Crazy Water Pickled Lemon
Cookbook Review

These are Tiger's Eye and Jacob's Cattle dried beans that I grew in my community garden row. It is only a fraction of what I should be able to harvest in a few weeks. I don't expect to be able to grow enough beans to sustain us all year-we eat a lot of beans- but I wanted to find out how many pounds of dried beans I could get from a small patch of them. I also wanted to grow my own selection of varieties because as much as I love the basics (black, kidney, etc) I want the beautiful variety nature has provided to be preserved.

I wanted to look at prettier beans on my pantry shelf. Right now I'm in love with the Jacob's Cattle for its gorgeous red and white contrast.

Last night I made hummus to be eaten on sandwiches with fresh tomatoes (now in season!), grilled eggplant, and feta. I haven't had hummus in over 11 months. I didn't have any garbanzo beans and it wasn't part of my local challenge to get any since they aren't grown locally. I have missed it. My home made knocks the socks off of any prepackaged variety. I had beautiful parsley growing lush like jungle and cut a bunch of it. Four rinses later (all the water went into the pond, by the way, and not down the drain) and I was still getting tons of tiny little bugs off of it. I don't mind a stray bug that I can't see and don't know about but when, four rinses later, I'm still getting about a hundred tiny bugs...forget it. I don't eat bugs.

I'm bummed about that.

My head has been buzzing with food inspiration lately and I have been hankering to make some new dishes and try some new techniques such as Chinese spring rolls and home made veggie burgers. I have been wanting to buy a Chinese cookbook because I've never had one but it's not a great time for me to be purchasing anything new and I do have a lot of cookbooks already. So I took one of my very favorites ("Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone" by Deborah Madison) to bed with me along with a newer cookbook that I hadn't yet really explored called "Crazy Water Pickled Lemons" by Diana Henry.

First of all, Deborah Madison delivers the goods! Note to self: always check Deborah's book first for recipes. She has three spring roll recipes. Her recipes turn out perfect 99% of the time. If you only have one vegetarian cookbook, get this one.

I bought "Crazy Water Pickled Lemons" because it's beautiful. My favorite food in the world is Mediterranean style. This encompasses the food traditions of a lot of different countries but all in all there is a style that asserts itself through the ingredients and links them all together. I buy cookbooks largely for inspiration.

I opened up Diana Henry's book for a quick eyeful, not expecting to read much. An hour later I was turning the pages, reading her notes and essays on spices and ingredients as though it was a mystery novel. I couldn't put it down. Diana Henry is not just a cook, she's a poetic writer. When she writes about spices I can smell them. I can taste them. I know what she means about the excitement of seeing interesting colorful packages of exotic food on the pantry shelves.

I don't actually embrace the wild use of herbs for desserts. I am also not a fan of lavender as a flavoring. Yet, when she's writing about them I think it's like an aromatic universe of possibilities.

What an incredible contrast to the brash clangy commercial world of Rachel Ray with her cookbook called "Yum-o"*. I didn't even bother opening up her book when I was browsing at our local book store. It looks like one big television commercial dedicated to how to cook fast from a package.

Diana Henry's book has got me thinking about eating local versus eating internationally. She roused my desire for olives, lemons, cumin, and rice. Things that don't grow here. Oregon produces wild rice but I'm not crazy for its grassy chewiness. California does grow basmati rice though and if I can get it there instead of all the way from China, that's a good deal less travel for my food. How can I eat the food my soul craves while adhering to standards of local eating that I deem important?

I think trade offs are the way to go. Just as I learned in my months of buying only local foods, it takes some homework. It takes some effort. I don't have to stick to a 100 mile radius either. California is a hell of a lot more local to me than Chile. Washington state is more local than California. I do plan to grow my own lemons (must be brought in in the winter here) so that I don't have to buy them from California. But I will still buy olives. I think one has to think of the exotic imports as treats. I've said that before. Spices have been travelling the globe for centuries and keep well. Spices are the heart of regional cuisines. If you have the right spices you can often slur the lines with local produce. If I can't find Napa cabbage for spring rolls I'll experiment with regular cabbage and then grow my own Napa the next chance I get.

