vegetable salads and gardens

“If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden… He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar stud that has rolled under the dressing table.” –W. Beran Wolfe, as quoted in the Sun Magazine

Record breaking warm weather + a bike ride to work in my garden + an afternoon spent slicing, mixing and tasting in the kitchen = a day as perfect as it gets for me. Only 3 weeks ago it was snowing in Seattle and today it is over 70 degrees. I sang all the way as I peddled to my garden plot. My sweet husband had come over to the plot on Sunday and raked the newly delivered compost into the soil for me. I took a picture to prove to myself later that I didn’t dream him playing farmer for an hour! So today, the soil was flat and rich and ready for me to plant more rows of seeds (cilantro, cosmos, asters, basil starts, and fennel today) and form little hills for my newly transplanted zucchini and spaghetti squash starts.


In the parking lot of the grocery store today, I ran into a former client of mine, and she pulled over to say hello. She is doing very well and it made me happy to see her sustaining her success (still sober, living in her own apartment, retaining custody of her son and working full time in a professional job). She is the second former client of mine that I have seen in a week. Last week I went to a fundraising luncheon for my former employer and heard another former client address an audience of 2000 people, describing her history of hardship and her work to overcome them. She is almost finished with the college program that I had encouraged her to start, and is living in her own apartment as well. She acknowledged me in her speech and it really touched me. A social worker cannot look for regular gratitude or acknowledgement and be happy in their work, because it comes sporadically and far between. So, I am tucking these encounters away in my memory to keep.

But, you probably didn’t stop by here to read about social work. I bet you would rather hear about my activities in the kitchen today. Right? Well, let me tell you! I made some baked tofu that I will cool and use in salads this week. I baked a loaf of banana bread (and I snuck in a little grated carrot… I am not sure why… but it sounded like a good idea. When the bread cools I will tell you if it was a good idea after all.). But best of all were my salads.

I used my Cuisinart to shred and slice fresh veggies and then split the vegetables into two separate bowls, and continued mixing and cooking to make two different salads to eat this week for lunches at work.

To make the vegetable “base” for these salads:

Set up the Cuisinart with the cutting blade. Pulse to chop one bunch of cilantro. Change the blade to the grater blade. Grate a two inch piece of ginger. Without cleaning out the bowl, grate two large carrots.

Change the blade to the slicing blade. If the bowl is filling up, empty it into a separate bowl, otherwise just keep going. Slice in two red, yellow or orange bell peppers. Then slice in one bunch of washed green onions.

Okay, here is where your salads diverge. Split the vegetables into two separate bowls. You will be making a noodle salad with peanut sauce, and a Chinese chicken salad.

Noodle Salad with Peanut Sauce

Blanch two handfuls of green beans. To blanch, boil a pot of salted water. When boiling, add the green beans. Keep them in the boiling water for two minutes. Drain and run under cold water to stop the cooking process, or drain and submerge in ice water.

Cook about 1/3 of a pound of spaghetti. Cook for the full time indicated on the package and check for doneness. You don’t want it to be “al dente” but rather, you want it fully cooked. Although normally, “al dente” is the way to go for pasta, when eaten cold, pasta will seem chewy if not fully cooked. Drain the cooked spaghetti and run under cold water. Toss with a little oil to prevent sticking. I also sprinkled a little Cajun seasoning on mine (salt, pepper, cayenne, dried garlic and onion and who knows what other goodness is in there) but that is not necessary.

Make your dressing by blending:

¼ cup peanut butter
2-3 Tablespoons coconut milk
1 teaspoon fish sauce
1-2 Tablespoons rice vinegar
1-2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sesame oil
1-2 teaspoons red curry paste
1 minced garlic clove
Pinch of sugar (unless your peanut butter has sugar in it already)
Pinch of salt and pepper if desired

Mix all of the ingredients together. I put ranges of amounts for some of the ingredients because you will want to adjust the balance of flavors to your own preference. I like mine sharp and spicy and so I use more vinegar and curry paste, but you may like it sweeter.

Toss the vegetable “base” you made before with the blanched green beans, cooked noodles and the dressing. Serve cold. This will keep for at least 3 or 4 days in the fridge… although I made mine to eat for lunches this week and there is already a large dent in the bowl from all of my “tastes” that I had to take.

