My Husband Rules.

So I have this small, ugly kitchen that we're slowly working on. I have a decent-sized cookbook collection and they were all piled on a small table at the end of the kitchen, until we got a new huge dining table to put there. The cookbooks have been shuffled around to various spaces in other rooms and were resting on a bar table in the parlor when Keith, listless with cabin fever, decided he could build a shelf for them.



Without any prompting whatsoever by me - I was dealing with the pile of cookbooks in the parlor without any problems, though I knew it wasn't a permanent place - the other night Keith set up shop in the garage and began to tinker. Before I knew what he was doing, he had fashioned a shelf that would fit under the cabinets of my open walk-in pantry, and would mount to the walls and bottoms of the cabinets so that I'd still have plenty of room on the counter beneath.



In the time it takes me to make dinner, he'd installed it, fastened molding to hold it in place, sanded and spackled where necessary, and begun to paint it.



The next morning it got another couple coats of paint, and we let it dry for the rest of the day.



Keith did all of this by himself for about $5 in scrap wood and assorted supplies he found in the garage. The paint was the same paint we'd used on the kitchen walls. I had nothing to do with this project whatsoever, and I'm amazed at Keith's skills here. Just for purposes of comparison, here's what the kitchen looked like when we moved in.



Here's what it looks like now. Still not great, but better!



And here's my new shelf, which we loaded with my cookbook collection this morning. Keith had thought I'd have loads of extra space after the cookbooks were in. He underestimated my years of cookbook lust.



I love this guy even more than cookbooks.



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Labor Day

Whew, it's been a canning week! And freezing, too. I've put up enough rhubarb for three or four pies, I've pickled peaches, I've pickled beets, I put up ginger-beet relish, I made mozzarella cheese, I made bread, I made biscuits, I blanched and froze 20 ears of corn (some on the cob, some cut off), and I pickled 20 pounds of cucumbers. I now have ten quart jars and sixteen pint jars full of pickles - half kosher dills, and half bread-and-butter. They're cheerfully pickling away on my kitchen table at the moment.

Yesterday was interesting; Keith and I took a break from canning to help a friend of a friend cull her chicken flock. She had several old biddies who weren't laying eggs anymore, and there were more chickens than her coop could handle, so some of them had to go. This was the first time any of us had seen inside an older hen, and let me tell you, it's NOTHING like the inside of a little one! It was an egg machine in there! Dozens and dozens of yolks in varying sizes, a big veiny egg sac, just some very complex works.

I always kind of thought the egg was a byproduct and they just made one at a time, but I have a whole new respect for my laying hens now. The female chicken is built to make eggs, and lots of them. I'll always remember seeing all those yolks, some full sized and some smaller than a dime.

Today I'm giving the house a much-needed scrubbing and then making some pizza dough and biscuits for the freezer. Maybe a pie crust or two, as well. I also need to stew the aforementioned hen. She's too old to roast (her meat will be all chewy), but she'll be full of flavor and make an excellent stock when simmered for six hours or so with some veggie scraps. I like to reduce my chicken stock until it's thick and strong, then put it into ice cube trays and freeze it. I load the chicken stock ice cubes into a big freezer bag and throw one or two of them into almost anything - pasta water, risotto, gravy, whatever. It's a handy way to keep it.

So happy Labor Day to all who labor. I'm right there with you today!

Easy like Sunday morning...

So Saturday was pleasant and sunny and warm, the first non-rainy day for 20 days straight in Portland...

...so of course, as we lay in bed Sunday morning, we woke up to the heavy beat of rain on the skylights. Everything was soaked again. It's a good thing we got in our yard work and beach time when we did on Saturday.

Sunday morning we slogged out into the rain and mud for the first day of the Lents International Farmers' Market. The turnout wasn't great, but we made some purchases (mustard greens, a bundle of baby leeks, some radishes, asparagus for a high school wrestling team). Soaked and muddy, we changed back into our pajamas as soon as we got home, and lingered over the crossword together as we had breakfast.

We spent most of the day taking it easy, with the windows open so we could hear the rain, and I made raw ice cream, which was amazing. Raw milk, raw cream, our backyard eggs, real vanilla, those little fresh bananas, and the strawberries we'd picked on Sauvie Island the day before... it's a bit less creamy than I'd like, so next time I'll use less milk and more cream, but otherwise it was perfect. Tons of fruit flavor, not a lot of sugar, that sweet raw dairy, and all the good fats and nutrition intact! THAT is "guiltless ice cream," not that tasteless chemical crap they sell at the store. It's nice to indulge in a lovely dessert and not feel the least bit of worry over the consequences. Here's the recipe:

RAW STRAWBERRY-BANANA ICE CREAM

2 pints strawberries, washed, hulled, & halved
4 small bananas, mashed
3/4 cup sugar, divided
2 pastured eggs
2 c raw milk*
2 c raw cream
1 Tbsp vanilla

* In retrospect I would reduce this to 1 cup milk.

