Now Norma Knits

Caramelized Squash & Apples -- Somewhat of a Recipe

Oh. My. 

Sundays this time of year are often for experimenting in the kitchen. Yesterday I decided it was finally time to cut up a couple of the squashes I harvested a while back. I only ended up with two butternut squashes from the garden this year, and I've been rather loath to use them up, but really, how silly is that? I grow them to eat them, right? 

Oh, golden nuggets of wonder! This method really did them proud -- adding flavor interest, without being overly sweet. There really isn't much of a caramelized glaze to this. If you want that or want it sweeter than just a hint of sweet, of course, just add more brown sugar.

But oh, how nice it smells while cooking. Autumnal and spicy.

The two squashes were rather small (or at least I thought so until I cut them both up), so I used them both. I also cut up four small red onions, and four smallish apples from our local applefest a couple weeks ago, that had gone almost mushy (they go bad so fast). If I had had some cranberries on hand, I might have sprinkled a few of those in the mix. 

I coated the vegetables and fruit with sunflower seed oil from Rainville Farm which is about eight miles from here. I then added a generous sprinkling of cinnamon, a little sprinkle of kosher salt, and about a tablespoon of brown sugar -- just enough to help to bring out the naturally sweet flavors of the squash, apples and onions. I mixed it all up and put it in the oven, spread out on a large roasting pan, at 350F for just under an hour, giving them a couple of stirs along the way. 

I served this dish with local chicken breasts coated in maple-chipotle glaze. 

Holy cow, was that delicious. 

Sometimes the simplest of combos just totally rocks the house. 

Bonuses

When I got up yesterday morning, I found that one of the seven jars of tomatoes I canned the night before did not seal.  What sort of mischief is this?!  In all my years of canning, I don't think that has ever happened to me before. So anyway, that meant that that jar of tomatoes had to be eaten soon.  Oh, darn. 

At lunch time, I got to work chopping garlic and onions and green peppers, sauteed them up in olive oil, added the tomatoes, some fresh basil and some (dried) oregano and a bay leaf, and let it all simmer to thicken, while I put some frozen turkey burgers on the grill and went to the garden to pick a bit of Swiss chard and Lacinato kale.  I coarsely chopped the greens (and finely chopped part of the kale so Mr. Jefferies could have some -- he was teasing for it at that moment, that little health nut) and added them to the top of the simmering sauce.  They steamed there briefly to wilt.  Then I put the whole lot on the top of the burgers and sprinkled with a bit of Pecorino Romano.  

Lunch.

De-frickin-licious.

Later in the afternoon, after I got home from the gym, there was an email from Marcia who asked if I was doing any fall crops.  Well, I hadn't really thought about it. In the past they have not been all that successful for me.  I think the angle of the sun truly compromises the ability to grow vegetables here after September 1st.  But I did have an empty grow bed that was all ready to go -- the one that the yellow wax beans had been ripped from. And though it was raining, I was all wet from the gym anyway, and it's not like it was a cold rain. And I did have the seeds... so I went out and threw a packet of mixed lettuce seeds into the bed and gave it a good water. Despite all the rain, that bed was bone dry.  Go figure.  So we might have fresh lettuce in September -- you never know.  And wouldn't that be a bonus!

"Hey Mom......

....could you make me one of your oven omelets?"

"Sure. What would you like in it?"

"Um, whatever you have that's ready out in the garden."

"Broccoli, maybe?"

"Yummmm.  Do you have any spinach?"

"Maybe."

"Do you have any asparagus?"

"I'm not sure.  I'll look.  Would you like some cheese with it?"

"Mmmm, goat's cheese!"

Yup, I can do that.

 

 

Individual Oven Omelets

Spray small, single-serving quiche dish (or something similar) with nonstick spray, preheat oven to 375F

2 eggs, beaten

Stir in 1/2 Tablespoon of half & half cream or milk

Coarsely chop about a half cup of veggies of choice (This one has broccoli, asparagus and spinach.  Another favorite is zucchini, tomato & basil.)

2-3 tablespoons of crumbled or shredded cheese of choice (chevre, cheddar, feta, parmesan, Swiss, etc.)

Add veggies and cheese to egg mixture, stirring lightly to mix.  Pour into quiche dish.

Bake about 30 minutes.

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Eat for breakfast. 

