I’m menno, he’s gourmet

I don’t have much time to blog these days.  I am back to work full time as of a month ago.  That leaves three hours after work every night to spend time with Miriam before she goes to bed.  Thankfully I can focus on her during that time, because I’m not doing much cooking since my husband is now a full-time stay at home dad!  This is a GREAT arrangement.  He knows what makes me happy, so he has been cooking incredible locally-sourced gourmet meals for me every night.  He takes Miriam to the farmer’s market every Wednesday, and we spend the following week eating up all the good vegetables and local beef we buy there.   A few recent hits have been this chicken and beet dish (I actually like beets, when they are grated, and beet greens are delicious), and this beef and arugula dish (it’s so good we’ve been having it once a week).  Roasted vegetables have been a recent hit–locally grown potatoes, carrots, onions, and beets, tossed with olive oil, dried rosemary, salt and pepper, and roasted in a 450 degree oven until nicely browned.  Miriam even eats beets cooked this way!

On the weekends, I do my share of the cooking.  I’m making bread and yogurt now, to help save a little money.  Miriam eats toast for breakfast and yogurt for lunch almost every day, so we’re going through a lot of both things.  I like taking yogurt for an afternoon snack at work, with a piece of fruit.  I’m making the yogurt in my crockpot which is so Mennonite of me, I know (Mennonites love crockpots, although they use them for potlucks–I think it would be hilarious to bring a crockpot full of yogurt to a potluck!).    The bread recipe is Hearty Grain Bread from Recipes from the Old Mill (another Mennonite cookbook!).  I slice it and put it in the freezer, and pull out one or two pieces at a time for toast and sandwiches.  It has sunflower seeds, bulgur, wheat bran, oats, and whole wheat flour in it, so I know that it’s good stuff.

Fall is almost here.  The air is a bit chilly, and the fall colors are just starting.  We made cranberry muffins and an apple tart this past weekend.  The cranberries we picked ourselves and the apples are Alaska grown (tiny things, but tasty).  I’m not dreading winter, actually.  I feel more prepared this year.  I feel like I’m settling into a good routine which will keep me going.  How are you preparing for winter, and what keeps you going?

all the blog posts I keep meaning to write

There’s one potential blog post in my head about what makes a good green salad.  I’m really picky about salads.  Basically, you need fresh, local greens (spinach, mesclun, arugula are my faves), and then you need fruit, nuts, cheese and maybe a vegetable or two.  I like strawberries, green onions, walnuts and goat cheese.  I also like chopped pear, walnut, dried cranberries and goat cheese.  Green salads should be carefully composed so the flavors and textures go well together.  I can’t stand a green salad that is: lettuce, carrot, broccoli, tomato, any vegetable in the fridge.  Yuck.  All the veggies are bitter and the flavors do not mix at all.  I am excited to be eating good salad again now that we have fresh, local greens.

I’ve also been wanting to write about what Miriam is eating these days.  She’s growing fast and eating mostly table foods.  For breakfast she eats Cheerios, toast, and fruit (strawberries, cherries).  Lunch is usually yogurt, with more fruit (peaches, pineapple) and some kind of grain (more Cheerios, maybe some crackers).  Dinner is usually green peas (she LOVES these and will eat maybe half a cup every day), chunks of cheese, fruit, maybe some leftover roast chicken.  She will eat rice and pasta.  She occasionally will eat potatoes and carrots and broccoli, if I happen to be cooking some for dinner.  I probably don’t feed her enough whole grains, and she gets a lot more fruit than vegetables (a reflection of how her parents eat!).  Still, I am amazed at how much she can eat.  Today she ate two pieces of toast while at the babysitter’s!  For a thirteen month old baby who weighs 17 lbs, that’s pretty good.

And then there’s the blog post about salmon being in season here, now that it’s late June!  Yum.  I’ve been buying it once a week at the market, even though I should wait until we go dipnetting next month and then we can eat our own.  But I’m impatient, and the fresh stuff is so good and beautiful.  Tonight we had Copper River Red Salmon with this sauce.

And then a blog post about eating steak.  I have been craving red meat recently, and have gotten in the habit of buying steak once a week (usually I buy whatever cut is on sale).  It’s fun to try new ways to cook it.  Yesterday we had this salad which was easy and delicious.  We also have had this steak with balsamic pan sauce, which is good.  I have some guilt about eating steak–it’s not that good for you, and has a large carbon footprint.  But it tastes so good….

