maggieno

Ahhhhh. I just finished a half-cup (I'm being good) of excellent vanilla ice cream topped with freshly made, just barely chilled cherry preserves, made from the cherries we picked this morning from the tree in our backyard.  The tree is some old variety of pie cherry, not totally sour (especially if it remains/survives the birds on the tree long enough to turn cellophane red), that none of the farmers I've shown a leaf and fruit to have recognized.

Cherry preserves are a nice way to start the summer canning season. We picked 9.5 lbs of cherries, which cleaned up and was picked over to about 6 usable lbs. My recipe uses 4 lbs that cook down to 5 half-pints. Not a lot, not like the pounds and pounds of figs that we process in later summer, or the buckets of blackberries that spend an afternoon being turned into two or three batches of jam.
     I started cooking after NOVA, 9 pm, and was all cleaned up by 10:30 pm. Ninety minutes for the first canning batch is nice and easy anyway you look at it. Okay, I spent a bit of time in the afternoon preparing the cherries, but that was done after the picking this morning, house-cleaning, a visit from my brother, and a visit by a contractor to assess our basement problems and our need to replace our back doors. Oh, and time for dinner and for watching the news.

Now I think I'll go take my satisfied tummy and lay on the couch and read a trashy mystery.

Dinner was....wonderful.  Everything fell together perfectly, and without stress. And, it was a totally unexpected experience.

I stopped at the Broadway QFC to hit the BECU cash machine and strolled into the store for some yogurt.  Passing the meat counter, I saw two post-holiday turkeys, seasoned, dressed, and -- most important -- on sale. What the hell, I thought. I'm finally feeling better at the 3-week mark of this spring cold/asthma event; it's time for some real food. Tucked the 12 pounder into the basket; picked up some Yellow Finn potatoes, broccoli, some crimini mushrooms that were big enough to catch the skirts of the portobello title.

It wasn't necessarily a great afternoon for cooking.  I was struggling to reformat the C drive on my HP laptop in a last-ditch effort to squelch whatever it was that kept killing my screen after the Windows log-in. Then I was going through all the hoops and 75 updates (Windows)/25 updates (Norton)/new driver downloads (Intel) necessary to keep the newly regained screen lively. And, the sun came out. Very distracting.

However, somehow, someway, all the proportions turned out perfect, all the timing was spot on. This afternoon, I used just the right amount of preserved lemons and smoked salt with the mushrooms as they sauteed in butter and sherry. For once, I added just the right number of garlic cloves to the potatoes. The butter-to-flour proportions for the gravy were as they should be and needed no doctoring, just pan drippings and stock made from the neck and innards.

No credit for the turkey here; it came from the store looking simply beautiful and cooked up blushingly ready for a photoshoot. The broccoli, too, did what it had to do very well as it steamed in the microwave.

It was a spur-of-the-moment meal, thrown together while distracted and dearly dependent on whatever auto-pilot cooking habits I had picked up over the years. And it was one of the best turkey dinners I've ever cooked.

We sat down to eat at 5, as planned, and barely said a word other than "mygohd, this is good!" till the plates were clean. The bird was cooked to perfection.. The gravy came out as a person desperately wishes it will when company is over, rich and flavorful and daring you to ladle more and more onto the potatoes and meat.

No other reason for posting about it than wanting to remember this surprise on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

Sometimes the magic works when you least expect it.

It's not just the sweet stuff that doesn't live up to taste memories when a person is nearly 60 instead of nearly 8.

Now that there are delicious gluten-free pastas to be had (Tinkyada brand is amazing; the macaroni and various spaghetti hold up just like wheat pasta), I was determined to dig out the old family recipe for macaroni & cheese. I loved this stuff, a simple white sauce with regular old American cheese, and always made it so cheesy that it practically stuck to the roof of my mouth. The stuff freezes well, too, so when I was a starving 20-something, I could make a batch, eat a night's dinner's worth, then put the rest away for later when the budget really got tight..

Well, I can say that it still tastes good, but -- oh the richness is overwhelming now! And, I admit, my taste buds kept asking, where's the real cheese? I had my fill last night (didn't take much at all) and quickly froze small portions for later dinner accents. I may try M&C again, but maybe next time I'll try the recipes that put in a bit of a kick from spices or onions; and I'll go for actual chedder, or maybe a more exotic cheese.

