velvety ooze was at the perfect dipping temperature.  She invited us all to try our hands but the temper and the delicate twists and manipulations eluded us apprentices and our efforts produced interesting shapes that tasted great but were not easy on the eye.

As the years went on and lives got busier, all my sisters couldn't make the candy-making day and our numbers dwindled.  Mom was getting older and we downsized batches to make the day more reasonable.  I began to temper and dip under mom's tutelage (I think I never missed a candy-making year so mom thought it was about time!).  With her encouragement, I went from apprentice to journeywoman over the thirty years we made chocolate.  In the last few years of her life, slowed by Parkinson's, my mom gave me the reins for all the dipping and I became the master under her careful eye.

And so my own candy journey began. In the next part, we'll leave the story and get down to the brass tacks of the process and recipe for turtle making!

Making Beef Broth

I make foundational beef or chicken broths about 3-4 times a year.  When I do, they last us for many months of cooking and recipes.

Fall and winter is the big broth making season for us because our soup and stew making increases by leaps and bounds in the dark, cold, hibernating seasons. To make the broth for these, all we need is a day when we will be hanging around the house - puttering, reading, doing the laundry, blogging or staying close.

Preparation is easy and results in a deeply rich flavored beef broth. The organic ingredients (since we are extracting the essence of all these, we don't want pesticide or hormone-laden stuff) don't need to be prepared in a fussy way. Carrots go in washed with ends nipped off. Celery, we cut in half to make sure it gets immersed. Onions go in peeled and whole. The long slow cooking time will reduce these veggies down.

The most active part of the recipe is roasting the beef bones before I begin. I learned this trick from the cookbook "Caprial's Bistro Style of Cuisine." Set the oven at 450F. Put the bones on a lipped tray with an unpeeled garlic or two and roast in the oven for an hour.  Put the bones in the soup pot, squish the garlic into the pot and then the fun part. Deglaze the roasting pan with a little red wine and scrape up all the little tasty, roasted bits and add to the soup pot.

Add water to cover and simmer 6-8 hours. Strain the broth through a cheese cloth (toss out the cooked out veggies - they've done their job flavoring and enriching the broth). Refrigerate (or put outside) until cool. Skim off the fat, put into 1 or 2 cup containers and freeze. Pop the big cubes out the next day into a freezer bag and voila - heart and soul warming broth that YOU made, ready for every recipe!

The Big Apple

October is always apple crisp making time for us. Although I aspire to be a pie maker, I must admit that is it the quick crisp that draws my knife and time.

My favorite apple variety to use is an old beauty called the Wolf River. You can't much find it in the western part of Wisconsin where we live, but head east along the Wolf River where it originated and still grows, and the apple is readily found at farm markets and a few orchards.

My mom used it on occasion and she said my Grandma Loch did too. We all three liked it for it's fine tartiness in baking. But I suspect we also love it because you don't need to peel many to make that pie or crisp. These babies are huge, running from a half pound up to a pound each. Just three will fill an apple crisp pan and one can fill a pie! Since peeling is my least favorite part of the process, I make sure to get over to my old stomping grounds on the east side of Wisconsin in October to pick up a bag for baking.

For my recipe, I go to an old Betty Crocker cookbook and use this for the topping:

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 5 1/3 Tablespoons butter
• 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon.

I mix that up by hand and sprinkle about half over the cut apples in a greased 8x8x2 pan and pop it into a 375F oven for 15 minutes.  I take it out and sprinkle the remaining topping on* and bake for 15 more minutes or until the apples get melty good.

A little ice cream on it while it's still warm and our perfect fall dessert or snack is ready to go!

*I learned this little half-and-half topping trick from the June/July 2002 issue of Fine Cooking Magazine. It keeps the topping from getting dark before your apples are done the way you want!

Garlic and Me

It was a tool catalog that taught me how and when to plant and harvest garlic. Lee Valley, a mail-order company based in Canada, was a go-to catalog for my wood-working wonder of a partner. Years ago, while touting some gardening wonder implement or another, the company included a half page on garlic growing.  I can do this!!