Speaking of guilt, there’s another blog post in the making about how much guilt I have over our grocery bill.  The aforementioned weekly steak and salmon (plus, of course, wine to go with each) and the weekly farmer’s market haul add up to a not insignificant sum.  I love to eat good things, and good things cost money.  I try to make deals in my head–I don’t buy expensive lattes every day, I don’t spend much money on clothes, make-up, or shoes, I usually pack my lunch–but honestly, I could probably use a little restraint, and splurge on the good stuff more like once a month instead of once a week.  My husband likes to indulge me, so he doesn’t help (he also likes to eat steak and salmon weekly so he’s not complaining!).  I also have guilt about becoming a wino–being raised in a family of teetotalers makes me think there’s something wrong if you have wine several times a week with meals.  In France they do it all the time, though, right?  I need to move to France.  They spend a lot of money on food, and don’t feel guilty about it.  They also go to the market almost every day, which is what we’ve been doing lately.  Lots of small grocery trips add up to a bigger grocery bill.

And finally, the blog post about how I don’t blog enough, and I’m despairing that I’ll never really be a good blogger.  Oh well. Now and then I like to share about what I’m cooking and eating, and I don’t have the time or energy to make this into a world-class food blog with gorgeous photos and regular updates two to three times a week.  I still want to work on improving my food photography.  I have to learn some patience so I can stop and take a picture before eating!

i. love. this.

It’s my new Le Creuset stockpot.  My husband bought it for me for Mother’s Day!  He’s a good one.

I use it to make stock, soup, pasta, chili.  I often start planning for dinner with the question, “how can I make dinner and use my stockpot?”  It’s made of carbon steel (covered with enamel) so it heats up fast, and evenly.  Pasta water boils quickly.  Soups and stews simmer nicely at low temperatures.

I think it’s rare to have a useful and beautiful item in the kitchen.  I love the color this brings to the stovetop.

Mine was on sale at Habitat.  You can find them on Amazon also.

a little nutritional philosophy

Recently a few friends and acquaintances have complimented me on how good I look one year after having a baby.  I won’t lie, those compliments are great to hear.  But then they ask me what I did to look like this, or what dietary rules I follow.  And I respond somewhat guiltily, nothing.  I am lucky to have a good metabolism.  I do not exercise regularly, beyond what I do in a normal day (which is: carry baby and several bags up two flights of stairs, and try to take her on walks on my days off, and do something active on the weekends–biking or going on a hike.).  I am still breastfeeding her about 4 times a day, which burns extra calories (I am a little worried about having to adjust what I eat after I stop breastfeeding!).  But then I got to thinking–I have developed some basic rules for what I eat.  I’d like to keep enjoying food, and not turning it into a guilt trip or a battle to keep off weight.  Here’s a little of my nutritional philosophy:

1.  If I eat junk food, I try to have it be something I make myself.  If you don’t keep junk food around, you won’t eat it.  And when I get a craving for something sugary, I then have to think, “do I have the time and energy to bake something?” rather than just opening a bag and indulging.  I like to make my indulging “worth it”–deep, dark chocolate homemade brownies are so much better than the box kind.  Occasionally I buy a cookie along with coffee or tea at a coffeshop, but not too often.  I also have a bit of a weakness for chips and salsa–so I buy tortilla chips, and make my own fresh salsa.  We do not buy potato chips.  I admit, we do often have a supply of Breyer’s in the freezer, but I’m working on switching to more homemade ice cream (this lovely cookbook is the source of my inspiration).

2.  I try to stick to one sweet thing a day–one serving of ice cream in the evening, one piece of cake, etc.  I do break this rule occasionally.  When I eat ice cream, I use a small bowl, and I have one perfect scoop.

3.  I pretty much never drink soda.  I will have it when we go out now and then, but it’s never in our fridge at home.  Soda is a huge source of cheap calories.  I drink water mostly, though not as much as I should.  I have been trying to remind myself to drink a glass of water when I’m hungry before eating anything.

4. I try as much as possible to make everything from scratch.  This means I spend most of my spare time cooking, but I enjoy it!  My co-workers are always envious of the leftovers I bring for lunch.  I am amazed that anyone would settle for Lean Cuisine.

5.  I don’t really stick to a low-fat diet.  I am beginning to think that highly-processed, sugary foods are the real enemy, not fat.  I like the “whole foods” philosophy.  So I eat real butter, and we have bacon now and then, and I have an egg almost every morning for breakfast.  I eat whole-milk yogurt.  I find that I am satisfied longer when I eat this way.  An egg on whole-grain toast keeps me full until lunch.