And, next time, I think I'll stick with plain milk. It just could be that the whipping cream I used for part of the milk portion was a bit too much of a variation. Actually, it probably was. In fact, I'm fairly sure of it. Which is probably why I tucked the old family recipe back into my files instead of into a scrapbook.

A week or so ago, Susan picked up a bottle of Barenjager, a honey liqueur from Germany. Just on a whim. We both like mead and we both like honey. And liqueurs are meant to be drunk in small glasses, which is about our speed these days.

If you like honey, this is the liqueur for you. It smells like honey in a big way and it tastes like (more liquid) honey.

Noting that other German liqueurs are popularly mixed, at least among the younger crowds, Susan eyed the bottle of Bailey's that she also brought home from the liquor store, and promptly tried a mix of the Barenjager and some milk. She was so happy with the result that I tried my vanilla soy milk with a shot and was equally surprised. The combination really tastes good -- in fact, much better than Bailey's -- and it goes down really smooth.

So smooth, that I must say that you surely don't need more than a small glass of this stuff.

Last Wednesday's NYTimes had an intriguing drink recipe that I tried tonight. What had caught my eye was the list of ingredients, mainly avocado and mescal, two favorite tastes of mine.

Fancy alcoholic concoctions aren't usually on my menu, but it's been a good year for avocados and  I had a couple around the house. It's summer, as well, so cool fruity drinks are always welcome.

And, you know, it's a nice drink! Refreshingly green in color and you don't really taste the avocado, rather the richness of the fruit. I cut back the sweeteners (honey and agave nectar) and substituted limoncello for the Cointreau. Our local liquor store had just sold out of the coca leaf liqueur and didn't anticipate a reorder (although the gent I spoke with said that it wasn't because of taste; he rather liked it). I used melon liqueur instead.

I'd split the resulting drink between two people, but then our crowd isn't that young anymore. I did manage to finish it all off tonight (g) and certainly imagine that I would have had no complaints about the size of the drink when in my 20s. Still, I can easily see this drink served in tiny glasses before a summer dinner and one recipe could handle six easily that way.

Ah, but midsummer is a great time for flighty subjects!

In April -- snow.

On May 17th, 90 degrees of heat.

The temperature will be down to a high of 73 for today, but what a strange weather year it continues to be. My lilacs just opened enough for cutting on Thursday and the camillia is just still has blooms.

The warmer weather arrived in time for my birthday on the 15th, so that was nice. I filled the house with vases of lilacs, took my tomatoes out of the portable greenhouse and put them in their summer pots, walked the dogs and otherwise vegged out.
    On Friday, a friend treated me to a delicious steak salad at the Volunteer Park Cafe, a neighborhood Mom'nPop general goods store that has been converted to a cafe. it's just a couple blocks down the hill from the Seattle Asian Art Museum and the pioneer Lakeview Cemetary on the crest of Capitol Hill, on the corner of a street of homes dating from the early 20th century, a green and cheery location.
    Yesterday, I took off early in the morning for the annual Pike Place Market Cheese Festival. No breakfast -- I intended to fill up on samples, which were plentiful and perfectly softened in the rising heat. The vendors were mostly Pacific Coast creameries, but a few importers of European cheeses also showed up.
    The variety of goat cheese was delicious and the opportunity to taste more uncommon styles of cheese is not to be missed. Because I knew it would be a while before I got home on a hot day, I resisted buying a lot of cheese, but did succumb to some "Purple Haze" from Cypress Grove Chevre, a California creamery. We really like their Humboldt Fog® soft-ripened cheese: tangy and creamy and a real crowd pleaser. (We first bought it back in our Secret Adventures of Jules Verne days. I was out shopping for munchies when SAJV fannish friends were visiting and couldn't resist the "Fogg" cheese, in honor of Micheal Praed as Phileas Fogg.)
    Yesterday, Steve, Ellen, and Anne Marie came over in late afternoon and we walked around the block to Tidbits, a local tapas restaurant, for a birthday dinner. As usual, the food was good, the atmosphere was light and relaxing, and a good time was had by all. Back home to the cool house (love that heat pump with it's reverse air conditioning) and tea. And dogs on laps.

