CHILI

i use a different combo of meat and veggies each time i make chili. here's what i did last night:

brown two mild italian sausages (casing removed) in a stock pot, crumbling w/ wooden spoon while cooking (chris did this for me). remove sausage and set aside in a bowl.

brown one large yellow onion (chopped) and about 5 cloves of garlic (rough chopped) in the sausage drippings (scraping up brown bits as the onions and garlic cook).

add carrots and bok choy (yes, this seems very odd, but i had some leftover home-grown veggies from the night before...there were probably about 4-5 small carrots sliced super-thin on a mandoline and 1 smallish bok choy chopped up thinly (leaves and all)...i had made a very simple stir fry the night before and had only added a bit of soy sauce - i was a bit worried about the soy sauce, but by the time the chili was finished cooking there was no soy sauce taste at all...so...you could add some carrots and bok choy at this point, or whatever you like - the colors, texture, and taste of the carrots and bok choy were great and i'd definitely do it again.

add one seeded and finely chopped serrano pepper.

add a 15 ounce can of great northern beans.

add a 28 ounce can of fire roasted crushed tomatoes.

add the cooked sausage.

add cumin, chipotle chili powder, cayenne pepper, salt, freshly ground black pepper, and a little brown sugar and let simmer a while. i took it easy w/ the spices thinking i could add more later after i let it all settle and let the flavors mingle together. it turned out to be spiced perfectly and i didn't have to add anything.

so that's what i did. we just finished off the pot for lunch. it's cold and rainy, so hot chili was just what the doctor ordered!

have fun making your version : )

There are beans in my attic (take 2)

OK, so you are supposed to dry shelling beans on the plant. Problem was, I wanted to pull our bean teepees down to make room for a fall planting. So about a month ago I pulled all the Scarlet Runner Beans off the vines with the intention of drying the beas for soups. I somehow thought that you dry beans like you save seed for other varieties - by shelling them and laying them out on a flat surface. It turns out, they are supposed to be dried in the pods so we had to invent a space to dry them....

Introducing the world's first bean hammock. They seem to be happy up there and are moving along quite nicely. And best of all...I have lettuce sprouts where the beans used to be.

beansy

have you ever seen baby beans? these are the first beans (blue lake bush beans) i've ever grown, so i have just seen my first (above). VERY cute. i have my hand in the photo for scale. these little guys are supposed to grow into 6 1/2" round pods. somehow i thought they'd be more similar to my peas (tall telephone pole peas), but not at all. i just went outside and took a look at my peas and even in the infant stage (i uncovered a small pea from within a dying blossom) the peas emerge shorter and much wider than the slender mini beans that even this tiny, are bare, they've already shed their dying blossom overcoats.

lesson learned: when the flower dries up, both pea and bean pods grow in the same place, but emerge looking quite different. i probably learned such things when i was in elementary school, but when it isn't part of daily life, so much of it floats away...

something else i've noticed while watching my peas and beans grow: the data on the seed packets i've purchased only serve as suggestions for what might occur. i planted my pole peas, beans, and snap peas on the same day. my pole peas packet suggests 70 days to harvest and my bush beans packet claims 55 days to harvest. i've been eating my pole peas off the vine for over a week now and my beans are nowhere near snack stage. my snap peas packet reads that they will grow with self supporting vines and will be ready for harvest in 58 days. last thursday they showed that they were not in the mood to be self-supporting when they fell right over. they are now happily growing around a bamboo teepee and it was just today that i saw my first snap pea blossom - no actual peas in sight. i guess the performance of our plants varies for so many reasons: soil, fertilizer, sun, shade, water, pests of all sorts, surrounding plants, love, etc. that it must be near impossible to pinpoint seed packet specifics such as what time of year to plant, days to germination, days to harvest, etc. i'm having fun watching and learning. no need for hard data. mother nature has her own ideas and i'm certainly not going to question them.

speaking of mothers, when i was a tot my mom used to call me beansy, her little beansy. truth be told, she still addresses me as her little beansy in an email every now and again, usually when i'm not feeling well or i've been let down in one way or another. maybe that's why i'm so fond of these sweet fragile little beans...

but i thought you loved my dirty roots...

As I looked at my meticulously groomed carrots resting in their sterilized pint Ball jar, anticipating the day they'd become pickles, I paused to consider what I'd been up to all afternoon. If my favorite root vegetables are those freshly pulled from their beds and covered with dirt, why was I spending my entire afternoon scrubbing, peeling, and trimming one bunch of Peter Martinelli's carrots to create a single jar of pickled carrots? Why didn't I just skip the prep work and drizzle the carrots with olive oil and roast them or simply rinse them off and eat them fresh and unadorned?

Instead I found the preparation of this sole jar of pickled carrots profoundly fulfilling. Now this wasn't my first foray into pickling, just my first jar of pickles using produce from the recently-back-in-action Point Reyes Farmers Market. I'd experimented with cucumbers, green beans, and other carrot varieties. I'd searched for and tried using an assortment of sizes and types of jars: Ball, Kerr, and a even a French wire-clamp jar with a rubber ring (these canning vessels are classic examples of the type of nostalgic domestic objects to which I'm forever attracted). Lastly, I read recipes from a diverse array of cultures before writing and then attempting a few of my own.

Once I decided what this particular pickling project would entail, the carrot preparation mentioned earlier began. Next, I selected whole spices from my Morton & Bassett collection, chosen specifically for my pickling experiments, and crushed most of the spices with my thumb to release their flavor, some required the strength of the bottom of a stainless steel measuring cup, and one spice, star anise, was too pretty to crush and was added fully intact. The smell of the apple cider vinegar, water, sugar, and crushed spices simmering on the stove was fantastic (Chris disagreed, but I loved it!). The photograph above is of the full jar as it cooled to room temperature.

My choice of attempting to make yet another labor intensive jar of pickled carrots versus biting into a fresh carrot much closer to its original and well-loved dirty root stage isn't much of a stretch when I consider other aspects of my life. How did a hyper-driven corporate recruiter with her favorite phrase "make dust or eat dust" posted prominently on the front of her computer abandon that world completely and pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree? The same way a proud urbanite committed to the contemporary art world and public transportation moved to a small rural town (pop. 350), bought a car, and became dedicated to growing fruit, vegetables, and caring for two boxes of composting worms.

These are just a few of the disparate experiences that have somehow become stitched together to create the person I am today. There is some part of me, sometimes a very small part, that has a soft spot for just about everything in my past.

Sometimes I miss the clear and quantifiable way I was rewarded in the corporate world. Calculating my value is much more complicated now and often leaves me feeling a bit unsettled. I was spoiled by my city apartment's proximity to delicious Indian, Japanese, and Vietnamese restaurants (just to name a few of my wide array of gastronomic choices). Guilty trips to H&M for $3 earrings or $5 sunglasses and those fabulous evenings having drinks in swanky bars with my girlfriends...sigh. Oh city life...

But now I make homemade lemonade with the lemons and mint that grow right outside my front door. I walk 5 steps out my back door and savor what seems like an endless supply of raspberries and blackberries. And then there is the gratification of digging my hands into the dirt with my neighbor to uncover a family of little potatoes and watching my peas' tiny tendrils hold on tightly as they climb higher and higher up my fence. The peaceful nights, quiet with the only exception being the sound of a lonely owl softly hooting every now and then...glorious. Oh the country life...

I love it all, but for now I focus on the moment and patiently await my first bite into one of my crisp pickled carrots.