Garlic is the last thing I plant each season. I start thinking about planting around the fall equinox.  I look over the garden and plan next year in my mind's eye and then decide what small space (about three yards square) I will choose to bed the garlic in over the winter.  I have until frost to get them in so I am leisurely about this.

I have saved back a few robust garlic heads from my July harvest. I have also pestered the garlic seller at farmer's market to share his favorites for me to try. And then in a whirl of activity, I break the heads into individual cloves, push them about an inch deep and 2-3" apart and ten minutes later, my year's worth of garlic is planted.  I put a thick mulch about 12" deep on top of them and mark the area.

The garlic sleeps the winter away.

By the spring equinox, the shoots are up; by summer solstice the scapes are ready and by July the stalks are brown and sere and my garlic is ready to come out of the ground.  A quick tug, a rub to get off the clinging dirt, a gentle braid of three heads with a loop at the top and they are ready to dry.

Our old rake handle (seems appropriate given where I learned to grow garlic) will hold the harvest under a protected roof to dry for a few weeks. Then I'll cut off the stems and put them in the pantry. I dream of meals ahead.....

No Escaping Scapes

We've been growing garlic for quite a few years now. We break apart the garlic into cloves and bury it closely together about an inch deep in fall.

It's a favorite because it's a winter sleeper - it goes into the ground in October with a nice foot-thick mulch and we forget about it until it's leaves poke up. We always enjoy a little mild spring garlic in April and May when our stored garlic from the previous season's harvest has given it's last gasp.  But we like to wait for most of the crop to mature.

In June (usually right around the solstice) on it's way to maturity, the garlic puts out it's flower.  The lovely "scape" curls around with a hooded flower at it's end. If we left the scape on the plant, it would draw power from the growing garlic. Gardeners just snip off this scape to keep the energy directed to the growing garlic bulb.

But oh those scapes!  They can be refrigerated and then added to foods just like a clove of garlic.   Although we use a few like that, we go crazy for garlic scape pesto. We make it and freeze it for cold winter meals where, combined with pasta and veggies, it brings a warm remembrance of solstice and summer when we looked for it's distinctive curl.

The recipe below was shared by Cate and Mat, our CSA from Ridgeland Harvest*

Garlic Scape and Almond Pesto

• 10 garlic scapes, finely chopped
• 1/2-1/2 c. finely grated parmesan (or to texture/taste)
• 1/3 cup slivered almonds (toasted lightly if you'd like)
• 1/2 c. olive oil
• sea salt

Put about 1/3 of the scapes and almonds in a blender or food processor with some of the olive oil and mix. Continue to add these until these three ingredients are blended. Scoop into a bowl and add the sea salt and cheese.

If you don't use it immediately, press a piece of plastic against the surface to keep it from oxidizing. It can be stored for a couple of days or frozen for a couple of months (though we've been known to discover a tasty frozen chunk the next spring!)

*This year we got the sad news that their garlic crop hadn't made it.  Difficulty in obtaining the winter mulch and an over-wet spring has taken it's toll. We know how much their garlic harvest means to the farm's livelihood.  So we thank them for their efforts when the weather brings drought one year and too-frequent and too-heavy rains the next.

Mmmmmm Morels

Hunting for morel mushrooms is a time-honored forager's pleasure.  Wet woods and rain followed by hot temps usually bring these tasty fungi up and out. Lately, weather patterns have been disrupted and so the predictability in the appearance of these early May treats is hard to pin down. 

One is simply forced to head out to the woods and enjoy the spring flora and fauna day after day...how we suffer.

Our old hunting grounds of ten and twenty years ago are pretty well consumed by the spread of garlic mustard. So we have tramped alot over the past few years looking for just the right new spot. When we don't find morels, a kind neighbor shares or, if worse comes to worst, a stop at farmer's market to buy a few at a dear price is still fine with us. We crave the season's fruits and fungi!  This year, we supported a local farm family who found bushels of morels and paid the price for some amazingly big yellow beauties.