Mash the strawberries in a big mixing bowl, then stir in 1/4 cup sugar. Set aside and let it macerate for 30 minutes to an hour, so that the sugar dissolves and pulls all the juice out of the crushed berries. Stir in the bananas and mash it all up some more together. Set aside.

Beat the eggs in a separate bowl with a mixer, going on medium-low speed until the eggs foam up. Beat in the remaining 1/2 cup sugar, a little at a time, until it all thickens up. Mix in the remaining ingredients, then stir in the fruit and transfer it all to your ice cream freezer to let 'er rip. This makes about 2 quarts.

Anyway, Sunday night dinner was awesome too - did you know that you can stuff steak? I had a lovely flank steak, which I marinated in soy sauce and olive oil with a bit of molasses and garlic, and I cut a deep pocket into it while it marinated. I stuffed it with some barley that I cooked with sage and some other spices, as well as carrot and green onion, and then slow-roasted the whole shebang. It was perfect! We will definitely be doing barley-stuffed steak again. I served it with the asparagus we'd gotten at the farmers' market, steamed up with some lemon, and a nice red wine. Perfect for a rainy Sunday:



Yesterday was much less peaceful, got the house clean finally (the one thing I miss about apartment living is getting all the cleaning done in two hours) and got caught up on bills and all the mundane welcome-back-to-life stuff. And now, we're officially caught up and back home. We took a nice walk to His Bakery this morning and read the paper over breakfast (a lemon-ginger scone for him, a pecan cinnamon roll for me). Keith's been doing yard work, since it's mercifully not raining yet, though it looks like it wants to. I'm about to go munch on some leftover blackeyed peas and cornbread (which we had with mustard greens for dinner last night) and get some writing in. It's all so mundane but I love that it's all getting back to normal.

Productivity, or at least the attempt.

Got the day to myself, as Keith is working a long day today, and it looks like a nice one. I've got the fire going - it was freezing this morning and I have to admit the house is a lot more comfortable since I managed to get the fire lit, and even though I don't really need it here in the middle of the day, I'd rather keep it going and stay warm than bundle up and have to light it again later.

So I'm trying to be productive today, get a little writing done and a bit of planning for my upcoming (hopefully) food cart, might break out the sewing machine and make curtains for the bedroom, thinking of trying out a gluten-free cornbread recipe to see if it works, and I'm feeling thoughtful which always means it's time to make risotto. I've got some shiitake mushrooms to use up and they'll go nicely in risotto with a bit of sage. I doubt Keith will be home for dinner so that means I have my little risotto feast by myself (I'm serving it with kale raab and radishes on the side, mmm) and then we'll have risotto cakes for breakfast in the morning. (Which will save us from spending $5 apiece on those incredible tamales they have at the farmers' market on Saturdays.)

Lana's fertile eggs are due to hatch this weekend, and she's looking a bit more alert than usual, so she might be feeling some movement under there. I can't see anything happening though, and she's not budging, so I don't really have any news to report just yet. There ought to be some baby chicks this weekend though and I will certainly post pictures as soon as I have them!

Musings.

That there is beef short ribs slow-braised for three hours in honey and beer with carrots and onions, served over sage polenta with a side of asparagus sauteed with salted Meyer lemon. I had to share a picture, it was that good!

I've been reading French Women Don't Get Fat, which is a fabulous book I cannot recommend highly enough, especially to people who are always dieting. We could all stand to be a bit more French in our approach to food - quality over quantity, relishing what we eat and putting it down when we're not relishing it anymore. Plus the recipes in this book look fabulous!

I dug up some more grass yesterday and I'm planting lavender this afternoon, all along the front of the yard. There will be a little path to the mailbox, surrounded by lavender, which should make it a fragrant experience to get the mail. Our blueberry bushes are getting small flower buds all over them, and so is the cherry tree but it isn't blooming yet even though several other cherry trees around town are blooming beautifully. Meanwhile in the guest room, 15 of my 26 tomato pots have sprouted (including both of my black tomatoes)!

Got a bit more of the seed starting to do today, sending out some job applications, getting some writing done, straightening the house, blah blah blah. Another day, another to-do list!

Luddite, indeed.

So the evil empire just jacked up our internet service bill again, and now we really can't justify paying $50 a month for a service that wastes our time more than it contributes to our lives. So... we're thinking of cancelling our internet.

*gasp* "No!" you cry. "I cannot LIVE without reading this blog!"

Fear not. Coffee shops with free wireless internet abound in this fair city, and if I know us we'll still be online two or three times a week. But I refuse to pay for it any longer when it wastes so much of my time at home, and we don't really need it. I get the newspaper delivered now, so that's what I can read over breakfast to get the news, and with all the work there is to do around this house (plus a lot of writing I want to get caught up on), I will be glad to be rid of the distraction.

This is a big step for me though, as my biggest weakness is my internet addiction. I anticipate heavy withdrawals soon, ha, but I do think it'll be better for us both in the long run.

And I know I'm going to be very busy soon, as the tomatoes are already sprouting and I have seeds to order and peppers to plant and a fence to build and grass to kill and so much to do outside...! Today I'm running out for a flourescent light for my tomatoes. They sprouted a lot sooner than I thought they would and they're stretching out way too high looking for sunlight, which they aren't getting in our spare room! (But in the spare room, they're also warm and not being trashed by cats, so...)

Saturated Animal Fats: To Your Health!

I just came across this excellent article (click to read). It explains how it happened when, after thousands of years of consuming delicious saturated fats such as butter, we in the USA suddenly decided that those fats were unhealthy and should be discarded in favor of hydrogenated trans fats and other solidified oils. Even after heart disease became the #1 killer, and the original researcher discovered a massive flaw in her own work and tried to correct it, we stuck with the margarine myth for decades.

Of course, the article never mentions the one really serious flaw in margarine, the one that's worse than heart disease: It tastes like ass. Sorry, but it does. I don't know anyone who's ever said, "You know what this dish REALLY needs to enrich the flavor? A big glop of hydrogenated vegetable oil!" In fact, one of the first discoveries I made when I first began cooking in my teens came when I realized that you could use less fat and get more flavor with a small knob of butter. The margarine was so blegh that you had to use huge scoops of it just to get a faint hint of artificial butter flavor. Give me just a little pat of real butter any day!

So I enjoyed reading that over my coffee-and-raw-milk this morning, and now I'm off to clean the house and make our Shabbos dinner (game hens, root vegetable mash, and turnip/kohlrabi greens tonight, perhaps with fresh wheat rolls). First, though, I'm actually proceeding with plans I had before this article - whipping up some tasty animal fats for cooking!

The raw milk we buy is obviously not homogenized, so I typically make butter with the cream. However, today I'm going to make clotted cream with it instead! I grew up reading about clotted cream (typically on scones with jam) in British novels as a kid, though I didn't really know what it was. I've still never had it, though it sounds delicious, so I'm making it today. In the morning I think I'll whip up some traditional English scones and serve them with clotted cream and jam, and maybe tea instead of coffee for once, just to keep it authentic.

Today's cooking adventure that most excites me, though, is schmaltz. I've always heard that schmaltz, known to gentiles as "rendered chicken fat," makes a better cooking fat than butter. I've been idly thinking of making my own schmaltz for several months now, but this week our local paper actually did an article on cooking with various animal fats, and they included a recipe for schmaltz! So I take that as a sign, and I'm going to raid the freezer for all the chicken skin and fat trimmings (the ones the dog didn't eat) and see about getting schmaltzy.

One Dog: Free to a Good Home

I am very tired today. Why, do you ask? I'll tell you.

I worked a day shift yesterday, and Keith was off working on a commercial. Ordinarily we crate Patch whenever we leave the house, because he snacks from the litterbox, knocks over the trash and strews it everywhere, jumps up on the kitchen table, and wreaks general havoc. But I took the bus to and from work yesterday, plus work itself, and it seemed cruel to keep the dog locked up for 8 or 9 hours. So before I left, I shut up the cats in the back of the house where the litterbox is, left the dog in the front of the house, moved the recycling bin out to the porch, and stacked the heavy compost bucket on top of the trash can to weight the lid down. Then I took the dog out to pee but he refused to go, so I put him back in and left.

I returned home in the evening to a very guilty-looking dog. He had knocked over the trash, compost bucket and all; fortunately the lid stayed on the compost bucket so at least the rotting compost wasn't scattered everywhere. The trash, however, was. In the trash was a huge mound of spiced flour we'd used for making chicken wings over the weekend; we weren't composting it because it'd had raw chicken rolled around in it. The flour was all over the kitchen floor, creating an unholy mess. To cap it all off, the dog had also peed on the kitchen floor.

I got that cleaned up and went to the back of the house, to discover the cats had managed to climb into the back of the bathroom cabinet and pull out a roll of toilet paper, which they shredded into confetti all over the bathroom and all down the hallway. It looked like the morning after a ticker-tape parade. I cleaned that up too.

By this time all the animals were wailing for their dinner. I told them to wait. "I'm going to go check on my pets who don't trash my house," I snapped. "The good pets. The ones who give me good food and garden fertilizer. The ones who earn their keep." Then I went outside. The chickens were fine; Jane and Lana had laid eggs. So I brought them back in and fed the mammals and made my own dinner.

Later on, Keith came home, and we went to bed early because he had to get up at five in the morning for work today.

So, shortly after three a.m., we woke up to the kind of noise you'd expect to hear if you turned on a faucet full blast but the pipes were clogged with mud. Keith got up to investigate, and the dog was sitting up in his kennel, looking guilty and also very ill. He had thrown up once or twice, but the sound that woke us up was that of absolutely FOUL diarrhea. At that point we realized that there had been quite a bit of chicken bones, chicken fat, and other waste in that trash, and I hadn't seen any of it when I'd cleaned up the mess earlier. All that chicken was about three or four days old (our trash doesn't fill up very quickly and it has baking soda and a lid so that it doesn't stink).

Retching and gagging, Keith put the dog out into the yard, and Patch was eager to go. Keith bundled up the bedding and took it out to the trash, and we cleaned up the rest of the mess with a strong vinegar-water-alcohol solution. We decided to leave the dog outside for a bit - clearly he wasn't feeling well and we weren't eager for a repeat occurrence - and I lit several strawberry-scented candles around the room. Finally, an hour and a half before Keith had to get up and drive an hour for work, we managed to doze off to flickering candlelight.

Thirty minutes later, we woke up again to a tap, scratch, scratch, tap. Roxy, our mama cat, was displeased to be shut out of the bedroom and wanted back in. So Keith got up and let her in (she woke him up first), at which point she glanced around the room and walked right back out.

The dog seems to be feeling much better now but I'm still tired, and I know Keith is exhausted. When they say pets are good practice for having babies, is this what they mean?

Mouse in the House!

A little over a week ago, while Ben and Peta (my Aussie friends) were still visiting, I got up one morning to make biscuits. I was humming along in the kitchen, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw Roxy (our mama cat) with a toy. Looked like a grey mouse toy we used to have but I hadn't seen it in awhile. She put it down, and... it wriggled. OH MY G-D IT'S A MOUSE!!

I've never had a mouse in my house before and I was so embarrassed to have one while company was visiting. To make matters worse, the mouse got away while Roxy was playing with it, and escaped to who-knows-where. Fervently hoping that the mouse wasn't pregnant or a new mom, we finally shrugged it off - "We have three cats," Keith explained. "If we have a mouse now, we won't for long."

We didn't see the mouse again, or any signs of one - no chewed things in the pantry, no droppings. So we concluded that the mouse must've gotten out of our house, and forgot about it. Until today.

We took our drive out to the country for our raw milk and came home to find a semiconscious grey mouse on the kitchen floor. Fry and Davey, our adolescent kitties, were playing with it. As we realized what they were playing with, before we could react, Davey grabbed the mouse and ran off to our bedroom, where he hid with his prize under the bed. Keith followed, and eventually moved the bed and grabbed the stunned, barely living mouse in a paper towel.

Thus began the struggle of conscience. Neither of us wanted to kill the mouse, but if we let it go outside it would just come back in. We were in full agreement that there was no room for a mouse in our kitchen - yuck! Besides, it was already half-dead. We both wished the cats would've just finished it off, but they were playing with it instead, so clearly the job fell to Keith in his position as Man Of The House.

He took the mouse outside, dispatched it quickly, and tossed it in the trash.

Probably not the most respectful end for a living thing, and we both felt awful about it, but it had to be done. Hopefully we have no other mice, and if we do, I hope the cats actually do their freaking jobs on them. I hate that we have THREE cats and Keith still had to be the one to kill that poor little grey mouse.

So RIP, little guy. Your end at Keith's hands was more merciful than it would've been in Roxy's teeth; I hope that's some comfort.

May no more mice bring us such sad decisions.

Book Review: The Urban Homestead

Keith was browsing through the bookstore the other day (always a dangerous financial situation!) and he picked up a copy of The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City. I've been reading it first and... wow! This is the perfect Bible for everything we're working towards here.

Yes, there's a chapter on gardening for homegrown food. There's some on foraging wild food. There's raising chickens, rabbits, and goats; there's worm composting (about which more shortly), there's canning information and everything you'd expect. Then they take it a step farther and include information on solar power, composting toilets, greywater recycling, and everything else you need to know for maximum self-sufficiency in the urban environment. Score!

So now that it looks freakishly like spring outside - sunny, fairly warm, with new green shoots coming up everywhere - we have the design for our front yard's edible landscaping and Keith's built the first raised beds in the back, with only a few more to build. We've got our seed catalogs and will be ordering soon so we can get started on the early veggies and the hot peppers. And now we're talking about building a solar oven for the backyard so that we can cook in the summer without heating up the house, and also save on our gas bill while we're at it. It'd be nice to have a brick oven out there too for wood-fired pizzas and breads! And eventually a greywater system and more rain collection barrels... ohh, so much to do.

Those of you who are interested in urban homesteading, I highly recommend this book. It's nice to find such a comprehensive guide in one place!

By the way, you may have noticed that when I mention books here on this blog, I link to them on Powells.com and not on Amazon or another major retailer. This is because Powell's Books is a business worth supporting! Located right here in Portland, they are the largest independent book retailer in the world and still provide excellent service at a great price. Their main location downtown occupies four stories of a full city block, and every employee is knowledgeable, friendly, and efficient. These people love books. So if you order books online, give them a try instead of Spamazon!

Foreign Invasion

My house is being overrun with Australians this weekend.

A couple of friends and former classmates from when I went to grad school down under both worked on a film that premiered this week at Sundance. One is flying in tonight, and the other in a couple of days. We're almost done cleaning the house (haha) and we're looking forward to a weekend of good food and mingling accents.

I made mozzarella cheese from the last of our first batch of raw milk this morning. The milk is fresh for exactly a week and then it's just not good to drink anymore - it's still safe, but it doesn't have that nice sweet flavor. So I made mozzarella with it and it's delicious, and I have more whey left over for cooking with. I've gotten addicted to cooking with whey! It's so much better than water in so many things.

Mozzarella cheese is fun to make - a bit more involved than ricotta, but still pretty simple. I got to stretch and knead it for awhile, which was fun in a very kindergarten way!

Not sure yet what kind of trouble we'll go looking for this weekend, but I'm pretty sure good times lie ahead. Will keep you posted.

Big Week, Dairyffic!

Whew! It's been a busy week.

I've been trying to get through 7000 words on another revision of the damn novel (aka "the thing that is eating my life"), I went to see The Informant! at the Laurelhurst, and last night there was a cast and crew screening of Extraordinary Measures at the Bagdad. On Wednesday our littlest cat, Fry, was spayed and she's recovering nicely. We've also been taking the dog on long walks and runs through the park.

We had two very nice people from Independence Gardens out to start working on our landscape design; we're building raised beds and going functional-farm in the backyard, but we wanted a pretty, natural-looking garden in the front yard and I'm not good at landscape design. So Independence Gardens is going to show us how to turn our front yard from The Ugliest Lawn In Portland (seriously, it's overgrown weeds and poorly laid-out rose thorns) into a beautiful landscape of edibles and flowers that will attract lots of bees and hummingbirds. I'm very excited about this!

In the evenings I've been playing with dairy. We're still really enjoying that raw milk - especially after a workout; the protein and healthy fat is exactly what you need to repair post-workout muscles - and I've made a big batch of the most spectacular crumbly ricotta cheese. With the leftover whey I made a very tasty and healthy potato-turnip-parsnip soup, and I drizzled it with homemade creme fraiche! The creme fraiche is the easiest thing I've ever made - just stir a tablespoon of raw buttermilk into some raw cream and let it sit for a day or two, and it cultures itself without any work from me.

I got the raw buttermilk by making raw butter, which was also crazy easy! I just skimmed the cream off the milk and went at it with a beater until the butterfat separated from the buttermilk, and then I rinsed the butter clean and that was that. Here's my pretty homemade delicious healthy grassfed raw butter (whew, adjective overload!)...



Here's my delicious ricotta cheese...



And here's how they came together in a mind-blowing hot potato salad! This is fingerling potatoes, celery, green onions, and pickled garlic, cooked together in the homemade butter and rice vinegar, and then served over lettuce with the homemade cheese sprinkled over. I don't mind saying this was one of the most satisfying meals I've ever had.



Tonight I'm going to try my hand at homemade mozzarella, which will find its way into a casserole with mushroom bolognaise, some whole-wheat penne pasta, and the homemade ricotta. That ought to be good for one dinner and a few lunches too!

Ahh, productivity.

Last night I went to bed early. My glasses are off at the optometrist's office getting new lenses put in, so I'm on a contacts-only basis for this week. Unfortunately I can only wear my contacts for most of a day before my eyes get dry and then my contacts get all sticky and blurry and I can't see anymore. At this point I generally take them out for the night and put my glasses on, but last night I had no glasses, so I sat around blind for an hour making screenplay notes with my nose four inches from the paper, and then I finally decided to call it a night.

So this morning I woke up at about five, did the usual morning routine of snuggling cats in bed, getting up, taking the dog outside to pee, feeding the cats and dog, starting coffee, checking chicken food and refilling their water while they graze around, collecting eggs, then sipping coffee over the computer while I finish waking up. By noon today I'd swept the house, put away two loads of laundry, added fresh pine shavings to the chicken coop, cleaned out the catbox, taken out all the trash and recycling and sorted them and put them out for the garbage men (who come before dawn on Mondays), and organized two massive containers of paints and craft supplies.

The afternoon was spent in errands - to the co-op for fruit, to Trader Joe's for milk and cheese, to the Urban Farm Store for dog food, and then to the park so Patch could run himself out. (I saw a bumper sticker recently that said, "A tired dog is a happy dog!" How very true that is.) I thought about going to the gym next but I think I'll just go in the morning since they close early on Sundays.

So now, if I don't go blind again too early, I'll spend the evening on a screenplay overhaul I'm trying to complete this week. Hot bath and a cup of tea first though - I think I've earned it today.

Tomorrow I'll be making a chocolate ganache out of a fresh bhut jolokia pepper from my dad's garden - the hottest pepper in the world, many times hotter than a habanero! Stay tuned as I figure out how to do it and see what the end result will be.

Didja miss me?

I'm back from my two-week hiatus! Sorry for the absence. It's been quite an eventful two weeks; a lot has gone on, most notably the totalling of my beloved little car. That issue hasn't been resolved yet but I tore a couple of ligaments in my neck and am currently undergoing massage therapy twice a week to heal the damage while I try to negotiate a nice settlement to get a new car with.

The bright event in the last two weeks was our one-year anniversary. We celebrated with a pleasant drive out to the Columbia River Gorge (more to follow), picking 37 pounds of Asian pears for free, and a fantastic dinner at Ned Ludd - can you think of a better place for the Urban Luddite to dine?

In the meantime, I'm still cooking and canning. I'm almost done processing the 60 pounds of apples and hoping to finish that today; I have jars upon jars of applesauce (with and without maple syrup), apple butter, and apple pie filling. I've also got a big bag of dried cinnamon apples and more apples to go in the dehydrator today. I think this afternoon I'll put up some more apple butter and then we'll carve up a jack o'lantern tonight for the Halloween festivities!

Halloween should be a fun day; my brother's coming up for a month-long visit, and we're opening the house up to all and sundry for trick-or-treating or a drop-by on the way to wilder parties. I'm making up a big vat of steak chili, another of vegan chili, a pan of honey cornbread, and some homemade pumpkin fritter-donuts. I got a huge harvest of fried green tomatoes so I might fry some of those up as well. It won't be the healthiest evening but we eat healthy most of the time, so one night of celebration can't hurt.

The rest of the green tomatoes, by the way, are going to be pickled this afternoon. I just heard about pickled green tomatoes (to be used in place of regular pickles on sandwiches, burgers, etc.) and I'm super-excited. Our late heat snap this summer made my tomatoes go crazy with another round of production; I actually harvested some delicious ripe tomatoes in late October (imagine!) but most of the tomatoes are still green and unlikely to ripen. So I'm pretty stoked to pickle them!

I also harvested the sunchokes and hooooooboy. Back in the spring I bought a pint of sunchokes at the farmer's market, and instead of eating them all, I planted about half of them. They grew into massive six-foot sunflowers, and when we pulled them up, I'd say we found about 30-40 pounds of sunchokes buried like treasure in the dirt. Eating them all before they go bad... well, it's a tough job, but somebody's got to munch tasty homegrown veggies! I think I'm up to the task. (And some of you should be on the lookout for a care package.)

As far as the chickens... Lucy and Doris are almost finished with their molt, and hopefully will start to lay again but they may take the winter off (argh). Lana still hasn't laid anything beyond that first little fart-egg, which may not have even been hers. Jane is laying faithfully almost every day so has taken Lucy's place as my favorite hen. I'm sorry I threatened so often to eat her.

Yes, I'm still canning.

Well, we didn't get to the apples yesterday, though Keith did painstakingly wash all 60 pounds of them. He also did most of the work in peeling five pounds of garlic, which took quite awhile and left our fingers sore but fragrant.

Meanwhile, I put up 13 jars of maple pumpkin butter, some with hazelnuts and some without...



...and then I pickled all the garlic with my popular recipe.



This morning we have to run some errands on a tummyful of berries, quinoa, and hazelnuts. Got to pick up more canning jars for all these apples and salsa, and some cat food and pine shavings for the chicken coop, so we'll head to the Urban Farm Store first. Then the co-op for onions and Freddy's for office supplies so we can finally get our office organized. And then home to get to work on these apples!

So much for autumn.

So here it is on the first day of autumn and we're breaking yet another temperature record here in Portland with a high of 97. Sigh.

At least that means it's warm sunny weather for all our outdoorsyness today. We had a trillion errands and now I've got to do some gardening this afternoon, and finish painting our chicken coop. (Shyeah. Like I'll ever be done with this chicken coop project. Doubtful!)

The day started with a trip to the vet for my mamakitty, Roxy, who has gained an astonishing amount of weight. For those who are new, back in March we adopted a homeless pregnant kitty who still looked like a kitten herself. On April 4 she birthed six kittens, including a tiny runt who couldn't push past her brothers and sisters to nurse and had to be bottle-fed by us. We kept Roxy, the runt (Fry), and a boy kitten named Davey. Roxy lost all her babyweight quickly and reverted to a very small, svelte 7.5 pounds. Since weaning her kittens, being spayed, and moving to the house, she has ballooned to almost 10 pounds and has a rather alarming matronly look about her. So as of today, she's on a diet, poor gal. And Davey has to be on probiotics, and Fry still needs extra food, so it looks like we're going to have to start feeding all three of our cats separately. You know, just because life isn't complex or demanding enough around here.

And speaking of feeding animals, our hens have outgrown their little chick feeders and they keep knocking them over. We now need to install large hanging feeders on the underside of the coop, so we went to the Urban Farm Store (my favorite store!) and bought them. I can't figure out how to get the lid on the feeder, because I'm an idiot, and the water regulator isn't working so it just overflows gallons of water all over the chicken run. Our afternoon agenda now demands that we resolve this problem.

We also bought some asparagus starts at the UFS so I can start our asparagus patch in the front yard. Yay! We won't be able to harvest any asparagus until 2011 but it should be worth the wait. And in the meantime, next year, it'll look pretty... and the important thing is that it's another patch of grass GONE in our Quest To Eliminate the Lawn.

Further continuing the quest today, we dropped by the Portland Nursery to spend some of a gift card we got as a housewarming present. We got a handy-dandy little weeding tool and some completely frivolous iris and crocus bulbs - no, we can't eat them, but dammit I want pretty flowers in the spring. And anyway they attract bees. Bees are important, right? *innocent look*

We also got an obscene quantity of garlic to plant, which knowing us is still not going to be enough garlic. We were going for more vegetable starts but we decided to come back later and spend the rest of the gift card once the first raised bed is built. And that's going to have to wait until the next job comes through for both of us as funds are getting tight.

So it's a day of drama and melodrama and hard work. Tonight I really need to put up some pumpkin seed pesto sauce, pumpkin butter, and pumpkin gnocchi. My list of "preserves to can" on the fridge is getting ridiculously long but I haven't gotten around to it for awhile. Maybe when winter comes I'll be able to sleep in once or twice and lounge about reading... but there's no sign of winter today.

Aww. I'm blushing!

What a nice suprise to wake up to! I was just sitting here sipping my coffee and making my usual morning rounds of the internet when I happened upon my own fried green tomatoes on Fab Frugal Food. I really enjoyed making those and sharing them with Anne when she was here a couple weeks ago, and so pleased that a mere gluten sensitivity led us to such serendipity. Chickpea flour really does make excellent fried green tomatoes, so much more flavorful and crisp than wheat flour. I'll be making them again for our housewarming party this weekend. Thanks for the shout-out, FFF!

I didn't finish all of my preservation agenda yesterday because we got sucked into the first three episodes of "Firefly," an excellent space-Western series from 2002 that we're only just now getting to. The good news is that we got at least ten pounds of grapes sorted and picked from the vines while we watched it. The bad news is that now I have to make even more grape jelly. Yesterday I made seven jars of it, all of which jelled perfectly. I've never made Concord grape jelly before. It's a very messy endeavor but a fascinating one! The juice starts out a bright fuschia color, and then - just as it starts to simmer - it suddenly turns into that dark purple jelly color all on its own. Trippy! I took pictures all along the process and will post about them later this evening.

I also roasted and pureed a sugar pumpkin and saved enough seeds to cover four plates. All the seeds are currently drying on top of the refrigerator and anyone who wants to plant a sweet pumpkin plant next year should let me know, because I have seeds aplenty. This many organic seeds would've cost us at least $50 from the store, possibly more; the pumpkin I collected them from cost $1 at the farmer's market.

Also yesterday I invented my own recipe for strawberry-rhubarb jam, spiced with allspice and cinnamon and the slightest dash of cardamom (which goes beautifully with rhubarb). It turned out a bit thin and runny, despite the pectin I added, but it tastes good anyway and it's still usable as a jam. It might also be good on top of ice cream or drizzled over chocolate cake if I have any dessert functions to use it in the future. It made eight jelly jars' worth!

Tonight I'm going to try to finish that maple pumpkin butter, and juice the new batch of grapes so they can sit overnight for jellying tomorrow. I also received a small shipment of various peppers from my dad's pepper garden in Mississippi, which I hope to round out with my own anchos and turn into a balsamic chile chutney using Jamie Oliver's recipe. Meanwhile I still have two more boxes to unpack and I need to clean the house before our housewarming party on Saturday, and I have some writing and film projects requiring my attention. I really can't believe I used to suffer from boredom. Lately there are just not enough hours in the day.

Autumn? Already?

Labor Day isn't until tomorrow, but it feels like autumn today. It rained all night last night (on the skylights over our bed, making the loveliest sound), and this morning we woke up to a chilly, windy, wet world. We went early to the farmer's market during a break in the rain; all the beautiful winter squashes were out, in every shape and color. We bought a sugar pumpkin (my own pumpkins aren't sweet and we want to save the seeds from a sweet one), as well as a butternut and two delicatas. We also got a few chayotes, which I've never heard of - I'm always excited when I discover a new veggie or fruit, and it just keeps happening these days.

In the fruit department we scored a great deal on the last (very ripe) strawberries, so I'll be canning some strawberry-rhubarb jam this week, and some sugar plums, which we'll probably just eat while their visions dance in our heads.

Lemon cucumbers were fifty cents a pound and I still have a huge bowl of my own cherry tomatoes in the fridge, so I'll be adding a sweet onion and making another cucumber salad today. But now that it's cold and windy and raining again, I think this will be the last one. It feels like the first of many rainy fall days that we'll spend just like this, me cooking and canning while Keith reads a book and we listen to the sound of the rain on the porch roof through an open window.

At least he got a chance to start on the grape harvest while I made lunch. Our own little seedless white wine grapes are ready for the picking - at least, the ones we haven't already devoured - but he started the harvest down the street, where an unoccupied home for sale has a long fence laden heavily with beautiful dark Concord grapes. He's gotten a huge basketful already and there's plenty more to pick! I'm definitely making jelly, and I'm looking to see what else I can do with all these grapes. Is there anyone out there who actually likes raisins?

Self-Preservation

Aaaaaaand preserve season continues. This week I've put up rosemary jelly and lavender jelly, frozen garden greens, made several batches of honey corn muffins (trying to perfect a recipe by tomorrow), and broken out my new dehydrator (thanks, Dad)! Last night Keith and I put on an excellent movie - Barton Fink, I recommend it - and kicked back to keep busy. I pitted a gallon of huge, succulent dark sweet cherries until my hands dripped like Lady Macbeth's; Keith hulled the last of Pawpaw's pecans. Some of the pecans went into pecan pralines today. The cherries, much as it killed me to do it, went into the dehydrator. It violates everything I stand for, to be standing there with a huge bowl of lovely juicy fresh cherries and alter them this way, but I'm trying to keep my mind focused on how delicious these dried cherries will be once fresh cherry season is over.

In other news, Davey and Roxy enjoyed a little overnight trip to the vet's office and came home with their procreative organs missing. Davey's fine, Roxy's still a bit woozy, but I think they'll be okay. Fry was too tiny to go - be glad you're the runt, my little one - and she seemed to enjoy a fun night of wrestling with our hair and chewing our fingers as we tried to sleep. Now it seems she's very glad to have her brother back home for these games.

No word yet on the house. I guess now we'll hear back on Monday. Set to close one week from today...

Marionberry in a jam. But I'm not talking about DC politics.

Got up this morning and made a test batch of savory corn muffins, since I've been asked to bring some to a wedding next weekend and I want them to be perfect. Surprisingly, these were! I made them with creamed corn and black smoked sea salt for a nice light smoky flavor. Half had jalapeno, half didn't, and all were topped with just a bit of shredded Tillamook cheese for a nice look. Keith and I ate a few of them straight from the oven, spread with the marionberry jam for yesterday (we had to open one jar to test it before giving the others away, after all). The jam was perfect, ripe berry flavor and a thick buttery consistency, and it went so beautifully with the savory corn. One of the best breakfasts I've had in awhile.

Then we finally got around to cleaning the house, which took all day because we were lazy about it. We've now got five loads of laundry in the wash (yikes, but it includes bedding and couch slipcovers) and I really should be making lavender creme brulee for tomorrow, and lavender jelly for gifts later, but eff it, I need more jars and don't feel like shopping for them at the moment. What I really want is a nice cool bath to finish reading my book in.

Dinner tonight is flaxseed tortilla chips dipped in the rest of the currant salsa, which we added more corn and black beans to this morning to make it sturdier. We've been watching the "Blue Planet: Seas of Life" documentary series on Netflix and thoroughly enjoying it, and I expect we'll finish it tonight. Probably not too exciting, but we should rest up anyway... Elizabeth arrives tomorrow and it's always a whirlwind of good times whenever she's around here!

By the way, this morning I spoke with my grandmother, who was surprised that I'd made jam yesterday and said she'd never made homemade jam before. She made it sound a lot more impressive than it actually is. Just to prove how easy it is to make things yourself (and wind up with a far superior product than the crap at the store), here's a recipe for that marionberry jam in the above picture I took this morning. You can also use blackberries and/or raspberries for this in any quantity; just make sure you've got equal parts fruit and sugar, so it preserves safely. (I know it sounds like a lot of sugar, but remember you're only eating a little at a time.)

MARIONBERRY JAM

2 c marionberries
1 c blackberries
3 c sugar
Juice of one lemon

Puree berries in a food processor or blender. Transfer to a saucepan and stir in sugar and lemon juice. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens into the consistency of melted ice cream. Transfer to sterilized jars, leaving about 1/4" headroom, and seal. Process the jars in boiling water for about 10 minutes and let cool at room temperature. The jam will thicken considerably as it cools.