Languishing

Wow, this blog is languishing. I guess we've all been busy with the quotidian and have neglected the more delicious luxury of writing. Well, between the lot of us we've had some significant life changes: gained a baby and some new food restrictions, lost some chickens and a dog, undergone all the preliminary paperwork for an adoption. Whew. No wonder our gardens aren't in yet! I hope all of your quotidian days are worshipful. (Doesn't that sounds very spiritual and idealistic some days? Well, they are worshipful to the Lord even if our hearts aren't quite tuned to hear the praise.) While we neglect to write, maybe you would enjoy perusing this website that Danidoodle found: Quotidiana.

I miss my garden.

'And this brings us to the third, and what may be the most important
reason why you should garden. It is the cheapest, healthiest, keenest
pleasure there is. Give me a sunny garden patch in the golden
springtime, when the trees are picking out their new gowns, in all the
various self-colored delicate grays and greens--strange how beautiful
they are, in the same old unchanging styles, isn't it?--give me seeds
to watch as they find the light, plants to tend as they take hold in
the fine, loose, rich soil, and you may have the other sports. And when
you have grown tired of their monotony, come back in summer to even the
smallest garden, and you will find in it, every day, a new problem to
be solved, a new campaign to be carried out, a new victory to win.'

-- F.F. Rockwell

Portuguese Stone Soup

I adapted this from the recipe of the same name on epicurious.com, originally from Bon Appetit, Dec. 1992.

8 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 cups cooked kidney beans
1 lb. peeled diced boiling potatoes
1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes
1/2 head savoy cabbage, chopped into bite sized pieces
1 lb. turnips, peeled and diced
2 leeks, chopped, rinsed very well to remove sand
2 large carrots, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves

Combine all ingredients in a crock pot, and cook on high 2-3 hours, until vegetables are tender. Best if refrigerated overnight and rewarmed the next day.

I served it with rye crisp bread and Emmentaler cheese. Also good with hearty brown bread.

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

This is the Jam that friends of QD may recognize in their Christmas packages, unless it's already been eaten by our husbands!

The recipe is slightly adapted from The Complete Book of Year-Round Small-Batch Preserving. I grabbed all of the preserving books at my local branch of the library, and I particularly liked this one for it's approachability. The recipes have proved tasty, too.

The jam takes at least 32 hours, so plan ahead. The long resting times allow the pectin in the strawberries to develop without excessive cooking so the beautiful red color of the fruit is maintained.

4 cups halved or quartered (depending on size) firm strawberries
2 cups finely chopped red rhubarb
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup bottled lemon juice

1. Mix berries, rhubarb and sugar in a non-reactive (stainless steel or enamel) pot and let stand for 8 hours, stirring occasionally.

2. Bring fruit and sugar to a boil over medium heat. Add lemon juice and return to a boil without adjusting heat. Boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, cover, and let stand for 24 hours.

3. Bring fruit mixture to a rapid boil over high heat and boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and test for gel formation. Continue boiling at 3-5 minute intervals until mixture forms a gel. **

4. Once the mixture forms a gel, process in sterilized jars in hot water.

Makes 2 to 3 pints.

** To test for gel formation, have a plate chilling in the freezer while you cook the jam. Remove the plate and place a spoonful of hot jam onto it. Return it to the freezer for 2 minutes. If the jam moves slowly across the plate when you tilt the plate to one side and/or wrinkles when you press your finger into the edge of the spoonful of jam, then the mixture has cooked enough.

Bully Barley

We're trying to introduce ourselves to more of the whole grains in this world. Last night we ate pearled barley. Later this week: spelt. So while Danidoodle and Jesse use these all the time, they are new over here at the house of meat and potatoes. The barley was a huge hit. Patrick even took the leftovers for lunch and asked me to write down what I did. So here it is. For the record. So that I can make it again. Yums.

Saute about 5-10 min:
1 med onion
2 sm heads of garlic (about 5-8 cloves)
2 Tbs butter

Add and stir:
2 Tbs curry
Cook about 5 min.

Add:
2 chopped apples
2-3 sausages (hot and Italian)
1 1/2 c pearled barley
3 c. chicken stock

Stir frequently and cook until liquid is absorbed.

Serves 4 with a little bit of leftovers.