We usually get enough to put in some scrambled eggs or to saute lightly and put on toast.  Rarely, we still have some hoarded ramps and then we make our absolute favorite spring treat - ramp and morel pizza!

We saute the morels and ramps lightly. If we're lucky, we still have a chunk of garlic scape pesto (those lovely curlique greens that grow on your garlic as it strives to flower) saved in the freezer to spread over the pizza dough to create the foundation for the pizza. 

Garlic Scape and Almond Pesto
Blend together into a fine pesto paste.

• 10 garlic scapes, chopped fine
• 1/3-1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/3 cup slivered almonds, lightly toasted if you like
• sea salt to taste
• up to 1/2 cup olive oil

We add goat cheese and mozzarella, perhaps some slices of roasted fresh asparagus, a little Italian sausage on Lloyd's homemade dough and pop it on the grill.  The tastes are unique and sublime. Spring is encompassed!

And if we don't happen upon more morels this year in our hunt, we'll be back tramping again next spring. The woods invite us to enjoy them no matter what the result of our quest (I will say we found one lone stalk of tasty wild asparagus on our latest morel tramp so all is not lost in the tasty treats department). And that makes it all the more special!

Singing Sorrel's Praises

In the spinach family, sorrel has a tangy bite and pokes its head up early to greet the spring. Tender leaves are great in salads or added fresh to yogurt to make a sauce.  When they are cooked down, they turn a less lovely shade of green, but their tart taste stays true.

I've planted it in the garden and am happy to see it in spring (hint: I plant this perennial in the ground in a pot to keep it's spreading ways under control). We love to add it to our first greens - watercress and spinach - when we make our spring salads.  It is delicate and doesn't keep well so with my own plant,  I just pick what I need when I need it.

We recently came across a beautiful soup recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy. She breaks out vegetables into their larger families (mint, carrot, knotweed, thistle, cucurbit, lily, sunflower, morning glory, legume, grass, goosefoot, nightshade and cabbage) and then talks about how to use foods within the same family. Like all her cookbooks, it is a rich and wonderful source of information and savory recipes that is a delight to read for research and for finding good foods to make.

 Ramped Up Spinach Soup with Lovage and Sorrel
(translated into Marge-ese)

2 c. chopped ramps (about 3 oz)
big handful of sorrel leaves (about 2 oz)
8 ounces of spinach leaves, w/o stems
2 T butter or delicate olive oil
3 c. ramp broth, water or light chicken stock
2 lovage leaves (we didn't have that and skipped this)
freshly ground black pepper
heavy cream or thick yogurt (optional)
toasted bread crums

Melt the butter over medium heat. Add the ramps and cook for 2 minutes. Add sorrel, spinach and 1 t. salt. Coat the veggies with the butter. Then add the broth, bring to a boil and simmer 10 minutes. At this point, if you have it, add the lovage.  Cool slightly and puree in blender. Gently re-heat and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with a smidgen of cream or yogurt swirled in. Add a few pinces of breadcrumbs if you want.

Simple and delicious as a spring rain!

Ramping Up for Ramps

And the spring food continues!  We are late this year for ramps - the wild leeks that grow in swaths in just the right spot. They usually spring up in late April and then literally fade away soon after. While we do some foraging, all our tramping this spring never revealed a good spot for these oniony short-lived treats. We don't worry about it though. Our friends at Harmony Valley Farms sustainably harvest these alliums and sell them at farmer's markets and the Viroqua Food Coop.

We always try to get our hands on 5-10 bunches during the season and cook with abandon. Stir-fries, added to scrambled eggs, sauteed and added to soups and stews, made into a pesto, on pizza. Theses are all wonderful ways to use these roots.

We were first introduced to ramps through our CSA on the eastern side of the state. Our May shares often contained ramps that our farmer Steve brought over from this area. We fell instantly in love with them. We were the CSA pick-up point for our area and I always hoped that members would take one look at these and put them in the "Anybody can take these" box for unwanted veggies. I would even leave an oh-so-casual note, "If you don't want your ramps, we would be happy to have them". One friend, a cook of some reputation though unfamiliar with ramps, took that as a ringing endorsement for these treats...and I didn't get his share!