I love almonds and sadly they don't grow in my region. However, southern Oregon grows almonds well and I can find sources for those grown there as opposed to almonds grown further away. Save those things that don't grow in your region for special treats. I could eat three avocados a day. But not a single one of them will grow here. I still have not bought any avocados. I am not going to add them regularly to my diet again because of the road they have to travel. However, as a special winter treat I may buy a couple to make a grapefruit avocado salad. (Grapefruits are also not local.)

I believe it's possible to eat largely how we want and need to while still buying mostly local. You have to be willing to experiment with your produce. I think you need to try growing some of the delicacies (like lemon grass) that your grocery store normally imports from far away and use substitutes wherever possible.

Here are some guidelines:

• Try growing special foods in your own garden whenever possible. (Experiment with what will grow!)

• Buy dried goods in bulk (except for spices) to reduce packaging use. Do some research to find out if you can get your dried goods from locally grown sources. You may be surprised by what your region is producing.

• When buying something that doesn't get produced locally, try to find sources as close to home as possible. Miles count. So count them.

• Save the non local purchases for special treats instead of every day staples.

• Consider making some of your own condiments such as harissa or chutneys that you might normally buy. Some exotic condiments are very easy to make at home and taste better anyway.

I just read some reviews of this book. Most were good but one was very sour. I thought it was interesting. This book is not a traditional cookbook. It is more than that. The sour reviewer was annoyed by the small type, the way the chapters are laid out by spice rather than dish, and that she included too much prose- the very thing that got me turning pages into the night. This is how we should be approaching food: put it into a context in history, in lore, in the pantry...working our way through flavors and approaching our nutrition as a deliberate and thoughtful process. Using our imaginations and traveling the world with our senses.

This is the kind of approach that takes cooking from a necessary daily activity to an exciting, stirring adventure.

I don't need to buy any new cookbooks. I have plenty.

Having plenty is not something I've felt often over the past couple of years.

Plenty is beautiful.




*Yes, I realize that this is a charitable thing that she's started and I am happy that she's doing it, but "Yum-o"?! Oh for crying out loud! I HATE "Rachelisms". EVOO is the stupidest thing ever. As though I'm much too lazy to say extra virgin olive oil.

Shelling Peas
is the new karaoke

Cooking for a lot of people is exhilarating when you don't have to do it every day. If I had been a farm wife in the thirties with thirteen (or two?) children I would have constantly had a "headache" and made the family eat cold oatmeal for dinner with bacon lard. My husband would have beat me all the time because I would have been useless. The only time in my life that I have been a great housekeeper was when I was a childless housewife: when it was, in fact, my only job.

Cooking for a large group of people I like/love is like giving them a piece of myself. This is why I love Thanksgiving. No gifts but nourishment and time spent together preparing what keeps us hale and hearty, or in bad years-just plain alive. I like a lack of set traditions so that everyone can make it up as they go along. I like things to be informal.

Not informal in a Martha Stewart fake informal way that is really just what formal looks like when it's wearing jeans. I mean truly informal. The kind of gathering where everyone is comfortable lounging around with their shoes on or off, however they please. Where they can help themselves to whatever is in the fridge. The kind where you feel comfortable rooting around in cupboards for glasses. The kind of gathering that doesn't concern itself with doing dishes until the next morning.

So I made my friends wash potatoes* and lettuce and shell peas. The meal was about 95% locally grown and produced. Plus it tasted great.

Here are some highlights of the gathering:

• Lisa B's daughter Maddy's obsession with catching and releasing as many frogs as possible and the sideways discovery that Lisa isn't all that crazy for amphibians being up close and personal. Even baby ones the size of dimes.

