tossed salad and boiled eggs

Green Gulch Farm salad greens in my favorite wooden salad bowl

It is Sunday morning. I've woken without an alarm. I've posted my poem. I have a few eggs boiling on the stove. We will soon be eating those eggs with a green salad and slices of toast topped with homemade jam. Green Gulch Farm adds lovely little flowers to their salad greens mix, and for me, it makes all the difference. It is a good day. I'm happy. That's all...

berry

Breakfast on Mesa Road, Point Reyes Station, June 2008

berry, oh berry
simple, honest, and sweet

juicy and black
not at all like a beet

you bathe in the sun
and you never burn

you fall from your stem
nothing asked in return

Puttering About in a Small Kitchen

Chinese, Japanese, and Italian eggplant

my notes...

Earlier this week I went a little food crazy.

Chris was working late one night when I decided to tackle the lemon-blueberry yogurt cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen that I had stumbled upon during my blueberry recipe search. There were some perfect blueberries lounging in my kitchen that needed to be put to good use. I'd happily eaten many straight from the bowl, but was in the mood to bake something with the rest. I proceeded to dirty a few bowls, measuring cups & spoons, and a bread pan. I changed very little in the recipe. I subsituted whole wheat flour for 1/3 of the white flour and added the lemon juice and powdered sugar glaze mentioned in her list of other ideas for the cake.

Of course, baking a cake wasn't enough. I felt some sort of magnetic pull toward using each and every bowl, pan, and utensil in my kitchen. I didn't fight it. It reminded of the night my mom and I decided to bake an apple pie. The mood did not strike until midnight. We decided to just go with it and headed out the door toward a nearby 24-hour grocery store. We were sleepy and silly, yet muddled through the recipe and were happily enjoying our homemade pie a few hours later. It's one of my favorite memories.

There were leftovers I could have eaten. It could have been an easy and low key night, but instead I felt inspired to remain in the kitchen and make something with the eggplant stash I'd purchased earlier in the day. Chris and I had been perusing the stands at the Tuesday market following an exceptional lunch at Boulette's Larder--they do everything right and this day had been no exception. We turned a corner and found ourselves standing in front of a table piled high with eggplant of all sorts, Japanese, Chinese, and Italian. I was studying the different shapes and sizes and trying to decide which type I preferred when Chris suggested Why don't you buy all three. Cook them all and see which you like best. I said Oh yes yes, The Eggplant Challenge. Good idea! I bought one of each.

At this point I'd prepared the batter, but the cake still needed to bake for 50 minutes. My eggplant challenge would have to wait. I only have one oven in this small kitchen you know... Luckily, I'm almost opposed to kitchen gadgets and appliances, so the small size of my kitchen isn't much of an issue (although I wouldn't mind a south facing window in front of my sink...). I'm a back-to-basics type when it comes to the kitchen and see most gadgets and appliances as superfluous. I just need a few good pans, a sharp knife, and a cutting board.

So, while the cake baked, I decided to prep the ingredients I'd need for my challenge and the ingredients for a pasta dish I was concocting in my head. The pasta dish had been inspired by an eggplant based recipe I'd seen on The Wednesday Chef the prior week. My version ended up a little different from Luisa's and Melissa's, but the core of the original recipe remained fairly intact. I switched to whole wheat pasta (Eduardo's whole wheat penne), went back to Melissa's lamb versus beef (for some reason I was in such a lamb mood this week...3 meals w/ lamb!), added some grape tomatoes, used three types of eggplant versus one, substituted cilantro for mint, and swapped out yogurt and melted butter for Parmigiano-Reggiano that I grated on top (sometimes I'm so predictable).

The cake was set to cool and I was finally able to cook the eggplant. I diced each eggplant into cubes of about 1/2-3/4", tossed them in olive oil, garlic (just a little), and salt before spreading each variety onto its own pan and placing those pans inside a 500 degree oven. The eggplant cooked quickly, in about 15 minutes. I let it cool slightly and then grabbed my notepad and pen and began tasting and taking notes.

The Japanese eggplant was soft and creamy, it almost melted in my mouth. This sounds nice, but frankly I enjoyed the other two more firmly textured varieties over the melt-in-your-mouth variety. It was a little sour. The skin was slightly bitter and the thickest of the three, but it did crisp up a bit and that was nice. I was surprised because I'd anticipated that the Japanese eggplant would be my favorite. It ranked 3rd (aka - last).