Carrot Orzo

This carrot orzo from Epicurious.com is fantastic. Even Patrick liked it! And it can easily be gluten free.



yield: Makes 4 servings

Ingredients

* 6 ounces peeled baby carrots (about 1 1/4 cups; from 16-ounce package)
* 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
* 1 cup orzo (rice-shaped pasta; about 8 ounces)
* 1 1/2 cups water
* 1 1/4 cups low-salt chicken broth
* 1 large garlic clove, minced
* 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
* 2 tablespoons chopped green onions
* 1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary

Preparation

Place carrots in processor. Using on/off turns, finely chop carrots. Melt butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat. Add orzo and carrots; sauté until orzo is golden, about 5 minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups water, broth, and garlic; cook uncovered over medium heat until all liquid is absorbed, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes. Stir in cheese, green onions, and rosemary. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve.

Grandma's Home Brew Eggshell Fertilizer

Earlier one of our number shared a few ideas for solving quotidian problems. Laundry stains, if I remember right. I just thought of something my Grandma used to do. To make a 'fertilizer' for all her flowers (outdoors) she used to take all our egg shells and throw them in a gallon jug with the top cut off. Cover with water. Let them sit. Until they stink. A couple weeks?

This egg shell juice makes a great natural free fertilizer for all your flowers! (And I'm sure it'd be great for tomato plants, as well, as they tend to get blossom end rot when lacking certain nutrients.) I can't speak as to the 'why' it works, but can testify that it does.

Winter Soup Swap - Pumpkin Soup - GFDF

Pumpkin Soup - GFDF (Gluten Free Dairy Free)

3 large, yellow onions, chopped
4 Tablespoons butter or your favorite substitute
4 large Yukon gold potatoes cut into chunks
6 carrots cut into chunks
2 teaspoons salt (salt to taste)
2 Tablespoons Herbs de Province
4 minced cloves of garlic
1 (28 oz) can chopped tomatoes in juice - I used 5 medium tomatoes, chopped so as to fly under the PVR (Patrick's Vegetable Radar)
2 (26 oz) cartons chicken broth

1 cup half and half or cream (unless you're making the dairy free version)
¼ cup sherry
2 (15 oz) cans of pumpkin - (I used about 36 oz of pureed triamble pumpkin*)

Melt butter in soup pot. Add onions and garlic and sauté for 5-10 minutes. Add potatoes and carrots and sauté 10 minutes more. Add chicken stock, salt, herbs de province, & tomatoes and simmer until the vegetables are tender, approximately 30 minutes. Add the pumpkin and simmer until you're ready to eat!

Made: just over 5 quarts

Options from here:
Serve as is.

Stir in 1 cup of half and half to make a cream soup. The half and half shouldn’t be very cold when you add it. (This obviously makes the soup NON-dairy free.)

Serve soup as is and cream on the side.

If you would like you can puree the soup and add the cream and sherry at the end.

___

Brian got this recipe from a friend at work - and came home after trying it saying, "IT was really good - and I could eat it!" Poor multi-allergic hubby.

I think this will be my contribution to the soup swap this month - I'm feeling uninspired by my original carrot & ginger idea. *Plus, I have one beautiful triamble pumpkin from the garden that I would like to humbly share - in the hopes that the God of gardens and soup swaps would see fit to give me a more prolific garden next year.

My One and Only Triamble Pumpkin - 12 lb.
Alternatively entitled,
"The Ugliest (but supposedly yummiest) Little Pumpkin"

Winter Soup Swap - Apple and Pumpkin Soup

Some of us here at Quotidian Dignities have decided to try a winter soup swap. I don't know about you but I can't make one meals worth of soup to save my life. I'm always half way into the recipe only to realize my 8 qt pot is not big enough. So I transfer and start praying that the soup turns out good enough to either give away or eat for weeks.

Instead of fighting this mass feeding instinct, I decided to ask some friends to join me and then share what they make too much of. This way we each get different soups to eat all month rather than being forced to think of new ways to use the soup I made way too much of.