• Riana's daughter Amaya using dog and frog water for festive beverages. The following speculation concerning how likely it was that Amaya was hoping to eat an actual frog was pretty great too: it was decided that frogs the size of dimes would only be good fried like "popcorn" style appetizers and Riana's French husband Benji did point out that while French people do eat frogs, they only eat the legs.

• Max stopping a bloody nose with an apple. It wasn't as effective as he hoped and resulted in a disgusting piece of fruit and blood all over his face. He was amused with the experiment and I went flying through the house to locate tissues. He's been getting more of them lately which I think is because of the heat.

• Pat from here in McMinnville (who is very old friends with Riana's mom, also named Pat) making mojitos and filling the kitchen with the scent of mint. It was quite a process and makes it a beverage to sip, I think, not gulp. Pat was lovely in her pretty summery skirt and shiny smile.

• Max blurring by with actual real cherries in his hands that he was actually EATING.** Yes, fresh local cherries. Did I dream that? Does that negate the awful blue Gatorade he was drinking earlier from the corner store? My kid ate cherries and I didn't have anything to do with it. It was a beautiful sight.

• Enjoying Benji's imitation of hormonal teens. He's a teacher and we were discussing the French school system and I was asking how hard the age group is that he teaches (from 11 years old to, I think, 15?) and he was demonstrating the fun attitudes and postures of the different ages. You'd never guess from pictures of him how funny he is.

• Finding out that French kids can be picky eaters too. It was also enjoyable finding out that a lot of French people don't even like cheese at all, or will only eat a couple of kinds of cheese. I always suspected these things but keep hearing people claim that picky eating is only an American phenomenon. Which I didn't believe.

How weird and modern is it that you can meet someone online and feel like you've known them a million years without having ever met them in person and then when you do meet them feel like they're family? As messed up as the world is right now, that's a pretty great experience. Thank you Riana (and family!) for taking the time to come and have dinner with us. Until next time we'll gather around pictures in Flickr and share each others' adventures through our blogs!



*My first potato harvest of the year!

**And then spitting the pits out at the girls. Boys!

Wheat fields of McMinnville
the food where I live

Wheat fields are beautiful. That's a field of food right there. Golden grains shining under the July sun. It's a shame that this food isn't going to feed the people who live near it. This food is going to be exported. This is what's wrong with the world right now. We grow grain and ship it away. We grow nuts and ship it away. We grow beets for sugar and ship the sugar away.

All this food surrounds us and it isn't going to feed us. It's going to suck up a bunch of power to send it somewhere else, to feed other people. We have starving people here in our own county. But that's another story, isn't it? Because even if all the food we produced were to be sold locally there just aren't enough jobs to provide money for the people who are starving to buy it with. The weirdest thing is that every country could be growing enough food for all it's starving people but the people who are starving aren't necessarily starving because there is no food, they are starving because the food costs too much.

While poverty is something I have been familiar with personally in the past and am re-experiencing much more lightly now, I am extremely fortunate that I have enough resources to buy 18 pounds of sour cherries when they become available. I am fortunate to be able to buy them for $1.20 per pound and that I have the knowledge to preserve them in several different ways.

To know how fortunate I really am, even with debt collectors calling me every day, all I have to do is see how rich in food I am to feel my true luck. And now, I must go shower, get dressed, and get processing because my sour cherries are turning brown!! Ack! I'm off. I hope for all of you that you are rich in food too because that is the true measure of our well being.

A Sandwich Story

Look at that sandwich. Don't you want to eat that sandwich? I want to want to eat that sandwich, but the truth is that I was afraid to eat it. That's right, I experience food fear periodically and somewhat randomly. I'm not sure what happens but there's a little audible *click!* in my head that makes me unable to eat something I've prepared.

Your instinct might be to suggest that perhaps I need to take some cooking classes and maybe I should stop putting Spam in everything. I don't feel an inordinate amount of pride about many of my skills (just get me going on laundry) but I know I am a good cook because my family has a very discerning palate and it took years but they all agree now that I am an excellent cook. The opinions of my family members matters a whole lot more than I like to admit.

No, I don't know why it is but it has always happened. In spite of having been raised as a vegetarian and deciding to remain one, the first two dishes I actually mastered were: polenta with butter and rosemary, and perfectly roasted cornish game hens.

Yes, I have shoved my hand up a cornish game hen's sorry carcass to retrieve the bag of offal charmingly referred to as the "giblets". I have basted dead birds' bodies carefully with their own meat juices and delivered to a few guests what I hear was a very tender and delicious dinner. This is what I prepared for my room mate and a few of our fashion design friends in an effort to make the large nosed Lucca from Florence decide he had to marry me.

Instead he told me how, back home in Florence, all women named Angelina are very old ladies with multiple chin hairs.

Damn him. I've got five of them now.

The bastard knew I was going to have chin hairs, a love of aprons instead of stockings, and become a whole lot more ample. That's why he didn't want to take me home to his mother.

I got him back by calling him "Stallone Pantone" all the time after asking him how to say "stud muffin" in Italian.

I never tasted my own crispy golden cornish game hens because by the time I learned to make them I had decided that I was never going to become accustomed to the revolting texture of meat and it was a waste of time and potentially enjoyable meals to try and acquire a tolerance for it. Making those birds also taught me that I didn't intend to regularly (read: EVER AGAIN) touch dead flesh.

You would think I learned that lesson the day my dad left me a note thumb-tacked to a whole raw chicken when I was babysitting my sister after having taken acid for the first time the previous evening. However disturbing the texture of dead chicken skin is on a good clear day, it doesn't compare to the nightmare of moving undulating pores that it is right after you've come down from tripping on LSD.

Just for the record- I hated doing acid. I don't like psychedelic drugs. Actually, the only drugs I like are beer and cigarettes*. I did acid two more times before I realized that I really truly hated being high. Really. I know what it is to have hallucinations generated by my own wacky brain, what do I need to simulate being miserable for? My brain is a factory of fun all by itself. In fact, as it turns out, I have to take medicine to make it stop tripping all over the place.

Anyway. About the cheese. I made chevre cheese from raw cow's milk. It smells kind of sweet. It smells good yet it's not what I want. I can't bring myself to taste it. So I made this wonderful sandwich for Philip. He loved it. He loves the cheese. The cheese turned out great. But I can't convince myself to go wild and try it.

It isn't feta. I like feta. No, I am obsessed by feta. I miss feta and would happily trade in my shares in the Tillamook cheddar cheese factory for a nice big block of salty tangy crumbly and savory feta. More than avocados, more than lemons, I miss feta. I don't want a sweet cheese. I want it salty and tangy. The same way life comes to me. Feta with kalamata olives is how love tastes when sculpted by the sun beating down on dry soil.

I never taste a dressing until it's poured over my salad. The thought of having to taste a spoonful of any kind of "spread" for sandwiches makes me choke on my own tongue. Double that sensation if the spread has any amount of mayo in it. These are things that once in their designated food melange are absolute heaven.

Sometimes I make something that sounded really good before I actually have it in front of me. Philip will eat these meals and tell me they're very good. I made a lentil soup not long ago and I was craving it until I had the happy idea of putting some basil pistou in it. The second I let the giant spoonful of basil puree drop into the soup I knew I had ruined it. It still smelled good, and I actually did have a bowl of it** and even though most of my senses were telling me it tasted good, my body revolted and wanted to push it back up. Yum. So I didn't eat any more of it.

Philip says the cheese is very very good.





*I haven't smoked in four years so spare me any lectures.

**Purely out of guilt for having such a stupid childish aversion to a perfectly good soup.

Mozzarella

I have a few hints for making mozzarella:

• Don't forget to salt it.

• Kneading really hot cheese is dangerous, so don't be a cowboy about it.

• Don't expect it to miraculously roll itself into a tidy ball like you see in the fancy cheese section.

• Forget about trying to make those tiny little balls you see in extra-fancy cheese sections because hot cheese has a mind of it's own.