I think enjoying your food is really important.  So many Americans eat out of a sense of guilt, and I think there is a lot of over-analyzing what we eat.  When you eat because you love food, you will seek out the freshest flavors and the best tastes.  I think often about the French paradox, and I enjoy drinking red wine with meals a few times a week.  I spend more on groceries than most people, because good food is a priority for me.

I could go on.  I am hoping that this nutritional philosophy will help me enjoy food and stay healthy throughout my life, and maybe it will change as I age.  What rules do you follow?

dinner 4-7-10: salmon with cabernet sauce

We are almost out of the dipnetted salmon in our freezer, which means we’ll have to survive through May and June until the next dipnetting season. We’ll definitely stay longer and get more salmon this year. Last year Krestia got six salmon, and we had a six week old baby, and we decided that was enough since we wanted to get home. This year we’ll have a 14 month old baby who will hopefully enjoy the outing a bit more!

This recipe was loosely based on one I found online. I had salmon thawing for dinner, and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon that we had bought earlier, so it seemed natural to put them together. I think the sauce is like a French buerre blanc (maybe I should call it a buerre rouge). I substituted pear vinegar for the tarragon vinegar, and finely minced onion for the shallot. I’m not very good at sauces. This one had to reduce for awhile, then the butter has to be whisked in piece by piece, and I’m impatient, and it seems overly fussy. I let the sauce sit on very low heat while I finished the salmon, and it turned into something wonderful–tangy, creamy, rich. It was a bit too thin for my liking, so maybe reducing it even more would help! We ate this with Yukon Gold mashed potatoes (Alaska grown!) and freezer peas.

dinner 3-30-10: Marrakesh moose stew

We were lucky to get some moose meat from my cousin Jess when we visited him and his wife Jill in Fairbanks a few weeks ago.  Moose meat is really good stuff.  Think about it–it’s meat from a free-range, grass (and brush)-fed animal that has not been industrially raised or processed.  It’s lean and takes on other flavors well, and makes excellent stews and chilis.  I think it’s less gamey tasting than venison.  It can be tough so it needs a long cooking time, or a long time marinating in something before cooking.  This stew took about two hours of cooking until the meat was tender enough for my taste.  Moose tastes pretty much like beef, but I don’t know that you would want to eat a big piece of it by itself, like you do with steak.  So far I enjoy it when it’s cooked with other ingredients and good spices, like in this Marrakesh stew from the cookbook Simply in Season.  They say you can use beef, lamb or venison, so I figured, why not moose?   This dish has a few of the old stew regulars–meat, onion, tomato, potato, carrot.  But then you add a cinnamon stick, rutabaga, turmeric, crushed red pepper, cloves, and raisins.  I serve it on couscous, and top it with chopped cilantro, and sometimes even chopped almonds.  We drank some Zinfandel along with it.  It’s delicious–hearty and exotic all at once.

dinner 3-23-10

One of our favorite quick meals around here–Sweet Potato and Black Bean Burritos, with homemade guacamole and sour cream. I should make homemade salsa too but haven’t done that in awhile (as you can imagine, the tomatoes we get in the grocery stores up here during the winter are pretty sad, and even tomatoes grown here in the summer are not like the ones I remember in NY). I bought some dried chiles last week and wanted to use them in this dish, so I toasted two of them in a cast iron pan, then put them in a bowl and covered them with boiling water and let them soak until soft. Then I pureed them with a little of the soaking water, and added the puree to the sweet potato/onion/garlic/spices/black bean mixture. It was a good addition. The chiles are mild ones (called guajillo) so I think maybe I should have done more than two, or added more crushed red pepper to the sweet potatoes. I also prefer to use black beans I soaked and cooked myself, but decided to just use canned beans this time around.

dinner tonight

…..was this Sausage Risotto:

I tried making risotto at home for the first time a few weeks ago.  Homemade chicken stock has become a part of my life now, happily, and I’m enjoying making dishes that feature its goodness.  Risotto has developed a reputation as a finicky dish to make, and I was curious to see if I was up for the challenge.  First of all, it’s not that finicky.  You can walk away from the stove.  You can add a cup of broth all at once, turn the heat to low, and leave it for a few minutes, and I promise, the sky will not fall.  However.  On my first try a few weeks ago, the risotto turned out thick and gloppy.  Tonight’s risotto was much better.  I think I was more patient.  I let it cook slowly.  Miriam was taking a nap while I cooked dinner, which helped tremendously.  Last time I ran out of stock and was worried that the flavor of the dish would suffer if I used water, so I let it be too thick.  This time, after adding two cups of broth, I added about two cups of water and I don’t think it affected the flavor negatively.  With sausage and Parmesan cheese dominating the dish, a little water instead of stock is okay.  Next time I think I will try adding a little wine first, before I add the broth.  Even without the wine, we cleaned this up quickly.  I’m sad there won’t be any leftovers for lunch tomorrow!