The morning is definitely cooler today, but sunny. I've watered the gardens, eaten, checked email and blogged, and I'll probably get dressed to take the dogs on a walk while the weather is still comfortable for them (Cutter does not like heat and Tatra's coat is even thicker).  Then it will be back home to stretch out on the chaise on the back porch and read the Sunday papers.

No complaints. No complaints at all.

In between garden work, I've restarted working on putting all our books into a database. This afternoon I started on the bedroom books, which include most of the (many) reference books that Susan has accumulated for her work on the new trilogy.  Which also means that, buried in piles of books around my laptop, I forget about the time and just grab something to eat when I reach the bottom of one book tower.

Tonight I remembered that I really ought to eat some protein around 8, just as NOW was starting on PBS.

I stared into the fridge, slid open meat shelf and was delighted to find some chopped sirloin already defrosted. These are good patties that don't take much prep, so I took one out and went back to staring into the coolth to figure out what I would do with the meat.

Well, tonight all the watching of Food Network shows and reading of Dining sections in newspapers came together.

I took out a jar of the pomegranate molasses we put up last fall. Pulled out the small fry pan. Put some Hawaiian red clay salt., Lebanese poivron rouge (dried and ground red peppers) and ras el hanout spice mix in a mortar to make a rub. I heated the molasses with a bit of butter, rubbed the spies on one side of the patty and cooked it bit then flipped it and spiced the other side. Between flipping the patty over every so often, I filled a plate with baby spinach, adding some sunflower seeds. When the patty was just the rare side of medium, I put it on top of the spinach and poured the remaining molasses over it all.

It looked pretty enough, but - gad - I was bowled over by the taste! None of the flavors were overwhelming and the butter smoothed any edge; even the fresh greens were softened just enough not to fight with the meat, which had a flavor that was only amplified by the spices.

I was floored by how easy and quick it was! Five minutes, seven at the most, and I was back at the table, happily shoving books and computer aside to make room for a dinner that made me very very happy.

And then, reenergized, I got two more shelves of books in the database. Only four more on that bookcase and four more bookcases to go to finish off the bedroom stash!

Back in 1979, when we didn't yet know that we had started courting, Susan and I agreed that we both hated Valentine's Day. Silly stuff. Too commercial, too coercive. Too much of something we hadn't had much success with, if truth be told. A role-playing character of mine just happened to extend an invitation for dinner on Feb 14th that year; her role-playing character just happened to accept. No need for further details, I assure you.

This year, we went out to eat.

I had wanted the try Impromptu, a small restaurant in Madison Park, for a while. The chef there married the Gluten-Free Girl, of food blog repute, and so his restaurant is safe for those of us who must avoid wheat, rye, and barley. The idea that a person could sit down and not worry about the crackers or gravies is simply lovely. (Actually, their love story is quite sweet. I started reading her blog in time to follow the courtship and wedding prep, and had a good time -- and good eats -- at one of the promotions parties for her new foodie book this past October. If you read the NYTimes, you probably saw their picture a couple of times the past week.)

Impromtu sits at the end of the Madison Park neighborhood shopping district, down where the lake ferries docked in the days before freeways. It's dining area (with bar) is maybe as big as our living room and kitchen, but with two walls of windows that overlook the beach area and Lake Washington, we didn't really feel crowded.

We had made reservations for an early table. With Susan getting up to be at work at 6 a.m., workweek night events are limited, even on Valentine's Day. And, as noted, this is 29 years later. There are advantages to being the first customers to arrive: we got a prime table looking out on the lakeside park.

The advantage to choosing a good restaurant is that the food is as good as the decor, atmosphere and  view.

I started off with a salad: mache with hazelnuts and blue cheese. The greens were incredibly fresh, as if just picked, and the bits of cheese were large enough to be tasty but not so big that they overwhelmed the mache. Susan had the foie gras, which she tells me was wonderfully crispy and creamy at the same time. I had to avoid the oranges in the sauce and take her word for it -- blast it all.

The second course was lobster risotto served on endive leaves. The lobster meat was tasty -- and generous, the best I've had in a long time. At first I thought the saffron risotto was bland, but when I scooped it up in the bitter endive, the flavors complimented each other well. I still might have still added a touch of pepper, but that's just me on a heat kick.