• If you're using pasteurized milk this cheese will get soft and messy if you store it in water.

• Don't be afraid of it after you've made it.

I think my cheese could have had more flavor but two things must be considered: the first thing is that I failed to salt it, even though I fully intended to and the second thing is that this was a quick recipe which means the flavor didn't have time to develop. In spite of that I put it on this locally made focaccia bread with tomato sauce and a light sprinkling of jack cheese and the flavor of my own cheese was really nice.

The next time I make mozzarella I plan on making it using the longer method in which the curdling is accomplished with the slow action of enzymes added to the milk and kept at a warm temperature instead of doing it in minutes by using an acid based additive like lemon juice or vinegar. My friend Lisa B. did some research and discovered why I wasn't able to make ricotta successfully from the whey left over after making my cheeses. The reason is that you can only make ricotta from whey that has not been treated with acid. So the other reason to take more time to make mozzarella is one of economy: if you let milk and whey separate using an enzyme you can get two products out of one gallon of milk. Ricotta is a byproduct of cheese making.

That's a two for one situation.

One gallon of milk should yield about a pound of mozzarella cheese and a half a pound of ricotta which means that if I make my own it will only cost me $2.53 p/lb*. Tell me, when was the last time you got artisan quality cheese for that price?

Most average cheeses cost between $5 and $8 dollars a pound in my town. Artisan cheese goes for somewhere between $9 and $20 p/lb. With gasoline prices on a pretty steady climb I don't think we're going to see good cheese get cheaper.

*My local milk costs $2.69 for a gallon, plus you have to add the cost of a packet of cheese culture which costs about a $1.00. You can actually get a culture that you can keep alive indefinitely if you learn the art of feeding your enzymes and then the cheese would only cost $1.79 p/lb. I'm not there yet. Milk often costs close to $5.00 a gallon so sometimes this good price might not be possible. You also have to consider the different yields for different cheeses which vary some.

Yogurt Cheese Report

Arty picture of cheese bowl to disguise the fact that my old camera takes crappy pictures and I dropped my new one on the floor and broke it. I'm still waiting to hear from the company if it's fixable, how much of my vast fortune it will take to mend it, and how long I will be forced to take terrible photos.

The yogurt cheese (lebneh, I'm learning to call it), turned out to be extremely successful. The question I have is how come anyone bothers with cream cheese at all when you can eat this cheese which is healthier all around? I didn't let mine get super stiff because when I open hunks of cream cheese I usually spend some time trying to whip the arthritis out of it so I can spread it on something instead of tearing up my food.

The lebneh is tangy and smooth. I spread it on a piece of wheat toast and topped it with jalapeno pepper jelly.

I would like to sit here and chat all morning but I have to go get ready for my first all day Master Gardening class. This will be a challenging day because we got almost no sleep last night between our dying cat, the alert dog, the light sleeping kid who is scared of sleeping without the kitty and who didn't go to sleep again between the hours of 2 am and 4:10 am. I look like I got hit by a semi truck. All this after a very rough day yesterday. It has come to my attention that I should have gotten my psychiatrist appointment before starting therapy. All the therapy did was make me feel worse.

So I hope you all make some yogurt cheese and have a really great Thursday!

Gifts From A Far Away Kitchen

Pine nuts gathered from the woods near Riana's house.

A few cloves of "Rose" garlic that I could eat but would rather plant. I suppose since it's too late to plant garlic here for a summer crop, I could plan on keeping it in the ground for two years and actually let it go to flower? It would be great if I could plant it now and still get a big enough head to harvest. Should I try?

Riana Lagarde is a food and travel writer living in southern France with her French husband and baby. They have embarked on a "slow living" year during which they are not buying anything besides the absolute essentials. I encountered her on flickr first and have since been reading her blog regularly which chronicles their adventure in slow living. I am not ready to make the huge changes that she's made (she is mostly cooking on her wood stove, not using heat except for the wood stove, not buying plastic, or toilet paper, nor sponges, and dries all her clothes on a line, just to name a few big changes) but I read what she's up to and it makes me think a lot about my own consumption and has begun to shift my own habits by inspiring me with how resourceful she's become and how happy and satisfied she is leading a slow life.

