Food. Soil. Thread.

Small Quilting Space in a Closet

2012-01-23T13:38:00.000-08:00

Goal #89 - Setting up a sewing space in my house

Ever since my son was born, finding time for hobbies like quilting has been difficult. Even more difficult is not having space for quilting. Before he was born, it was only a minor annoyance (maybe more than minor to my husband) to have the dining room table covered in fabric and cutting tools and spools of thread while I spent days working on a new quilt. After the baby it was not possible: Pins falling to the floor, little hand grabbing at carefully laid out fabric pieces.

design from iheartorganizing

I don't have a "spare" room in my house or a "studio" out back like people in quilting books have. I needed to make use of what space I had. Along came Pinterest - the great visual idea board - and brought me tons of inspiration this month to get started. I decided to use my laundry room to create my tiny-quilting-space, but a closet would have worked too.

To see my idea board for my tiny-quilting-space, click here! If you like the idea of setting up something in a closet, search "closet office" on Pinterest for ideas - check out this pretty example to your left.

To start, I found a design for a table that would fold down to be stored away, and my ad on Craigslist for a carpenter to build it yielded a dozen emails in so many hours. Ikea sells a similar table for about $200 but it was too big for my space. I encouraged the craftsman to make whatever amendments he thought would make the table better and I am very happy with the result.

Folding table all tucked away

Folding table up and ready for inspection by toddler

Then I used an old TV tray to create a fold away ironing board by using an industrial stapler to staple the metallic fabric to the underside of the tray (you can see it in the photos at the end of this post). I've had an unused magnetic herb/spice container set in my kitchen for years, so this was finally put to use as a holding tray for pins, bobbins and buttons.

Since I will not have room to lay out pieces on the floor or a large table, I followed a great idea for a mobile design wall. I purchased a large piece of stiff sheet insulation ($10) at a DIY home store and had them cut it to size. I then used an industrial stapler to cover it Warm&Natural batting. It creates a "sticky" surface for cotton and is also pinnable. I love it! You can see it behind my sewing machine in the photos at the end of this post.

newly organized closet

I cleaned out the small closet in the laundry room (most of what was in there will be just fine in the garage now) and moved all of my sewing and craft supplies to the closet. This required some downsizing, which was good to do anyway. The most useful thing did was to move my fabric from big disorganized bins on to little "bolts" that I can easily see on the shelf. To make the bolts, I ordered 100 comic book boards from Amazon ($10), folded each piece of fabric lengthwise, secured one end of the folded fabric to the board with tape and then wrapped it around the bolt. The best part is that I can see at a glance how much of each fabric I have by the thickness of the bolt.

so many little bolts

books and unfinished boxes for projects

Room at the bottom for paper crafting supplies and

embroidery

Lastly, a folding chair finished my new quilting room. When I want to sew, I simply wheel my laundry cart into the hall way and set up the table (the sewing machine is stored in the table's open cabinet). When my son wakes from nap time, I can just shut the door to the laundry room and not worry about stray needles.

After: Quilting room

Before: Laundry Room

Now I can get on with my craft and quilting goals: #19, #67, #74...

Tiny Sewing Space for Quilting

2012-01-04T12:34:00.000-08:00

Its a new year and in just in time for launching new projects, I have fallen in love with the website Pinterest, which acts as a visual e-collage of images from around the internet that inspire you. It has been a pleasurable time-suck but has proven really helpful to develop some ideas that I have had floating around in my head.

One of my 101 goals is to create a quilting space for myself. I have no spare room in my house and can not use any common space for fear that a small child will disorganize my perfectly laid out quilt pattern or worse, find a spare pin on the floor. My solution? Make a collapsible sewing space that can be set up and taken down in the laundry room.

I collected ideas on Pinterest and have gotten moving on creating my space. If you want to see my idea board, just click here: Tiny Quilting Space.

Yesterday, I went to the fabric store and bought a length of metallic fabric for ironing boards to turn a wooden tv tray into a fold away ironing table to set up next to me when I am quilting. It was very easy to do with an industrial staple gun.

Next, I have a carpenter that I found on Craigslist who is building me a narrower version of this table from Ana White Homemaker:

When I want to work on a sewing project, I will wheel the laundry bins that I have in the laundry room into the hallway and open up my table to create a 5 foot long work space. My custom table will be only 18 inches deep so that I will have room to sit in front of it.

Now I am going to start working on my design wall. Off to the home improvement store for a piece of insulation!

A New Year and New Intentions

2012-01-01T01:30:00.000-08:00

Exactly one year ago, I embarked on a mission to complete 101 goals in 1001 days. As a new mom, it has been a great prompt to continue to prioritize myself and value my interests. I have done some great things this year because my goal list, including working in the Herbfarm kitchen, taking a chicken from yard to plate with my own hand, meeting and cooking with some lovely people, and watching three babies be birthed into this world.

Now that I have finished some of my most exciting goals, I seem to be losing a little steam. I am considering changing a few of them. I know, I know. It kind of seems like cheating. But as we grow and change, our interests and priorities do too. Also, its my game so I can make up the rules.

If you have one of these skills, access, or knowledge, and would like to help me make any of these happen, please let me know! You will be compensated by my grateful and entertaining company, as well as very good goal-completion karma (priceless!). If you make your own list, I would love to read it!

Those in process are in bold text. Completed goals are written in ~~strike through~~ and include the date. I started the 1001 days on January 1st of 2011, which will bring me to September 28th of 2013, and have now have 49 goals completed or in process. After reviewing the list today, I have written the goals that I am considering striking in red.

~~kill, clean and eat a chicken~~ (8-28-11)
learn to bake a great baguette
~~get rid of the Christmas tree before the tree recycling program is over~~ (1-9-11)
~~eat xiao long bao dumplings~~ (11-3-11)
learn to make Edith's won tons
milk a cow (again)
go crabbing
~~catch a salmon~~ (8-26-11)
visit Goldmeyer hot springs
~~go on a girls retreat weekend~~ (6-3-11)
~~act as a staigaire at a 5 star restaurant~~ (7-1 and 7-2-11)
go to the circus
~~regularly attend a quilting group~~ (winter 2010)
~~see a baby be born~~ (1-5-11) (3-9-11) (11-27-11)
~~host a tweetup~~ (1-25-11)
~~take a food photography class~~
visit Salt Springs Island
eat primarily from from my garden for one month
bind my three unfinished quilts
Bla blhjhkjhkhkhka blab la bla(In progress!)
go on a family walk together twice a month
reflect on gratitude every night for 30 nights
Jog for one mile without resting
do 3 chin-ups in a row
~~eat at the Herbfarm~~ (4-17-11)
host a charity dinner
~~acquire a mircoplane~~ (7-30-11)
fluidly play Amazing Grace on the fiddle
submit to the Sun Magazine's 'readers write' section every month for a year
~~learn to make perfect gnocci~~ (2-27-11)
keep a my-day-in-6-words journal for a year
learn 6 'signature' dishes from the cook who makes it {2/6}
post a photo a month for Shutter Sisters for 6 months
grow the traffic on my blog by ten fold
see my writing in print - on real paper - in a national format at least twice {1/2}
take my son to visit his auntie for a sleep-over
switch the posts on my earrings to gold so that I can wear them again (allergy!)
~~make dinner for a single mom with a new baby~~ (8-24-11)
~~start a KIVA account~~ (1-13-11)
take a girl's night out at least once a month
~~get the airbags replaced in my car~~ (1-20-11)
take a daily vitamin
own a meyer lemon tree
make corned beef from scratch (including the brine)
~~get a replacement head and start using my sonicare toothbrush again~~ (12-25-11)
~~Try dim sum at T and T Seafood restaurant~~ (12-4-11)
~~visit~~ ~~Allium on Orcas~~ ~~restaurant~~ (2-26-11)
learn to make a pie from Kate McDermott
complete my professional licensing
get my second (and last) tattoo
start a business
teach my son at least 10 signs (ASL) {8/10}
learn to use my dslr on manual settings
sunbathe on a secluded beach
write a will
become comfortable with the dsmIV
ride the entire Burke Gilman trail on my bike
learn to make cheese
start a movement
participate in a scavenger hunt
go geocaching
pick berries
purchase a quarter of a locally raised cow
float down a river on an innertube
learn to make light and fluffy Akara (black eyed pea fritters)
Bla bla blab la bla
finish an optical illusion quilt
make gallons of pesto (to last the winter) from my own basil
~~grow enough potatoes to store for winter~~ (2011)
grow garlic for the first time
learn to shoot a gun
~~grow purple peacock kale-broccoli~~ (summer 2011)
teach my son to swim
carve a wood-block stamp
teach my son to send thank you cards
soften my heart towards a reconciliation
Bla bla blhjhabhjhjhjhj la bla ( (Done! 2-1-11)
Bla bla blab lahjjk bla (In progress!)
~~organize my digital photos~~ (9-21-11)
get printed photo albums up to date
send my Auntie a card for every major holiday
write a personal manifesto
read more
~~get a professional family portrait done~~ (10-4-11)
make a monthly entry in my baby's (and all future babies') baby book
~~smoke something (fish, salt...)~~ (8-27-11 salmon)
visit at least 6 food producers to see how its done {2/6}
~~complete the dark days of winter SOLE food challenge~~
set up a sewing space at home
~~donate or consign 20% of the clothing in my closet~~
~~Meet more bloggers, writers, chefs and food lovers~~
~~Find more enjoyable, paid, writing opportunities~~
get recordings of my dad singing his best songs
eat pizza at Delancey
~~teach a class~~
~~get a personal cosmetic lesson~~ (9-24-11)
do a round-brush hair lesson
go clamming
~~*insert great goal I think of after hitting publish*~~ Prepare a disaster kit for my home
put aside $10 for each complete goal (to spend on a little trip!)
donate $10 for each incomplete goal

* If the goal is blacked out, it means that the husband has censored it for its personal nature.

I'll be posting the more interesting aspects of my progress on a regular basis. If you are also doing 101 goals - I would love to read your list too!

"Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it." - W. Clement Stone

Anti-Consumer Holiday Gift Giving

2011-11-20T12:02:00.001-08:00

Ah, its that time of year again. Time to go broke buying "gifts" that no one wants so that you can wrap it all up in yards of bleached paper and plastic string and make people "happy."

There is another way! You do not have to compromise your values during the holiest season.

I have a simple recipe for holiday success:

Step 1: Celebrate "Buy Nothing Day" the day after Thanksgiving. I offer to you my alternative to long lines and stampedes at Walmart: I host a turkey sandwich party with family, complete with board games and rental movies.

Turkey sandwich party - even better than a Walmart stampede

You can buy these here!

Step 2: Celebrate "Small Business Saturday" the day after Buy Nothing Day. Use your hard earned dollars to buy a special gift from an artist, crafts-person or small local business. Songcroft Naturals is a nice example of an independently owned company growing their own ingredients and making high quality products. Find similar companies in YOUR community. Even easier - Have you been to the online marketplace called Etsy? You will fall in love with all of these unique beautiful things that hard working hopeful people would like to sell directly to you. Especially awesome are the children's toys worth keeping for generations.I mean, really, how can you resist these little handmade booties or carved wooden tractor? As my friend Sarah says, even looking at these makes me ovulate.

My child will love this handmade toy. I will make sure of it.

Step 3: Visit a craft fair or marketplace to support more hard working talented people with your holiday dollars. If you live in Seattle, you are lucky enough to have Pike Place Market every day of the year and the awesome Urban Craft Uprising a few times a year, including December 3rd and 4th. I would recommend bringing cash so that you do not go into debt at this better-than-you-are-imagining craft market. Who is coming with me?!

Urban Craft Uprising: promo from Behrens Films on Vimeo.

Step 4: Consider other creative ways to support things you believe in. Why not give a gift certificate to a CSA or other organic food delivery service? Everyone loves free food delivered during a busy week.

Have a favorite charity or cause? Donate in a friend's name and send a card saying that you did. I love KIVA, which gives micro-loans to small business people around the world. You even get your money back when they re-pay the loan and you CAN LOAN IT AGAIN! How fun!

Use your talents to say, "I love you." Offer a delivered meal or babysitting to a family with young children, use of your vacation property, eggs from your backyard chickens, whatever talents you have that can be shared! If you choose your gift and the recipient with careful thought, your efforts will not be unappreciated.

Wrap up the best books that you read this year and give them to a friend who is an avid reader and dying to find the next best read. Nothing beats a great book! (Did you read The Hunger Games yet?)

Step 5: Lastly, there is nothing wrong with a mass produced item. I did cry after all, when my parents gave me a KitchenAid stand mixer for Christmas years ago. And I know my mom really appreciates the new Cuisinart that my siblings and I gave to her after her 20 year old food processor finally died. Just choose wisely. Give something that someone will actually appreciate and forgo the gifts that are given for the sake of gift-giving. No one really likes those trinkets and stinky candles anyway.

Most of all, take some time to remember what all the fuss is about anyway. Whether end of year celebrations are religious for you or not, it surely has meaning deeper than a big sale or fancy bow.

Happy Holidays!

Well Tested: The Best Pumpkin Pie Recipe

2011-11-20T10:43:00.001-08:00

Last Thanksgiving, high from the thrill of so many people to keep my toddler busy while I partied in the kitchen all day long, I decided that one pumpkin pie recipe was not enough and declared it a good day for a pumpkin pie recipe contest.

I chose two solid recipes: one from the side of the Libby's canned pumpkin and one from Cook's Illustrated. Libby's represented a straight forward traditional recipe. Cook's Illustrated represented the "improved" version - highly tested and always focused on the best result over the easiest method.

cooking pumpkin and yam on the stove top

The Libby's recipe could hardly be more simple. Could a recipe that is so simple actually make a really good pie? The Cook's Illustrated recipe was more complicated for sure. The recipe calls for replacing some of the pumpkin with cooked yam and has the baker first cook the pumpkin-yam on the stove top to concentrate flavor. It calls for real milk and heavy cream instead of canned milk and then uses a multi-temperature baking process to avoid any curdling.

The spice profiles differed between the two recipes. Libby's uses a small amount of ground cinnamon, cloves and dried ginger. Cook's Illustrated replaces clove with nutmeg and uses fresh ginger instead of dried.

The math teacher in the family was in charge of dividing the pies

The pies were laid out for the official dozen tasters. Whipped cream was provided for authentic pumpkin pie eating experience. The crusts used for both pies were the same so as not to sway results.

When it comes to traditional foods, deciding which recipe is "best" is not as easy as it seems. Nostalgia is a strong force. Even if your new and "improved" recipe for an old family favorite is indeed improved - with a higher quality ingredient, let's say - the resulting dish may be declared as "off" or "not right" by your family members around the table.

This held true for the pumpkin pies. Libby's recipe won by a fair percentage, although the Cook's Illustrated recipe has its fans as well. I had a hard time deciding which I thought was "best." I liked the familiar taste of the Libby's straightforward pumpkin pie. I also appreciated the rich and complex flavor of Cook's Illustrated, but was it better? Maybe. Maybe not.

Maybe is not reason enough for the significant extra effort involved. This year, I will be sticking with Libby's. No need to add yam. No need for stove top cooking. Canned evaporated milk solves the potential curdling problem. Here is what I will borrow from Cook's Illustrated though - they do have the best method for making crust (vodka!) and I appreciate freshly ground nutmeg and ginger instead of old dried spices, which only take an extra few seconds.

Whether your family goes old school or high brow - happy pie eating and be sure to make plenty of whipped cream!