For the main course, Susan had lamb chops on a sauce with white beans and warmed olives. Just looking at the meat as Susan cut it, you could see that the chops were beautifully cooked. Susan confirmed and was further impressed with the olives and sauce. The prosciutto around my sea scallops totally destroyed any future ability to enjoy bacon wrapped the same; the ham was thin and crispy and added just the right amount of fatty flavor. The cabbage and wild rice was amazingly light and fresh-tasting. I don't know how oranges would tasted in the dish, but it was right fine without them.

Susan had ordered a cabernet with dinner, and I, an English cider, both generously poured. In fact, I was quite startled by the pint glass place in front of me. And, with dessert, I enjoyed an equally robust serving of my favorite single malt scotch (Lanavulin) with my cheese plate (a firm Spanish and a soft ripe; a fruit compote; macadamia nuts and crackers). Susan had a chocolate mousse (the Grand Marinier in it took it off my list).

Each serving of the dinner was perfectly sized, and the food well balanced. When we left at 6:30, we were satisfied and not overly fed. The restaurant had filled up with couples by then (most of them probably under 35), but being Valentine's Day, the noise level was low and the  room just hummed with personal conversations. Outside, night had fallen, but it was not cold and the car was parked right outside the door. We were up the hill and home in less than ten minutes.

It was an excellent dinner for a holiday that we had decided to give another chance.

Maybe next year, the old alter ego Jedi will come out of hiding for a 30th Valentine's Day anniversary and extend a invite for dinner at home to an alter ego Imperial officer.

Could happen.

We just watched the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie -- and hey, we really enjoyed it! I can imagine that some of the shots could be overwhelming/confusing on a big screen; and i admit that we turned the captions on at one time; but the story seemed fine to me, even subtle at times (amazing). Oh well, isn't the first time that our reactions differed from popular opinions.

Interesting stats from yesterday's and today's NYTimes. The paper ran a 2007 quiz yesterday and printed the answers today. Some humorous reactions, some to shake one's head over, some bemusing.

Forty-seven years after JFK's run for office, 5 of the Rep/Dems running for presidential nominations are Roman Catholic and nary a peep about that status from the electorate. Perhaps that's because there's a Mormon aspirant -- a nonCatholic being more threatening to other nonCatholic Christians perhaps? -- or maybe it's a measure of how establishment the immigrants grandkids and g-grandkids have become.
     Only three are Baptist, and the rest of the Christian sects represented show up only in ones and twos.
     None of the runners would have been old enough to serve in WW2. Except for Mike Gravel (b. 1930), seven are of the Silent Generation and seven are Baby Boomers (Obama at the tail end of that group). I think that this is the first time that the Silent Generation has made it this far in a presidential race, or, at least if one of them makes it to the nomination, the first to be so chosen. After Bush Sr., the nominations skipped straight into the Boomers.

According to the quoted stats, only 15% of Americans refrained from sex until age 21. Oh, come on, for sure there were/are more geeks than that in the population! Hmmm, but then geeks probably have cell phones, which aren't called by polesters. 58% say that they have no homosexual friends or relatives; right, sure; they don't know that they have such. Read another article recently that noted that the midsection of the country is suddenly reporting  much larger numbers in their populations -- more people coming out of the closet apparently because these are not people who recently moved to the midwest.

They also connected quotes with people and I was startled to read: "..as the evil emperor palpatine watches it all crumble we pray save ameria this administration is criminal impeach them all happy thanksgiving people." Then today I found out that the quote came from Rosie O'Donnell and was not so surprised after all.

This year's turkey a la king was super killer, btw. Rich, creamy, wonderful turkey from the kosher bird we had for Christmas; a once-a-year treat full of butter, half-and-half, sherry, mushrooms, olives...sigh. Promptly froze the rest lest the temptation to have it again tomorrow prove overwhelming...and deadly.

Just over 2 hours till 2008.

Our first figs were delicious!

Yesterday, we picked the first figs our young tree has produced. Just 4, but they were tender and wonderfully, lightly sweet. Perhaps I we had left them a day or more longer, they would have been even sweeter, but we've had rain the last couple weeks and the fruit had begun to split.