Locally a Ramp Festival has started (invitation only..and no, we aren't on the list) in a forest that boasts fields of ramps. Last night Lloyd and I met some friends at the Rooted Spoon Culinary for a spring ramps dinner featuring ramps dug Thursday from those fields. The menu was delightful and included:

• Chicken and ramp terrine
• Ramp pesto and goat cheese crostini
• Pickled ramps (to die for)
• Pea shoot salad with ramp dressing
• Trout stuffed with ramps
• Couscous with wild mushrooms, carmelized ramps and watercress
• Maple creme brulee

We wondered if we would be overwhelmed but our chefs knew how to weave the strong flavors throughout the meals in a way that had us savoring the offerings.

The fleeting season of ramps is almost over but we feel like we honored it well. And there are still two more bunches in the fridge to play with!

Watercress Time

The coulee region of Wisconsin is full of bluffs, hills and valleys. Spring-fed streams are everywhere and in many of these streams grow the peppery, piquant watercress. The variety in these streams tastes nothing like the bland product sometimes available in grocery stores.

Cress can be available during fairly cool months if the stream is running and not frozen over. March and April often bring an abundance of this green. Family lore has it that only in months with an "r" in them can it be gathered. In the other months, water bugs find this leaf just as tasty as we do and cleaning becomes a chore as well as a lesson in aquatic zoology.

I've been lucky enough to enjoy it for years from the stream that runs through the farm that is still in the hands of Lloyd's relatives. Sometimes our food co-op has some, sometimes the early farmer's market. We look forward to eating it in spring with a roaring anticipation. The first greens of the season speak to us of the bounty ahead. A quick spread of mayo on Lloyd's homemade wheat bread piled high with the fresh cress makes a sandwich that tells us that spring has really arrived.

And So It Begins...

Today, I went to the garden and dug my first garlic of the season.  I love nothing better than pulling these first delicate slips. It means spring really is here and the growing season is upon us.

Last fall, I buried many individual cloves and covered them heavily with straw. Since then, these  little beauties have been sleeping away the winter.  The first hint of light and warmth brings their shoots up above the ground.

When I dig them, the clove is wet and withered. I peel off that layer, and inside there is a thin shoot, looking much like scallion.

This first garlic is sweet and mild enough to put raw in salads.  Tonight, we're making Miniera, a Brazilian dish that marries thinly sliced collard greens with bacon (yes, greens and bacon - a match made in heaven). A few slices of this sprightly spring garlic serves as a perfect mild flavor maid of honor.

Collard Greens Miniera

1/2 # collard greens, halved lengthwise and stems and center ribs discarded
2 slices of bacon, finely chopped

Stack the collard leaf halves and roill cross-wise into a cigar shape. Cut crosswise into very thin slices (1/8"). Cook bacon til crisp. Add collards, tossing to coat and cook until just bright green (about 1 minute. Season with salt and serve.

Gourmet Magazine January 2001

Why Organic?

For us, the transition to almost all organic food was gradual. We added more locally grown, organic veggies early on in our lives because we could access that easily in our garden and at farmer's markets. Fruit was more difficult since very little was available that way. So we bought conventionally grown fruit until I saw a grocery store worker stocking a fruit bin with latex gloves. It really came home to me at that moment how much pesticide was on that fruit.

Of course we had been reading -alot - on eating in a healthy way; the state of corporate food production and control of seed; GMOs and more for years.  Our natural health practitioner also encouraged us to go organic. We had been using the Environmental Working Groups Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen lists to help us navigate.  We looked at each other,  did some math on whether we thought we could afford organic fruit as opposed to consuming unneeded pesticides and the decision was made.