Planning a Thanksgiving Menu that I actually look forward to eating

2011-11-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving - the epic meal of the year - is in a few weeks and I have begun thinking about the menu this year. I am not a fan of marshmallows, tins of fried onions, or canned green beans hiding under canned cream soup. But I do like tradition.

busy kitchen, thirty minutes to go

Each Thanksgiving, I cook for about 15 people. This leaves me with a turkey dilemma - roast one turkey or two? I can roast a big 22 to 24 pounder or two smaller turkeys and have tried both approaches. I am not sure which is best.

More exciting than the turkey is the rest of the meal. Brussels sprouts are necessary as are potatoes of some kind. My dad always requests mashed carrots and turnips, a family favorite. My mom requires a fruit salad with whipped cream served by heaping spoon fulls on the side. I have a favorite recipe for cranberry chutney that I really enjoy and is great for the turkey sandwich party I host the following day.

Pre-dinner snacks, very important!

Although I reserve the right to make last minute changes, here is my menu for this year:

Brussels Sprouts with Bacon and Cream - recipe here. Make extra and toss with pasta and provolone cheese later in the week.

Mashed Carrot and Turnip - Cut 6 large carrots and 3 small to medium turnips into a very large dice. Boil in salted water until tender. Drain well. Mash with a tablespoon or two of butter and a heaping teaspoon of dried dill. Taste and add salt if necessary.

Roasted Potatoes - peel your small to medium yukon gold potatoes. Use a fork to scrape around the surface of the potatoes to create a rough surface. Boil them in salted water for about 5 minutes. Drain them well. Toss with a generous amount of olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast them in a hot oven until tender.

Cranberry Chutney - recipe here. My friend Meaghan commented on this previous post that it would be wise to visit the bulk aisle of the grocery store in order to save significant money on this recipe, and I agree.

I am on the fence about green beans this year. One year, I made a great green bean dish which involved tossing fresh green beans in anchovy paste, olive oil, minced garlic and a squeeze of fresh lemon, and then roasting them in a 425 degree oven. Now that was good. But do I need a third vegetable dish? Hmm.

Oxymoron: The Self Reliance Community

2011-10-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

Go Party with the Cool Kids

This Sunday, you can go to your very own barter event to trade your potatoes for beets and your tomatoes for bread and party with other people who are too cool to just go buy stuff with money.

Sunday, October 23rd from 5:30 to 9 pm, on the third floor of the Phinney Neighborhood Center (6532 Phinney Ave N). The party will include barter, potluck, square dance, beer fundraiser for the Seattle Farm Co-Op, and official book release for The Urban Farm Handbook.

Paranoia or Preparation: Entertainment for the Self-Reliance Inclined

Coming to a theater near you...

The Seattle Public Library hosts 'Urban Self-Reliance" workshops

The Seattle Public Library is loving on the "Urban Self-Reliance" trend with workshops throughout the city in the month of October.

The workshops are free and open to the public. Registration is not required, except where noted below. Seating may be limited based on room capacity.

"Bicycle Maintenance" - Learn basic bike maintenance techniques from instructors from The Bikery, a non-profit community bike project.
11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22 at the Fremont Branch, 731 N. 35th St., 206-684-4084
Noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29 at the Capitol Hill Branch, 425 Harvard Ave. E., 206-684-4715

"Simple Sewing (Bags/Pillows/Potholders)" - Sew Up Seattle will teach beginners the basics and encourage those with experience to create a project using donated scraps. Registration is required; call the branch to register
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22 at the Delridge Branch, 5423 Delridge Way S.W., 206-733-9125 (This session will focus on potholders.)

"Keeping Chickens in the City" - Learn the basics of keeping chickens in the city, including starting with chicks, feeding and housing requirements and more. This workshop is presented in partnership with The Seattle Free School.
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22 at the Ballard Branch, 5614 22ndAve. N.W., 206-684-4089
6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 25 at the Northeast Branch, 6801 35th Ave. N.E., 206-684-7539

"Basic Canning/Jam Making" - Learn about canning equipment, how to can safely, resources for recipes and instruction and recommended tips from a pro. This workshop is presented in partnership with The Seattle Free School.
6 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 25 at the Magnolia Branch, 2801 34th Ave. W., 206-386-4225
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30 at the Ballard Branch, 5614 22ndAve. N.W., 206-684-4089

"Make Your Place: Non-Toxic House Cleaners with Raleigh Briggs" - Learn easy, affordable recipes for products you can use to clean your home, your body and even your pets.
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22 at the Green Lake Branch, 7364 E. Green Lake Dr. N.

"On the Wild Side at Green Lake: A Mushroom Hunt Primer" - Become familiar with wild mushrooms and gain practical knowledge about safe wild mushroom gathering, preservation techniques, mushroom recipes and more.
6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19 at the Capitol Hill Branch, 425 Harvard Ave. E., 206-684-4715
6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 25 at the Green Lake Branch, 7364 E. Green Lake Dr. N., 206-684-7547

"Learn About the West Seattle Tool Library" - The West Seattle Tool Library is a community-led project providing pay-what-you-can access to a wide range of tools, training and relevant advice. Learn how to become a member and support this neighborhood project.
6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 24 at the Capitol Hill Branch, 425 Harvard Ave. E., 206-684-4715
3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29 at the South Park Branch, 8604 Eighth Ave. S., 206-615-1688

"Hand Sewn Upcycle Without a Machine: An Appliqué and Fancy Stitch Workshop" - Make an appliqué, learn about reverse appliqué and other decorative techniques. Registration is required; call the branch to register.
2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22 at the Wallingford Branch, 1501 N. 45t St., 206-684-4088

When you say you are preparing for an earthquake,
you don't look like a crazy person.
What's in the bag? See here.

"Finding Edible Weeds in Your Garden and Lawn" - Seattle author and expert forager Langdon Cook will talk about how to use your backyard as an exotic produce aisle.
6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26 at the Beacon Hill Branch, 2821 Beacon Ave. S., 206-684-4711

"Disaster Supply Kit" - Learn how to put together your own disaster supply kit during this hands-on workshop.
6:30 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27 at the Lake City Branch, 12501 28th Ave. N.E., 206-684-7518
1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29 at the Ballard Branch, 5614 22ndAve. N.W., 206-684-4089
4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 29 at the Broadview Branch, 12755 Greenwood Ave. N., 206-684-7519

For more information, call the Library at 206-386-4636

Link Lab Sausage delivered and two good books

2011-10-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

Now that I wore my scarf for the first time this season, I will need to start looking for things to keep the sun shining in my heart. This week brings a few points of happiness.

First, let me tell you about the sausages that will be delivered to my door this week from Link Lab. I have been wanting to try the handiwork of this local sausage maker since I wrote about him working with a farmers market vendor to turn her organic meats into custom sausage creations. So, I was thrilled when I saw that Spud.com now carries Link Lab sausages. This week they were offering a spicy Italian, a pork and jalapeno, and a Fremont Brat. If you haven't tried Spud for local organic food delivery, you are missing out on the easiest way to get your groceries. If you want give then a look, you can use the coupon code CRSEA-ALELAR for a $25 discount over your first few orders.

The next best thing is Annette Cotrell's new book, The Urban Farm Handbook. This woman is amazing and I am so happy that she was recruited to write this book and share what she has learned. I first met Annette when I took her up on an offer she extended through her blog to give a tour of her urban "farm." She had turned the back yard, front yard, sidewalk parking strip and the side of her driveway into full scale food production operation. She had raised beds of greens, beets and tomatoes, rows of raspberries, coffee bean bags filled with potatoes, chickens pecking around the backyard patch of grass, a tree heavy with plums, even her own peppercorn bush.

She was managing to grow most of her family's meals on this average sized lot in an upscale neighborhood in North Seattle. I was impressed. She was someone that I wanted to follow and knew that she would continue to do amazing things.

And she has. Not only has she written The Urban Farm Handbook to show others how to begin to do what she has learned can be accomplished in the city, but she has since sold her home and moved herself, her chickens, her two sons and her understanding husband, to a more rural homestead 30 minutes outside of the city. She has already managed to collect a menagerie of animals, is drowning in goat milk and establishing her permaculture food forest. I am jealous.

My next happy thing this week is another book that I was sent last month and have been drooling over since. Also written by a talented Seattle woman, Good Fish is a sustainable seafood cookbook written by Becky Selengut, a Seattle private chef and cooking teacher.

I was feeling like a horrible cookbook reviewer because I kept meaning to follow a recipe from the book and then sharing the results. The problem is, that just isn't how I normally use a cookbook. Cookbooks are evening reading material for me. I read it cover to cover like a novel and then use the inspiration to cook something new. Good Fish has inspired me this month to use the salmon I caught for a salmon chowder and to cook a great shrimp and grits. The photos in the book are gorgeous, her flavor combinations are exciting, and she includes great information about how to make environmentally responsible seafood purchases.

Garden Envy

2011-09-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

I noticed the little farm shortly after I moved to the town of Edmonds, a few miles north of Seattle. I like to stop and stare enviously at the huge vegetable plot, daydreamingabout what I might grow if I had such an abundance of space. Howhas this mini-farm survived for so long, tucked between two houses and taking up a whole city lot, without becoming the foundationfor some new construction project?

The scarecrow keeping watch

After strolling past this small farmso many times, I saw the Farmer out there one day, dressed in overalls and boots and looking like atwin to his scarecrow and I stopped to chat. The small farm has survived, as it turns out,because it has only exchanged hands once since the Great Depression.

TheFarmer and old Cooper met around town years ago and hit it off like good buddies.Cooper lived in the little white and red house until he was 100 yearsold. He never had kids and his wife died about twenty years before him.Cooper and the farmer became good friends over time and when Cooperdied, the Farmer inherited his house and land. “Real estate developersthink I am nuts. They come around trying to buy the land off of me,thinking its crazy to use it for growing vegetables, and I just ignorethem. Then they really think I am nuts.”

Cooperhad the land since the depression, says Farmer. He built the garagefirst and then lived in it with his wife until the big house was readyto live in. “The house is pretty much the same, even the old woodstove,” says Farmer. When I told him that the photos I was taking wouldend up on the internet, he said he would tell his kids. “I don’t have acomputer. I don’t have a cell phone. I have one of these phones,” hemimed holding a separate ear piece and mouth piece, “they call it acandle stick phone.” He said he didn’t mind me taking photos of theplants, people stop and do it all the time he says. “One guy set up atripod, was taking pictures of the sunflowers. Sometimes they talk tomy scarecrow. They think its me! You can take pictures, just none ofme,” he said, “And leave out my name,” he added. We’ll call him Farmer.

the suburban farm in the spring

Cooperworked his land for decades. Farmer has been at it for six years. “Thisis not what I thought I would be doing with my retirement. I thought Iwould be working on old cars, until I got this house,” he said, peeringout over the rows of tomatoes. “You can’t just put it out and leave it.Its like having kids - you gotta keep up with it.”

Between his own life in Edmonds and the stories he collected from Cooper, Farmer is like a town historian. “Ifyou dig down, the dirt gets pretty hard,” Farmer explained to me.“You’ve heard of the term skid road? they used to do that here - skidthe logs down the hill to the water. They had 4 or 5 mills down thereat one time. Making shingles mostly. I’ve found old bottles and such inhere. No bodies though.”

Thevegetable plot is a full city lot of its own and is a lot of growingspace for one man. Farmer has his own system down well and if there isone thing that you notice when you drive by is the neat rows and theorganization of it all. “I don’t know if you would call it rotational,but I do move what I plant every year,” he explains. “Next year, thecorn and pumpkins will be up here and I’ll put the potatoes at thebottom. Its a cold spring, so you take a risk planting corn. but if youdon’t, you miss your chance. You know what they say - it should be kneehigh by 4th of July - but I have only had that twice. You get corn ifits warm enough to germinate, you just get it late.”

the farm in the summer

Amongst his rows of peas, corn, tomatoes and onions, healways leaves room for a patch of pumpkins. A group of preschoolkids come down every year and pick their own. “Because, youknow, they think those pumpkins grow in the back of the supermarket.”He likes doing his part to teach them differently. “A lot of kids, theydon’t like to get dirty, but out here they don’t seem to care.”

Withsome luck, there will still be places to get dirty and grow seeds whenthose preschoolers are old enough to retire to their own gardens.

A version of this story first appeared on MyEdmondsNews.com

Recipe for an Old Laying Hen

2011-09-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

Goal #1: Kill, Clean and Eat a Chicken

When I first heard of the idea of setting 101 goals for myself, I immediately wrote, "kill, clean and eat a chicken" at the top of the page. This was a goal that combined my interest in food and my preoccupation with self-sufficiency and survival skills. The thing about a goal list, I have discovered, is that it validates otherwise bizarre behavior with the simple explanation, "It's on my goal list."

It was harder to arrange that I had anticipated. I had a few false leads - people who said that they would teach me or help make a connection but never did. A few months ago, a backyard farmer said that he had a couple of roosters whose time were up and he invited me to help. I didn't hear anything for awhile after, until last week's email that contained directions to his farm and a few video links to watch the method he would use. "We have a handful of old hens, and some young cocks that need to go," he said. "If the videos at the bottom are more than you can handle, you might want to re-consider."

I watched the videos a few times, peering in close to my computer screen to make out exactly where the farmer was making his cuts. Never did I want to change my mind. I only wanted to get it right.

The appointed day arrived. I packed a change of clothes, rubber boots, a Harrods of London apron (it is the only oilcloth apron I own), and a small cooler for the chicken I hoped to bring home. The drive through farmland and forest was peaceful and I turned off the car radio to really take it all in.

When I arrived, the farmer was setting up the "processing" station: killing cones, a large pot of water kept hot on a propane burner, a Featherman mechanical plucker, and a table lined with plastic sheeting. I watched carefully as he processed the two roosters first. Then, it was my turn.

the set up

The hen was pulled from the pen where she had been pecking around with her sisters. She rode calmly under the farmer's arm to the shady area of the yard where I was waiting. She went into the cone head first, her head sticking out of the narrow bottom end. She looked around a bit but didn't fight or squawk.

Incredibly patient with me, she didn't complain as I tried to decide how I wanted to hold her head in my hand. Finally, I felt comfortable with my thumb under her "chin" and my fingers over the top of her head. I found her "ears" and positioned the blade just above, slicing firmly down on one side and then the other. Thick blood flowed immediately and I held her head gently but firmly for the first few seconds as she tried to pull away. When I felt her relax, I let go and waited while her body drained of blood.

My hand held the memory of her warm feathery head in against my fingers for awhile afterwards. This is the thought that went through my mind as I watched the chicken die, "I eat meat. This is what that means." I felt gratitude to the bird and to the farmer. I understood the seriousness and finality of the taking of a life, but not remorse at doing so. I had told myself ahead of time that if I could not kill and process a chicken on my own that it would be time to reconsider being a meat eater.

All gloves are off: cleaning my hens

From the cones, the hen takes a one minute dip in hot water and then into the mechanical plucker, which whirls her around the drum of flexible rubber "fingers." In just a few seconds, all but a splattering of feathers have disappeared and the hen is ready for cleaning. There are videos on the internet (search YouTube for Joel Salatan) if you want details about how exactly to clean out a chicken. It was easier than I anticipated and much more interesting, since I wasn't expecting to find eggs inside.

from inside the hen - eggs at different stages

Finding the egg was one of those moments that made the connection between sterile food and warm breathing life real in my mind. These were not young broilers that I was processing, but 3 year old laying hens. Here is this hen, whom I petted a few minutes before. Here is the egg she would have laid into her nest of hay had she lived a few hours longer. Here is this chicken, unrecognizable as her former feathered self, ready for a soup pot.