(p.s.  In an effort to revive my blog, I’m going to try and post once a week about something I made for dinner, with a picture!  My food photography, in a word, stinks.  I am hoping to improve it, and breathe some life into this site.  Let me know what you think.)

homemade baby food

Miriam is now eating three meals a day, plus a few snacks! It took me awhile to get into the groove of feeding her.  At first I was intimidated by the concept of making baby food. I started off buying some organic baby food called Sprout. It’s actually pretty good, as baby food goes. It’s all organic, the ingredients are pure and simple, and the flavor combinations are thoughtful (banana and mango, peas and beans with mint, apples and blueberries, pears and apricots, peach rice pudding). Baby food can have spices in it like mint and nutmeg and cardamon. But after feeding Miriam some of that stuff, it struck me that the ingredients were so simple that I could be making them myself. I remembered some friends of ours in Rochester, Ken and Carrie, who made baby food for their kids, and Ken told me over and over again how easy it was, and how nutritious. I bought the book Super Baby Food, and I started.

Here’s what I usually do: once a week, I bake two yams in the oven (I prick them with a fork a few times and wrap them in aluminum foil). When they are soft all the way through, I take them out, let them cool, peel them and mash them into a pile on a plate. Then I use a spoon to scoop little portions into an ice-cube tray. I let the yams freeze overnight, then pop them out of the ice cube tray and put the food cubes into a freezer ziploc bag. Then all I have to do is remove one cube at a time, thaw in the microwave, and feed it to Miriam! She eats one cube of sweet potatoes daily. I have also done this with pears–peel and cube them, cook in a saucepan on the stove with a little water until soft, and puree (or leave in small chunks if baby can handle those). Freeze in an ice cube tray.  This takes very little time and can easily be done on the weekends.  I can send homemade food with her to the babysitter’s, and have it for use at home.

Miriam’s diet so far is basically the same every day. For breakfast she has whole grain oatmeal cereal (Earth’s Best–I could do homemade cereal but I haven’t gone there yet) mixed with applesauce, pears or bananas. For lunch she has sweet potatoes and peas (she loves freezer peas–I thaw them briefly and she eats them as finger food). For dinner she has whole milk yogurt with another fruit or vegetable. All day long she snacks on Cheerios, and she also likes cheese and crackers. If Krestia and I are having something baby-food friendly for dinner, she’ll have little bits of it. She likes chicken (I’ve starting doing a roast chicken once a week or so).  I do need to work on getting more green vegetables into her. So far she doesn’t like avocado, broccoli or green beans.

It feels good to know exactly what goes into her food, since I’m making it myself.  It is pretty easy and convenient.  I find myself eating bits of the food I feed her–it’s yummy. The storebought stuff usually has some kind of metallic, processed taste.  I will probably buy baby food occasionally to have when we travel, but for now, I’m going strong on making my own.

killing three posts with…one post.

Eating Locally in Alfred, NY. I spent a few weeks with my family over the holidays, and I was impressed with Alfred’s food scene! We ate prime rib from Locustbrae Farm, and salad greens from the hydroponic operation at Alfred State College. My sister Janna’s household buys organic raw milk from Sunny Cove Farm, and I just noticed that you can now buy organic local chicken from Windy Ridge Natural Farms. I believe there are several places in the area that sell eggs also (Janna, where do you get yours?). This is all very, very good. Combined with all the canning and freezing you can do with a big garden, it’s getting more and more possible to eat mostly local foods if you live in that area!

My mother-in-law, the pastry chef. Seriously, the desserts she makes are amazing. We spent a few days with my husband’s parents and we ate so well. There was this cake:

She’s good at presentation, isn’t she? I believe it was a hazelnut cake, layered with raspberry jam and real whipped cream, frosted with chocolate ganache and garnished with those amazing little chocolate leaves. We also ate mini pecan tarts, chocolate biscotti and pumpkin custard topped with whipped cream and pecans. All homemade, and all so delicious.

Conquering the whole chicken. I have posted before about my shameful habit of only buying boneless skinless chicken breast. Whole chickens were on sale at the grocery store a few weeks ago, and I bought one. My friend Meggan recommended making Cook’s Illustrated French Chicken in a Pot, and it was a good recommendation. It’s easy and delicious. The next day I made chicken noodle soup with the leftovers, and I felt so thrifty. I have two more whole chickens in the freezer. Next I think I might try cutting one into pieces myself.