For the second salad…

Chinese Chicken Salad

Unless you have some leftover cooked chicken already, cook one boneless, skinless, chicken breast: Heat a small skillet over medium to medium-high heat. Add ½ cup of water and 2 tablespoons of olive oil and bring to a simmer. Sprinkle the chicken breast with salt and pepper. Add the chicken breast and two smashed cloves of garlic to the oil-water. Cover. Simmer until the chicken breast is just cooked through. You should probably use a meat thermometer if you are not sure that you will know when it is done. When cooked, remove from the oil-water and allow to cool completely. Shred the chicken meat.

Peel one cucumber. Slice in half, the long way. Use a spoon to scoop out the seeds. Slice the cucumber halves into thin slices. Toss the cucumber, the shredded chicken, and the “vegetable base” together.

Make the dressing:

2 Tablespoons of sesame oil
2 Tablespoons of rice vinegar
1 teaspoon of soy sauce
Pinch of sugar
Pinch of pepper

Toss the salad with the dressing. If you happen to have the dark pink matchstick variety of pickled ginger in your fridge, add it to this salad. This should be eaten within 2 days on account of the chicken.

I use to make this a lot when I was in high school, and I would include those crispy noodles that you are probably thinking of when you think Chinese Chicken Salad. If I remember correctly, I would take dry bean thread noodles and puff them up by sliding them into a wok of very hot oil. They would puff up immediately and I would drain them on a paper towel. If you try this – tell me how it goes. Keep the puffed noodles separate or they will get soggy.

Pretty soon, I will be able to make these dishes almost entirely from my garden and I am so excited! When my friend came over a couple of weeks ago to eat meatloaf sandwiches for dinner, she asked me mid-meal, “did you grow this lettuce?” I paused because I thought maybe she was teasing me, but she really believed that I may have. Pretty soon the answer will be “yes!” and I know at least two friends of mine will be rolling their eyes.

(here is my little friend enjoying the banana bread - the carrots were just fine, by the way!)

“My creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.” –Robert Ingeroll, as quoted in the Sun Magazine

Chinese Beef with Asparagus

I usually post my own recipes on my blog, but I want to share someone else's recipe with you today. This is my husband's favorite new dinner, he likes it so much that he even eats the vegetables. Surprisingly (if you know my husband), it is not even spicy.


This is from Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's, "New Cantonese Cooking." It is the Beef with Broccoli (Yuk Far Chau Ngau) dish that can always be found at American Chinese restaurants. I make it with asparagus instead because I live in Washington where asparagus is one of our main crops. Besides the vegetable swap, I have made a couple of other small changes to her recipe.



1 pound flank steak, very thinly sliced against the grain



(thin slices are most easily accomplished with very cold meat, so if you find it difficult, you may want to chill the meat in the freezer for 30 minutes to an hour. Cut the flank steak in half the long way, resulting in two skinny pieces of steak. With your knife at a 45 degree angle, with the blade pointing to the right, cut diagonally from left to right, shaving off thin pieces of meat) This video shows how to cut cooked steak, but you do it the same way for raw meat.


Marinade:

1 inch piece of ginger, grated
1 tablespoon rice wine
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons oyster sauce
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
pinch of cracked pepper

Marinate the sliced beef in the marinade above. Let sit for 30 minutes while you prepare the remaining ingredients.

(Get some rice cooking now to serve with the beef)

1 pound of asparagus: wash, snap off the ends, and cut on the diagonal into 3 or 4 pieces each
1 bunch of green onions, washed and cut diagonally into 4 or 5 pieces each


(Thank you http://aldentecanoodler.com/category/parties-people/ for photo)



Mince 2 garlic cloves and another 1 inch knob of ginger



Make a sauce:

2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 teaspoons cornstarch
pinch of sugar
pinch of pepper
pinch of salt if desired
1/4 cup chicken broth



Heat a wok or similar shaped pan on high heat for 30 to 45 seconds. Add 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil or peanut oil and swirl to coat the pan. Add the ginger and garlic and cook for a few seconds before adding half of the beef. Cook for about two minutes, or until the red is gone. Remove to a clean bowl. Add a little more oil, and bring back to temperature. Add the remaining beef and cook as before. Remove from the pan and add to the other beef.


