On Food

Last weekend seemed to revolve around food. It started on Friday when Ryan had a pork roast, some chicken thighs, and a half gallon of milk all spoil in his refrigerator. I recommended that he get a refrigerator thermometer and check the temperature and then we would proceed from there. 

After a few hours, the temperature seemed to settle on 42 degrees which is really too warm for a refrigerator. I found a repair person who was willing to come Saturday morning to assess the problem and Ryan vacuumed the coils and cleaned the fans. When he woke up early Saturday morning, the temperature had stabilized at 35 degrees. We cancelled the repair person as there was no sense paying for a service call when there didn't appear to be anything to repair. 

I had planned to make a pork loin on Saturday and some crockpot tortellini on Sunday, but I switched them around. I wasn't sure if I would be going over to Ryan's to rescue all the things in his freezer on Saturday and if I would be back in time to do the pork loin. It turned out that my Saturday was essentially free after I had dumped everything in the crockpot, so I sat and knit on my sock while I watched Barefoot Contessa. I've never watched her show before, but I noticed some things during my viewing marathon that I thought might help with my own preparing and serving of food.

Daffodils in a vase are an arrangement low enough to see over.

• I need to use more adjectives when John asks what's for dinner. Instead of saying "pork", I should reply with "succulent loin of pork, marinated with fragrant garlic, rosemary, and wine".
  

• I should say "really good" more often, as in "I used good vanilla", or "This is really good olive oil". 

• Prosciutto wrapped around things (figs, melon slices) sound like easy and delicious appetizers, and they can be served at room temperature. She did make an accompaniment to a salad by wrapping hard salami around a breadstick, but that seemed a little ghetto for Ina.

• Always describe arugula as "peppery".  

• John will appreciate dinner more if I tell him that "I turned the flavor up."

• Ask loudly "How easy is that?" at frequent intervals while cooking.  

I do appreciate how she doesn't make really fancy and complicated dishes and her enthusiasm for good food is contagious, but after a whole afternoon of Ina, I was ready for a plain grilled cheese sandwich, made without turning the flavor up in any way.

 

Old Dog/New Tricks

This old dog learned a couple of new tricks this weekend. I wanted to make the fresh ginger cake I wrote about on Friday but wasn't looking forward to peeling and slicing the knobby hunk of ginger I needed. A few minutes on the internet gave me a couple of the tricks I needed. The first thing I found out is that ginger can be peeled with a spoon. It was simple and there was no danger of cutting my fingers. The next thing I learned is that ginger can be blitzed in the food processor. I froze the peeled pieces for a few hours, put them in my food processor for a few seconds, and voilà, chopped fresh ginger to bake this:

It was delicious. This is not my grandmother's gingerbread, but a strong ginger cake. It was great with whipped cream

and I think it would be equally tasty with some vanilla ice cream. 

I hope your week is off to a good start and that you have cake or something just as yummy to carry you through the

rest of this fraught week. 

I Thought I Was Done

I thought I was done blanching, freezing, fixing, and figuring out ways to use the garden produce, but that was not the case. We went to visit Ryan and the garden earlier this week after a hard frost. The garden has already gotten frost three or four times before, but this time Mother Nature meant it. John managed to salvage a meal's worth of green beans and snow peas but then asked if I could do something with a five-gallon bucket of green tomatoes. I wasn't going to give out fried green tomatoes for Halloween, so I convinced him that just a big bowlful would be much better. Ryan found a recipe for tomato relish that sounded very interesting to me (no vinegar!) so I decided to try it. 

The first thing I learned was that fresh ginger is completely different than ground ginger. I cut off a hunk, peeled it, and reveled in the scent. After I added the cumin and lime juice and zest I was really hooked. 

I added the rest of the ingredients and then diced the green tomatoes for what felt like forever. In actuality, it only took about 90 minutes but I was quite happy that I did not have a five-gallon bucket full of the things. 

After all the peeling, juicing, zesting, and chopping, I put the pot on the stove to cook down. This recipe called for ripe tomatoes and cooking it down for approximately 30 minutes but I cooked mine down for about 90 minutes since I was using green tomatoes that were much harder.

I doubled the recipe and we had to have hamburgers on Thursday night so I could taste my relish. It's damn good! I love the taste of limes, cumin, and ginger, so I may be making more of this stuff with canned tomatoes once I finish these jars.

