What We Ate: July 7-11

Monday

M. sick (with PE's virus from last week). D and TA ate leftovers from Sunday's barbecue (smoked pork loin, sausage, cole slaw. M ate pretzel crackers. 

What PE ate: 

I don't know what PE ate since I couldn't stomach the smell of dinner and stayed in my room... She survived.

Tuesday

Everyone still ate leftovers (M had chicken broth and toasted bread).

Wednesday

pesto (from small basil plants thinned out), linguine, green beans

What PE ate:

linguine with shredded cheese, carrot sticks

Thursday

• leftover pesto on store-bought polenta (sliced and heated in casserole dish with olive oil and dried basil); 

• [made-up dish] cannelli beans cooked in a pot with paprika, chives, garlic and sour cream, covered with whole-wheat bread crumbs and put in pan under broiler until bread crumbs toasted

• garlic bread

• green salad

• (later) fruit salad with yogurt dressing

What PE ate:

Neither TA or PE will eat polenta. TA ate pesto on leftover noodles and everything else; PE ate small omelet with cheese and ham, fruit salad later. 

Friday

(I thought there was enough leftover polenta to make another dish with it, but after preparing stuff to put on it, I pulled out of fridge and discovered only 5 small slices left--so I had to improvise)

• polenta, white rice, leftover beans in a casserole dish with leftover/frozen pizza sauce, pecorino cheese and sliced sausage

• baked acorn squash

What TA ate:

baked potato, sausage, bread, squash

What PE ate:

rice, sausage, squash

A cook's (deck) garden

The sun in our yard is limited mostly to our deck, due to the towering oak trees in our south-side neighbor's yard. We also have seven deer who visit our front and back yards at least once a day, eating hosta leaves (though not hosta blooms, for some reason), any other blooms they can find, even the pachysandra which they aren't even supposed to like.

So, my garden is limited to however many pots I can put on the sunny-side of the deck. The deer can't walk up the steps to my deck or I'm sure they would have eaten almost everything I plant there.

Since the sunniest part of the deck happens to face the kitchen window where I stand and wash dishes, I've added more and more flowers to my deck garden over the years so that now I have pink Asian lilies, marigolds, pansies, a large pot of pink hibiscus (yet to bloom in mid-July), and one Black-eyed Susan rescued from the deer.

Otherwise, everything I grow is to eat. Given the limited space, I don't bother growing most vegetables but concentrate instead on herbs. I usually have two pots of basil, each with several plants, one pot each of coriander/cilantro, parsley, spearmint and chives (which have lovely purple blossom heads in early summer). This year I've added a pot of tarragon and one of marjoram, but I've never had much luck in either of these as perennials.

I also have a small herb garden on the south side that doesn't get more than 3 hours of sun a day, where I'm able to grow sage, lavender, two kinds of thyme, rosemary and oregano. These are the only herbs I've found that the deer (or slugs) won't touch.

Since the rosemary in the ground probably won't winter-over in Maryland, I am also propagating/trying to propagate herb cuttings on the deck in smaller pots to ensure their perpetuity, including rosemary and tarragon. Last year the rosemary plant wintered over just fine on the deck, shielded by one side of the house, and I planted it in the ground in the spring. There's something satisfying in trying to keep the same plant growing, like nurturing the same yogurt culture in your fridge for months at a time.

Quick Uses for Herbs

Chives

I use chives in cooking almost everything since I am somewhat allergic to white onions. PE likes to go and harvest it for me with small scissors and bring me strands which I cut in smaller pieces with kitchen shears. Good fresh on top of soups, potatoes, etc., but also added to sauces and recipes calling for onions.

Basil

I love having fresh basil in the summer. I start making pesto with it as soon as I need to thin my plantings, then make pesto every week or so using cuttings off bigger plants (basil will often grow back, so I try not to take the whole plant for cooking purposes until it's nearing winter and ready to die back anyway). I also throw fresh basil leaves on foccacia, both before and after cooking, and cut it fresh into any Italian sauce.

Cilantro/coriander

We use coriander in Thai cooking (not so much these days since kids won't eat it) and in making fresh salsa and guacamole.

Thyme

I tend to use thyme more in cold-weather cooking, which doesn't always jive with its growing season. Good with herb-roasted chicken, in soups and stews.

For more information on growing and using herbs, I strongly recommend Rodales Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs (listed in my Amazon widget on the web page for this blog).

What we ate: June 30-July 4

I got busy this week, with D out of town and PE getting a stomach virus mid-week, so I didn't write down what we ate every day. I vaguely remember leftovers on Monday and turkey meatloaf in the middle of the week (not a hit), then on to D. grilling chicken on Friday. So, I'll use this space to talk about the only memorable thing I made:

3 Things From the Same Dough

(This was on the same night as the turkey meatloaf; PE will not eat meatloaf, even when disguised as a hamburger in a bun; creativity ensued...)

Since I was making bread in the bread machine anyway, I put it on the dough cycle. When done, I took out and divided into 3 balls on a wooden board dusted with flour.

• The first ball was pushed into a small greased loaf pan, left to rise in the oven, set to "breadproofing" (100 degrees).

• The second ball was rolled out into a rectangle, then spread with butter and sprinkled with a little sugar and cinnamon, with a small handful of raisins pushed into dough. It was then rolled back up into a log and put in a small, greased loaf pan into the oven to rise.

• The third ball was rolled into a mini pizza, very thin crust, and set aside to rise a little while the the others were rising, until I could make the sauce for it.

After I rolled out the mini pizza, I made some quick tomato sauce in the microwave (see Recipe in previous posts). I took the two loaves out of the oven to rise some more and set the oven to 375. I added the sauce and shredded cheese to the pizza dough and put it in when oven was hot enough. I then added the 2 bread loaves when they had risen enough.

Lessons learned:

• Bread dough is not the same as pizza dough--it's less moist and thus less flexible. So, it was not a perfect pizza, but PE didn't seem to mind. She liked having her own little pizza. An adult might notice the difference.

• I've never figured out how to get raisins to stick to raisin bread. Once sliced, a few of the raisins always manage to fall out. Maybe I should add the raisins to the dough cycle in the machine, so they'll be more integrated, then add cinnamon and sugar as an afterthought? I don't know how Pepperidge Farm gets their raisins to stick...

Homemade granola

I have not yet mastered making excellent homemade granola. In fact, my homemade granola is often passable, at best. But with Naked Granola selling for $4 for 12 ounces ON SALE (that’s $5/pound) and other granolas nearly as pricey—as well as the fact that most commercial granola contains a lot of added sugars—I soldier on with my granola-making.

Part of my problem is that I always worry that the oats are too raw, so that most of my granolas verge on being on this side of burned.

So, this is a recipe in-process. I’ll post more tips and suggestions for refinement as I figure them out.

Tip: Though most recipes call for making granola in long, shallow pans, the easiest way to cook it is to use a large cast-iron pot. This way, when stirred, the flakes don’t fall out of the pot, as they’re likely to when using pans. You can also heat up the liquid parts of the granola in the same pot, on top of the stove. And there should be some nutritional benefit to using cast iron.

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 250-300 degrees. (250 degrees is about the normal temperature, but will require more intervention and cooking time. 300-325 will speed things along, but at risk for over-browning).

Ingredients:
-½ cup canola oil
-¼- ½ cup sweetening (honey, maple syrup, brown sugar, or any combination of them)

Pour these ingredients into a cast iron pan and heat on medium-medium low until they melt together. Whisk. Then add:

-4 cups whole (not quick) oats
-chopped nuts of some kind, around 1-2 handfuls (suggested: pecans, peanuts, sliced almonds toast well, whole almonds with skins do not—the same is true for hazelnuts)
-1/2-1 cup of some other grain with a different texture, for variety (like puffed millet or puffed rice)

Possible flavorings:
-vanilla extract, orange oil/extract or lemon extract (added to liquid ingredients, prior to adding dry)
-cinnamon, powdered cardamom or ginger—or a combination of all three (add to dry)

Stir well until coated with the sweet, oily goo, then pop into the oven (no lid).

Check the granola every 10 minutes or so and stir with a large spoon. You can go for longer stretches when the oven is at a lower temperature, especially at the beginning, but 20-30 minutes into it, you’ll need to start checking more frequently or turn off the oven for the last 10 minutes.

(Hint: during the 10-minute intervals, you can do a series of short exercises, or wash the dishes—don’t try to do anything that requires a long stretch of attention).

Pull out of oven when it reaches desired level of brownness. Cool. Store in a container with a tight lid. (I find large Mason jars the best.) Add raisins or dried fruit to container and shake in, if desired.

For breakfast, serve with unsweetened granola (especially if you used a lot of sweetening).

Granola snack: In a small bowl or custard cup, mix equal parts of granola and peanut butter; add a little honey, to taste. Little kids seem to like this. Leave it in the cup, to serve (don’t bother to shape). Add chocolate chips, if desired.