Return the pan to the heat and add the asparagus steams (reserve the flower tops) and cook for about two minutes. Add a little oil if they are sticking. Add the asparagus tops and the green onions. Cook for one more minute. Add the beef, and any liquid in the bowl, to the pan. If your pan has a lot of brown "bits" clinging to it, drizzle 1 tablespoon of rice wine into the wok and use a spatula to scrap them from the pan.


Make a well in the center of the beef and vegetable mixture. Stir the sauce and put it into the well. Stir the other ingredients into the sauce and cook for about 1 to 2 minutes, until the sauce thickens. Turn off the heat, transfer to a preheated serving platter and serve immediately with rice.

Edible Gardening in the Pacific Northwest

I am so happy to be digging around the dirt. I find myself spending at least an hour a day thinking about the soil, my seeds, my little sprouted vegetable starts, and what everything will look like in July. It all makes my giddy!

I built a cold frame from an old window that I bought at the very cool Re-Store in Ballard (a non-profit retail outlet selling everything from bathtubs to windows to wood flooring that has been reclaimed from demolitions). There it is, in the photo above. Yesterday, my beans were enjoying a warm 78 degree day in my crude cold frame despite a 50 degree day outside. I think I will build another cold frame this weekend. With 3o0 square feet of planting space in my plot, I am sure two frames could be put to good use! My brother helped me to till the ground after I abandoned efforts to turn it by hand. Thanks brother!




It has been a mild April these last two weeks (although the first week of April was very cold and it snowed on April Fools Day!), with partly cloudy/partly sunny sky and light rain every 3 days or so. So far, I have planted, from seed, a lettuce seed mix, spinach, scallions, red salad onions, parsley, carrots and beets. I have transplanted bush beans, some under bottle cloches and some under my cold frame, to see which does best.

here are the beans in the box


Here are the beans in the bottle cloches (just cut off the bottom of a plastic bottle and bury it about two inches to keep the wind from blowing it away. leave the bottle cap off unless it is freezing weather)

Easter and leftover Ham

Easter is my new favorite holiday. It is like Christmas - with the family and the meaning and the nice meal, but without all of the shopping and stress and freezing temperatures.

This year was a chill Easter. We went to church in the morning, and then I spent the afternoon cooking and watching old family video of my childhood and my mom's. I didn't realize how strong of an accent (and lisp) I had then! "This ith a thtory about a gill and a baeid (a girl and a bird)"

I made procuitto wrapped asparagus to snack on in the afternoon. What a great invention. It is impressive tasting and looking, yet it is so easy.

Our dinner menu was:

green bean and golden beet salad with kalamata olives and a basil lemon dressing

cheese biscuits

apricot and Dijon glazed ham

carrot pineapple cake for dessert!

The biscuits were very good thanks to Cook's Illustrated instructions that made them very flaky. My cousin did most of the work!



Last night I used some leftover ham for dinner. When I was eating my bowl of pasta and ham, I though that it reminded me of carbonara, American style. So, I though I would include instructions for both American and Italian style Carbonara pasta.

When I was about 12 years old, I took dance classes from a woman who lived in an old school that had been converted to artist lofts. She lived in the auditorium, with a huge stage. Her bedroom was a little control room near the ceiling and her kitchen looked like it used to be a locker room. When I showed up one day for class, she and her husband were making lunch and offered me a bowl. It was a spaghetti dish with what seemed like bacon and scrambled eggs. "Like breakfast pasta" I thought. It was pretty good and I made it at home. It took me a while to connect this scrambled egg pasta with the carbonara dish on Italian restaurant menus, and when I did, I realized my dance teacher had simply overcooked the eggs. Carbonara requires accurate proportions and a quick hand to get it right, but other than that is very simple. It is one of those dishes that is much much better than its four ingredients would imply.

Carbonara Italiano (Serves 2-3)

1/2 pound of spaghetti
1/4 pound of bacon (don't use maple flavored)
2 medium eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Boil the water for your pasta. Get out a large glass bowl and pour a few tablespoons of the boiling water into the bowl, then set aside to warm the bowl.