Then, if you are incredibly lucky and have the day off and the sky looks like this for one of the first times all summer:

...drive to Stowe for browsing and dining, and then drive home through Smuggler's Notch. 

 

Homemade ice cream, not from Ben & Jerry's, but a place called I.C. Scoops in Stowe.

 

Mine was ginger-peach.

Yummmmmm.

277. Phallus Against A Stormy Sky

Honestly, when I look at the water tower, it doesn't seem that phallic to me.  But I've taken about 13 break photos of the water tower at UVM over the last few weeks. I take them on my BlackBerry, and I email them home to myself.  When I get home to find them on my computer....well, I don't know.  Is it just me?

Anywayyyyy, in case sexy water towers are not your thing, how about I show you progress photos on something that might be:

I'm making Central Park, from Knitscene Magazine Fall 2006, in Peace Fleece Sheplova Mushroom, and it's moving along quite nicely. 

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This week has been all about the yoga (Twice this week. Go me.), the green drinks* for breakfast every day, and the hot stone massage I had last night.  Things could be worse, I'll tell ya. 

* Here's a recipe...or a loose approximation of a recipe.  Each one was slightly different this week, but they've been uniformly good-tasting (To me.  Your mileage may vary if you are not open-minded about such things.) and, I think, extremely invigorating and healthful.  I'm sure they violate some sort of international breakfast rules, but I'm all into living on the edge like that.

    8 ounces of yogurt (I variously used my ginger yogurt or plain goat's milk yogurt)

    a little bit of maple syrup or honey

    a large handful of raw greens from the garden (beet greens, broccoli, kale, Swiss chard, baby bok choi)

    sometimes I added a half a banana, sometimes some pumpkin.  In the pumpkin ones, I added a generous sprinkling of cinnamon.

I put all this in a blender, pulse it for a while, then blend it 'til smooth.  Drink.  It makes me feel all devastatingly sexy and beautiful like Rene Russo in The Thomas Crown Affair, and I imagine that Pierce Brosnan is going to give it to me (the drink!  the DRINK!) in bed. 

It's the water tower.  It's getting to me.

240. Green Bean Heaven

My mom dropped by on Sunday morning as I was processing the latest peck (or it could have been a bushel or a metric tonne -- I don't know -- some quantity, anyway) of beans that I had picked.  I know she doesn't really like, nor do I, the ones that are a bit on the large side, but that's really all I had on offer at the time. Still, as I had demonstrated to myself over and over all week, MY overgrown beans are still tasty and tender and wonderful.

Anyhoo, my poor mom.  She declined to take the large beans, and said maybe she could come by for my next picking.  Her loss, but I understand.  There is nothing worse than tasteless, tough, stringy beans.  But I reiterate:  Mine are not that way!  Honest! 

When she was here, I was in the middle of making The World's Best Green Bean Casserole, which totally lives up to its name.  The idea of this would also be a concept that is slightly foreign and ridiculous to my mom. "If you've got Campbell's cream of mushroom soup in the supermarket and canned beans," she would probably wonder, "why the hell are you going to all that trouble of making your own sauce from scratch?" 

She came of age, having moved from East Armpit, Quebec, to West Groin, Vermont, in the '50s and '60s, and she had four kids in cloth diapers and a dead husband and a town-clerkship that she inherited from my father to manage, and a garden and house to take care of, I think all before she even became an American citizen -- what can I say? In her shoes, I would have been the first to say: "Bring on the frickin' Campbell's!"

Anyway, make this casserole. Though we have never been a "green bean casserole" family, I remember the time when Sandy did a poll something along the lines of "What dish do you consider essential to be on the Thanksgiving table?"  (I think it was Sandy, anyway...) and I remember it seemed that 90% of the comments were "green bean casserole!" so apparently our family is deficient in some way.  I will have to put this on the Thanksgiving table and just see what happens. I'm guessing there will be requests for the recipe from my family members.  I used spelt flour for the thickener. I did not have any of those french fried onions in my pantry, and the writer of that blog says they are mandatory, but I only used a slice of the ever-present-this-week Jewish rye bread and 1 tablespoon butter for the topping, and I have to say, her addition of a touch of sherry and my addition of the rye bread and caraway seeds.... it is so good I'd almost be willing to enter into a bake-off competition with her over this. 

Amazing.