The Italian eggplant had the "eggplant taste" with which I am most familiar. It turns out that most familiar does not equate to best, not by any means. The skin was chewy, but not as thick as the Japanese. The skin did not crisp up at all. The seeds of the Italian eggplant were most prominent. It held its shape during cooking better than the Japanese, but not as well as the Chinese. The taste, especially when compared side-by-side with the Japanese and Chinese varieties, fell very flat. It was quite bland and I'll reiterate that this bland taste appeared after being tossed in olive oil, garlic, and salt. This not a good thing. The Italian eggplant ranked 2nd.

The Chinese eggplant held its shape during cooking. It had the thinnest skin. There weren't any bitter or sour notes noticed during the tasting. The skin was thin and unobtrusive. It absorbed the olive oil, garlic, and salt nicely. This eggplant was firm yet soft on the inside, and lightly crisp on the outside. There was a hint of sweetness in the flesh. The Chinese eggplant was the clear winner.

By the time I'd baked and glazed the cake, performed the eggplant challenge, and prepared my pasta dish, it was quite late and I was almost too sleepy to enjoy my creations, but I didn't mind. It was worth it. It might not be every girl's idea of a good time, but I actually enjoyed my evening of puttering about in the kitchen for hours on end.

Just as I finished my bowl of late-night pasta, Chris walked in the door. We sat down at the kitchen table together and ate slices of sweet cake before collapsing into bed and falling quickly into a deep and restful sleep.

strawberries for dinner

Strawberries with Buttermilk & Vanilla Sugar

Fill dessert bowl 3/4 full with cold buttermilk
Spoon in 1 - 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
Stir
Drop halved strawberries into bowl
Eat

a night to remember

my first homegrown strawberry in Point Reyes

It was a hot sunny day in San Francisco and this is not a place where hot sunny days come along often. I was hoping it would be one of those hot sunny days followed by a comfortably warm evening, the type I grew up with in Chicago. An evening without a light jacket is something almost unheard of around here. I really wanted to make the most of this surprise heat wave and prepare a dinner that fit the mood, something simple, beautiful, and light.

I'd been reading a lovely new book written by Molly Wizenberg, the creator of the blog Orangette, and thinking of making her bouchons au thon. I'm not sure if I was truly interested in her recipe or just charmed by her story, but decided that it didn't really matter. I forged ahead.

I rarely follow recipes, but Molly particularly noted that she always did, so I thought I'd try and practice restraint. I was almost 100% successful with the only exception being a substitute of sour cream for the crème fraîche I'd forgotten to purchase during my trip to the market.

The recipe turned out wonderfully and my only complaint is that the bottoms of the bouchons stuck to the well greased cups of my muffin tin. I'm not sure if it was my tin, if I did not use enough oil on the cups, if using butter would have made things less sticky, or if it is simply the nature of the beast. It was so minor I probably shouldn't even be referring to it as a complaint.

When Molly refers to the bouchons as odd and homely, my guess is that she does so lovingly. I think the little puffs are darling. I served the bouchons, two small puffs per person, atop a bed of ancho cress and sliced strawberries.

Ancho cress is a cress I had not yet met, before our Tuesday visit to the farmers market. If you too are unfamiliar with this cress you can see a photo of an ancho cress and scarlet runner bean salad on the Rancho Gordo site. This salad made me miss our beautiful scarlet runner bean and christmas lima bean tepees. They were really fantastic!

bean tepees we built from a type of flax growing on our neighbor's property (thanks Ruth!)

The ancho cress called out to me that day at the market. So did the pencil thin asparagus, Yerena Farms strawberries, and some small pale yellow carrots. It really was a perfect day.

The first bite into a leaf of ancho cress tricks you into thinking it is a tame green, but it is quickly followed by a peppery bite. I tamed the bite by tossing it with a light dressing of olive oil, fresh orange juice, a very small squeeze from the honey bear, and a little s&p. I decorated the top of the cress with sliced strawberries, lemon zest, and some thin shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano.

Petite plates of crisp green decorated with red, creamy white, and tiny flecks of yellow--all topped with golden puffs. A small round table for two in front of a large window on a warm night, the city humming below, and sharing it all with someone you love. A night to remember... Sigh. Smile.

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.