The recipe for my first soup swap is below. The recipe said it made enough for 4 servings but I thought it looked like a lot more than that. Since I needed 12 servings I decided to only double the recipe. I got 12 quarts. So unless you eat 6 c of soup as one serving, you can safely assume that one recipe makes way more than four servings! Count on being able to feed 12 with bread and salad or even more if you pour the soup over rice. I put mine in 1 qt canning jars and put the jars in the freezer to pull out if someone has a baby or if I have a house full of dinner guests. Or if I just don't feel like cooking.

APPLE AND PUMPKIN SOUP

Roast:
2 lg butternut squash, pumpkin or winter squash

Saute:
3 or 4 medium onions, coarsely diced
2 Tbs curry powder
4 Tbs olive oil (or 2 T butter and 2 T olive oil)

Add:
6 peeled, cored, and slice apples
1 qt chicken stock
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
peeled and cubed squash

Simmer till all is soft.
Puree in batches.

Add:
2 c fresh apple cider
1-2 qt chicken stock

Soup should be a little sweet and thick so add stock accordingly. Salt and pepper to taste. Its really yummy and not at all spicy. You could add a chipotle sauce when you serve it or diced jalapenos, etc. The recipe suggests serving with sour cream, diced apple, and toasted pecans. Which sounds great if I'm serving it to someone who cares about presentation.

This recipe makes about 6 quarts.

Home Remedies

I've learned some things in the last week. Practical, ordinary, daily things such as don't let the toddler eat blueberries in his best khakis and don't do anything with Sandia Green Chilies without wearing gloves.

Here's the thing though: we all have great hindsight. And it does no good to beat yourself up once the harm is done. What's called for in these situations is a little wisdom from grandma.

Here's what I learned:
1. pour boiling water through the back side of the fabric to remove fruit/berry stains. You may have to repeat a dozen times but the stain will, absolutely, come out. Just watch out for steam burns.
2. forget milk, butter, vinegar, lemon juice, baking soda, aloe, calendula, mechanical grease cutter, rubbing alcohol, bleach. None of it works. Wait it out with a bowl of ice water. My burn went away in about 12 hours.

So grandma's remedy didn't come through for me on the last one but the boiling water trick is sure fire. Does anyone else has some practical ways that grandma would have taken care of a quotidian problem? Please share your wisdom.

A Month of Cheap Eats

My husband challenged me to live on the food stamp budget for groceries. That meant taking my usual grocery budget of about $600 down to $250. And for the month of July, I came in at a grand total of $308. We still got a weekly organic CSA box, ate all organic fruits and veggies, as much local/organic everything else as possible, and paid $10 a gallon for local, raw, organic milk.

I cheated in tons of ways, though. That figure doesn't include any eating out or any of the stuff I already had on hand or got from my garden. Plus we were out of town until 4 July. So that's like four free days. We didn't have to skimp anywhere near what we would have if we were really living on food stamps. We're still shooting for a low grocery bill in August, so I'll let you know how it goes.

A few notes on how I cut my grocery bill in half:
We eat vegetarian most nights, and when we do have meat it almost never takes center stage.
I make bread, granola and yogurt at home, and we didn't buy snacky food like crackers, chips or granola bars.
Beans and rice.

My Google Calendar has all of the meals we ate (and some other random life events).

Meal Planning

Whilst serving stir-fry vegetables, tempe, and quinoa for dinner the other night, I learned the benefit of meal planning. My boys were much more inclined to quietly eat the meal set before them when they could see, posted on the fridge, that tomorrow would bring more 'manly' food to the dinner table.

As a side note, my brother-in-law, who is living with us this summer, has enlightened me to the fact that there are girly dinners and manly dinners. I knew this sort of. I mean, if I try to serve a salad, cheese, and crackers for dinner, I expect my husband to start foraging for something else to eat within the hour. I just didn't realize that the list of girly dinners extends to quiche, soufle, pesto pasta, vegetable stir-fry, roasted vegetables, pot pie, and most other meat stretcher meals. Hmm.

Since we are trying to eat only ethical meat and still stick to a reasonalbe food budget, I've taken to cooking meat a couple times a week and then scattering a litle pepperoni on one of Friday night's pizzas. Need less to say, that didn't quite cut it for the SEAL training brother in law. After many conversations about animal ethics, non-meat protien sources, the desired caloric intake, and the need for high-protien meals, we struck a shaky compromise that includes some tempe and some manly slabs of meat, some non-vegetable lasagna and some vegetable quiche.