239. The Great Cinnamon Experiment and More About Why Captioners Make Mistakes

A while back when I talked about a fungus attacking the stem of a tomato plant, Sue wrote that she had successfully used cinnamon to stop a plant fungus.  I had read this assertion before, and have read it a couple times since.  Well, the other day I decided to give it a try on my powdery mildew problem on the squash plants.  I didn't know what would happen, but I figured what the heck.  I went out and used a ginormous bottle of Costco cinnamon (next time I will go to the dollar store, because even Costco cinnamon is not cheap!) all over those giant squash leaves.  I didn't do the entire pumpkin patch, because those leaves looked too far gone, I thought. 

I noticed a few things when I did the cinnamon-sprinkling:  Well, it's a well established fact that cinnamon is a female aphrodisiac, and I gotta tell you, when sprinkling about a pound of cinnamon all around me, well.... Fact.  (Excuse me -- I'm off to Costco to buy another pound of cinnamon so I can take a bath in it...)

Okay, I'm back.  What was I saying.......?

Oh, yes.  So apart from that physical effect on me, it seemed to upset the bees that were pollinating the summer squash.  They seemed upset and maybe even disoriented by the strong scent.  I don't know if that is a lasting effect, and I hope it's not harmful, but one of the reasons we are losing our bees, I've been reading, is that the pesticides that are being used in "traditional" agriculture are making the bees somehow disoriented and unable to find their hives.  So that worried me a little bit. 

Also, this has been a rainy year here, and I am practically eaten alive by mosquitoes whenever I go out to my garden, even in the full sun.  But when I was coated with cinnamon, not one mosquito bothered me.  Or maybe I was just so blissed out by the love powder that I didn't notice if they did.  (What?  That was NOT ME with a straw up my nose doing cinnamon lines!)

I wasn't able to go to my garden the day before yesterday, but when I got home from work yesterday I went out and I found this:

Perfectly perfect, unblemished by powdery mildew, squash leaves.  All these leaves were coated with powdery mildew the other day, and it even rained the other night and much of the cinnamon washed, or was blown, off.  The leaves I missed (because at that point I needed to ....well, you know, I got distracted) still have a little bit, but otherwise we're all good.  I sprinkled more cinnamon on the untreated spots yesterday, though I didn't have enough to get everything. 

So there you have it.  My little garden cinnamon experiment. 

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And a little funnism from work:  There is a very knowledgeable presenter who is featured heavily in this multi-week section of work.  There is just a leetle problem:  He has a heavy Indian accent. 

The first day he was talking a lot about the epicardium of the heart, which he pronounced A.P. cardium.  All right, fair enough.  I caught on to that one about ten minutes into this talk after I saw "epicardium" written on the PowerPoint, and adjusted my steno writing accordingly. 

Yesterday one of the pronunciation gems was, "Al Wheeler gas exit change." 

Any guesses?

Anyone? 

Bueller?

How about "alveolar gas exchange"? 

Eek. If it weren't for all that talk about alveolar gas exchange I had in the courtroom for all those many years in DUI cases, I wouldn't have had a clue WTF he was talking about.  You should have seen the hearing students cluster around my screen, too.  And they looked at my face like, "How did you know that?!"

But just when I was smugly basking in the glow of being The Most Amazing and Intelligent Human Being on Earth, "infarct" started translating "infarmer's market."  I made "FARKT" a brief form for "farmer's market" during the Michael Pollan talk.  This is exactly why I hate brief forms -- they lurk in there in that steno dictionary, forgotten, until they come out at the most inopportune moments.  Thankfully, I have a wonderful working relationship with my medical student, we both had a great laugh about it, and I fixed it quickly on the spot.  But geesh. 

Then followed two hours of a speaker who talks no less than 7 million words a minute.  I was a puddle of quivering goo at the end of it.  My student asked me, "Which do you like better -- a slower speaker with a heavy accent, or a too-fast speaker without an accent?"

.....

I asked if I could see a different menu. 

.....

And speaking of inopportune moments, next week we have a return visit from the "I Heart Female Orgasm" people, and you may remember that I got caught out by a brief form following that event last year also, so that I went and orgasmed right in the middle of my work. I know that to some people this will not come as much of a surprise, but still, I do try to maintain appropriate decorum whenever possible.