We had been working towards more organic meat for years before that. Each time we moved to a different city, I  stopped making my homemade broth because I needed to source organic chicken and beef. The whole point of a slow broth making is to extract flavor not just from the meat but from the bone - a good broth gels. As I mentioned in my post on making chicken broth, the thought of extracting antibiotics from the bones as well was like an anathema. This recent article in Mother Jones is a telling on the use of antibiotics in animals in the food industry.

We don't eat organic to live forever. We eat it because it is healthier for our bodies. It is supportive of our small family farms that raise food they want to eat straight from the fields and humanely raise their animals (yup, we visit the farms we buy from). It often means that we buy locally and in a direct eye-to-eye-contact way that lets the growers know how much their sweat and effort means to us.

And the money we spend on organic? It's not always as expensive as people think. I like this comparison our Viroqua Food Co-op published last year. And if we do pay more, it's where we prioritize our household expenses. We think it's worth it!

Ten Ways to Cut Your Grocery Bill While Eating Healthy

I like the common sense approach taken in this post from Food Tank, a "food think tank" webpage. These are all tips we have used to eat economically. Small things can make a difference...especially getting off the corporate food chain.

Image: 'the curse of eleven eleven'  http://www.flickr.com/photos/15732690@N00/3670097230
Found on flickrcc.net

The John and Yoko of Carrots

I'm not sure any carrots could get better than these two found in our bag of carrots from our CSA. They remind me of the iconic Rolling Stone cover photo by Annie Leibovitz.

I love the real variety and trueness of produce like this that would never make it through the corporate food chain to a grocery store.  True food love brought to us by our farmers Cate and Mat from Ridgeland Harvest CSA!

Seeds and Gardens

Growing our own food has almost always been part of my life. My parents had a big garden in our city backyard for our big nine-member family. I loved planting. My dad and I would go to the hardware store where they had jars of seeds, the littlest bags in the world and an old fashioned scale. I was his helper as he went down the list and picked and weighed out the seeds we needed.

Then home to plant. Dad had a hoe with measurements marked off on the wooden shaft. He would lay it out and put a stake with string in the ground. One of us kids would unroll the string to the other end of of the about-to-be-hoed row and he would guide us - "a little to the right"; "more to the left" to the spot to plunge it into the ready soil for a straight row. He hoed, we sowed. And then all those seeds and plants? Why, they growed! Weeding, picking and garden chores were an all-family affair.

Lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, green and wax beans were all part of "going out to the garden" to get some of the food for supper. Snacks during harvest season were crunchy, juicy beans or warm tomatoes picked right that second. I missed that as a young apartment-dwelling adult. When we bought our first house in spring, making a garden was our first order of business and has remained so at every place we've lived.

We have grown this, that and the next thing over the years. Once we started regular CSA shares, we still planted. Our garden now features whatever I can't get enough of in our CSAs or what I want on hand as much as I can.  Spring/summer garlic, onions, fresh herbs, cucumbers, tomatoes, chard, sorrel.  The winter seed catalogs have me dreaming of what tasty treat we will try this year.

Each time I plant a seed or bulb or plant in the warmed earth of spring or the cooling soil of fall, I feel like a maker. It speaks of ancient rhythms that tie me to nature and her cycles. Growing even a small part of the food we eat brings an amazing satisfaction.

I am so happy and excited to see a growing passion again for growing food. Our library is beginning a seed saving library in partnership with Seed Savers and planning workshops to teach and reach out to people on sustainability and gardening. I can hardly wait!

Beets - A Loved Root Vegetable

Of all the root vegetables, my favorite for most of my life has been beets. From the piquant pickled beets of my childhood, to the robust sauteed beet greens and the delicate sweetness of lightly cooked baby beets of my adulthood, beets have held me in their thrall. It doesn't matter if they are the dark ruby ones or chiogga or golden beets. Each is tasty and each is carefully kept long after the season is over to be put into our meals for many winter days.

A favorite way to make beets is to turn them into bright little chips with any supper. Crank up the oven to 400F; cut the beets in 1/4" slices and spread them in a pan on parchment paper. Lightly oil and salt and pepper them. Bake for 10 minutes;  flip them and bake another 10 minutes. Slightly crisp, a little smoky and deeply sweet and roasted, they are finger-licking good.