Seeing as I am not able to buy pine nuts, I expressed envy that Riana is able to forage them near her house. So what did she do? She sent me a care package with the following items: PINE NUTS IN THE SHELL!!!, French chocolate (Angeleen, I think you should stop by in the next couple of days so I can let you taste a square!), a piece of ginger root, some cloves of "rose" garlic, three vanilla beans (which I actually wanted to buy but was holding off), and some cinnamon sticks. My head is busy trying to think what I will send in return.

Chick actually found the package before me and hid it behind my arm chair where she attempted to maul it (she could smell the chocolate) and was only successful in putting a couple of teeth indentations in the package. I'm so glad that Max found it in time!!

I have tried cracking a couple of my precious pine nuts (which I would like to eat in a salad because Oakhill Organics is having their Christmas produce sale tomorrow and I can get some lettuce from them) but I have ruined two trying to get them open. HELP Riana! They are two small for my nut cracker and my hammer decimated one and all the pieces shot out in every direction. I don't dare try to crack another one until you tell me your own method!

As I am writing this I have thought of a couple of great items for a care package for Riana. But I won't tell yet just in case she pops over here for a visit.

As we all start examining our own contribution to the excessive use of oil through buying exports, or driving giant cars to go pick up our kids a few blocks away (even I have been guilty of taking Max to school on some mornings on my Scooter which is ridiculous), and supporting foreign economies, I think it's good to reflect on how globalization has enabled us to connect with people all over the world- something quite positive if we learn about each other and find inspiration from each other.

Now that I am not buying nearly as much imported food I find that the little splurges feel really large- very special. Getting a package from an Internet friend full of goodies from her own region feels like stepping back in time when most of our exotic goods were sent to us from relatives and friends who have traveled farther than us. I can see a world where most of us get our imports through friends and acquaintances rather than buying them through giant greedy corporations. Sending gifts that can be eaten or grown to make longer lasting gifts that nourish is pretty great. Nothing that Riana sent me will clutter my closets with crap. None of it will sit forlorn on a shelf collecting dust. It will be eaten, enjoyed, and (maybe?) live on in my garden.

Thank You Riana!!!!

I know that there are a lot of groans out there about getting cookies as presents from friends and family during the holidays. None of us want to get fatter than we are. But I'm thinking that the magic of food as gifts is that it is imminently useful. It doesn't have to be fattening either. The spice blends are a good example of something you can give that can be used in the kitchen and enjoyed in a way that so many gifts cannot. Home canned goods are also a great gift- it doesn't have to be jam (although, come on, jam is awesome!!!), you can make dilly beans or chutneys or pickles or candied nuts. I love that people still give food as gifts, especially when they have made it or grown it themselves.

Speaking of the spice mix: I will write down all the names of everyone who voted on the food related gifts post and I will draw one name out of it to win the spice mix gift. I will do that later today and post the results.

I also have results to discuss concerning the coffee liqueur. In all the batches of liqueurs I've made so far, the one universal problem has been that they are too thick and sweet with not enough of an alcohol punch which I have blamed on not being able to get my hands on 100 proof liquor. I tasted the coffee liqueur last night (that was made with 100 proof vodka) and for the first time ever I have to say that it doesn't have enough sugar in it to make it thick and rich enough- though also for the first time ever-it actually has the right amount of punch to it. The flavor is very good. I am going to add a little bit of sugar to it and wait for it to dissolve for a couple of days and I will report on it again. As soon as I have it perfect I will do the second drawing of a name to pick the winner of a bottle of the booze.

For anyone wondering if I will ever make good on my promise to take care of my brain- I have finally made an appointment with a therapist and today I will get a referral to a psychiatrist to help adjust my medication. So there.