All those who wonder why captioners make mistakes or want to quit their jobs, or why court reporters won't caption in the first place, raise your hands.

201. Please Leave a Message After the Beet

I've been slaving in the garden and the kitchen -- from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. yesterday. My back and feet ache, the beds of my nails are blackened, I'm hot, and I missed yoga. But it's all worth it for the beets. 

Here's my family pickled beets recipe:

Pickled Beets

6 lb. beets (not counting the leaves in the weight)

(Note: My aunt's original recipe, which I printed in the blog previously, said "2 lb." of beets. That just can't be right. I had much more than 2 pounds yesterday and got 7 pints. I didn't weigh the beets, but I feel like it has to be at least 6 pounds.)

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Syrup:

2 c. apple cider vinegar or white vinegar
2 c. water
2 c. sugar
1 lemon, sliced thin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon Mixed Pickling Spice (available in the spice section of your supermarket) placed in a muslin bag (the muslin bag is very important unless you want to get unpleasant crunchy things in your mouth when you're eating your pickles...)

Cook the beets.  To cook: Cut the leaves off with about 1/2 inch of stems left on. Leave the skins on.  Boil the beets 'til tender. Drain off hot water and let them cool until you can handle them.  Then take a little paring knife and cut off the tops and the bottoms. The skins will slip right off in your hand. Discard the skins. If the beets are small, leave them whole.  If they are large, slice vertically or horizontally, or cut in chunks to suit your mood. 

Put clean jars and lids in a large pot of hot water and keep hot until ready to use, but do not boil. 

Combine all syrup ingredients, bring to a boil, and boil for 5 minutes.  Add cooked, prepared beets to the syrup and simmer for 15 minutes.  Remove lemon slices and spice bag. 

Pack beets in hot pint or quart jars.  Pour hot syrup over, bringing the liquid close to the top (with about 1/4 inch headspace).  Put on lids and screw bands; tighten.  Allow to cool. 

I like to let my pickled items cure for a few weeks before serving, and pickled beets are best served chilled. 

This recipe makes about 6 pints.  I squeezed a 7th out of it because that's how many beets I had.  I had to make a little extra syrup to pour over the 7th pint. It doesn't seem like much for the amount of beets I started with and the amount of work I put into it, but next winter I will have forgotten all that. I have enough beets still growing to result in at least two more batches like this, so that by the time winter rolls around, I'll have quite a nice little store of these pretty, delicious jars, and enough to share a few as gifts. The remaining beets needed to be thinned out so they could have room to mature. I always plant many more than I think I'll need, because I practice this sequential thinning technique, using the ones I harvest as I go along.

178. Friday's Blog

It's Friday, and you know what that means, right?  It's garden-along reporting time.  So let's hear it.

Me?  I've got boatloads of pea pods on both rows of peas.  The Amish ones look close to being ready to pick, but I wish they were a bit more green -- I sense a yellowish cast to them, or maybe I'm just imagining it.  They don't seem to be the same shade of green that my nana's peas used to be.  Still, as is true with the spinach this year, I've finally gotten peas to grow after years and years of trying with no success, so it's a big step in the right direction. 

I've harvested two of the eight heads of Romaine lettuce in the large square pot and left the remaining six to get bigger.  I had a most excellent salad with it yesterday.  (with arugula, salmon, and dijon-honey vinaigrette)

The summer salad mix and red Romaine and red ruffly lettuce (I can't remember the actual name of it) are all doing well, as is the stir fry mix.

The asparagus seems to have a new lease on life!  I fed it bone meal and watered it, and then we had a nice cool spell while I was gone, I guess.  It's more productive now than it has been all spring! It sure does love that bone meal, I guess.  It took me 15 years to realize that the gardening book was wrong, all wrong, about "just put the asparagus crowns in the ground and forget about them."  Turns out, asparagus loves to eat just like every other plant on the planet. Why are the "experts" always such idiots, and why do I follow their advice even if my intuition tells me they're wrong?   

The summer squash and zucchini (second sowing after the first one succumbed to the beetles) are up and doing well.  I just couldn't feel right about the white fabric over them, so I took it off.  They don't seem to thrive that way -- they don't get enough light, and they look a bit anemic to me.  I'm too natural a girl for that, I guess.  But then, I've resorted to being quite vigilant with sprays of Pyola.  I don't like to use anything at all, even if it's supposed to be organic, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  The beetles are exhibiting signs of clinical depression now, and are confused.  I find them hanging out on things like the lettuce, which is to say their GPS is seriously malfunctioning.  There aren't very many of them left at the moment, and they don't seem to be eating or mating. Yay. If there's one thing I can't STAND, it's the squash-beetle (and Japanese beetle) orgies. Not on my watch, you bastards. 

