I think the notion of the Cocoon by designer Mans Salmonsen is very fun – grow herbs on the top planter portion and store fruit and other goodies below. Makes good use of space doesn’t it?
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From the category archives:
Food
If you saw my post a few weeks back – on February 15th I started some tomato and eggplant seeds in peet pots indoors – attempting to get going for some early planting. I set them out on a cookie sheet – kept them watered and after about 10 days – *nothing*! I think the downstairs of my house is too cold and dry yet to nurture much without some intervention.
Then I picked up one of those Jiffy mini greenhouses for starting seeds (about $3) from a local greenhouse out here in Connecticut – poured some water in to the bottom reservoir, clapped on the clear plastic cover and like magic the seeds bounded out of the soil like gangbusters within about 3 days.
The tomatos first – then the egglant. Now I have to go about thinning the sprouts which is a little sad but utterly necessary. I take the lid off in the afternoons so the little buggers get accustomed to a regular environment and the bright sunshine.
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Since maple syrup is in high season right now (how yum is that?) I got to thinking yesterday that since it’s a reduced substance derived naturally from trees it must have some excellent health benefits.
Low and behold, a little search online and I found that it does indeed have high amounts of minerals such as manganese and zinc – more about it here. North American Indians regarded it as part treat, part medicine – which gives new meaning to the phrase “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down” doesn’t it?
In honor of this newly rediscovered healthy treat, I thought I’d post this recipe that Martha Stewart published in her May issue of Everyday Food last year.
In that issue (which I’ve saved along with the rest of my copies of Everday Food in a nice neat stack) Martha suggests making and freezing Cinnamon-Oat Pancakes so that you can just pop them into a toaster oven during the week for a really nice start to the day. Why this idea never occurred to me before, I can’t say – waffles and pancakes are readily available in the freezer section so it makes perfect sense to do this. I tried it and low and behold, it’s fabulous.
Cinnamon-Oat Pancakes along with freezing and heating instructions:
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 cups old fashioned oats
2 cups milk
2 large eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil, plus more for skillet
Method:
1) In a food processor combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and 1 cup oats and pulse a few times to coarsely grind oats. In a large bowl, whisk together milk, eggs, and oil. Add dry ingredients and 1 cup oats and whisk just until moistened.
2) Heat a large skillet (nonstick or cast iron) or griddle over medium. Lightly oil skillet. Using 2 to 3 tablespoons for each pancake, drop batter into skillet and cook until a few bubbles have burst – 1 to 2 minutes. Flip pancakes and cook until browned on undersides, 1 to 2 minutes more. Repeat with more oil and batter.
To Freeze: Cool pancakes on a rack, then arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet. Freeze until firm – then place in plastic freezer bags – can be stored up to 3 months.
To Heat From Frozen: For a single serving, warm pancakes in toaster – for a large batch warm in oven.
How simple is that?
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The past few days I’ve been reading an amazing book – “The Heretic’s Daughter” by Kathleen Kent. The story is set in the late 1600’s in Salem Massachusetts during (you guessed it) the Salem Witch Trials. I don’t want to digress from my theme of Sugar Shackin’ by discussing the story at much length – except to say its a remarkable read. My point in bringing it up is that there’s a scene in which the main character Sarah Carrier goes off with her father and brothers to collect maple syrup that I thought was particularly evocative. At the beginning of March 1692 it goes:
“…The maple grove was very old, many of the trees forty of fifty feet high. Father told us that the Indians would come there to make their gashes in the trees, collect the sap in hollow logs, and thicken the sap by dropping heated rocks into it. Father chose the best, feeling carefully around the crags and fissures with his fingers, never tapping below a limb or close to a defect in the bark at the the Northern exposure. When he chose his site he gently hammered into the bark, in an upward motion, the concave rod, allowing the sap to flow downwards from the inner recesses of the tree. It would take hours to fill the buckets…”
I was reading this on Saturday morning and realized that it was indeed the big time of year here in New England when the sap is running and the sugar collectors are out in droves – hanging their buckets and firing up their kettles and stoves.
While most of us think of Vermont and Canada when it comes to maple syrup, there is a respectable sugar culture here in Connecticut. I drove out to East Haddam over the weekend to take photos of some of the buckets.
Modern collection methods are far less sensory and use drills to punch the plugs into maples all around the trunks rather than carefully hammering them in like Sarah Carrier’s father did, but the old fashioned aluminum setups are still pretty romantic looking.
Three buckets above for these mature maples. We’re having a very mild March here in Connecticut (hallelujah!) – rather than snow on the ground there were birds chirping and daffodils coming out of the ground nearby.
An inside look…
What “a sap” I am – I thought it just flowed out the trees rich and amber colored. Nope – clear.
Driving around I came across Rick’s Sugar Shack – set deep in the woods in East Haddam, Rick was having an open house. I was able to get a little insight into the syrup making process and take some shots of their maple stoves and rendering equipment – which as a California girl, was quite a revelation. I didn’t grow up with sugarin’ as part of my culture so I find this really charming.
I’ve always wondered what the smoke was all about – apparently it’s from a wood fired stove that heats a large cauldron that cooks the sap down and renders it into syrup. Here’s the main cooking in process:
Inside the pot there are four chambers that the liquid flows through as it’s rendered. You can see the clear sap in the far right chamber and the tone changes to deeper amber as it flows along.
You can really detect a smoky flavor in many local maple syrup products – particularly in maple candy. I’m certain that oak fired stoves have a different flavor than pine since the heat and burn rate is different with soft and hard woods.
The rendered syrup is strained and then made into candies or other goodies.
A candy machine waits to make new treats for visitors:
I discovered a treasure trove of recipes and ideas for using maple syrup other than simply pouring over pancakes – even though that is probably my favorite. I’ll be adding them this week – among them is Maple Mustard – and Maple Jelly (shown below) it is so surprisingly yummy you just won’t believe it!
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I was out walking around my local mall (Westfarms out here in Connecticut is really fabulous) and suddenly the aroma of spice and flowers melded with herbs came wafting through the air. It took a few steps, a little looking around before I spotted the big pot of tea sitting in front of the Teavana store. A long time tea fan, I made my way over and tasted a special brew they’d mixed up – part White Ayurvedic Chai, part Samarai Chai Mate – 100% heaven!
It’s a beautiful blend – the taste is wonderful and it’s said that it does all sorts of lovely things for you such as suppress appetite, increase energy and focus – stuff I can always use help with. I wish someone would concoct a scent sampler for websites so that I could impart the fragrance of those blossoms and branches through the internet. But perhaps you can image gazing at the photo below – with it’s little pieces of fruit and flowers it’s a beautiful spicy inviting concoction.
above: the dried blend – below: steeping
The tea itself is gorgeous – and while Teavana certainly didn’t invent remarkable teas they have helped to revolutionize the awareness of all the benefits of the various blends. There are scads of local tea enthusiasts and purveyors such as Tea Savvy in my neck of the woods who do wonderful things with their blends as well.
Another item that really thrilled me were these gorgeous floraly tea tins which they sell in various sizes to store tea, along with a label reminding of what’s inside as well as brewing instructions.
I love patterns and papers so I was enchanted with these beauties – the picture below was snapped with my ever handy iPhone so forgive the poor lighting. I can imagine a collection of these in an open shelf kitchen next to cups and saucers. I have a wet bar in what I call my parlor that has some dribbles and drabs of booze bottles that rarely see much action. I’d love to get a collection of these together and convert the area into a tea bar (or tea cozy) along with various pots and cups – it would get much more use for sure!
another view:
The tin I picked for my chai blend was this really pretty yellow and cherry blossom style – at $14.95 for the tin, and about $40 for the half pound of tea I’ll be collecting these slowly I think.
The paper seems to be treated to resist moisture and water a bit – but it has raised gold embossing and nice heavy texture.
Once last look:
Ok – one more – this time that’s it…(I love playing with my camera. In this case I’m trying to dodge flares and keep the aspect straight – not all that easy today.)
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Thanks to Kitchn on Apartment Therapy for featuring my Super Duper Immune Boosting soup – it was quite a thrill to see the recipe among the site’s Delicious Links on Wednesday!
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So I just joined a locavore dinner club here in Connecticut that turned out to be as much fun as I originally thought it would. Basically each month the group sets a theme, and we the dinner clubbers create dishes based on it, made from ingredients sourced from within a 30 mile (or so) diameter of where the party is slated to be held. Each month a different dinner clubber hosts.
Saturday was my first event – the theme was soup – but I was assigned a hot appetizer as my dish which left the field more or less open. The challenge of course was in finding fresh produce and ingredients in the middle of winter.
I pined and worried till I came across White Gate Farm’s (in East Lyme, CT) website. Probably the only farm stand open year round amid freezing temps and snow on the ground – White Gate Farm has large greenhouses, and happy roaming chickens. Eggs and greens, and some stored squash and potatoes were first on my list.
The farm is owned by Pauline Lord and her husband David Harlow – fairly recent transplants from Northern California (as am I) – and they have quite the operation going there. Happy go lucky chickens as mentioned, a thriving greenhouse, homemade jams, sauces, dressings, bread, and a surprising number of customers for late January.
I really enjoyed my visit, and would have loved to have taken pictures of my own, but it was 18 degrees F when I was there and I’ve discovered my camera battery doesn’t enjoy operating in sub-freezing temps and promptly shut down. So I was pleased to see that the Hartford Courant had written Pauline and White Gate up about a month ago and took the great photo of Pauline (below) – read more about them here. I also found a few images that coelgart2009 took recently.
I ended up taking home some purple potatoes, some raspberry ginger preserves, onions, garlic, a bag of greens from the greenhouse, and some dried cherry tomatoes.
I also dropped by The Local Beet in Chester for local milk and hand crafted cheese – something quichy was obviously in the works but I wasn’t really sure what. Finally by the time I got home I had about an hour to whip something up – the answer came from Tastespotting – I just punched in “quiche” and Christina Eats easy recipe for mini quiches popped up.
This recipe, as it turns out, is the perfect thing when you have a few eggs, and no time. Just saute up whatever you have – onions, garlic and in my case purple potatoes from White Gate – and add to about 6 eggs and 1/3 cup milk. I topped off this with a crumble of feta cheese and it was amazing! Below is the formal recipe from what I finally took to the party. Great for brunch, lunch, appetizers, you name it.
Mini Quiches
12 mini quiches
6 eggs
1/3 c. milk (I used 2%)
1 purple potato
1 onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
6 oz feta cheese
2 tsp. red chili peppers
1 tsp. each salt & pepper
Olive Oil.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Heat a generous pour of olive oil in a pan on medium heat. Add potato, onion, garlic – Cook for a few minutes until soft.
Whisk together eggs and milk in a mixing bowl. Add vegetable mixture and mix lightly.
Spoon mixture into lightly greased muffin pan. Top with a crumbled cheese.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden.
Cool for 20 minutes, then carefully remove mini quiches from pan.
I just happened to have a set of silicone muffin shapes which worked really well – no greasing necessary – just wait for a few moments and then pop the quiches out. You can also use regular muffin tins – I found that they turn out best if you fill the cups about half way full.
The party by the way was great fun – our next challenge is recipes from the 1700’s – wow!
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This is a brilliant flavor combo – salty ridged potato chips gently dipped in milk chocolate. It’s a little crunchy and wildly addictive. I first tasted these a few weeks ago when I was in a local candy store picking out some goodies. They were selling for about $10.50 a package which had about 12 chips each ~ a little pricey I thought.
So I figured it couldn’t be too difficult to just make these at home – at first melting the chocolate the old fashioned way over a double boiler was what I envisioned – but then I spotted the Baker’s Dipping Chocolate about $4.99 – microwavable and perfect for the task. So one bag of Ruffles married with the Baker’s goodness yielded enough chocolate chip wonderfulness for a good amount of snacking and gifting to neighbors and friends.
Simply microwave the chocolate till it’s soft and liquid and dip away, one chip at a time. Resist the temptation to thickly coat each chip ~ just one reasonable dip for 1 or 2 seconds will get the right flavor combo. Also, the chocolate really wants to adhere to anything it’s come into contact with as it dries so be sure to let these set up on waxed paper or they will break when you remove them.
Of course purists will want to make their potato chips from scratch – the ridged style is really what makes this recipe work – that, and a very light cooking oil so as not to interfere with the chocolate flavor.
Wrap a dozen or so up in a pretty bag and give with a holiday card to your friends for a little holiday pick me up – they’ll love you.
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