Beyond providing encouragement to my boys during the less 'manly' dinners, posting my meal plans has also helped me streamline my grocery shopping and find dinner solutions at the end of an exhausting day. I frequently change the order of meals according to unexpected evening plans. I'm also open to changing up the meats and veggies according to sales at the store. But I have the week's meals planned and budgeted. Meat dishes are balanced with the vegetarians nights and leftovers are planned for the nights when we don't have much time to eat. And at the end of every week, no matter how weird the rest of the meals have been, we can always look forward to pizza.

I've also found sparkrecipes which allows me to input my recipes and it saves them in my cookbook and calculates nutrition info. Ever wonder how many calories or how much cholesterol your homemade meal contains? Well, wonder no more. I know I'm not the only one who goes through seasons of counting calories only to realize that the 4000+ daily caloric intake is probably a more likely cause of the tight jeans than the dryer! Anyway, I love this tool for those seasons.

I'm going to post my meal plans (when they look impressive and occassionally when they inlcude spaghetti and hot dogs night after night) because I'm always wondering what my friends eat for dinner so that I can stimulate the frequently lagging creative juices. What are your favorite meals? Would you consider putting the recipes in sparkrecipes and posting a link? I'll do the same for some of my favorite meals! These two weeks include a lot of meat. Part of the SEAL training compromise!

Monday - World's Best Lasagna and Salad
Tuesday - Leftover Pizza (from last Saturday)
Wednesday - Applegate Italian Suasages (only purchased on sale!) and Kim Chi
Thursday - Lasagna Leftovers
Friday - Curried Pork, Raisens, and Rice and Salad
Saturday - Homemade Pizza

Monday - Thai Mango Chicken and Quinoa and Salad
Tuesday - Leftovers
Wednesday - Pasta and Pork Chirizzo Sauce (homemade in a massive batch and frozen in 2-4 person quanities)
Thursday - Quiche and Salad
Friday - Homemade Pizza
Saturday - Leftover Free-For-All

And for fun, here's a fermented pancake recipe thats great for a weekend breakfast. Its from sally Fallon's cookbook Nourishing Traditions. Sort of. The yogurt instead of milk idea is from her and I pretty much used family recipes for the rest.

Daily Sun Tea & Eggs

Sun Tea

My new kick is making two canning jars of sun tea every afternoon. I love using the sun (rather than the stove) to make the tea. And I love the repetition of measuring out the herbs and water on a daily basis. My oldest loves to go 'check if the tea is ready' and bring it inside when he thinks it's done.

I use 1 Tbsp of dried mint and 1 Tbsp of dried lemon balm per 32 oz. jar. It's so refreshing on a hot afternoon with a dash of agave. Both of these herbs are very calming on your mood, as well as your digestive system.

Eggs

We're getting eggs on an almost daily basis now! It's crazy and I feel like a little kid whenever I go outside and realize that we haven't checked for eggs in awhile (like half an hour). It makes me almost giddy to walk over to the coop, squat down, lift the door, and peak inside. It's kind of like Christmas everyday. Although not quite as spiritually significant.

Easy Quiche Crust from Scratch

This recipe is copied from My French Cuisine. I copied it because it really was easy and wonderful and because I want to be able to find it again. :-)

This dough is called "pâte brisée" in French (pronounce "pat breezay"). It is the base for all quiche and pie recipes. If you take the time to make your own crust, your quiche will taste a million times better (at least!) than if you buy it ready-to-use.

The ingredients below are enough to make 2 thin crusts. Use one half of the dough right away and freeze the other half for your next recipe!

• 250 grams of flour (1 and 3/4 cups or a little over 1/2 pound, unbleached, all-purpose)
• 125 grams of unsalted butter (1 stick)
• 1 egg
• 1 tea spoon of crème fraîche (or sour cream if you can't find it)
• 1/2 tea spoon of salt.

The base ingredients are the flour, salt and butter. The egg and crème fraîche are here to help them stick together (plus the egg will give the crust a nice golden color).

1. First sift the flour over a large bowl and add the salt.
2. Cut the butter in tiny cubes. Incorporate the butter to the flour with your finger tips (you can't really use a spoon here... You could use a pastry blender but you'd loose all the fun of making your own "pâte brisée"). The dough will feel like coarse sand grains between your fingers.
3. Push the flour and butter mix on the sides of the bowl, digging a hole in the center.
4. Break the egg and pour it in the hole in middle of the bowl. Beat it a little with a fork then use a wooden spoon to incorporate the flour little by little. Add the crème fraîche or sour cream and mix again until the dough is homogeneous. Use your hands to knead the dough and form two balls of the same weight.
5. Place the balls of dough in plastic wraps and let them rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour before using or freezing.
6. Let the dough warm up a little before rolling it out.

Weeklidian Dignities

I'm planning on doing this on a weekly basis this summer. Anyone want to join me? It'll usually be Thursday mornings.

CANNED

And Oh Boy, Did We Can!
Jesse and I hit the project from 8am - 5:30pm with help from Danidoodle and Christie in the middle. Even with many hands, it was not light work.
A portion of a day's worth of canning. We made Ginger Rhubarb and Strawberry Rhubarb Jams and a plain Rhubarb for adding to other culinary creations.

We think Ezekiel was confused about what was getting canned. He climbed in and stirred himself with a wooden spoon for a while and then he and Og moved on to using the pot for music making efforts (ie: banging spoons and toys against the pot in order to create maximum noise).

Can It

Now is the time for pickled artichokes and strawberry preserves. I've got tons of jars salvaged from great grandma's pantry, a giant le creuset stockpot and an itch to get canning.

The NY Times just ran a story with lots of imbedded resources for newbies.

The Alpha Beet and All the Others

Double Fisting It Veggie Style

I know this isn't a blog for posting kid pics but as the quotidian things in my life go, it doesn't get much better than Ezekiel pushing away his favorite go-gur (yogurt) and pitching a fit for stalks of steaming hot broccoli! Everytime he finishes one, he asks for another so as to always have two stalks going at a time. As I type he's just thanked me for handing him the sixth stalk! It makes my veggie lovin' heart so happy.

Putting up the Corn

My birthday shindig was planned with grilling burgers, chicken, corn in mind. Seeing as how I caught the swine flu's cousin a few days prior to the party, we now have a freezer full of meat and sacks full of corn. Even though I'm still a little under the weather, I am clearly doing better than I was the last four or five days. Evidence of improvement?

-7 loads of dirty laundry piled at the top of the stairs
-bathrooms that are filthy
-food is rotting in the fridge
-we ran out of bread and eggs
-fruit flies are circling the sacks of corn
-my seedlings which were ready for outdoor soil are wilting in their starter pots
-I have no idea when my flower beds were last watered

and most importantly, I NOTICED all of the above.

Well, 4 loads of laundry are finished. Diapers are washed, folded, and stowed. One bathroom is clean. The least dirty one. Food is still rotting int he fridge but most of it is in sealed containers. And I'm 12 ears of corn into taking care of the fruit fly problem.

As a kid, my grandmother's freezer was a magical place, full of prepared home made, home grown food. Well, almost home grown since she got a lot of it from the local Mininites. I remember huge bowls of strings and snapped bean ends, piles of corn recently shorn of their kernels, greens wilting in the big stove pots, and mountains of pork being pulled into BBQ. Hands down, my favorite was fresh tomatoes, creamed corn, and BBQ. And every time I came to visit Grandma, that meal was an option (excepting perhaps the frsh tomatoes) because she always made enough to put some up. During college, I lived about 45 mintures from her house. I went to visit many weekends and always got sent back with a cooler full of goods. Those are days I won't soon forget!

So here's the way my Grandma always 'put up the corn'.

1. Husk. Pretty self explainatory. Take off the husks.
2. Silk. Make sure you get the silks of really well or they'll mess up the corn.
3. Shuck. Using a comfortable knife, cut off the kernels into a bowl.
4. Scrape. Scrape the blade of the knife firmly over the kernel beds several times. This pulls out the cream of the corn and is vital for the taste of homemade cream corn!
5. Cook the kernels and scraped off 'cream' in just a little water until blanched.
6. Let is cool and put the corn into freezer storage containers.

When you pull the corn out, all you have to do is thaw it in a pot and add the chicken bullion, sugar, salt, and milk. I've never had left overs.