Another favorite way to cook them is from an old recipe (so old I've lost the origin), Roasted Beets and French Lentil Salad.  Our friend Francoise (an amazing cook) would make the most astounding lentils with the simplest ingredients on New Year's Day. I think of her when I make this recipe because the tastiness of the lentils echoes hers in some small way. It always calls to me at the turn of each new year as well.

Beets finished roasting

• 3 medium beets, oiled, wrapped tightly in aluminum foil and roasted in a 400F oven for one hour; then peeled and diced
• 1/4 c. minced flat leaf parsley
• mixed baby salad greens
• 3 oz of goat cheese

Combine in a saucepan & cover by 2" with cold water:

• 1 cup French or green lentils
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 large cloves of garlic peeled and smashed
• 1/2 onion studded with whole clove
• 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt

Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered until lentils are tender (about 25 minutes). Strain lentils and discard herbs, garlic and onions.Put lentils in a large bowl.

For dressing:

• 1 1/2 T sherry wine or balsamic vinegar
• 1 T. whole grain mustard
• 1/2 t. salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 2 3/4 T olive oil
• 1 shallot minced

Mix a little more than half the dressing into the lentils, add the diced beets and parsley and mix.  Use the rest of the dressing on baby salad greens. Top the greens with the lentil mixture and add dots of goat cheese on top.

This makes enough for 4 main dish salads. Um, I'd show you a picture of the finished salad...but we ate it too quickly! Num!

Getting Fresh - Winter Salads

Pomegranates & shaved radishes

We love fresh greens in the dark days of winter. Although we enjoy eating local and seasonal, this is the hardest to achieve with salad greens during January and February. Most farms, even ones with greenhouses, can barely afford the fuel for heat and grow lights in this darkest of seasons to grow the delicate beauties. Few achieve it near us.  But we crave a fresh bite, so off to the co-op we go.

For some odd reason, we get more crazy inventive with our salads than we do in spring and early summer with abundant salad greens at our fingertips.  We top our winter salad greens with pomegranates and oranges; pears and citrus; avocados and nuts; shaved radishes and cabbage . We play with vinegars as we make our dressings and noodle around with bits of this and that for more crunch. Cheeses in little dollops for the soft ones and thin shaved pieces for the hard ones lend an interesting depth to the proceedings.

It's like a little party everyday. We're not sure what'll appear in our salads but that makes it all the more fun!

Getting Some Morroccan Roots On

One of the fun parts of any CSA share (community supported agriculture) is the surprise of just which veggies and fruits are found in the box each week. We have tried all kinds of new tastes and found real excitement in exploring recipes to enjoy them. We received shares in both November and December from Ridgeland Harvest, our CSA, that were full of great root vegetables - turnips, rutabagas, beets, potatoes, carrots.

We don't often eat rutabagas and turnips so we wanted something tasty that could be a "keeper" recipe to return to annually when the bounty of root vegetables comes. We found a winter-satisfying recipe that really elevated them into something scrumptious - I know, I know, for some people root veggies are never described that way -
Morroccan Style Chicken with Root Vegetables from Epicurious.

Although it broke my 10-ingredient rule, we had everything the recipe called for on hand or a close substitute to keep it rocking. The roots used were rutabaga, turnips, carrots and sweet potatoes.We had home canned tomatoes; chicken stock; currants and even cilantro hanging around. Biggest prep time was just peeling & cutting up the veggies - about 7 cups worth. That took as long as the quick cooking of the stew.  But with curry, cumin and cinnamon perfuming the root vegetables, it was worth every chop. This is indeed a root-recipe keeper!

CSA - Community Supported Agriculture

The seed catalogs are arriving. In the cold of winter, those of us who garden are thinking of what we want to plant in the warming days of spring.  January also brings the first notices from farms who have CSA's that its time to think of buying a share so they know how much to plant.

The basic premise of a CSA is that a household helps support the farm by buying a share in the harvest. The farm then provides a weekly or bi-weekly delivery of vegetables, herbs, fruits, eggs and sometimes meat throughout a sixteen to twenty week harvest season. By becoming a member, you agree to share in every farmer's risk - the harvest may be bountiful or poor depending on the weather, pests and other factors that affect yield.All the CSA's we know about provide organic produce at a fair price. Ridgeland Harvest has been our CSA since we came to town.

We support CSA's for a number of reasons. For us, knowing where our food comes from is important. Equally important is directly supporting nearby farm families who are caring for the land. We love to buy locally and organically. We appreciate the concept of investing now for a reward later. We have been treated fairly and respectfully in our relationships with our CSA farmers  both here and on the eastern side of the state.

We also love the crazy kismet of opening the box and seeing what we get to cook with for the week - we commit ourselves to using everything in our meals. We have discovered and come to love many vegetables we never tried before (rabid collard green fan!). With all the produce, we simply eat healthier - less meat and more cooking to the season. It is an great incentive to celebrate the bounty of the harvest that we have right here in Wisconsin.

Besides the newsletter from the farm that has great recipes, a couple of cookbooks have helped with tasty uses for the bounty - our favorite is Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Season Produce from the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition. It is full of recipes for all the fruits and vegetables found in CSA boxes and farmer's markets.  We also rely on Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

We still stop by the farmer's market during the season. We like to browse, see friends, pick up a little extra here and there and support more farm families. But it's our CSA food that truly sustains us, challenges us and that we support our farmers by investing in.

Oats! Oats! Oats!

Mom made lots of oatmeal for us as kids. I can safely say I, um, hated it. The rolled oats were gluey and mushy and no amount of brown sugar and milk could make it tasty. As I pecked at the edges and learned to eat it without tasting, it quickly cooled and then the parent child face-off began - cajoling; stern orders; finally veiled threats to have it appear in the lunch soup if not eaten right now (some of my siblings insist this did indeed happen; seems apocryphal to me). I happily left that oatmeal past of my childhood behind.

As an adult, some friends came back from a trip to the UK with pinhead oatmeal and raved about the taste. They made me some. Holy smokies - that was oatmeal?!?!?! Dense; tasty, delightfully nutty and chewy. Yeah baby! It was the first time I thought about oats as a grain - a savory grain like rice or barley - rather than a sugary cereal or a penance from hell. Luckily, we didn't have to go across the ocean to buy it - we found pinhead and steel cut oats at natural food stores and co-ops.

We really hit the taste jackpot when we discovered  War Eagle Mill in Rogers AR, a waterwheel-powered stoneground mill that sources organic grains. Oh, man, oh man, those oats are worth every penny. Fresh, fresh, fresh. When we ran out and went back to store-bought, the difference was stunning. We are hooked on War Eagle (oh, plus they come in cool cloth bags and give us a recipe for bannock cakes - see below).

We also figured out a good way to make it easily and quickly on an electric stove: using an asparagas cooker (the tall, lean pot), cover 1/2 c.oats and a pinch or two of salt with a cup of water; put the cover on & turn on high. As soon as it begins to boil, turn off the heat and let it sit for 20-25 minutes. The residual heat from the burner keeps it cooking and the high sides of the cooker keep it from boiling over. Give it a quick stir and serve. When we decide oatmeal for breakfast, it makes us sing "O-o-o-oats!"

Finally, let me share the gist of the Bannock Cake recipe from War Eagle Mill with you. Oatier than pancakes but just as darn good.  
Mix together:
-1 egg
-pinch of sugar
-1/3 c. butter milk
Add:
-1 c. cooked steel cut oats
-1/2 c. flour of choice
-1/2 t. baking soda
-1T. oil
-pinch of cinnamon

Then cook in a lightly oiled skillet over medium low heat til bubbly, flip, cook a little longer and eat like pancakes. Extras can be kept for week in fridge or frozen and toastered when ready! This recipe makes about 7-8 little beauties.