Hungry Times Two

My preciouses Can you tell what I've been up to in my first summer in Oregon? It turns out if you put 12+ tomato plants in your garden, you best be ready for the tomatoes. Despite a historically hot and dry Summer 2018 here in Multnomah County, our Early Girls, Oregon Springs and San Marzanos thrived. Being "job free" this summer had its perks. After breakfast and feeling fully caffeinated, every other morning I'd take my best garden assistant, Loretta the pup, for a walk to the community garden at Gresham City Hall. I'd tether her to a garden stake under a tree and give her a bucket of water, and she'd turn full Goat, nibbling at the weeds along the border of the nearby garden plots. While Loretta grazed and supervised as my personal Garden Security Guard, I'd water every plant twice, filling up the "dirt collars" Scott built around each plant, which served as nice trenches for water. Then I'd pick off the ripe or nearly ripe...

64 degrees, friends.  That's the current temperature here in Gresham, Oregon, at 1:30pm PT on Monday, July 2.  This southern-born transplant is in awe. Yesterday while reading on our patio in mid-afternoon, I donned a long sleeve because of a light, cool breeze. If I was back in Charlotte right about now, I'd be removing as many layers as legally possible. It's a transition that's a welcome change. No more sweating off sunscreen or makeup, and goodbye frizzy hair that can claim it's own zip code? (Well, the hair is still kinda big.) I'm in! And Scott is no longer having summertime humidity  Nicolas Cage-style freak outs . Yet when it comes to gardening, the cooler temps and surprisingly dry weather so far are perplexing. After a bit of wrangling, we secured a large 20'x20' plot at Gresham City Hall community garden, which is walkable from our apartment. It took a full day to hack weeds out of the very rocky soil and hand-turn/till with ...

My favorite milk glass windowsill vases have been kicked to the side. They had such a good run early in the summer, holding herbs and flowers from our yard.  Instead, today we visited our community garden plots and HELLO LOVELIES. Our first two Brandywine tomatoes are nearly ripe and we found nearly 2 pounds of San Marzanos ready and waiting.  The windowsill is crammed today with these fruits. Yes, a tomato is a fruit. Tomorrow I'll find a small batch recipe for tomato sauce for the Marzanos. Food in Jars is typically a resource for that. This will be my first rodeo making sauce to can, so if anyone has tips, please share!

We're back with another edition of "Hey, we used to be bloggers." I am not so sure who reads blogs much anymore (hi Moms!) but hell, if e-newsletters are in again and the ' 90s "flatform" shoe is making a comeback , maybe we have a shot. As I nurse a gin and tonic made of nothing but the finest (here's to you, cheap Chek tonic cans from the Mount Pleasant, SC Bi-Lo - sometimes you just buy things to get the job done, especially when you're en route to Vacation Weekend after a slight detour to fix a flat tire on I-26...), I'm mulling over what's happening so far in our garden plots.  We went Tomato Crazy this year, planting 6+ mixed varieties in our raised beds that kinda-sorta get sufficient sunlight in our backyard, and 8 seedlings in one of our two Winterfield Community Garden plots. Hopefully we'll soon pick beautiful Red Delicious, San Marzano, Black Krim, Blue Gold Cherry, Brandywine, and a few "mystery" tomatoes,...

This is what happens when, despite some ungodly temperatures here in North Carolina, your garden decides to go forth & dispense some goodies. I have 30 cucumbers in my crisper drawer right now, y'all. What. The. Heck. Fortunately, I like a good cucumber challenge. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) The first thing I did when our Seed Savers Exchange A&C and White Wonder  cukes started showing up was to find a good pickling recipe. And with temperatures hanging in the 100 degree fun zone for nearly 2 weeks here, I needed one that didn't require processing them. Who could conceive of a hot water canning bath in that kind of weather?

In my last post I shared that we hauled back lots of apples from the N.C. mountains. Since then I've eaten apples in my oatmeal, cored into slices with peanut butter, in a sheet cake, with cheddar slices, and in a celery and blue cheese salad. Our dog Loretta enjoys wrangling the cores out of her red Kong . And yet we still have SO MANY APPLES. One half of our fridge is completely stacked with apples and one crisper drawer is full. We have a bounty of  "Nature's Toothbrush." (Ew.) Chopped Apple Cake, from the 1987 edition of the Trinity United Methodist Church, Charlotte, cookbook. (My dad was the minister there in the late '80s. The ladies there could COOK.) At night they multiply in our fridge like amoebas. They're taking over. I think I may become one.

Looking for something different to snack on? Need a break from that cheese tray or chips & dip rut? C'mon, you're better than that. Check out my guest blog post on We The Eaters for a lovely Italian pickled Giardiniera. It's a simple pickle featuring carrots, cauliflower and red peppers, but with enough zing to tell your taste buds to get happy. You know you need to eat more vegetables. So get canning!

Last week I went a bit bonkers for anything a mason jar can contain. Perhaps it's my participation in Bitten Word' s Cover to Cover '13 (they're cooking the entire September issue of Bon Appetit , y'all), or because We The Eaters invited me to share a post for their canning challenges. I just decided I needed some can-therapy, and put my stash of jars to good use on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday.

It's Friday. Let's make this short, sweet and fantastic. Yesterday I posted about my new-found love of eggs. Then last night I read in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle (rereading it, as I now have a vaguely deeper understanding of how damn hard it is to grow your own food) about her family's favorite Eggs in a Nest dish. And what's in my email this morning? A friend sharing Eggs in Purgatory , which looks like something we need to cook NOW. I love it. File this under "Well, that was something": Last weekend while visiting good high school friends in the Raleigh area, we stumbled upon this at Harris Teeter: Gjetost, a cube of brown Norwegian cheese. A quick Google search indicated it's commonly called "fudge cheese," something the Norwegians like to fuel up on before they hit the slopes. Somehow I thought I'd be ok with that. My friends liked it; I thought it tasted like caramelized Play-doh. Next up: I need to fin...

In January I proposed a few ambition s I'd like to take on in the culinary wonderland this year. Thus far I have 1) roasted a chicken, 2) eaten less crap, and 3) traveled to Italy. (Still need to blog this...ugh, my bad.) On my to-do list: 1) Buy the skillet (but only after we move...another sore spot) and 2) fry up a chicken, 3) fix a real curry, 4) Get schooled on wine, and 5) entertaining more. A real proper curry may be the next thing I try. I am also adding "pickling vegetables" to the list. Pickled cocktail okra, anyone? I just made myself hungry. Yum...lunchtime.

Here I sit, typing on this wee blog, with my back to my grandmother's china cabinet (which was originally a pantry for my great-grandmother's pump house , where all the men would go to have a drink 'cause my great-grand didn't allow liquor in her home, thank you very much). Peering into the glass door of the cabinet, I see nine jars of Christmas Morning Marmalade, which I rechristened "Pucker Up Marmalade" after Scott and I spent nearly two hours peeling, slicing, and seeding an ungodly amount of citrus fruit right before Christmas.

As I sit here typing, a funny little sound escapes from my kitchen. "Thwack. Pop." Silence...then again, "Thwack." No, it's not Scott taking out his frustrations on a meal tonight. It's glass jars filled with yummy sweet spreads sealing their lids as they cool. Oh, how I love that sound! What did I make, you may wonder. Well, let me tell you. It has to do with these shots, taken during our visit to Homestead Farm two weekends ago: Our host tells us what's up... respect the fruit. We always respect the fruit. The apples we picked -- about 20 - 25 of the Gala and Cameo varieties, were HUGE - nearly twice the size of the typical grocery store kind. I am obviously all about them, as you see below. In addition to acres of apples, the farm also includes a pumpkin patch - pretty irresistible this time of year. Our friend Ryan demonstrates how Mr. Potato Head has been replaced by a much larger piece of produce - MUCH larger. If apples aren't your deal, you...

This weekend, Hungry Times Two was minus one, as Scott hightailed it to Charlottesville , Va. for a father-son trip. (I was a little, no - make that super - jealous as that's one of the weekend trip destinations on my list). As per ritual when it's just me in the house to cook for, I scaled it down a bit, with the usual stir fry for one that did not turn out well at all on Friday (rice undercooked; zucchini and eggplant overdone and in a salty sauce I didn't care for). What to do? Trash the meal for a snack of homemade popcorn, of course. *An aside: Since my introduction to kernels popped in a big pot with a lid, aided by a little salt (or Old Bay, or cayenne, or whatever seasonings you'd like) and olive oil, I haven't bought any microwave popcorn and have no inclination to do so. Why eat greasy crap imitation butter flavor when you can make real popcorn for pennies? And my tree- huggin ' self loves that there's less packaging.* Saturday, with hopes for find...

Lately I'm obsessing over what to can/preserve next. I'm already thinking about Christmas gifts and I think Scott and I may do what we did last year, which was to hand make everything for friends and family. It was very rewarding, fun, saved us money, and way less stressful than hitting the mall or big box store for the one perfect thing for each person on our list. Like a squirrel hoarding for winter, I'm saving extra jars and food containers that will hold up well for nesting gift goodies and I want to hit up Craigslist and thrift stores to find Ball and Mason jars. Much cheaper than buying new ones, and less waste too. The jars and threads can be boiled to sterilize and reuse - it's the lids that have to be new and replaced. With tomato season about to hit its peak, what could a canner want more than to do some homemade salsa? Chutney? Gazpacho? Vegetable soup? Even Tomato Jam! Marinara? The possibilities are quite endless. I also would like to try out something...

Apologies to all Moulin Rouge fans for the post title - I never really took to that movie but I am a HUGE Ewan McGregor fan (oh, the Scottish accent and his fearless roles, especially in the cult classic Velvet Goldmine), but I digress... I'm up on here today to tell you all about canning/preserving and how satisfying it is - yes, that thing that your grandmomma /grandma/gran/ MeeMaw does or used to do. Canning, or "putting up/laying up" as it is colloquially known, is a great way to make use of particular produce you love and want to enjoy year-round. My lovely friend C. taught me how to do it last summer and I have really, really, really enjoyed all the things I have canned thus far. I'm not really into pickling or preserving a lot of veggies, except for tomatoes, but I love making fruit spreads like jams, preserves, chutneys, butters, etc. Yesterday I took to the stove in my wee hot-as-hell-kitchen and made seven pints of strawberry jam . It went a little som...

Home bound today with a cold and sore throat, I thought I'd recap our holiday gift making bonanza that started up in mid-fall when I, inspired by my canning with a friend, decided to leap into canning for Christmas. In addition, an unfortunate slam by the down economy" made Scott and I realize we could save a lot by not hitting the mall or big box retailers and instead, show our love for friends and family with gifts made by our own little downsized but not downtrodden hands. In addition to the pear chutney and the Spicy Red Pepper Jelly (which didn't jell, but became a nice sauce for pork and the like) my friend and I made, I canned Apple Butter and Sweet Potato Butter. If I chose this endeavor again, I would only do one at a time - not both. I quickly realized that I don't have enough counter space or stove burners for two recipes at once. After hunting unsuccessfully for some cute retro-style canning labels, I took Scott's suggestion and used name badges. Funny ...