And, today, while out watering the deck containers, I noticed a new baby fig on the leader . Hurrah! (Now I just wish I could actually see the flowers that culminated in these fruits....)

Next on the list to ripen are the Myer lemons, but it's been a strange summer and not as continually hot as usual, so the lemons are really sloooooow to turn from green to yellow. The senior fruit is just beginning to lighten on one side, so just maybe by summer's end.....

Chutny! Blackberry jam!

We've been busy the last few days.

Susan started it with the chutney. With mangoes so readily available (Costco sells two kinds by the flat!), with a pound or so of fresh tamarind on hand, and with an eye to the neighborhood food-gifting come the holidays, Susan decided that it was time to can some homemade Major Grey chutney. On Saturday, we processed the tamarind, cut up the fruit, squeezed the limes (one Costco bag = 1 liter of juice); on Sunday, we added the spices and cooked it up. Boy -- the house smelled heavenly. We canned a dozen squat, half-pint silvery-top jars for give away and 4 full pints for ourselves. One of the 1/2 pints didn't set, so we'll eat that one ourselves and have to punt come Christmas, but the stuff tastes as good as it smells, so I count the session a success.

On Monday, friend Steve invited me over to pick blackberries in the back end of the home lot. He's done a bang-up job of training the vines up the fencing he has back there, so gathering the berries was somewhat pain-free. We easily picked 16+ cups. Once at home, I took advantage of having all the canning equipment upstairs and set to making jam.
     It's been so long since I made blackberry jam that I was still using wax to top off the jars when I did so. I just can't bring myself to actually BUY blackberries, not after 10 childhood years of picking them in the fields around the house and after the early years here in Seattle when I could pick them down by the abandoned railroad tracks or over in the old Bellevue strawberry fields or on the way to the local high school. These days, the tracks are now a paved bike&hike trail around the north end of Lake Washington; Bellevue has a real downtown with colorful high-rises on the sunny hillside where the fruit used to grow wild; and there aren't any empty flat lots left in Seattle.
     I reviewed all the blackberry jam recipes I've squirreled away and found a couple that weren't sugar heavy, one a local recipe (which makes sense because local berries don't need all that sugar) and one from a Martha Stewart magazine (which, I have to admit,  has had great preserving recipes, even if they get a bit fussy).
     The recipe made 6 half-pints, 2 more than the recipe suggested (lots of juice and had to cook a bit longer than called for), and the mash left over from straining some of the jam was so good that Susan ate it all up when she come home from work. I "washed" the utensils in the jamming pot with carbonated water to drink over the next few days, and used the rest of the berries for a slump (a bit too juicy for that recipe, but still tastes good, especially with a splash of whipping cream) and for breakfast today.
     All in all, a successful excursion! And, Steve reminds me, there will be more berries yet. Maybe we'll make up that one jar of chutney with some jam.....

   

Okay, they're really raspberries, but everyone calls them blackberries...and they are almost impossible to find to buy...and they are  wonderful.

On Friday, I checked out the new location of the local Friday afternoon farmers' market. Down the line of booths was one belonging to a small, two-woman farm that had whole flats of blackcaps! I stood there with my dropped jaw and said the obvious, "My god, are those black caps?!" My pride was redeemed when, a few moments later, a man walked up, stopped on the dime and exclaimed, "My god, are those black caps?!"

They certainly were, whole flats of them. Strawberries were also available and the farmers were willing to mix flats. I put together a half-blackcap, half-strawberry flat and hurried home. I swear -- a third of them barely made it out of the flat, Susan and I were so busy gobbling them down. (The gent who had stepped up ended up buying a half-flat also after deciding that just a carton or two would never make it back home.) The strawberries were at that absolutely perfect stage: not mushy but ripe enough to fall apart in a rush of sweetness in your mouth. And the blackcaps were full of flavor; the crop will be even sweeter after the next week of sunshine.

Next Friday: blackcap tarts with custard! Or a a triffle! Or maybe I'll just make sure we're well stocked with good cream!

(Smaller than ordinary blackberries, more shallow and firmer than familiar raspberries, blackcaps come cleanly away from the well-thorned branches. I don't know if these are Rubus ursinus or Rubus Leucodermis (probably the latter which are more commonly cultivated). "Blackcap" is a term applied to about 50 distinct species in the 50 states.)