But for now, the good news is I have enough ginger left over for a fresh ginger cake, and enough limes to enjoy several vodka & tonics with plenty of lime, just like I like them. I'll be pacing myself with the drinks so I have enough vodka and limes to last through at least Tuesday (and I'll probably need to replenish the ingredients so I have more on hand for at least a week afterward). 

I hope you have a great weekend!

Quilts and Dreams

One of the things we did when we were visiting my SiL was go to the Quilt Show put together by the Mountain Laurel Quilt Guild. I've been once before and this one was just as impressive. There were small decorative quilts, like the one below,

and Challenge quilts, like these.

The challenge involved turning to page 25 in any magazine and interpreting what was on page 25 into a small quilt. 

There were large quilts,

and medium quilts. 

This one was made of tiny triangles

and this one was inspired by a photograph of the maker's father.

This one was made from selvedges,

this one was made from the maker's father's ties,

and this one was inspired by the Pokey Little Puppy. 

I was entranced by these small quilts for some reason, maybe the tininess of the pieces? Whatever the reason, I stood in front of them for quite a while and even dreamed about cutting out tiny blue pieces that night. 

The only quilting I've done is making some place mats so it would be nice if I could get further inspired by these quilts with tiny pieces and maybe even make one of my own. 

In a Pickle

I've been buying one of those small round watermelons each week for the past month and have been surprised at how good they've been. I usually cut them up into bite-sized pieces and then John and I have a ready supply of nice cold watermelon (especially welcome when it's 95 degrees like it was on Friday).

I was a little disappointed when I cut this one in half; it's not the bright red of a really ripe watermelon. But it still tastes okay, and then I remembered something that Vera mentioned - pickled watermelon rind! I looked for a recipe and decided to give it a try. 

I cut off the dark outer rind and then cut the rind pieces into spears, enough to fill two quart jars. Then I made the brine.

It looks a little dark and murky, thanks to the apple cider vinegar, but it smells delicious, thanks to the vanilla and pickling spices. The recipe calls for whole allspice berries but I didn't have any, so I just added an extra tablespoon of pickling spices. I doubled the brine recipe and had enough to fill both of my quart jars. 

I ladled the brine into the jars, and voilà - watermelon rind pickles! You're supposed to cool and refrigerate them for at least 24 hours to let the flavors develop, so I haven't tried them yet. I'll report back when I do. The brine smelled so delicious, so I'm hoping the pickles are just as delectable. Fingers crossed!

My Day As An Apprentice

John did a lot of work on Justin's house after we bought it - refinishing wood floors, painting, insulating, putting in a new kitchen floor, replacing some of the boards on the back deck, and many other things that needed to be fixed. I helped some, but mostly with small things, especially after I got asked not to paint because nobody wanted to see my brush marks and my taping was sub-par. (Fine with me!)

Justin has a big bow window in the living room. Since the house was built around 1960, it only has single-pane glass, which has always bothered John. We couldn't afford to replace the whole window, so John had this idea to make storm windows for it. He bought clear plexiglass sheets, used the router to trim each panel to the correct size for the window pane, and made, cut, and painted channeled wood blocks to hold the plexiglass sheets onto the outside of the window. I wasn't so sure how this whole thing would look, but yesterday was installation day. 

The pillow is for Justin's cat, Nugget. I was disappointed
that she didn't lie on her pillow and watch us.

I was in charge of removing the blue plastic wrapping from each piece of plexiglass, ensuring it was clean and free of dust and dirt, and handing John the correct pieces and associated wooden blocks while he used the drill to screw the blocks in and anchor each piece of plexiglass. The static electricity on the plexiglass attracted a lot of dust, but it was a chilly day and I was wearing gloves which helped. 

When John attached the first blocks I thought he placed them sort of haphazardly and it took me a few minutes to convince him to move them more to the periphery and in line with the existing window divisions. He did eventually see that I was right but that meant we had to move six or eight blocks, fill in the screw holes and paint over them.

We used gold-colored screws so while John was cleaning up, I painted the screw heads with white paint so they wouldn't stick out so much. We were working outside, and it was chilly and took over five hours, but I tried not to complain. John had already done most of the painstaking work so I got to be the gofer and apprentice. I'm still not convinced this will make a measurable difference and I wonder if it was really worth all the time and expense (plexiglass isn't cheap!) but it looks better than I thought it would. 

Today I'm staying home and looking forward to my usual chores of cooking, mopping the kitchen floor, and cleaning the bathroom. They're easier than my day as a storm window installation apprentice!