While the pasta is cooking, cook the bacon. When the bacon is cooked through, and not yet crispy, remove from the pan and roughly chop. Drain the fat from the pan, reduce heat to low and return the bacon to the pan to keep warm.

When the pasta is almost done, pour the water out of your bowl and crack the eggs into the bowl. Beat the eggs. Now, very quickly, drain the pasta and immediately toss with the beaten egg in the bowl. Add the bacon and cheese. Mix again. Season with pepper.

The egg should create a creamy looking coating on the pasta. If it resembles scrambled eggs, you have used too much pasta per egg. If it looks like raw egg, then either your eggs were too cold, your pasta was not tossed immediately, or you are not using enough pasta per egg. If it is not perfect, don't despair. It is salvageable. If the egg is still raw, put everything together into the bacon pan and heat, stirring continuously, just until the egg begins to set. If the egg is over cooked, you can either eat it as is, or you can mix in a little warmed cream to make it wetter. Better luck next time!


Now for the just as simple, but much easier (and not as earth moving)...

Carbonara Americana (serves 2-3)

1/2 pound of pasta
1 cup of store bought Alfredo sauce
1 teaspoon of butter
1 minced garlic clove
1/3 pound of leftover Easter ham, cut into matchsticks
1/2 cup frozen peas


Bring a pot of water to a boil. While your pasta is cooking, melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Add the garlic and ham and heat over medium low heat for about 4 minutes. Add the peas and continue heating for another 4 minutes. Add the Alfredo sauce and heat though, about 2 more minutes. Drain the pasta and toss into the saucepan with the other ingredients. Toss well, season with pepper, and serve.

Cheatin' Dinner

I love Trader Joe's. I thought everyone loved Trader Joe's. Its like someone collected all of the things that I normally buy, put them all in one place, and then reduced the prices by half. Brilliant! 

But then a friend told me that when she goes there she can't identify anything edible. What?! And then I sent my husband there to get something and he said that "they don't have anything." I think I know what the problem is. You can't approach Trader Joe's as though it is an Albertsons. You have to love it for what it is. If you drive there thinking that you need brand name items: Pepsi, Kellogg cereal, and Hamburger Helper for example, then you will leave confused and disappointed. Trader Joe's must be approached like a fine restaurant. You may have an idea of what sounds good for dinner (pasta, for example) when you sit down to study the menu, but you don't get up to leave if they are not serving the exact dish you were craving ("you mean you don't have linguine with seared scallops and wilted pea shoots, in a light cream sauce?!"). 

If you are new to Trader Joe's fabulousness, I have a suggestion for the next time you are there. Pick up a bag of spaghetti ($1), a small wedge of Gorgonzola blue cheese (about $2), and a bag of their frozen "fire roasted vegetables in balsamic butter sauce" ($3).  

You will be using 1/2 of the bag of pasta to make a dish to serve 2 or 3 people. Bring a medium pot of salted water to boil. When the water boils and you begin to cook the pasta, dump the whole bag of frozen veggies & sauce into a saucepan and cook on medium heat. When the pasta has a minute left to go, crumble the blue cheese into the veggies, and continue to cook. Drain the pasta and toss with the veggies and cheese. Done! Gourmet dinner for a couple of bucks per person. 

Back to the Future Meatloaf

When I told my husband that we were having meatloaf for dinner, he didn't exactly jump for joy. But, I was feeling traditional. Maybe it was the email that my grandma sent me with a clip from housekeeping magazine circa 1955.

Some of the advice was good... I do try to "make sure my home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where my husband can renew himself in body and spirit." As the family foodie and designated cook, I do try to "have dinner ready for him," and with a flip of a gas switch I, "prepare a fire for him" and of course I always am "happy to see him, greet him, listen to him." The rest of the suggestions were a little iffy. Although I would like to think that I, "speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice," I can't agree to "not complain if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day." Hmm. Or that I should, "Remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours." Is that so? And then of course there was the suggestion to "be a little gay and a little more interesting for him." (*raised eyebrows*)

Well, excited or not, he loved the meatloaf and went back for seconds. I think meatloaf is best served as a hot sandwich, and rather than waiting to consume leftovers between two slices of crusty bread, I opt to forgo the mashed potatoes all together and always eat my meatloaf, fresh from the oven, as a sandwich. (I used a squishy ciabatta).