Now they're leaving my cucumbers and squash alone, mostly.  At least I'm keeping ahead of them, I think.  I'll have to stop with the spraying once the plants flower, though, because it's also toxic to my beloved bees.   And now it's the uphill battle against the moth that will lay the eggs that will become the squash vine borers.  It's always something, I tell ya.

The pears look like they're doing great, and the black raspberries are in the red stage.  Black and ripe will be next.  I can't wait!

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I've got a Swiss chard recipe for you. 

Swiss Chard With An Italian Flair

1 large bunch Swiss chard, coarsely chopped or shredded

1 or 2 T. olive oil

2 cloves garlic, chopped

3 or 4 large fresh basil leaves, chopped

Salt & pepper

Gently heat the olive oil 'til hot but not TOO hot.  Add the garlic and stir 'til it's aromatic and starts to get tender. Careful not to burn it! Then add the basil and gently cook. 

Toss in the Swiss chard and cook 'til just tender.  Add salt & pepper to taste.

I served sliced Vermont hydroponic tomatoes on the side, and they were delicious, but I wondered how much more delicious it would be to have turned them, chopped, into the Swiss chard mixture until the tomatoes were just warm.  The flavors side by side were delicious, and I think together they would have been even more so. 

We had this with local grass-fed beef burgers and fresh local mozzarella with more fresh basil and olive oil.  Really gooooooood. 

Pinch me. Am I awake? It's not even July 4th yet, and I'm eating copious amounts of basil and Swiss chard from my garden. 

Harvest Photo of the Day

Swiss chard, Five-Color Silverbeet

173. Smoothie for a Sunday

Inspired by Jessica's healthy green-and-fruit smoothies, I made one for myself the other day. 

Inside: 

1 container of Vermont buffalo milk blueberry yogurt
3/4 cup sliced strawberries from my garden
3 large broccoli leaves from the plant I rescued from overcrowding in my garden, chopped
1/2 banana
1/4 cup unsweetened blueberry juice

4 ice cubes
2 probiotic capsules

Blended 'til smooth.  Delicious! 

It's so filled with healthful nutrients, I can at least fool myself into believing that it undoes the damage of the Diet Pepsi I have every day at breakfast time.

Right?

167. Bringin' Home The Bacon, or A Girl Cannot Live On Greens Alone

Harvest Photo of the Day

This spinach was thinking about bolting (going to seed) in the high heat we've been having.  (Yes, I can read plants' minds....you got a problem with that?)  So I pulled it all up and served it for dinner before it was ruined. 

I wanted to make an interesting salad. I'm in between "crops" with the radishes, and I'm starting to feel I'm going to turn green what with all the greens I've been mainlining.  I was hungry for something a little different, colorful, and crunchy to interest-up my salad.  I had to go back on the grid for a minute and go shopping.

I haven't bought bacon in a dog's age.  I've eaten things in restaurants with a little bacon as a garnish or to add flavor interest, but I have wanted to stay away from the nitrates and nitrites.  Well, imagine my excitement when I was shopping and I ran across some local smoked bacon with no nitrates and nitrites.  And just when I was looking for something interesting for my salad!

A recipe (for Claudia) was born:

Spinach-Bacon Salad with Maple Vinaigrette

(Makes 2 large dinner salads.)

Enough spinach for two generous salads

1/2 of a smallish red onion, chopped fairly coarse

1 Granny Smith apple, chopped (not peeled)

6 thick slices center-cut bacon, cooked (I placed mine on a broiler pan on the rack and broiled it for about 4 or 6 minutes on each side, until it was crispy), then cut up

4 or 5 large radishes, sliced

2 hard-boiled eggs, cut in quarters

1 cup coarsely chopped broccoli

2 Tablespoons roasted (hulled) sunflower seeds

Assemble all these ingredients in a large bowl or plate.

Make the vinaigrette by whisking these ingredients together:

1 tablespoon maple syrup, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, black pepper, 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil