Two Suppers for an Autumn evening

I just wanted to say suppers.

But seriously.

Two meals so decidedly simple.  So perfectly...perfect.  Both take about half an hour, and sometimes less.  Both will have you dreaming of a white Christmas, fires in the fireplace, and mugs of herbal tea and hot chocolate.  And Hawaii.

Well, let me explain.

I spent my first year of college at BYU-Hawaii. It was lovely.  I studied on the beach.  I scuba dived.  Dove.  I went scuba diving.  I lived with nine girls.  I ruined chocolate chip cookies.

I made chicken curry with my best friend, Coby.  It was a Sunday tradition.

It is easier than pie, which is actually quite difficult, is cheap, and is yummy.

Root veggies in a pot.  I always start with onions and garlic in olive oil.  It makes the house smell lovely.  I add a couple of stalks of celery, a couple of carrots, and some potatoes. 

So many good things begin this way.  Pantry Stew, Curry, Clam Chowder...

Next, brown some sort of meat with the onions.  Stew meat, lamb, chicken...whatever you have or makes you happy.  Ree would say, "whatever makes your skirt fly up".  I love Ree.

I add enough water to barely come to the top of the veggies.  Simmer until the veggies are just tender.  It takes about 10 or 15 minutes.  Then I add a very secret ingredient.

Behold:

Speaking of skirts flying up.  Stir in this stuff until it melts, and simmer for 10 or 15 minutes.  It will thicken up.

Serve over a bed of rice.  Think of middle eastern spice markets.

 

Don't go away just yet.  We aren't quite finished.

Remember that part in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...the new one...where they are eating cabbage soup and are sad about it?  Yah, they're idiots.

I have a good friend...a book, to be precise.  I eyed my mom's, which was losing it's cover and looked like it was three hundred and fifty years old.  Knowing me well enough to know that I am not above stealing from my own mother, she got me my own.

 

She is a smart woman.  This cookbook is from the 40's.  It includes recipes for rabbit, squirrel, and other small game.  It never calls for "a can of..." or "a package of...".  It assumes that you have to make what you eat...it is unfamiliar with the center isles of the grocery store.  It harks back to a simpler time.  I love its naivete.

As you can see, it starts with two tablespoons of butter, melted in a saucepan.  Add 1/4 cup of chopped onions (I usually just add half of a medium onion) and saute until tender.  Add 1/4 cup of raw rice, 1 quart of water, four bullion cubes (or four cups of chicken broth), and 1/2 tsp of salt.  Simmer it all together for 15 minutes, covered.

Add and 2 and 1/2 cups of finely sliced cabbage.


It came right out of my garden.  Full of vitamin C and mellow goodness.

Simmer another five minutes.  Now get ready for the best part.

We use nothing but the finest in this house.  Dish up the soup.  Sprinkle it with shredded cheddar, and top with a bit of paprika.  Sometimes I add a bit more rice (if you do this, add more water proportionally) and a bit more cabbage than the recipe calls for, but it is heavenly right out of the book.  Talk about comfort food.

Now excuse me while I go turn up the heat.

A pinch of this and a dash of that

I have several things I wanted to post about and couldn't decide if I should combine them or give them their own space. Being the practical human being that I am, and not wanted to break Laura's self imposed "no two posts in a row" rule, I decided to just combine them.

Try to keep up.

First of all, I attempted Mozzarella. It wasn't such a smashing success. The main problem, I believe is that I didn't use a cheese thermometer. I thought I would just try to wing it before I invested in one. Second, the milk was a little off (something the cow got into, no doubt. Silly cow) so the flavor was less than desirable. Let me see if I can help you imagine: you know that smell when you pass by a dairy? That is how this milk tasted. So, texture: hard and non melty, taste: dairy in the sun. I put this stuff on my pizza, determined not to waste it. It wasn't inedible, but you should know, I went out and bought a thermometer the next day. I'll try it again. Here are some pictures from the experiment, I'll post on the process when I actually do it right.

I also don't have a double boiler...but we make do. I had to pasteurize the milk. Mozzarella has to be made from pasteurized milk, and I was starting with raw. Look at me go.

There was a lot that happened between the picture above of the milk cooling and the cheese below...but it happens fast and photo-documenting it was not something I could do all alone. Next time I'll enlist the help of Jon or neighbor Stay.

It doesn't look so bad, does it? Well, looks can be deceiving.

School has been out a week. I've done a lot in that time. I'm all about effective time management. That includes time scheduled to play Mariokart of course.

Lest you think all I do is play video games though, look what I did:

I canned the sauerkraut Jon and I put up two months ago. It was so easy. The local grocery was having a sale on cabbage back in February. We sliced it up in the food processor...about three lbs. We layered it with kosher salt in an enamel crock and then put a weight on top. After eight weeks in our basement, it had turned white and fermented beautifully. It tastes much more like what I had in Germany and isn't bitter like some of the stuff that comes in cans here in the states.

This is the perennial garden. Rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus, and the basic Italian herbs...I use a lot of Italian seasoning.

I started seedlings in February in my basement under a grow light. As soon as the snow was off of the garden and it had dried enough for Jon to till, we transplanted the cold weather crops, lettuce, spinach, cabbage and peas into the garden. I had some seed left over, so I broadcasted some to stagger the harvest. As you can see though, there isn't any discernible difference between the transplants and the seeds. Ah well. Next year I'll just plant seeds...probably in straw bales (see earlier Mom and Laura post). The soil has a lot of clay, but look what else I did so that next year it will have a better consistency:

Tomorrow I will fill up the far left area (there are three) with clippings, hay from the chicken coop, and steer manure. Next year I will have some good compost to till into the garden.

Saturday, we got a Bountiful Basket. Go to http://www4.bountifulbaskets.org/ to see more about them. It is a food co-op that delivers about $25 worth of food for $15. It is beautiful produce and a lot of it, but some stuff that I wouldn't normally buy. A $4 carton of blackberries for one. 10 bok choy, for another. What in the world do I do with 10 bok choy? What do I do with one bok choy for that matter?! I'll keep you posted.

But I digress...

They sent me four red peppers. So I stuffed them.

Oh man, I am not a stuffed pepper fan...or I wasn't, until tonight. Y.U.M.

Here is the recipe as it appears on http://southernfood.about.com/od/stuffedpepperrecipes/r/bl30220q.htm.

I added black beans, green chilies, green onions, and raw corn, cut from the cob to the tomato mixture right before I mixed it in with the meat mixture. I added a lot more of the tomato mixture to the meat too. Last, I mixed in some mozzarella (not the stuff I made, remember I ate that on my pizza. I said try to keep up), Tillamook sharp cheddar, and Parmesan to the mix before I stuffed the peppers. I then topped them with the remainder of the tomato mix and a mix of the aforementioned three cheeses. I baked them for about 45 minutes as opposed to the 55-65 on the recipe. These are to die for. There was enough to stuff eight peppers though, so guess what we are having for dinner tomorrow night!

Ok, last but not least, how cute is this kid?

This is my nephew, Wesley. We got to go to St George to visit Jon's sister's family and this kid stole my heart. Seems that Jon stole his though...

He latched onto his uncle Jonjon, following him around, sitting right next to him wanting to eat what Jon was eating...which, if you know Jon, was pretty funny. They bonded.

I'm tired now. Here's to more of the same all summer long!