I called my mom last night and told her about my meatloaf dinner. "How come your meatloaf is good and my meatloaf isn't?" she asked, "You kids used to always complain about my meatloaf."

"Well, I don't know. How do you make your meatloaf?" I asked her. I listened carefully to her list of ingredients, thinking that maybe I just didn't like meatloaf as a kid, and that my taste had changed. But when she got to the part about, "and then I topped it with a can of cream of mushroom soup." I actually shrieked out loud.

I didn't know that that was not the worst of it. It so happens that my grandma called later that night, and I told her about my making meatloaf for dinner. "Well," she said, "do you remember Dixie, your grandpa's cousin? She gave me a recipe for meatloaf when I was first married. Her recipe said you were supposed to put a can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup inside of the meatloaf, like a surprise." Aha, I thought. That is where my mom got the idea. "Well, I didn't have any cream of mushroom soup," my grandma continued, "so I used a can of chicken noodle soup. When your grandpa cut into it at dinner, it looked like worms coming out of the middle of the meat." Lovely.

Now try to erase all of those thoughts of bad meatloaf, maybe you even have some of your own. Put them out of your mind. Now try this recipe.

The (Anti) Good Housewife's Meatloaf

No Campbell's required.

1 pound of ground beef

1/3 pound ground pork sausage

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 yellow onion

2 carrots

3 stalks of celery

8 ounces of button mushrooms

1 cup of chopped kale

3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 eggs

8 saltine crackers

1/2 cup of milk

1 teaspoon of dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon of salt (or more)

1/4 teaspoon of black pepper

dash of chili pepper

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 cup ketchup

1/4 teaspoon Worcester sauce

For the Glaze:

1/4 cup ketchup

1/4 teaspoon Worcester sauce

dash each of salt, pepper, garlic powder and sugar

Dice your onion, carrots, celery, and mushrooms into a very small dice. Heat the oil and begin to cook the onion, carrots, and celery over medium heat. After ten minutes, add the minced garlic, mushrooms and kale. Season with the thyme, salt, pepper, chili powder and garlic powder. Cook until the mushrooms look cooked through. Taste. If the vegetables taste bland, add more seasoning. Allow the vegetables to cool.

A note on the vegetables: Don't try to save time by mixing them into the meat before cooking first. Raw vegetables in your meatloaf will let off liquid while baking and steam your meat, which is not what you are going for. Also, you could improvise a bit with which vegetables to include, but after some trial and error, I think the ones listed above work best (beets, for example, give the well cooked meat a disturbing red hue!).

In a large bowl, beat the eggs. Add the meats. Crush the saltine crackers and add their crumbs to the meat. Stir in the ketchup, Worcester sauce, cooled vegetables, and milk. Mix it really well. If you have short finger nails, get your hands in there and really mash it all together. If you have long nails like me, get to beating with a wooden spoon. Do you think it needs more salt? Some extra dried herbs? Now would be the time.

Heat your oven to 375 degrees. Find a loaf pan, or a Tupperware dish, or something else that will fit all of the meatloaf. You are going to use this as a mold. Lay a sheet of plastic wrap inside of the container and then fill it with the meatloaf.

Line a baking sheet with a sheet of parchment paper (if you have any). Flip the plastic lined, meat filled, container upside down onto the baking sheet and remove the container. Remove the plastic. Mix the ingredients for the glaze and brush it all over your meatloaf tower. Bake your meat loaf until it registers at least 155 degrees. Depending on the height of your meatloaf this will take from 35 to 55 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to sit for 5 minutes before cutting and serving.

The reason you are cooking your meatloaf as a free-standing tower, rather than in a loaf pan, is two fold. First, this gives the chance for extra fat to run out from the loaf rather than pooling on top. Second, you have more surface to glaze, and therefore to develop a lovely crust. To serve, you could go traditional and plate it up with some mashed potatoes and a side of veggies. Better yet: two slices of good bread, a little mayo, and a lettuce leaf if you wish.

A meatloaf sandwich, by the way, goes really well with the spinach salad of last week.