My gratitude to the two hens that became my dinner (one is novelty, I told myself, two is practice). My thanks to Adalyn Farm for teaching me this new skill and for allowing me to make new use of your old hens.

Recipe for an Old Laying Hen
This soup does not strip chicken from its bone or hide it between colorful chunks of vegetable. This soup celebrates the hen and appreciates the flavor she took years to develop in her old muscles. This soup is not for wimps.

1 old hen
1/2 of an onions, sliced into thick pieces
2 garlic cloves, smashed with the side of a knife
1 teaspoon of dried thyme
2 teaspoons of curry powder
a dash of cayenne pepper (or more!)

Cut the chicken, first into the typical eight pieces (legs, thighs, wings, breasts) and then cut each piece in half again, right through the bone. Cut the back into three pieces. Heat a large heavy soup pot over medium high heat. Add half of the chicken pieces, allowing them to brown skin side down for about 10 minutes. Push those pieces to the side and add the remaining chicken, allowing them the same 10 minutes to brown.

Add the remaining ingredients to the pot. Add 3 cups of water, scraping up any bits that browned to the bottom of the pot. Bring to a simmer. Cover and reduce the heat. Continue at a low simmer for another hour. Test a piece of chicken after an hour to see if it is ready to eat. If it still very chewy, continue cooking, adding water if necessary.

At the end of the cooking, add salt to taste. Adding it too early is a mistake because if you need to continue simmering for another 30 or 40 minutes, the broth will become too concentrated and salty.

When your soup is complete, split the chicken into five bowls, about four piece for each person. Ladle the broth into each bowl with the chicken pieces, about half a cup per person. Serve with a piece of crusty bread and sweet butter.

Goal #8: Catch a Salmon

2011-08-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

Squinting through heavy eyelids, I stirred my cup of tea. The sun would not rise for at least another hour. I slipped out the front door with my backpack over my shoulder and a fishing permit in my pocket and jumped into the car with my dad. Twenty minutes later, I was squeezing around the gate at the county park entrance and beginning the mile long trek down to the beach. With no street lamp and heavy tree cover, there was barely enough light for us to distinguish the path from the underbrush. The tip of my fishing rod bounced through the air behind me, occasionally rustling the leaves of a low hanging branch.

My uncle, an avid fisherman and a professional hydrologist and river expert, had promised that the last two weeks of August would bring millions of pink salmon to the shores of Puget Sound and the connecting rivers. Although I have caught dozens of trout while on family camping trips, I wanted to catch a salmon, a symbol of the Pacific Northwest. A salmon would be a bigger catch and felt more elusive than a simple stocked river trout.

The sun rose over the Olympic mountains and my uncle taught me to read the water. "This water is too shallow. See how the waves are breaking there? That is ankle deep water you are fishing in." Scan, scan, scan the water he said, work the beach. "You are hunting. Stay on the move."

His fly rod whipped the air as the pink feather and hook flicked the water. With practice, my spinner flew further and further out into the sound, but always a few yards in from where I could see the salmon rolling.

A generous teacher, when my uncle hooked his first fish, he called me over and handed me the rod. "Keep the tip up, always keep the tip up," he said, stepping a few feet back and letting me manage on my own. "This is good, he's tiring himself out, just let him go. Any chance he gives you, reel it in." The fish did not flail, it just leaned against the line, swimming to the right and then to the left, like a skier making its way down a mountainside.

Soon, the fish was in shallow water, its back glinting in the sun. "Just walk it up the beach," my uncle said behind me. The fly rod had no mechanical reel. My hand cranked in circles, wrapping the line slowly around the old reel, bringing the fish onto the beach.

I grabbed a softball sized rock and knelt beside the salmon. "I should kill it!" I said, the rock poised above the wide eye of the fish. My uncle laughed, "You will really have to bludgeon it with that," he said as he unfolded a knife and handed it to me. I leaned over the fish, holding it still with one hand and visualized the line of the spine. I cautioned myself not to hesitate with my cut, an unsure hand would only make a butchery of the kill. I positioned the tip of the knife beside the gills and plunged it in, finding the vertebrae and severing the spine, while dark blood covered the blade. I cut out the gills on both sides and finished bleeding the fish. I cut open its underbelly and cleaned out the fish, lifting out the egg sacks and running my thumb nail along the spine to scrape out the kidneys.

As I finished cleaning the fish, a commuter train rounded the corner and came down the tracks toward the beach. "Hold it up for them to see!" said my uncle. I hooked my finger under the salmon's jaw and hoisted it into the air. As I held it up proudly, its heart rested against my finger, still pulsing.

My catch now rests on ice in my fridge at home. Goal number eight on my list of one hundred and one is complete. Now onto the next goal: learn to smoke a fish.

Herbfarm Stagiaire, Part II

2011-07-27T16:15:00.000-07:00

Arriving at the Herbfarm to act as “stagiaire” for two days, I was excited and just a little nervous. I was expecting to spend the next twelve hours running about yelling, “Yes Chef!” and being cursed at while I fumbled with trays of food.

As it turns out, Chef Chris, apparently the youngest head chef of a 5-Diamond restaurant anywhere, is one of those rare people who has a lot of talent but little ego. The kitchen had a steady rhythm, efficiently working down a list of tasks towards the final product - a nightly 9 course dinner designed around a monthly theme.

Organization was paramount. Everything was labeled and grouped on trays by course. As the staff moved around the kitchen, and rounded blind corners, they called out, “Corner!” “Corner - hot pan!” “Behind you - carrying plates!” “Corner!” Each person worked their way quietly down their list of daily tasks, occasionally chatting with those around them, mostly concentrating on the ingredients in front of them.

Even the student interns seemed to get away with very little ribbing from the senior staff. “That’s ‘Yes Chef’ to you!” was as nasty as it got. Even when the kid spilled oil on the floor right before crunch time, he was allowed to suffer his humiliation in silence. At the end of the second night, when a mistake was made with a tray of duck breasts, the staff was stoic, more surprised than upset. “This has never happened in three years,” murmured one of the staff, almost in disbelief over an easy slip-up.

I was grateful to be put right to work with simple tasks and comfortably fell into my own moving meditation. I washed and chopped hundreds of dollars worth of morels, their barely damp sponginess reminding me of the nose of a dog (hint - wash them in salty water and when you think they are clean, raise one to your lips and suck the dampness of one into your mouth, letting your sensitive tongue feel for any grit). I pitted hundreds of cherries, eating the ones that split when the pit was too large to fit through the hole of the pitter. I pulled each tiny leaf off of dozens and dozens of thyme stems. I picked the meat from the legs of sixty squab, which is much like trying to squeeze raisins for grape juice. I cured duck legs, blanched and peeled fava beans, and made pasta dough - tasks that I was relieved I already knew how to do, although my pasta kneading technique was much improved by the instruction of the sous chef. He was kind enough to not laugh at my sorry efforts, simply saying, “here, I’ll help you finish,” cutting my dough in half, and without comment, he began kneading the dough with an expert hand and let me adjust my form to match his.

Far from a kitchen dictator, Chef Chris dug right into the work itself, chopping vegetables for the night’s dinner, garnishing plates on the line, experimenting with ideas for next week’s theme, and even mopping the floor at the end of the night with everyone else. He was clearly the creative force and the leader of the team, but he was also a part of the team with everyone else. Watching all of these moving parts work together, it struck me that the kitchen is like a choir: no singer lining the bleacher is noticed for their exceptional talent, but anyone who sings a note off key has the power to ruin a song.

The first day, I was so focused on staying out of the way and trying to be helpful, that I barely tasted any of the food. Since a couple of extra plates are made for each course, I was encouraged to sample from them if they were not needed in the dining room. On the second night, during the third course, I grabbed a stuffed pasta roll and a few morels and stepped around the corner and into the rows of dish storage. I took a bite and sighed, relaxing into the layers of flavor, rich noodle, warm creamy goat cheese, woodsy morels coated in butter. As I pulled the pasta to my lips for a second bite, I pulled back and looked again. “I made this,” I thought. This was the egg yolk pasta that I had mixed and kneaded the day before. This was the cheese filling that I piped onto sheets of pasta this afternoon. These are the morels that I had washed and chopped. So maybe it wasn’t my recipe and maybe I did not actually apply any heat to any of the ingredients. But my hands had prepped each part of this dish and now I, along with 39 other guests, was eating it.

I was asked a few times why I was there at the Herbfarm. “Are you in school or are you working?” on of the kitchen staff asked when I first arrived. “Well...” I hesitated. Yes, I work, but in a job that has no relation to food at all. Why was I taking time off of work to go work in exchange for a stiff back and sore feet? When I explained that my job is not in the restaurant industry, she asked if I had a career change in mind. “No, probably not,” I answered. I thought about this while I rinsed and chopped and sorted and arranged food on plates. I was there because this is what life is about for me - exploring my interests, collecting novel experiences, learning new things.

What I learned most from my two days as Stagaire is that most of us have the ability to create amazing things like the Herbfarm does every night, if only so much attention was put to the task. Sure, Chef Chris is talented and creative, but there was no secret magic happening there - only exceptional ingredients and the finest consideration for each detail. Lemon thyme wasn’t chopped for garnish, but rather each individual leaf was pulled from the stem. Button mushrooms were not used when morels were available. No one thought it outlandish to make a sage blossom cream from scratch only to be used to fill the minute hollow of two little raspberries, wrapped in a tiny strip of fresh fruit leather, to be served as an amuse bouche at the end of dinner.

One of my favorite questions to ask someone is this: What would you do if you knew you would not fail? I wonder, is this what keeps us from doing what we have passion for? Fear of failure? Have we failed less if we never tried at all? Fear and monotony are ingredients that make life sour. It is when I stretch past the day to day to explore new things that life is sweetest. Now back to my goal list, eighteen done, lots more to do.

Goal #11: Becoming a Stagiaire

2011-07-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

I wasn’t nervous at all about walking into the kitchen of a 5 Diamond restaurant without any professional training, until a last minute email exchange with the Chef a few days before I was to arrive at the Herbfarm. “Just bring two good sharp knives, work pants and non-skid shoes,” he wrote nonchalantly. It was then that it dawned on me that I might be allowed to actually DO something and I started to feel giddy.

I spent the next couple of days getting my knives sharpened at the butcher’s, second guessing what was meant by “work pants” and “non-skid shoes” as though these were some kind of foreign words that I needed to decipher. The night before, as I walked a good friend to the door after dinner, she asked me if I had a food handlers permit. A food handler’s permit? I had let mine expire years ago and it had not crossed my mind that I should renew it. Thankfully, I had just read that the county offered the test online and by morning I had the permit tucked in my wallet and felt that I had averted a crisis.

My inclination, when nervous, is to step back and observe my surroundings carefully, listening to instructions with the concentration of a game show contestant on the million dollar question. This is useful because I am able to remain calm and not look like an idiot, but the downside is that my furrowed brow and hawk-like focus look like I am trying to come in first-place in an evil eye competition. I practiced smiling on my drive out to the Herbfarm and gave myself a mantra - “I am friendly! I always do my best!” I arrived wearing a smile, black wrinkle-free pants of the kind that I remember donning to work as a retirement home waitress in high school, my non-skid clogs and carrying two newly-sharpened German-made knives. I was ready to do my best.

I had watched enough celebrity chef TV shows to think it entirely possible that I would be yelled at by the Chef at some point over the next couple of days. The main job of most TV celebrity chefs is to hate all food that is not their own creation and make aspiring cooks feel worthless. This possibility did not deter me though. Getting tossed out of the Herbfarm kitchen wouldn’t be so bad, like getting bashed on the red carpet by fashion critic Joan Rivers - being ON the red carpet is good enough.

more to come...

How to host a shower when your sister is the "Broom"

2011-06-27T16:10:00.000-07:00

I had the honor of hosting a bridal shower for my sweet little sister this weekend. She has taken on the title of "Broom" and allowed her beautiful wedding-dress-wearing future-spouse to have sole reign over the title of Bride.

summer theme

My sister is not the lingerie & cookbook type so I wanted to host something that reflected her personality. I settled on a theme of summertime recreation and guests brought gifts for camping trips, backyard cocktail parties and future hiking expeditions.

prizes!

We played a few games and gave away prizes in colorful metal sand pails. My favorite game asked each guest to complete an old saying (such as "Behind every great man is..." or "A woman's place is...") with a new ending and my sister assigned points for the best answer. Among the best were my grandmothers answer to "A woman's work...is a load of crap" and a friend's response to "Behind every great man is...a man's behind."

sushi platter and summer rolls

I filled a metal tub with cold bottles of beer, root beer and hard lemonade. My grandma filled a hollowed watermelon with fruit salad and my mom put out plates of brownies and lemon bars. I ordered a platter of sushi and built a menu around it. I rolled vegetables that I had harvested that morning in rice paper and served the rolls with a sweet chili dipping sauce (those are broccoli raab blossoms you see peeking out of each one). I also made a salad with sliced red onion, red cabbage and iceberg lettuce, tossed with cooked shrimp and a bottle of wasabi flavored ranch dressing.

Grandma's handiwork

The food was enjoyed by everyone, the weather was perfect. Most importantly, my sister said it was exactly the shower that she had wanted.

New Frozen Yogurt Shop in Edmonds

2011-06-24T08:51:00.000-07:00

Summer is here and Edmonds is making it official with the opening of a new frozen yogurt shop on Main Street. Revelations Yogurt is owned by a local couple and managed by their teenage daughter, Devon Duvall. Children and adults alike lined up on opening day to fill their cups with their choice of frozen yogurt flavors and make important choices at the toppings bar.

I did the difficult work of making my way down the aisle to taste each flavor. With over 100 flavors available to order, Revelations Yogurt plans on changing the flavors on tap every few weeks. My favorite was the Original Tart, providing a slightly tangy base (I could have enjoyed it even more tangy) for a load up of sweet toppings.

The topping bar is the showpiece of the yogurt shop. Bin after bin of crushed candies, fresh fruit and berries - not frozen! - and crushed candy bars tempt customers to load up. Those with allergies will appreciate the extra care that Revelations takes by placing all of the chopped nuts and crushed candy containing nuts at a separate station from the other toppings.

My creation totaled 4 ounces in weight and cost less than $2 before the opening day $1 discount was applied. All creations cost $0.44 per ounce, a good value for the quality of toppings and variety of choices.

I look forward to many return trips this summer!

527 Main Street, Edmonds

11 am to 10 pm weekdays

11 am to 11 pm weekends

Keeping Salad Interesting

2011-06-08T14:32:00.001-07:00

I do not want to believe the local weather expert when he says that we may be in a 30 year cooling trend in the Pacific Northwest. That is just horrible to contemplate. Thirty years is the bulk of my adult life. If it is true, it's a good thing that I like greens, because they will continue to be the most reliable producer in the garden of cold nights and wet days.

I grow a lot of different greens, so as to keep my salads interesting. There are spicy greens, tender-sweet greens, bitter greens, red-greens and purple-greens. There are curly greens, flowering greens, salty greens, earthy flavored greens.

Whenever I have seeds leftover from a packet of beets or spinach other other potential salad green, I add it to a small spice container that I keep in my garden basket. When I have more room in the garden for salad, I sprinkle this seed mix in and wait to see what pops up. I have dozens of varieties mixed in by now.

I took a photo (above) of this week's salad deconstructed. Clockwise from the top right: kale blossoms, sorrel, red lettuce, curly parsley, chive blossom, mizuna (mustard), chard, spinach. In the middle: thinned baby beets and mint.

2011-06-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

Renegade Garden: Growing food with out a yard

2011-06-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

On sunny days when I am driving around town, my eyes wander to parking strips, those three-foot wide strips of grass that run between the street and the sidewalk. They are seldom landscaped or otherwise even noticed. Because of rules limiting anything that could block a driver's view as they back out of their driveway, these parking strips are often in full sun. I think the same thing every time I contemplate these parking strips, "Just think how much food could be grown right there!"

There are some neighborhoods around Seattle where you can see examples of parking strip gardens overflowing with zucchini, kale, tomatoes and beans. As long as you don't block visibility for drivers, the city is very tolerant of the space being used for something other than grass.

My brother is an apartment dweller in Oakland, California with a green thumb and has found a few ways to grow food without a yard. He has converted a tiny sidewalk spot into raised beds and has a collection of pots filling his patio and greeting him at the front door. He says that he has had little problem with people helping themselves to the bounty.

He was skeptical of the patch of the litter filled dirt between the stairs and the garage, so he lined the inside of the raised bed and brought in clean soil. Considering Seattle's cold spring, I am a bit envious of his basil.

Found or Stolen?

2011-05-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

There is a community garden near my parent's house. In it lives a rhubarb plant. It is not in anyone's garden plot, its just alongside the fence, unharvested and lonely. Sometimes my mom and I bring some stalks home to make a dessert.

Half way through the growing season last year, I found a patch in that same garden that was choked with weeds, waist high. As I grabbed a handful and yanked, I discovered perfect little radiccio choking under the weeds. Abandoned. We brought a couple of them home.

a little here, a little there - found flavors

In my own community garden, a few plots are still untouched this year. I have been watching patiently as the weeds get higher around the plants - carrots, chard, chives, parsley - that came back to life this spring. I have slowly begun taking a few leaves here and there.

It seems such a waste to watch flowers wilt, greens bolt, lettuce go bitter, neglected by those who planted their seeds a season ago. Yet, the plants are not mine. Maybe their owners will return, held back from the garden by life's demands, and find that someone has been diminishing their harvest.

Today brought the first bag of salad greens from the garden

What do you think? Are the the branches of apples that hang over your neighbors fence fair game? Are the leaves of kale and chard that peek out from weeds in another gardener's patch stolen goods in your hand? Or are we resourceful gleaners simply sharing in the bounty that surrounds us?

Peeking in the bottle: my zucchini plant,
alongside the wood my son dropped in

foraged and found edibles

2011-05-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

I attended a wild plant walk this last week, to learn about edible plants that can be found all around us. I took my grandmother with me, and I think she was slightly bored. She needs the advanced class!

Learning to identify a few things only opens my eyes to all of the plants that I can not identify. I did find some chocolate mint growing yesterday in a heavy patch and grabbed a handful for a cup of tea.

I love the time that I give to my garden, laying seeds that will feed me this summer. But I am also hungry to know more about what nature cultivates. Wild edibles surround us as we wait for our own seeds to germinate in spring.

One of the women that I met last week is overflowing with knowledge about the world around her. Marilene Richardson is a gentle and encouraging teacher. Interested in learning to notice the buffet underfoot, want to become your own best tool in your preparedness kit? SongCraft teaches classes of all sorts and I have been browsing through the calendar. Farm Camp for grown-ups anyone?

Warming a cold spring

2011-05-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

This year is one of the coldest springs on record in the Pacific Northwest. Last year was a wet and cool spring as well, and I had hoped for better this year. Thankfully, I have a few tricks to warm things up and get my seeds sprouted and growing despite the chilly reception.

Barely two weeks ago, I planted a few rows of green beans under a row of "Gro-Therm" perforated plastic film. As a bit of a test, I transplanted three week old green bean starts at the same time. The beans that I direct seeded outside are now almost the same size. Next year, I won't bother starting beans inside, since direct seeding works so well with the Gro-Therm.

My zucchini seed has sprouted in its plastic bottle home. I leave the cap off of the bottle so that the little guy won't cook on a warm day.

Today was the first day of the year that I added spinach, lettuce and beet thinnings to my salad for dinner. I also added some mint leaves, which by the looks of it, I will be doing battle with this year. Those little buggers are popping up everywhere!

How is your garden growing this year? Any hints to share for a cold spring?

Are chain grocery stores cheaper than your local co-op?

2011-05-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

This post was originally published on MyEdmondsNews.com last year, before I started writing my weekly food column there.

I was in the check out line of a name brand grocery store last year, when I overheard the woman
in front of me talking with the clerk about the newly opened PCC (natural foods co-op) in
Edmonds.

"Have you been there yet?" asked the clerk.

"I can't shop there," said the woman, "its sooo expensive!"

I wanted to chime in, but thought better of it. If I thought the woman in the check-out line would have appreciated my point of view, I would have told her that PCC is not necessarily more expensive than other grocery stores, if you make a fair comparison.

A couple of years ago, the Seattle PI ran a story comparing the cost of purchasing a particular grocery list, at a number of different stores. PCC topped the list for price, by more than $100! But then I saw how they did their comparison:

"Each team had an identical list of products -- such as a 1-pound bag of carrots or a 26-ounce jar
of spaghetti sauce -- and instructions to note the cheapest price offered."

The Seattle PI authors argue that a carrot is a carrot is a carrot, no matter how, or where, it was
grown. I think it is safe to say that most environmentally and socially conscious shoppers would
disagree with the assertion that any jar of spaghetti sauce, or carrot, is "identical" to any other. In
fact, one of the shoppers in the study called one discount store "the place that food goes to die."

How useful is a price comparison between a wilted carrot at a discount store, with a fresh,
organically grown, carrot from a local farm? I don't think a headline that screamed, "Brown
shoes cost more at Nordstrom than Payless!" would stop the presses. Quality counts.

Reading the Seattle PI article, I began to wonder how a price comparison would look if equal
items were being compared. I wrote out a 17 item shopping list to use for my comparison,
including milk, eggs, meat, produce, and dry goods. My list included items that I commonly buy, with a focus on local and organic foods. Conventional (non-organic) items made it onto the list
too, if they were not included in the "Dirty Dozen."

***

I try to prioritize how I spend my grocery money, using thia basic principle:

If not homegrown, then locally produced
If not locally produced, then organic
If not organic, then family farm

Last summer, I read Omnivore's Dilemma (oh! the free time of a woman with no baby yet!),
and was motivated to research some of my food spending habits. I learned some very interesting
things, especially about animal products, that have helped me to be sure that my food dollars are
well spent. Here is a link to the blog post that I wrote about it.

***

To conduct my price comparison, I surveyed prices at four stores: PCC, Trader Joes, QFC,
and Fred Meyer. If an item was on sale, I priced it at the sale price. If an exact item was not
available, the closest item was priced instead (conventional broccoli was not sold at PCC, and
organic was substituted; Trader Joes and QFC did not sell local organic milk, so a national brand
of organic milk was priced).

The total for QFC was $76.70, including "member" sale prices, but no local milk, local free range
eggs, or organic meat was available. Most of the produce lacked origin labeling.

Trader Joes was $71.50, but vegetables had to be purchased pre-packaged, and no local milk or local
organic meat was available. Local items were not readily available.

Fred Meyer offered the best deal at $57.10, but didn't carry organic meats, and most of the produce was not local.

The total for PCC was $78.60...
...or $70.74 if I had used my monthly 10% off member coupon

The most interesting thing that I found in comparing all four stores was the price of meat. Only
PCC offered local organic beef, or specified clearly where the meat was produced. The organic chuck roast sold for $7.59 per pound, and the County Natural beef sold for $4.69, which was only twenty cents more per pound than the conventional beef sold at QFC and Fred Meyer, and cheaper than the beef sold at Trader Joes.

Another important note is regarding locally produced food. For shoppers who prefer locally
grown food, PCC has clear labeling on the origins of their products. Considering that some of
the benefit of organic foods is lost in a plume of exhaust, if it is shipped half way across the
country to get here, clear origin labeling it is important, if you want to know where your food
was grown and raised. Most of QFC's produce lacked any origin labeling at all.

If you don't consider all carrots created equal, and you are willing to compare (organic) apples to
(organic) apples, PCC comes out a winner.

Tilth Edible Plant Sale

2011-05-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

Just a portion of what you will find at the Tilth sale

If you live in the Seattle area and grow things to eat - then you will regret missing the Tilth Edible Plant Sale this weekend. You will find more tomato plants than you will know what to do with - all great varieties for the region. You will also find dozens of varieties of lettuces, onions, squash and brassicas (including the purple peacock kale-broccoli mix that I have been lusting for!).

Seattle Youth Garden Works will be there with their hardworking youth

If you don't want to browse, pre-packs are available, such as Mothers Day Pack or Beginner's Vegetable Garden

Where I really go nuts is the edible flower and herb section. Herbs that you have never seen sold anywhere else will entice you to spend more money than you had planned. I volunteered to set up the dozens and dozens of tables for the sale last night and came home with such gems as ginger-mint, lemon verbena, Australian bush mint (smells like a hippie's house... in a good way), sweet cicely and scented geraniums. I have two half barrels at on the patio that will soon be overflowing with smells, leaves, vines and flowers.

Edible flowers and herbs galore

Ginger-Mint and speckled lettuces

May 7th & 8th, 2011

9 am to 3 pm

Meridian Park, behind the Good Shepherd Center

4649 Sunnyside Avenue North

Seattle, WA 98103

What is the meaning of life?

2011-05-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

Life is all about relationships with loves ones and new experiences

Goals aren't just for the alcohol fueled ambitions of New Year's eve or the guilt placations of New Year's morning. I love my list of 101 goals and have been making steady progress towards the finish line at 1001 days.

Especially as a busy mom of a toddler who also works, blogs, gardens, writes and tries to be super-everything to everyone, having the goal list has legitimized taking time and energy to do things that matter just to me.

There are over a dozen goals that I have finished so far. Some are things that I will continue, like finding more paid writing opportunities, meeting other bloggers and foodies, and continuing to purge my closets. Here is what I have crossed off the list in the first 120 days:

get rid of the Christmas tree before the tree recycling program is over (1-9-11)

See a baby be born (1-5-11) AND (3-29-11)

host a tweetup (1-25-11)

eat at the Herbfarm (4-17-11)

learn to make perfect gnocci (2-27-11)

start a KIVA account (1-13-11)

get the airbags replaced in my car (1-20-11)

visit Allium on Orcas restaurant (2-26-11)

Bla bla blhjhabhjhjhjhj la bla ( (Done! 2-1-11)

complete the dark days of winter SOLE food challenge (4-15-11)

donate or consign 20% of the clothing in my closet (3-15-11)

Meet more bloggers, writers, chefs and food lovers

Find more enjoyable, paid, writing opportunities

Prepare a disaster kit for my home (3-15-11)

I have prioritized what I want to be sure to get done this year. 1001 days is just under three years, and I am needing to organize in my mind which things I should be working on for now. Here are the two dozen or so that I have put on the agenda for 2011. The ones in bold are already in progress, meaning I have at least started making arrangements to complete it. This seems manageable, don't you think?

kill, clean and eat a chicken arrangements are in process.
catch a salmon I have secured a promise of assistance on this.
go on a girls retreat weekend hot springs: its on the calendar!
act as a staigaire at a 5 star restaurant so.excited.
regularly attend a quilting group found a group and have have worked on a half dozen projects.
take a food photography class I will be taking a FREE! online class from Penny De Los Santos
eat primarily from from my garden for one month If the weather co-operates, I'll try for August.
Jog for one mile without resting New gym membership and I am up to 1/2 mile so far.
keep a my-day-in-6-words journal for a year this is harder than it sounds!
learn 6 'signature' dishes from the cook who makes it {2/6} See Gnocchi and Indian Curry
take my son to visit his aunties for a sleep-over
take a daily vitamin with folic acid, ladies!
own a meyer lemon tree
get a replacement head and start using my sonicare toothbrush again
Try dim sum at T and T Seafood restaurant
teach my son at least 10 signs (ASL) {8/10} up, more, all done, milk, baby, sleepy, help me, sorry
learn to use my dslr on manual settings
pick berries
float down a river on an innertube
make gallons of pesto (to last the winter) from my own basil
grow enough potatoes to store for winter they have eyes!
read more I hear the key to being a better writer is reading more. Recent reads: The Help, The Sun Magazine, The Hunger Games
get a professional family portrait done
make a monthly entry in baby's (and all future babies') baby book so far, so good.
smoke something (fish, salt...) Just got a BBQ grill and wood chips.

So, how about it? Want to make a list for yourself? A good goal is a SMART goal:

Simple - be specific! And remember that simple is not always easy.
Measurable - "lose 10 pounds" is measurable, "be healthier" is not
Attainable - for me, this meant not setting goals that are expensive to achieve
Rewarding - because that is why I am doing it!
Timely - in this case, 1001 days.

"Tell everyone what you want to do and someone will want to help you do it." - W. Clement Stone

Edible flowers and herbs in the garden

2011-04-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

If you live in the Seattle area and grow your own food, than the Tilth Edible Plant Sale is not to miss! Not only do they have a wonderful selection of hard to find vegetables and herbs, but you can be rest assured that the plants have been properly hardened off and that they are well suited to be grown in the Pacific Northwest.

Tilth Spring Edible Plant Sale

Saturday & Sunday, May 7th and 8th

9 am to 3 pm

Meridian Park, behind the Good Shepherd Center,

4649 Sunnyside Ave. North Seattle, 98103

A few weeks ago, I asked on Twitter if anyone had any suggestions for what I should grow on my patio, considering that I had 300 square feet of garden space a mile away. What would make good use of just a couple of big barrels when I have so much space in the ground to work?

Someone suggested edible flowers, which would be a great addition to my herbs, and would be especially handy to have close by for garnishing meals and beautifying salads. I already have thyme, lemon thyme, rosemary, oregano, mint, chives, parsley, nasturtium, sorrel and violas. After my dinner at the Herbfarm this month, I have a greatly expanded list of herbs and edible flowers that I want to grow.

Sweet Cicely

I grow most of my plants from seed, but I will be treating myself to a few starts from Tilth. You can see a full list of what will be for sale, on their website. Here is my list, all of which are available at Tilth's sale:

Lovage: a celery flavored herb with hollow stems

(The Herbfarm suggested using the hollow stems as a straw for a Bloody Mary!)

Sweet Cicely: a tall anise flavored plant with white flower
Scented Geraniums: I am hoping to find a rose scented
Lemon Verbena: an herb with a beautifully sweet lemon scent
Dill: great for seafood and in pasta salads and salad dressings
Borage: an edible blue flower
Sun Gold: a "tropical" flavored golden-orange cherry tomato
San Marzano: the best cooking tomato, a roma-type
Purple Peacock: a broccoli-kale cross

Happy gardening - if luck is on our side, spring weather will arrive before the calendar says its summer.

Goal #16: Take a food photography class

2011-04-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

Food is a difficult subject to capture well. You would think it would be easy - nothing moves, talks back, or points out their double chin in your best shot. But, food has to look appealing. The color can't be the slightest off, the light has to be perfect. A lot of really yummy things turn out looking like turds.

This is why I have been wanting to take a food photography class for sometime. Its on my list of goals. I thought I was getting a gift certificate for a class for Christmas, but I got earrings instead (thanks mom! I love the earrings!)

As it turns out, one of the best food photographers - Penny De Los Santos - is teaching a live online class, and its free! You can sign up for it here: creativeLIVE.

Penny is looking for six students to be in the studio of creativeLive and I am asking to be one of those students. You can ask too. Without furture introduction, here is my video submission. Fingers crossed!

Dinner at The Herbfarm Restaurant

2011-04-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

Last night I satisfied a long-time fantasy of mine and crossed off goal #25 from my list. I ate dinner at the legendary The Herbfarm Restaurant. I want to tell you that it lived up to my expectation in every way, which really is high praise. I was giddy with excitement and couldn't stop grinning. The guy across from me probably thought that I was a nut job, or that he had something stuck in his teeth. I remember thinking that my excitement was verging on inappropriate as I worked to keep the giggle in my throat from escaping.

Feeding resident piggies Borage and Basil between courses

How can you not get excited about nine amazing courses, each paired thoughtfully with wine - or in my case - a menu of floral, fruity and herbal juices, spritzers, "cordials" and teas. With the first pour of champagne, each guest was invited to choose a little sprig of herb for their glass. I choose a rose scented geranium, so each time I took a sip from my glass, my nose would fill with the heavy scent of rose.

@herbguy's photo of our first course:
Bairdi Snow Crab with egg yolk pearls, paddlefish caviar, spring forest widlings

Although I brought my camera with me, I left it in my purse and just relished the company of my friend, the music of the guitarist, the beauty on the plate and the flavors of ocean and earth: crab and tulips, clams and watercress, prawns and fiddlehead ferns, halibut and lovage.

petite sweet bites at the end

As I am writing this, I just remembered that I slipped that milk chocolate lavender caramel in my purse last night to save for later. I eat it now and let my son dip his finger into the liquid caramel to taste. Good taste training begins early you know.

Turning of Seasons

2011-04-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

Although the calendar says that Spring arrived weeks ago and the clocks changed to confirm that the dark days of winter are over, the warmer months are still just awakening.

For me, the change of seasons are signaled twice a year. Once when the rains and frost come to put my garden to sleep and little bits of fabric and quilt designs infiltrate my dreams. The second time when the idea of sewing strips of cotton together sounds like a chore and I begin to pursue seed catalogs late into the night.

I made my last Dark Days of winter SOLE food challenge this week and am truly grateful to SPUD for sponsoring this weekly organic meals every week from November to April. I looked forward every Tuesday to the delivery of root vegetables, leafy greens, apples and pears, organic milk, fresh pasta, meats and cheese that fed me through the winter.

butternut squash ravioli with kale raab and blue cheese

This week I made it out to the garden to plant more seeds and set up my Gro-Therm plastic to coax the seedlings out a bit sooner. I used the Gro-Therm last year from Territorial Seed and found that it warmed the soil by 2 to 10 degrees, depending on the amount of sunshine. The perforations kept things from overheating and drying out on hot days.

gro-them over arches

Of course, I can't fail to mention my son, who is a natural farmer and loved our time in the garden. I am so grateful, because if he didn't enjoy it, I don't know how I would be able to spend so much time growing food this year. He has his only miniature tools and insists on carrying the seed basket himself.

what a hard worker!

Goal #25: The Herbfarm

2011-04-15T16:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend, if you are looking for me, you will find me in a seafood-induced delirium at the Herbfarm. I thought that I would wait for my 30th birthday to have my "first time", but a (really awesome) friend twisted my arm and bought me a gift certificate with an expiration date.

Each 9-course dinner, served with 5 or 6 matched wines (non alcoholic options are also available), draws its inspiration from the rhythms of the season. For much of the year The Herbfarm kitchen gardens and farm supply the restaurant with an ever-changing harvest of common and unusual produce. Small growers and producers provide wild mushrooms, heritage fruits, handmade cheeses, and rare treasures such as water grown wasabi root and artisanal caviars.

Each day's menu is finalized only hours before the meal to best track the symphony of life on the land and sea.

If you are keeping up with my list of goals, eating at the Herbfarm is goal number 25 on my list. I just saw a preview of the menu for this week's Chambers of the Sea 9-course dinner and got so excited that I could barely read straight. I have to admit, every time I look at the menu still I can see are exciting words, really really exciting words. See that pretty mermaid above? That poster was designed just for this week's dinner theme. Ack! I am so excited I just might pass out.

Urban Homesteader Happenings, week 5!

2011-04-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

Welcome to week 5 of the Urban Homesteader blog party!
You are welcomed to link up your blog posts with the tool below.

This weekly blog party started in response to the effort by a family in California to trademark the term Urban Homestead, a term that is used by many creative and hard working urban and suburban folks who bring new life to old fashioned skills such as animal husbandry, micro-farming and food preservation. The urban homesteaders who link up each week are just a tiny sample of the many families who cutting sod and laying seed around the country.

This week has brought new events to tell you about. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has teamed up with a law firm to assist the authors of an Urban Homesteading book who have been threatened by the family who filed the trademark. A petition to cancel the trademark has been submitted. There is also a public petition that can be signed on Change.org's website and I added a link for the petition at the very bottom of this blog.

More importantly, spring is here, the soil has warmed and the last frost date has passed. Which means: seed planting time! I was deliriously happy this weekend covered in dirt and forming new callouses on my hands as I wheelbarrowed wood chips around the garden paths.

work party: laying wood chips

I planted shelling peas and snap peas, after soaking the seeds at home first. I decided to plant them in one long row along the south border of my 10 foot by 30 foot garden plot. I will plant my tomatoes and zucchini down that same side next month. By the time the tomatoes and zucchini are big enough to crowd the row, the peas will be finished and can be pulled out.

rescuing herbs and planting seeds

I also found numerous plugs of herbs - thyme, oregano, mint and parsley - that had been massacred by a roto-tiller the week before. I transplanted them and they have taken well in their new location.

Now it is time to see what you have been up to! I welcome you to link up your blog posts in the comment section below. If you are interested in reading more blogs about a homegrown life, you can check out the weekly blog hop at Sustainable Eats or see the Take Back Urban Home-Steading(s) page.

Handmade Savory & Flavorful Vegetable Potstickers

2011-04-09T12:49:00.000-07:00

I love fresh homemade dumplings, especially when made with thick dough rather than super thin pre-made wrappers. Thankfully, potstickers are one of those things that seem difficult or complicated, but are actually easier than they look.

The dough is simply flour (1 cup) and warm water (3/4) cup, mixed together, allowed to rest, then kneaded for a minute with more flour. Break off thumb sized pieces of dough and use a rolling pin to roll it into a rough circle, one for each potsticker.

I usually make dumplings with ground chicken thighs, but I wanted to use my local vegetables to make a vegetarian dumpling. You could use any mushroom, any leafy green, and any allium (garlic, shallot, onion) to make these. These were very flavorful, and I did not miss the chicken at all.

In a Cuisinart, I roughly chopped a hand-full of Shiitake mushrooms with two shallots and a knob of ginger. The, cooked the mushroom-shallot-ginger mixture with a scant tablespoon of oil, over medium heat for 5 minutes. Using the same Cuisinart bowl, I pulsed a large handful of kale raab (leafy greens with little broccoli type buds) a few times and added it to the cooking mushrooms. Continue cooking for 5 minutes.

Again in the Cuisinart, I chopped a hand-full of cilantro, a tablespoon of sesame oil and a tablespoon of soy sauce. Remove the vegetables from the heat, stir in the cilantro mixture. Allow to cool. This is your filling.

I made a simple dough, as outlined above, rolling out each circle, adding a dollop of filling and folding into a half-moon shape.

To cook, heat a couple of teaspoons of oil in a large pan over medium-high heat. Add the dumplings, standing them up around the pan. After the bottoms begin to turn a golden color, add enough water to come up the sides of the dumpling part way (maybe a cup), cover and allow to steam until the water has evaporated.

Here is a very easy to follow tutorial, including video, from Hsiao-Ching Chou on the Chinese Soul Food website.

I didn't say that they were pretty - only delicious and full of flavor.
I served them for dinner with a bit of steamed fish and ruby chard.

SOLE Notes: Thanks to Spud.com for the organic shallots (WA), organic mushrooms (BC), organic kale raab (OR), organic cilantro (CA) and organic ginger (not even remotely local).

Urban Homesteader Happenings

2011-04-05T05:29:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Food-Soil-Thread's 4th weekly Urban Homesteader blog party!
Please feel free to add a link from your blog to the gallery below.

This is where the three words of my blog find a home together: eating whole foods, digging in urban soil, and stitching together a homemade life: I am an urban homesteader. Let's see what you've made, grown, cooked and sewn...

I have recently heard about the authors of a book, Urban Homesteading , due to be released this month, and their struggle with the family who has attempted to trademark the term "Urban Homestead" and "Urban Homesteading." The authors and their publishing company are being threatened with an injunction if they go forward with the release of their book.

This is a book that I plan on ordering right now! To me, being an urban homesteader is about producing what I need by my own hand when possible, in order to increase my family's healthy self-reliance and reduce our addiction to unnecessary consumerism. In the end, the hope is to be more connected with my community and my environment, so it is unfortunate that the very term Urban Homestead is creating such discord in the very community that it seeks to promote.

a basket from last year's garden

If you are interested in reading more blogs about a homegrown life, you can check out the weekly blog hop at Sustainable Eats or see the Take Back Urban Home-Steading(s) page.

A request: please link to recent posts on your own blog that are related to growing food, reducing unnecessary consumerism, sustainable living and good old fashioned homemaker skills. Can't wait to see what you have to share!

Indian Chicken Curry with Potatoes

2011-04-03T18:09:00.000-07:00

I first made this recipe with shrimp and peppers

Indian Chicken Curry
Serves 4

2 chicken breasts and 2 chicken thighs, skin and bones removed
2 tablespoons of oil
1 cup of coconut milk

1 red or yellow onion
1 can of diced tomatoes
12 small potatoes
2 inch knob of fresh ginger
6 garlic cloves, chopped

1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
2 tablespoons ground coriander
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon (or more) of chili powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt

Prepare the fresh vegetables: Cut the onion in half and then into thin slices. If the potatoes are golf ball sized, cut them in half, if they are smaller, leave them whole. Mince the ginger and garlic.

Pour in the coconut milk. You can start with half of the can, and add more as you like. I prefer more sauce and a sweet smooth flavor, so I used most of the can. If you want a spicier flavor, use less. Bring to a simmer. Taste again and adjust salt or coconut milk if necessary.

I used the remainder of the coconut milk to tone down the curry sauce for the baby to eat with rice. It is a good way to introduce little ones to more complex & spicy flavor profiles, while cooling it to child-friendly level.

SOLE (Sustainable Organic Local Ethical) Notes: Organic tinned tomatoes (CA), organic onions (WA) and organic potatoes (WA) are local and organic and brought to me thanks to Spud.com

Chasing down a sunny spring in California

2011-03-30T21:35:00.000-07:00

I do not think that it is coincidence that I take off for a trip to California each year around the same time. Just as winter comes to a soggy end the first hints of spring push up through the soil, I become impatient for sunshine and go off in search of it.

California poppies along a busy street corner

Bad ass city of Oakland

a soft Cowgirl Creamery cheese and spring radishes for snack

Farmer's market find - mild and tender boy choy blossoms for our dinner's salad

an afternoon spent at the San Francisco aquarium

Pier 39's barrels of salt water taffy

Before departure - last chance for an ice cream bar and suntan!

2011-03-29T05:31:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Food-Soil-Thread's...
3rd weekly Urban Homesteader blog party!

Please feel free to add a link from your blog to the gallery below.

a basket from last year's garden

I am not particularly technologically inclined. If you know how to make a badge for us to use for our weekly Urban Homesteader blog party, I would love to hear from you! If you are interested in reading more blogs about a homegrown life, you can check out the weekly blog hop at Sustainable Eats or see the Radical Homemakers website.

Locally sourced Carbonara pasta with wilted greens

2011-03-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

The warming weather of this week promises a wider variety of local foods coming soon, but for those eating S.O.L.E. (Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical) foods this winter, its not spring yet.

This week I had bacon, fresh linguine, eggs and braising greens to turn into a delicious dinner. Carbonara is one of the simplest pasta dishes to make and is so satisfying, but you do have to pay attention to a few small details to get it right. I like to make wilted greens to top my Carbonara and make the meal complete with a hearty vegetable.

Although I love the flavor and texture of fresh pasta, interestingly I found that I prefer the way dried spaghetti picks up the egg.

Carbonara with Wilted Greens
Serves 2

Heat a large cast iron pan over medium high heat. Roughly chop a 1/4 pound of bacon and add to the hot pan. Cook until the fat has rendered and the bacon is beginning to crisp.

Meanwhile, heat a large pot of salted water to boiling.

Add some hot water to the serving bowl that you will be using and allow the water to heat the bowl. Pour out the water. Crack two eggs into the warm bowl, whisk together, and allow to sit at room temperature while the rest of dinner is cooking.

Finely grate a 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese.

Remove the bacon to a small oven-safe dish and keep warm in a warm oven. Discard all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat. Wash 2 large hand fulls of wilted greens (any kinds of kale, chard or beet greens) and then add the greens to the bacon fat in the same pan that you cooked the bacon in. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and a dash of red pepper flakes if you like a bit of heat. Cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, when the water boils, add 1/2 pound of dried spaghetti and cook according to the package directions. Have a colander ready in the sink.

As soon as the pasta is cooked you will move very quickly to finish the dish. Time is of the essence because the heat from the pasta will cook the egg and you do not want to lose any heat from the hot pasta.

Moving quickly, drain the pasta and add immediately to the bowl of whisked eggs, folding the pasta into the egg a few times. Add the hot bacon and the grated cheese to the pasta, turning again a few times. If everything went well, your pasta will be coated in a slightly creamy sauce with bacon studded throughout. Congrats! Top with the wilted greens.

I used fresh pasta here and added the bacon on top, but I prefer dried pasta

If the egg looks like scrambled egg clinging to the spaghetti, then you probably used too much pasta or you got nervous and added it back to the pan and cooked the egg. It will still taste good anyway, and you can add heavy cream to make it wetter.

If the egg looks raw and runny, then you probably took your time draining the pasta and it wasn't hot enough, or your eggs were too cold. To save it, Heat up the bacon pan again and quickly dump the pasta in, give it a quick stir and take it back out again.

SOLE Notes: Hempler's nitrate-free bacon (WA), Steibrs' organic eggs (WA), fresh Cucina Fresca linguine (WA), organic braising greens (OR), all thanks to Spud.com

Making an earthquake disaster preparation kit

2011-03-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I started my 101 goal project. I left the last goal blank because I knew that I would think of something later that I would wish I had included. Last week, I was talking with a few friends around the dinner table, telling them that when I went to the movies recently, every single trailer played beforehand was a story of world annihilation. I get home and the news is full of stories of politic unrest spreading around the world. All of this turbulence in the world shows up in my dreams and worry sets in. A few days later, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan hit.

I was impressed with what I heard about Japan's level of preparation for natural disaster. Not just on a national scale, but on an individual level too. I realized that worry was a pretty useless reaction to watching countries crumble - politically and literally. Useless... unless I can turn the worry into motivation to prepare for possible disaster, even while I hope it doesn't ever come. So, I filled in that last goal on the list: make a disaster preparation kit.

I found help from a few websites:

the well organized and visually appealing 72 hours website, which outlines what you can do to prepare in each important category.

bucket and a bag: easy to store, grab and go

The Red Cross, which has excellent value on preparedness products as well as great information. You can make a donation to support their work while you are there too!

Lastly, Amazon.com was the easiest place to shop for such a wide array of things and saved me from running all around town to dozens of different stores. Most of what I bought did not require paying for shipping either.

I have decided to organize my kit in this way:

All my food stuff is in a 5 gallon bucket with a tight fighting lid and a handle. Not only will this prevent pests and water from damaging my supplies, but it makes it easy to carry and a sturdy bucket has its own uses. Home Depot sells these bright orange buckets and lids for under $4. It is recommended that you keep enough food and water for 3 days.

This is what I learned about food and water supplies:

One gallon per person, per day, is considered good preparation, but 16 ounces per person per day is the absolute minimum.
The water from your water heater can be used in an emergency.
Store low-sodium food, so as not to make your thirsty when you are low on water.
Things that last nearly forever in storage: instant coffee, tea, bouillon cubes, honey, rice and pasta.
Look at the expiration date on dried and canned food and be sure to choose things that will last for more than a year.
Choose foods that you eat normally. Not only will this be more comforting, but it will also make it easier to rotate out your emergency food every year or two with fresh supply, without allowing it to go to waste.

I keep a "mobile kitchen" in an old wine box that I use for camping. I have tidied the box and am now storing it with the disaster kit. It includes a cooking pot, butane stove with extra fuel, candles and matches in a mason jar with lid.

The remaining supplies will fit into a duffel bag with water sensitive items, like documents and the radio, in a dry bag. The duffel bag includes:

Red Cross self-powered radio with flashlight and cell phone charger with a spare charging cord for my cell phone and a list of important phone numbers (the list should include an out-of-state emergency contact!). I love this thing - it has the option to recharge by the solar panel on the top or the hand crank on the side.
Photocopies of our passports, children's birth certificates, and other important documents. It is also recommended that you keep some cash, in small bills, with your emergency supplies, as well as recent photos of each family member in case someone is missing.
A lanyard with emergency whistle and extra house key. For children, this can also include a laminated card with their name and emergency contact information.
A comprehensive first aid kit and face masks for poor air quality or illness.
Plastic sheeting, duct tape, rope, folding knife, work gloves, and multi-purpose tool
Gear for bad weather such as a warm sweater, thick socks, rain poncho. Also, a wool or micro-fleece blanket or packs of emergency blankets are important.
Hygiene safety items such as hand sanitizer, Dr. Bronners soap, toilet paper in a ziplock bag, water filter or water sanitizing drops.
Don't forget flashlights and extra batteries!

I have also made a very small version of the full kit, to keep in my car. I realized while putting it together that it will likely come in handy many times for much more routine "emergencies" like playground scratches, forgotten sunscreen, and depleted diaper supplies!

Lastly, I just bought two safety items for my house: a little wrench to keep next to the gas meter in the case that I need to turn off the gas at its source, and a new fire extinguisher.

If this feels overwhelming to you - take a step back. You have many of these things around your house already and many of us have a little extra cash from a tax return. Lastly, if you would rather not build your own disaster kit from scratch, you can always buy a pack from the Red Cross. They have unbeatable value on kits ranging in price from $10 to $70 and you can add your items as necessary.

An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure!

Urban homesteader blog party!

2011-03-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Food-Soil-Thread's second weekly Urban Homesteader blog party!
Please feel free to add a link from your blog to the gallery below.

a basket from last year's garden

Winding down the dark days of winter challenge

2011-03-19T23:37:00.000-07:00

Now that winter is coming to a close tonight, it doesn't seem so long and dark in reflection. But then, my disposition is much rosier once the sun doesn't start setting until after dinner.

At the start of winter, I took on the call to complete the weekly Dark Days of Winter challenge to eat one Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical (SOLE) meal every week and post about it, from mid November until mid April. The best thing about the challenge is that it made me think about the origins of all of my food. Checking to see where my groceries were grown has become habit and I have gained a greater appreciation for eating in season every day of the week.

Limiting myself to what is available locally in the winter has an Iron Chef quality to cooking that I quite like. Rather than deciding what I feel like eating and then buying the ingredients with no attention to season, cooking locally takes what is available and forces some creativity in the kitchen, although I have not been perfect by any measure.

Today was a lovely last day of winter - the sun was out, no coat was necessary, and the family puttered around the garden together all afternoon. Although I will miss the weekly Dark Days challenge, I can't say that I have any problem trading it in for eating from my garden.

On a sad note, I have recently heard that Thundering Hooves family farm has "ceased all operations." They are the meat supplier that Spud uses and I have enjoyed quite a few beef meals in the last few months. By chance, I learned the news while cooking a beef barley soup this week. The beef, of course, was from Thundering Hooves and the black barley was an heirloom grain given to me by Annette from Sustainable Eats. A delicious fair-well anyway.

SOLE Notes: ground beef from Thundering Hooves (WA), onion from Anderson Organics (WA), organic canned tomatoes from Muir Glen (CA), organic chicken broth, organic mushrooms (BC) all from Spud.com

Urban Homesteader happenings

2011-03-15T05:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Food-Soil-Thread's first weekly Urban Homesteader blog party!
Please feel free to add a link from your blog to the gallery below.

If you are interested in reading more about the history of "urban homesteading," I have rounded up a few links to share with you. Here, Marie writes about the many generations of rural-suburban-urban homesteaders in her family. Then there is the website of the Dervaes family, whose two decade project of turning their urban city lot into a prolific farm is impressive, but who have also created a lot of controversy by trying to trademark the term "urban homestead" even though the term precedes their work. You can read a short reference to the history of the term as well as a synopsis of the controversy here.

a basket from last year's garden

Are you an Urban Homesteader?

2011-03-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

Are you an Urban Homesteader?

If you fantasize about a few acres, but make do with your own slice of urban soil...
If you pretend the humm of the freeway is a river flowing just over the next hill...
If you would rather make something new than buy something new....

...then I welcome you to drop by every Tuesday to see what other urban homesteaders are doing and to share a link from your own blog if you have one.

This is where the three words of my blog find a home together: eating whole foods, digging in urban soil, and stitching together a homemade life: I am an urban homesteader. Let's see what you've made, grown, cooked and sewn...

Starting next week you will find a Linky Tool here every Tuesday for you to link your blog to the week's Urban Homesteader blog party! Come back and browse the gallery of links to see what your fellow Urban Homesteader is up to - see you on Tuesday!

I am not particularly technologically inclined. If you know how to make a badge for us to use for our weekly Urban Homesteader link-up party, I would love to hear from you!

SOLE Food: handmade Gnocchi for dinner

2011-03-09T14:34:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about my soft little gnocchi clouds that I made with Chef Lisa last week. I am a little scared to make them myself, but one only learns through practice. I have been looking for more recipes that use potatoes and eggs, since they are easy SOLE (Sustainable, Organic, Local, Ethical) ingredients to find in the winter, so gnocchi will work perfectly.

I have invited a few friends over for dinner and plan to serve these tonight with a very simple tomato and cream sauce. My guests are bringing the salad, the dessert and the wine, so I can concentrate on the gnocchi. My son will be ~~pulling on my leg, opening the cupboards, and pouring his juice on the floor and otherwise~~ helping me, so I have that on my side.

The other chef in the hat of Seattle

SOLE Notes: organic potatoes (WA), cage free eggs (WA), organic tinned tomatoes (CA), organic shallots (WA), organic half & half (WA) for my gnocchi dinner are from Spud.com

Outlook Inn on Orcas Island

2011-03-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

After a treacherous icy drive up I-5 and then a much calmer rainy ferry ride, complete with impromptu performance by Bellingham bluegrass band Pole Cat, we arrived on Orcas Island. A meandering road brought us up one side of the horseshoe shaped island, through fields of woolly sheep, frozen ponds and sleeping vegetable gardens, dropping us off in the town of Eastsound at the crux of the island.

When we pulled into the parking lot of the inn, I had a moment of worry. Eyeing the wind battered annex buildings, it reminded me of a slightly better version of many of the thousands of beach front motels that line the Pacific Coast. It brings to mind my mom's favorite story about me as a pudgy three-year-old: Staying the night at a beach front motel during one of many trips between Seattle and Berkley, I noticed the bathroom's crevices lined with mildew, and announced to my parents, "Now I know the difference between a Motel and a Hotel: In the motel, the bathrooms are just a liiiiiiiitle bit dirty."

A few minutes later, I was swiping the key card and stepping into a beautiful suite overlooking the water. Remodeled in 2007, this is my kind of luxury room - upscale without frill, romantic but not sappy. Any doubt I had melted as I turned on the fire, took in the view and drew a bath in the jetted tub.

Can you see out of the window? That's the water!

Perched atop the water, at the entrance to town, the Inn is only one block away from Allium on Orcas, the top notch restaurant mentioned this year in the New York Times. Allium's chef and owner, Lisa Nakamura, is in the process of opening the doors downstairs for Lily, a small spot selling locally made ice cream, hot cups of clam chowder, fresh rolled sushi, and gift baskets of local products.

If the location, the beautiful rooms, and the chance to eat at Chef Lisa's restaurant is not enough to entice you, maybe a special discount will tip the scale? The owner of Outlook Inn just announced the best deal on the island - $150 for one night stay at the Inn and a $100 credit in the on-site restaurant, New Leaf Cafe. A second night can be added for another $100. You must book your room by Tuesday night - March 8th at 8pm! The deal applies to reservations from now until May 20th, 2011. The cafe is open Thursday through Monday, and I recommend their halibut chowder! You can reserve your room by calling 1-888-OUTLOOK.

If you want a glimpse of what you will be getting on a sunny spring day, sitting on the balcony of Allium and eating a leisurely lunch, you really should check out Kelly Cline's photos. It was her blog post that first made me obsessed with the need to get out to the island to eat at Allium. Enjoy the trip!

a lesson from Allium: gnocchi from Orcas Island

2011-03-02T08:32:00.000-08:00

The snow dusted coast of the San Juans

Another blogger told me once that the reason she blogs is because it gives her access to experiences that she would not otherwise have. That really resonated with me. Life is all about savoring and collecting experiences. A blog is just a very public way of declaring my interests and sharing my experiences with others. By sharing myself in this way, I am sometimes invited to see (and taste) things that I otherwise may never have had the chance.

A crossword and a ferry ride to really get away

I have written here before about the friendly and generous Chef Lisa Nakamura, who often answers my cooking questions for me on twitter and inspired my raw beet and roasted balsamic vegetable salad post last month. She is the chef and owner of the new Allium on Orcas restaurant, perched alongside a cove on Orcas Island in the San Juans. Open less than a year, Allium has already been mentioned in the New York Times as one of the places to go in 2011. A woman who has found her passion, you can find her in the kitchen every single day that the restaurant is open, cooking for island locals and tourists alike.

Allium's brunch fresh out of the oven

I added visiting Lisa's restaurant to my list of 101 goals and my husband and I decided to make the one-night trip our first vacation without the baby (another goal of mine). Lisa saw that I had also listed "learn to make perfect gnocchi" to my goal list and she very generously offered to teach me her method. She offers a daily gnocchi on her menu and I had heard about how good they were. When I told her the date that I would be out on the island, she told me to knock on the back kitchen door in the morning for my lesson. I almost skipped all the way there in the morning!

opening soon: Lisa's new venture will sell local ice cream and gift baskets

I am not going to give you a verbatim recipe here, lest my description fails you and you think the fault is with the Chef. The thing about gnocchi is that they are almost always chewy and dense, when they should be like warm, delicate clouds. Watching Lisa, I realized I had been doing every step wrong. I had been making a kind of mashed potato/pasta dumpling hybrid. Here is what Lisa does differently:

When I arrived, Lisa was pulling hot baked potatoes from the oven. "Mashed potatoes are too wet for gnocchi," she says, adding that they key to the potatoes is working them when they are still piping hot.
She uses egg yolks only - discard the whites - "one yolk per potato, plus one for good luck."
All that flour that I was using? She uses a fraction of what most recipes call for.
The "kneading" of the dough was really just a quick and light folding of the dough a few times.

From here, her process begins to resemble what I have seen in other recipes: we rolled out long snakes of dough, cut them into pieces and rolled the pieces into little balls. Using the back of a fork, Lisa rolls the gnocchi down the tines to create ridges that will help hold the sauce later.

I was shocked when the gnocchi bobbed to the surface of the simmering water within a minute of being added to the pot. My former gnocchi took forever to cook and these barely warmed up before they were done and ready to be fished out with a slotted spoon.

Lisa has a bowl of ice water ready to halt the cooking process. She says that at this point, the drained gnocchi can be frozen for later use. If you are ready to eat them right away, you can begin making a pan sauce. Lisa began with oil and white wine, adding the gnocchi, then bacon, mushrooms, reduced chicken stock and cream.

rolling the gnocchi to create ridges

We chatted while the gnocchi simmered away for a few minutes and then I was brought out to the empty early morning dining room, to watch the view of diving seabirds and choppy waters and eat my perfect bowl of gnocchi.

into a hot pan and ready to build a sauce

I think it was the best breakfast I have ever had. It was a meal of experiences - beautiful flavors made with someone I was honored to be cooking with, enjoyed while taking in a dramatic view of winter forest meeting stormy sea, and with the knowledge that my sweet husband would be waking soon and waiting for me to return to our perch above town.

Bon Appetite and happy travels...

San Juan Islands in Winter

2011-02-27T23:06:00.000-08:00

How long does it take to rejuvenate two tired parents?

Just one night, as it turns out.

With a cozy evening, a blustery walk to a lovely dinner.

It doesn't matter that it was stormy and cold. All the better for cuddling.

Thank you Orcas Island.

Gingered Beets with Avocado

2011-02-21T18:07:00.000-08:00

I've written many times about beets on this blog. They are a wonderful vegetable and under appreciated. Their sweet earthy flavor pairs well with strong ingredients. Some of my favorite combinations include blue cheese, feta cheese, ginger, balsamic vinegar, and other assertive flavors.

This recipe is for beet aficionados and the beet averse alike. I have served this to a group of food bloggers and to a group who couldn't tell you what a "foodie" is, and both groups praised the recipe. I first ate this on a visit to Alice Water's Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. If you are weary of beets, you will be surprised by how much you enjoy this simple trio of flavors: the sweet beets, the bite of the ginger, and the salty richness of the avocado.

Gingered Beets with Avocado

4 medium sized beets

2 avocados

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger

salt

Place the grated ginger in a bowl and cover with the oil. Allow to rest.

Cook the beets by either boiling them or roasting them. Chez Panisse roasted their beets drizzled in oil, with half an orange added to the pan, and covered with foil. The beets are ready when you can pierce them with a fork. This will take about 45 to 60 minutes, depending on the size of the beets. When they are cool enough to touch, slip the skins off. They will slip off easily. I do this quickly and under a trickle of water, because the beets will stain your skin.

Toss the beets with the ginger oil.

When you are ready to serve, cut the avocado and sprinkle with a bit of salt. Arrange the avocado and beets together on individual plates. If you toss everything together, the beets will stain the avocados and it won't look as nice. Enjoy!

Thanks to Spud.com for the lovely Washington grown organic beets.

When it's better from a tin can

2011-02-18T14:40:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I can't tell if my ideas are brilliant or brilliantly awful. Take my hair for example, soon I plan on looking super hot with either a perm or bangs. I haven't decided which yet. If it turns out to be one of my worst ideas ever, just smile knowingly when you next see me and I am wearing a paper bag on my head.

A recent attempt at Tuna Noodle Casserole is another example of ideas that can either go really well or really poor. I had a bag of shallots and crimini and shiitaki mushrooms in my fridgefrom Spud, and had the idea to make a cream of mushroom soup from scratch, which I would then use to make the casserole.

All started well. I pulsed the mushrooms and a shallot in the food processor and then cooked it down with butter, thyme, wine and fresh cracked pepper. After the flavors concentrated, I added fresh organic whole milk, brought everything up to a low simmer and gave a taste. Hmmmm. Very good.

I boiled the wide egg noodles and opened a can of albacore packed in olive oil. I grated some cheese and turned on the oven. This is where I began to give pause. Does tuna go well with mushrooms and cheddar cheese? Huh. This is a recipe I have made and loved. I usually use a canned soup - Amy's organic cream of mushroom. This casserole is creamy, comforting, cheesy on top. Yeah, that sounds good. Carry on!

I mixed the soup with the drained noodles and folded in the tuna. I added some chopped asparagus for some green. I cracked some extra pepper and sneaked in some smoked salt. I topped it all with the cheese and slid it into the oven.

When I pulled it out of the oven 20 minutes later, the look of melted cheese over creamy noodles held so much promise. I served myself a generous helping and sat down to eat. Hm. This wasn't exactly how I remembered it. Homemade cream of mushroom is really.... mushroomy. I chewed slower. I paused before my next bite.

Am I enjoying this?

I'm not sure.

Well, carry on! I finished the bowl.

A few minutes later, I'm not so sure my belly feels really good.

Nope, my belly definitely does not feel good.

Reflecting on the craziness of mixing creamy mushroom soup, tuna fish and cheddar cheese together, I hope this doesn't ruin a good casserole for me forever.

SOLE Notes: Thanks to Spud.com for the good parts of my meal - the local organic mushrooms, shallots and Fresh Breeze milk!

Winter Vegetables

2011-02-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

Life has been a bit busy around here. I am enjoying cooking with local organic winter ingredients, but somewhere between the cooking and bedtime, many meals that were meant for the blog have not made it through all the necessary steps.

Beautiful recipes who will never get their 15 minutes of internet fame...

In lieu of detailed recipes and blog posts, here is a recap of what I have been up to lately...

I have a bag of Bob's Redmill lentils (grown in Washington) that I have been playing around with. Local! Cheap! Protein and fiber! I made so-so soup one day and then a very good lentil dip the next day. The lentil puree dip recipe came from Gluten Free Girl's cookbook. Unfortunately, lentils are not very photogenic, but I asked her to show me her best side.

One of my favorite food-porn cookbooks is "Fresh" by Michele Cranston. Her recipes are simple but creative and the photos are gorgeous! This week, I have been using local organic apples and pears to play around with different versions of Michele's apple and nut crumble cake.

Winter delivery

I also made vegetable-heavy meat pies using grated parsnip, potato and onion to flavor the Thundering Hooves ground beef and create a cohesive filling. You can find my Nigerian style meat pie recipe here. If you have never made hand-held pies before, you can greatly reduce the work involved by using a pre-made roll of pie dough from the grocery store. They made a very "handy" lunch on the go (I can't help myself.)

This parsnip loves me, he really really loves me.

SOLE Notes: Thanks to Spud.com for the local and organic parsnips, beets, shallots, leeks, apples, pears, ground beef, lentils, onions, milk and butter. I love my weekly delivery!

Valentines Day Dinner and a Poem

2011-02-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

I interviewed a florist yesterday for an article that I was writing about Valentines Day. She has had a front row seat to other's romantic plans for the last 16 years. She says that she gives men a pat on the back for buying flowers but doesn't let them off the hook there. "Do you know what you are making for dinner?" she asks,"Have you bought the wine and picked out a couple lines of poetry? Its about the whole ambiance."

I commissioned a poem for my husband last year, from a woman sitting on a chair in a small town square, with a typewriter on her lap. I told her my topic - the coming wedding anniversary to my loving husband who helped me create our beautiful son - and she began pecking away at the keys. "Should I read it to you?" she asked. When she read it, I cried. A perfect anniversary gift.

If you need some poetry of your own, Jacquline Suskin will type out your own custom poem for those who help support her book tour. I hope she comes up to Seattle and if she does I will be sure to tell you. In the meantime, get your poem here.

I made an early Valentine's Day dinner this week - all pinks and reds - without a fake dye in sight. My sister in law taught me to make a coconut shrimp rice, tinted pink with some minced tomatoes. I cooked some ruby chard to serve alongside. Very nice!

SOLE Food: Potato Leek Soup

2011-02-07T18:58:00.000-08:00

This potato leek soup is one of those simple recipes that takes just a few ingredients and turns it into something greater than the sum of its parts. It makes a perfect SOLE (Sustainable Organic Local Ethical) meal because local & organic potatoes and leeks are both readily available during the winter and because this soup can be made using my frugal-stock method.

You can, of course, use any vegetable or chicken stock you have on hand to make this soup. If you are frugal minded though, I encourage you to start a stock-bag in your freezer. You will be surprised how quickly vegetable ends, peels, and wilted bits will fill up a gallon bag kept in the freezer. Because no one in my house in a vegetarian, I add chicken wing tips, backs and bones to the bag for extra flavor.

What I like best about this freezer-stock method is that is sustainable and ethical at its core, for what is better than reducing waste and using what you already have?

When the bag is full of tasty bits - onions, garlic, leeks, carrots, kale, parsley, celery, fresh herbs, chicken backs - pour it into a large pot (I don't bother defrosting first), cover with just enough water that everything is submerged. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat and simmer for at least 30 to 45 minutes. Add salt near the end, otherwise it may become too salty as it reduces from simmering.

Potato Leek Soup

Serves 4

2 cups of diced potato

2 cups of diced leeks

1 tablespoon of butter or oil

4 cups of vegetable or chicken stock

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

salt to taste

optional: 1/2 cup of whole milk

Cook the diced potato and leeks in the butter, in a medium sized pot over medium heat. After about 5 minutes, add the black pepper and then the stock. Increase the heat to medium-high and bring the soup to a simmer. Simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the potato pieces are soft enough to break up easily. Taste the soup and add salt to taste.

Use the back of a wooden spoon, or a potato masher, to break up most of the potatoes into the broth, while still leaving some pieces in the soup. Add the milk if you want a creamier soup, and bring back up to temperature before serving.

SOLE notes: The Washington grown organic potatoes and leeks were sent to my doorstep by Spud.com You can read more about my weekly SOLE meals here.

In quilting news...

My friend Meghan made this beautiful quilt for a contest recently. It's a great illustration of modern quilting: allowing a level of creativity with fabric that is not stifled by traditional patterns or rules.

Meaghan is a master at working with solid colors, while I rely on the ease of matching fabrics that have lots of pattern and colors! In this quilt, the color stip pieces are sewn on to a background piece and have loose edges, which you can see if you look carefully at the first photo. The leaves are layered on top of the background strips.

Super Bowl party fare, how to do local and organic on the cheap!

2011-02-02T09:20:00.000-08:00

Getting ready for a party this weekend? You don't have to throw your values out of the window just because guests are coming and you are on a budget.

I'll admit that loving food, and caring about where it comes from and how it was produced, is a trend. As soon as something moves from fringe to trend, there will be haters. There are plenty of people who will put their corn dog down long enough to wipe the grease from their lips and sneer at the "foodies" and their stupid farmers markets, but that doesn't mean food continuousness is not a great thing.

At their worse, foodies can be faulted for being esoteric, expensive and snobby - but we needn't be. The super bowl is just around the corner and I think I can put together a menu that:

uses mostly SOLE ingredients - Sustainable, Organic, Local and Ethical
is inexpensive - under $4 per person!
can be mostly sourced locally EVEN in the winter
appeals to a dozen friends who are busy swigging beer and screaming at the TV!

Deviled Eggs

They're cheap and easy and everyone loves them.

approx $5

1 dozen local organic eggs

1/4 cup of mayonnaise (I didn't say this would be perfect, get over it)

2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard or 1 teaspoon mustard powder

dash of salt and pepper

Place the eggs in a pot of cold salted water. Bring to a boil, boil for 6 minutes. Drain, then rinse under cold water so that they will peel easily.

Peel eggs, slice in half, pop the yolk out and into a bowl. Place the egg whites on a serving platter.

Whip up the egg yolks with the mayo, mustard, salt and pepper. Put the yolk-mayo mixture into a zip-lock bag. Use the bag to pipe the mixture: Cut the tip off of the corner of the zip lock bag and then squeeze the mixture out into each egg white.

Chicken Wings

They're hot and spicy and can be made with local chicken (organic if possible)

approx $12

4 pounds of chicken wings

salt, pepper, powdered garlic and chili powder

Follow this simple recipe from Lovely Lanvin for easy chicken wings, replacing the Japanese flavoring with a dash of chili powder, black pepper and garlic powder (unless you already happen to own the special ingredient!).

Emerald City Salad

A little green from the best green grocer in the northwest - PCC's deli salad.
approx $15

This salad normally includes bell peppers, but in the winter you can leave them out since they are most likely imported during this time.

1 cup uncooked organic wild rice (Lundburg is grown in California)
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 bunch organic kale
1/2 bunch organic chard
1/2 of a fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1/2 cup chopped parsley

For the full recipe, follow this link to PCC's recipe page.

Sweet Potato Fries with savory yogurt dip
Every party needs something to dip into, right?
approx $8

4 local organic sweet potatoes

4 local organic potatoes

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoon curry powder

salt and pepper

1 cup plain local organic yogurt

1/2 cup tahini (ground sesame seeds)

2 cloves minced local organic garlic

salt and pepper

Slice the potatoes and sweet potatoes into long wedges, about six "fries" per potato. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.Toss the fries with the olive oil, curry powder, and salt and pepper. Place the regular potatoes on a baking sheet and place in the oven for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, turn the potatoes and add the sweet potatoes. Cook an additional 15 minutes. Turn again and check them for doneness.

While the fries are roasting, make your dip. Simply whisk together the yogurt, tahini and minced garlic. I like the tang of Nancy's yogurt. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and taste. Add more salt and pepper if necessary. If the dip seems too thick (depending on the thickness of your yogurt and tahini), you can add a drizzle of olive oil to thin it out a bit.

SOLE Supper: Meatloaf

2011-01-30T12:51:00.000-08:00

Meatloaf is a great winter dinner - hearty and filling and easily made with mostly local ingredients. Using pasture raised beef and pork fom Thunderinng Hooves (and delivered by Spud.com) I gathered the vegetables I had (I didn't have kale, but I usually include leafy greens) and cooked my sister in law her first ever meatloaf!

SOLE Meatloaf

chock-full with hidden vegetables!

Serves 6

1 pound of ground beef

1/2 pound ground pork sausage

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 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 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

Dice your onion, carrots, celery, and mushrooms into a very small dice (or use the grating disk to grate them finely in a food processor). 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.

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 the middle 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, but I prefer to eat my meatloaf between two slices of good crusty bread and a dollop of mayonnaise!

SOLE notes: pasture raised beef and ground pork from Thundering Hooves (Walla Walla, WA), organic onions from Anderson Organics (Othello, WA), organic mushrooms (British Columbia), organic milk from Fresh Breeze (WA), locally made organic bread, all from Spud.com. Organic celery and carrots from origins unknown (my mom's fridge!)

Indian Shrimp Curry

2011-01-27T08:43:00.000-08:00

Quietly, and without fanfare or a camera, a friend of mine is cooking a gourmet dinner tonight. She will grind her spices by hand and cook 4 or 5 coordinated dishes, all with a child running circles around her legs, and she doesn't even have a blog to gush about whatever she has made. This is just good food - splendid and humble at the same time.

I have begging this friend to come to my house and show me how to make her shrimp curry. She has told me how to make it, and I have tried, but my version wasn't half as good. Sometimes you really have to see - and touch, and smell, and taste- something, in order to recreate it.

This week, she squeezed me in between work, errands, prenatal appointments, and taking care of the kiddo. She arrived with a grocery bag of spices and I provided the shrimp. She even let me hover around, making her measure what she normally would eyeball, and snapping photos while she chopped and stirred.

Indian Shrimp Curry
Serves 4 to 6

2 pounds of raw medium-sized prawns (shrimp), peeled
1/4 cup oil
1 can of coconut milk

1 small red onion
2 jalapeño peppers
3 Roma tomatoes
2 inch knob of fresh ginger
4 garlic cloves

1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
2 tablespoons ground coriander
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon cumin
2 teaspoons paprika
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt

Prepare the fresh vegetables: Cut the onion in half and then into thin slices. Roughly chop the tomatoes and peppers. Mince the ginger and garlic.

Heat the oil in a large, deep saute pan, over medium-high heat. Add the mustard seeds to the oil. Be ready with a lid - they will pop!

When you hear them popping like popcorn, add the onion and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until the onion begins to brown. Add the peppers, ginger and garlic and cook for a minute longer.

Add the spices to the pan, stirring to coat the vegetables. Cook for two minutes, scrapping the bottom of the pan so that it doesn't burn. Add the tomatoes, cooking for another minute, stirring to coat with the spices.

Add the prawns to the pan. Cook, stirring to coat with spices. Continue to cook for about 4 or 5 minutes. Salt the prawns and taste for doneness and the correct amount of salt.

Pour in the coconut milk. You can start with half of the can, and add more as you like. I prefer more sauce and a sweet smooth flavor, so I used most of the can. If you want a spicier flavor, use less. Bring to a simmer. Taste again and adjust salt or coconut milk if necessary.

Serve with steamed rice or warm flat bread. I made a grated carrot and savoy cabbage salad to accompany. The sweetness of the carrots and the earthy spice of the curry were a nice team.

(By the way - I used the remainder of the coconut milk to tone down the curry sauce for the baby to eat with rice. It is a good way to introduce little ones to more complex & spicy flavor profiles, while cooling it to child-friendly level.)

Easy, Creamy, Smoked Salmon Pasta

2011-01-24T08:10:00.000-08:00

Last week, I posted a "master recipe" for creamy pasta dishes. The master recipe can be easily adapted to many different seasonal flavors. Using my master recipe will change your mind if you think that creamy pastas have to be complicated to make. This is weeknight fare (even with a baby on the hip).

For the master recipe, one only needs a fat, an aromatic, a main ingredient, some white wine (which is optional), and cream. You can add a grated cheese or a fresh herb as an additional flavor component if you would like.

Last week I made a mushroom fettuccine. This week, I made a creamy smoked salmon pasta using the same master recipe. Here is how the master recipe worked with salmon:

Creamy Smoked Salmon Pasta with Fennel

Serves 2 to 3 people

8 ounces of fresh pasta

1/4 cup of butter (the fat)

1/4 cup minced shallots (the aromatic)

1 fennel bulb, chopped (another aromatic)

6 ounces of smoked salmon (the main ingredient)

1/4 cup white wine (um... the white wine)

1/3 cup of half and half (the cream)

Put a large pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta. Use plenty of water when cooking fresh pasta - there is extra flour on the noodles to keep them from sticking together and you don't want your cooking water to become sludgy.

sliced fennel bulb in the pan

Melt the butter in a large skillet and cook the shallots and fennel bulb slices, over medium heat until they begin to become soft, about 5 minutes. Add the white wine and continue to cook until the wine is reduced to a couple of tablespoons, about another 8 minutes.

Once the fennel looks done, add the pasta to the boiling water. Fresh pasta will only take a few minutes to cook - so read the package instructions beforehand. When you have added the pasta to the water, add the smoked salmon and cream to the fennel and shallots. By the time the pasta is done, the cream will be heated through - don't boil the cream! Add salt and pepper to taste.

Drain the pasta and add to the pan of cream and salmon. Toss well to coat. Turn off the heat and serve the pasta immediately. Fresh pasta waits for no one!

SOLE Notes: organic fennel, organic half and half from Fresh Breeze (WA), organic shallots (WA), wild Smoked Salmon (Seattle), fresh pasta from Cucina Fresca (Seattle, WA). These ingredients supplied by sponsor Spud.com.

To learn more about my Sustainable Organic Local and Ethical winter meals, you can see this post.

SOLE Supper: Mushroom and Cream Fettuccine

2011-01-17T12:53:00.000-08:00

When I think of a cream sauce, I think of something that is thick and gloppy and sounds difficult. But really, it doesn't have to be complicated. I have made a few creamy pasta dishes lately - none of which have taken more than one hand and a split attention to make.

As a master recipe, one only needs a fat, an aromatic, a main ingredient, some white wine (which is optional), and cream. You can add a grated cheese or a fresh herb as an additional flavor component if you would like. This week I made a mushroom fettuccine. Next week, I will be making a creamy smoked salmon pasta using the same master recipe and will post it for you. Here is how the master recipe worked with mushrooms:

Mushroom and Cream Fettuccine

8 ounces of fresh fettuccine

1/4 cup of butter (the fat)

1/4 cup minced shallots (the aromatic)

8 ounces of mixed mushrooms (the main ingredient)

1/4 cup white wine (um... the white wine)

1/3 cup of half and half (the cream)

1 ounce of grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Melt the butter in a large skillet and cook the shallots over medium heat until the begin to turn soft. Slice the mushrooms thinly, I recommend using Crimini mushrooms with a small amount of a second mushroom like Chantrelles. Add the mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the white wine and continue to cook until the mushrooms are soft and the wine is reduced, about another 8 minutes.

Once the mushrooms look done, add the pasta to the boiling water. Fresh pasta will only take a few minutes to cook - so read the package beforehand. When you have added the pasta to the water, add the cream to the mushrooms. Add salt and pepper to taste. By the time the pasta is done, the cream will be heated through - don't boil the cream!

Drain the pasta and add to the pan of cream and mushrooms. Toss well to coat. Turn off the heat and serve the pasta immediately. Fresh pasta waits for no one! Top each serving of pasta with a the cheese.

Because I am a food nerd, I had a little packet of local truffle salt that I picked up at the Portland farmers market earlier this year. I thought this mushroom pasta would be perfect for the salt, so each bowl got a little sprinkle at the end.

Serves 2 - 3 people

SOLE Notes: butter from Golden Glen (Bow, WA), half and half from Golden Glen (Bow, WA), organic shallots (WA), Crimini mushrooms (Abbotsford, BC), fresh pasta from Cucina Fresca (Seattle, WA). These ingredients supplied by sponsor Spud.com.

The wine and cheese were not local - but I just picked up a block of Parm from Golden Glen and am excited to use it soon! To learn more about my Sustainable Organic Local and Ethical winter meals, you can see this post.

Sausage giveaway over here!

2011-01-17T08:15:00.000-08:00

I am feeling lucky!

I entered a few different contests in the last month, and won about half of them! I am pretty sure at this point that an investment of $5 in lotto tickets just might be in order.

First, I entered my super easy, amazingly good, three-ingredient sausage gravy in Isernio's recipe contest and won a box of sausages - delivered to my front door! Then I entered my West African chicken stew recipe is Herban Feasts recipe contest and won a cookbook and dinner out at Fresh Bistro! Then I walked into Bartell Drugs, in subfreezing weather, wearing only a pair of disposable flip flops (I had just treated myself to a pedicure), and won a pair of massaging sandals for looking like a crazy lady without shoes. Then (!) I won a copy of a book about Seattle business women from Keren A.K.A. Frantic Foodie. Such luck!

I have enjoyed all of this luck (and edible things) so much that I wanted to share some of it with you. Isernio's Sausage has offered, at my request, to share a second box of chicken sausage rolls with one of my readers! Their chicken breakfast sausage is just as savory and delicious as any pork sausage, but without so much fat. The box of sausage rolls that were sent to my house didn't last long.

Leave a comment below to throw your name in the hat. For another chance to win, "like" the Isernio's Facebook page, or Food.Soil.Thread's Facebook page, and leave comments saying that you did.

I will randomly pick a winner by Monday, Janurary 24th, 2011 and Isernio's will send a freezer box with each of their varieties of chicken sausage rolls right to the winner's door!

Good luck!

Clams and Mussels in Chipotle Lime Coconut Milk

2011-01-13T12:40:00.000-08:00

My mom requested a bowl of shellfish in a "chipotle lime coconut cream." She didn't provide a recipe, and I can assure you that she has never made this herself, so I assume that she read it on a menu. Ok. I can do something like that.

It turned out to be really good. Even after the family left the table - I kept digging through the pot for more clams. Then my brother got jealous and came to join me.

Clams and Mussels in Chipotle Lime Coconut Milk
Serves 5-6

2 pounds each of live clams and mussels
1 quarter of a red onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 dried chipotle pepper
1 quarter of a lime
1 teaspoon of fish sauce
about 2/3 of a can of coconut milk
1/4 cup of white wine
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Prepare the shellfish as follows: Scrub any mud off of the shells, pull the "beards" off of the mussels, then soak the clams and mussels in a bowl of water sprinkled with a tablespoon of cornmeal.

While the shellfish is soaking, soak the dried chipotle pepper in a cup of hot water. Weight it down with another cup so that it stays submerged.

Meanwhile, combine the onion, garlic, juice from the quartered lime, fish sauce, coconut milk and wine in a large pot. Heat over medium heat to a simmer. Simmer for about 5 minutes. Chop the chipotle and add to the pot.

I cook the clams and mussels separately. Add one variety to the pot (it doesn't matter if you cook the clams or mussels first) and cover. Turn the heat to medium-high. Cook until they shellfish open. Remove the open shells to a large bowl, using a slotted spoon. Discard any that did not open. Add the second variety to the pot and repeat the process - cooking covered until they open.

Combine the clams and mussels in the pot again with the cooking liquid. Stir in the cilantro. Serve immediately, with fresh bread to soak up the spicy juices.

101 things to do in 1001 days

2011-01-11T11:01:00.000-08:00

I have been inspired. I read another blogger's list of 101 goals that she plans on completing within 1001 days. Its called the Day Zero Project. I love to set "intentions" for myself. Resolutions sound so difficult - to resolve yourself to make something happen and then to feel bad when you fail. But an intention is a turning towards, a laying of the way, an inspiration for the heart.

I am easily inspired. Sometimes my husband has to remind me that another new project may not be the best idea at the moment. In fact, in 2010, four of my intentions involved ending commitments and saying 'no' to new ones.

When I told a friend of mine about the Day Zero Project, she wasn't surprised. "You are the most goal orientated person I've ever met," she said. She's right. I love new ideas, new experiences, new inspiration. So, here goes it! My 101 intentions for the next 1001 days.

kill, clean and eat a chicken
learn to bake a great baguette
get rid of the Christmas tree before the tree recycling program is over
eat xiao long bao dumplings
learn to make Edith's won tons
milk a cow (again)
go crabbing
catch a salmon
visit Goldmeyer hot springs
go on a girls retreat weekend
act as a staigaire at a 5 star restaurant
go to the circus
regularly attend a quilting group
see a baby be born
host a tweetup
take a food photography class
visit Salt Springs Island
eat primarily from from my garden for one month
bind my three unfinished quilt
Bla blhjhkjhkhkhka blab la bla
go on a family walk together twice a month
reflect on gratitude every night for 30 nights
Jog for one mile without resting
do 3 chin-ups in a row
eat at the Herbfarm
host a charity dinner
acquire a mircoplane
fluidly play Amazing Grace on the fiddle
submit to the Sun Magazine's 'readers write' section every month for a year
learn to make perfect gnocci
keep a my-day-in-6-words journal for a year
learn 6 'signature' dishes from the cook who makes it
post a photo a month for Shutter Sisters for 6 months
grow the traffic on my blog by ten fold
see my writing in print - on real paper - in a national format at least twice
take my son to visit his aunties for a sleep-over
switch the posts on my earrings to gold so that I can wear them again (allergy!)
make dinner for a single mom with a new baby
start a KIVA account
take a girl's night out at least once a month
get the airbags replaced in my car
take a daily vitamin
own a meyer lemon tree
make corned beef from scratch (including the brine)
get a replacement head and start using my sonicare toothbrush again
Try dim sum at T and T Seafood restaurant
visit Allium on Orcas restaurant
learn to make a pie from Kate McDermott
complete my professional licensing
get my second (and last) tattoo
start a business
teach my son at least 10 signs (ASL)
learn to use my dslr on manual settings
sunbathe on a secluded beach
write a will
become comfortable with the dsmIV
ride the entire Burke Gilman trail on my bike
learn to make cheese
start a movement
participate in a scavenger hunt
go geocaching
pick berries
purchase a quarter of a locally raised cow
float down a river on an innertube
learn to make light and fluffy Akara (black eyed pea fritters)
Bla bla blab la bla
finish an optical illusion quilt
make gallons of pesto (to last the winter) from my own basil
grow enough potatoes to store for winter
grow garlic for the first time
replace the airbags in my car
grow purple sprouting broccoli
teach my son to swim
carve a wood-block stamp
teach my son to send thank you cards
soften my heart towards a reconciliation
Bla bla blhjhabhjhjhjhj la bla
Bla bla blab lahjjk bla
organize my digital photos
get printed photo albums up to date
send my Auntie a card for every major holiday
write a personal manifesto
read more
get a professional family portrait done
make a monthly entry in my baby's (and all future babies') baby book
smoke something (fish, salt...)
visit at least 6 food producers to see how its done
complete the dark days of winter SOLE food challenge
set up a sewing space at home
donate or consign 20% of the clothing in my closet
Meet more bloggers, writers, chefs and food lovers
Find more enjoyable, paid, writing opportunities
get recordings of my dad singing his best songs
eat pizza at Delancey
teach a class
get a personal cosmetic lesson
do a round-brush hair lesson
go clamming
*insert great goal I think of after hitting publish*
put aside $10 for each complete goal (to spend on a little trip!)
donate $10 for each incomplete goal

* If the goal is blacked out, it means that the husband has censored it for its personal nature.

I'll be posting the more interesting aspects of my progress on a regular basis. You can follow my progress my clicking on the 101 goals button under the header at the top of this blog. If you are also doing 101 goals - I would love to read your list too!

Skirt steak with raw beet and balsamic roasted vegetable salad

2011-01-08T18:40:00.000-08:00

I am a people person. I love meeting new people and making friends, although sometimes I forget to smile and come across as more serious than I actually am. Every once in awhile, I catch a reflection of myself in a store window and think, "Why is that mean lady glaring at me?" but then realize, oops, that's me. Fortunately, on Twitter, no one can see my facial expression and I make "friends" easily. Of course, in the world of Twitter, say one thing wrong and your "friends" will hit the bloody "unfollow" button and drop you like last week's food trend.

Of all of the random people that I follow on Twitter, there are a few people who really stand out. People who make great company, people who make me laugh aloud, people who are always generous with their advice. Lisa Nakamura is one of those standouts. She has a long culinary resume, including 5-Star restaurants, French Laundry and The Herbfarm. The restaurant that she opened this year was mentioned this week, in the New York Times' "places to go in 2011." She also happens to be a very kind and generous person without any whiff of the narcissism that characterizes some accomplished chefs.

Lisa regularly gives me culinary advice (via Twitter), from where to buy seafood in northern Washington, to how to make my first pastry cream ("stir with whisk vigorously until it binds and goes bloop"), and most recently, what to make with the collection of ingredients in my fridge. Naturally, I do whatever she tells me to do.

This week, I was starring at the ingredients for my weekly local meal and trying to figure out what to make. I send out this message-in-a-bottle to the sea of Twitter people: I've got skirt steak, potatoes, onions, shallots, squash, mushrooms, beets. What to make for dinner?

Sounds like the fixins for a great roasted salad to me, Lisa responded. She said to roast the vegetables separately since they will have different cooking times, then grill the steak on the stove top. Peel & shred beets and make slaw to give salad crunchy texture. ratio of vin to oil is 1 to 3. shallots can go in vin.

An hour later, dinner was ready and it was way better than what I would have come up with on my own. Better than that - it was fantastic. I decided to use the beet greens to lighten up the load of roasted vegetables and meat. If you have never eaten beets raw - you might be surprised that you like them this way - and you will save an hour of cooking time! Neither the beet root, nor the greens, need to be cooked to be enjoyable. Buying beets with the greens still attached demonstrates their freshness.

Skirt Steak, with raw beet and balsamic roasted vegetable salad
Inspired by the lovely Lisa Nakamura
Serves 4

for the steak:
1 pound skirt steak
2 tablespoons of fresh herbs, minced
salt and pepper, with a heavy hand

for the salad:
1 bunch of beets, with the greens still attached
8 ounces of crimini or white button mushrooms, cut in half
8 cloves of garlic
1 red onion
1 red or yellow bell pepper
balsamic vinegar
olive oil
salt and pepper

for the dressing:
2 shallots
1 clove of garlic
3 or 4 sprigs of fresh parsley or basil
1/4 cup of olive oil
1 tablespoon, plus a dash more, of balsamic vinegar

Sprinkle the steak with salt and pepper (be generous) and rub with the fresh minced herbs (I used rosemary, thyme and oregano). Set aside.

cooking for one: I used cake pans

Chop the onion in half, then each half into quarters. Cut the core out of the bell pepper and chop the pepper into large pieces. Put the chopped onion and pepper, and the peeled garlic cloves, in a roasting pan. Drizzle with about a tablespoon of oil, about a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. In a separate pan, give the mushrooms the same treatment. Roast both pans at 400 degrees. Give the pans a good shake every 10 minutes, so that nothing burns. Take the pans out when the mushrooms are soft and shriveling and the onions are translucent.

Begin cooking the steak, either on a grill, or in a pan. Cook quickly on high heat, about 4 minutes on each side. I use a cast iron skillet when cooking steak, because it retains heat well. I heat it for a few long minutes first, then add some oil and then the steak. Cook the steak until medium or medium-rare, then remove it from the pan and allow to rest.

To prepare the beets, begin by cutting the roots from the stems. Wash the beet roots and peel them with a vegetable peeler. I do this over the sink because the juices will stain cutting boards and counter tops! Once peeled, use a box grater to shred the beets (again, don't use a cutting board, shred them onto a plate).

Pick through the greens, discarding any leaves that look slimy, ate bug eaten, or otherwise unappetizing. Break the stems off of the leaves. Wash the leaves, first in a bowl with a drop of dish soap, and then again in fresh water. Shake off any excess water from the leaves, stack them on top of one another, roll them up like a cigar, and then slice thinly into shreds, one end of the cigar to the other.

To make the dressing, simply add all the dressing ingredients to a blender, blend until smooth. If you have any pan drippings from cooking the steak, add it to the dressing. Add salt to taste.

Toss the shredded leaves, the grated beets, the roasted vegetables, and the dressing together. Slice the steak into strips as thin as you can. Plate the salads and then top with the slices of steak.

all that red looks a bit primal. primally delicious.

SOLE Supper notes: pastured skirt steak from Thundering Hooves (WA), organic onions (WA), organic shallots (WA), organic beets, and mushrooms (BC) are from my SOLE supper sponsor, Spud.com. The parsley and herbs were from my garden.