Ancient Times

As the Super Bowl approaches we continue to find things to get excited about. Neither of us cares about football at all but, for some reason, we look forward to the Super Bowl each year. I, as you may know, am a big fan of any day or event that gives reason to make very specific foods. This year, however, I will attempt to make a dinner that does not include a "Buffalo" version of anything.


In anticipation of the big game Elliott has taken to doing his impression of the Goodyear Blimp. It's pretty spot on if you ask me. It's all about the subtleties of his movement.

Jen and I have chosen to prepare by watching hockey every night and sort of not knowing who is actually playing on Sunday. While I don't really care about the commercials it is actually pretty interesting as this is the only time of the year I ever see commercials. It's intriguing to know that they still exist.



For dinner tonight we gave the Wombats their first taste of pears. We purchased them last week but they were finally ripe enough to puree with the immersion blender. They were very juicy so I added a little bit of oatmeal for consistency.

Jen's mother hates pears. She distrusts them thinking they only exist in nature to trick people into believing they are apples and subsequently disappointing them. Sadly for her I think we have a new leader in the food race.

The Wombats' Favorite Foods (in descending order from favorite to least favorite)

1. Pears
   
2. Sweet Potato
   
3. Avocado
   
4. Peaches^*
   
5. Butternut Squash
   
6. Carrot
   
7. Peas
   

For salad I made this nice healthy salad of kale, barley, tomato, almond, radish, lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper. There is nothing more virtuous than eating a giant plate of raw kale. It makes you feel like you have earned pork. For the main course I made another virtuous meal of the ancient grain freekeh. It's amusing to me that it's such a modern trend to feature ancient grains that have been around and in use for a minimum of 6,000 years. So trendy. I cooked the freekeh and added it to some browned onion and garlic, kale, diced tomato, paprika, cumin, hot sauce, lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper. This dinner was tasty, wholesome, and a great excuse to eat a mess of pork belly at some later date. To go with this ancient grain I decided to crack open this bottle of Birra Etrusca Bronze from Dogfish Head. This is the latest release in their ancient ales series. For this beer they traveled to Rome with molecular archaeologist Dr. Pat McGovern and analyzed data from the drinking containers from 2,800-year-old Etruscan tombs. They tried to recreate the beers drunk by ancient Etruscans with this particular beer. I'm a bit ashamed to admit that these stories always intrigue me and get me excited to try their beers. I'm even more excited to try their beers now that Jen got me these super-sweet Dogfish Head Signature Glass. We picked this up the other day at the beer store where Jen read the ingredient list off the bottle (honey, hazelnut flour, heirloom wheat, myrrh, genlian root, raisins, pomegranate juice, and pomegranate) and declared that she was very skeptical of it. Understandably so. It was very good but much more like wine than I'd have expected. Another thing Jen is skeptical of is my new love of Vine. She doesn't believe that it adds anything to pictures of beer. I disagree. It adds something very important . . .

My amusement!

Sleep Burping

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night to a strange sensation. There was a gentle rubbing on my back alternating with four or five pats and cycling back-and-forth between the two. It took me a moment to figure out what it was that had woken me up. Eventually I realized that Jen was burping me in her sleep. I took a mental note of this before drifting back to sleep.


The guys were a little groggy and a little cranky today because yesterday they had to get their first serious round of vaccinations.


This left their legs sore and made them potentially a little feverish. The very nice woman in charge of ruining babies' days by injecting them put Peanuts themed bandages on their legs which begs the question: "Does any child in 2012 have any idea who the Peanuts are?"


Today we had a fairly full day. We checked out a day care location in the morning, took the guys into town to have lunch on the green by the library, then off to another day care location in the afternoon.


I got them both bathed and cleaned up which lead to the above picture which I hypothesize may be the greatest beefcake shot that has ever been taken. Elliott is a world class beefcake.


After all of this I had every intention of cleaning up the kitchen but instead I fell asleep and woke up moments before we were to get a visit from our friend Heather.


For wine I poured this 2011 Vera Vinho Verde, a super-dark slightly effervescent wine. This was mostly for the ladies. You may know from reading the blog that I am a little partial to beer.


For the men I poured this Dubhe Imperial Black IPA from Uinta Brewing. Technically I was the only man present. I can only be classified as a man when in the presence of two women and two tiny baby boys. In any other setting it is debatable if I am a man at all.

This beer was great. It had a fairly strong alcohol taste thanks to the high ABV but it was right up my alley with a nice chocolate and coffee taste from the roasted grains. After the fact I learned that this beer was brewed with hemp seeds which was a little more hippie than I'd been planning on but made for a very nice beer indeed.


In honor of our dinner guest I made a "healthy" meal starting with this tomato and radish salad with steamed edamame. The tomatoes and edamame were from the farm and the radishes from the local farmer's market. I also added some slices of farm shallot, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and black pepper.


I also made a salad with julienned farm Chioggo beets, lime juice, olive oil, and dill from the farmer's market with a little salt and pepper.


For the final course I soaked some garbanzo beans overnight then cooked them along with some garlic, farm shallot, farm onion, farm jalapeno, farm purple pepper, farm eggplant, carrots, and farm tomato. I added a little vegetable stock, Proseco, salt, and pepper. At the end I tossed in some of the purple basil leaves from the farm and toasted some pine nuts, ground them with a mortar and pestle, and folded them in. The pine nuts added a nice creaminess and rounded out the dish rather nicely. They also made me want to give myself a pat on the back for thinking of the idea.

After an extended sleep this morning snuggling with Martin and an impromptu nap with him in the late afternoon I'm actually feeling pretty lively at this late hour. I'm excited to wrap up the evening, watch a little television, and perhaps try to get upwards of five or six hours of sleep.

More Wombat visitors tomorrow so I'll need my beauty rest even though no one has ever so much as glanced at me in their presence.

A Grand New Plan

I raced home today to give Jen a break. With Jen's mum leaving this afternoon and her sister not due in until this evening I want to try to get her at least a couple of hours of sleep before dinner.


After going to sleep I gave Lisa the con while I headed out to pick up this week's farm share.

This week we got a head of Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage, a pound of tomatillos, two eggplants, a pound of summer squash, a basket of cherry tomatoes, a pound of slicing tomatoes, two red onions, a bunch of baby carrots, a bunch of Starbor kale, a bunch of basil, a bunch of thyme, okra, a basket of blackberries, a basket of peaches, and a bag of nectarines.

After returning home and grilling up some corn and poblano peppers I came inside to find that Lauren had arrived. I gave them both a quick coaching session then left them with the babies while I tried to get dinner ready.


I checked up on them periodically. Everything seemed to be totally under control.


After sitting down at the table I poured Lauren another of the Kool Aid style wines that she likes so much.


Jen, Lisa, and I had this IPA from Southern Tier Brewing Company. This was a really nice IPA, a fine accompaniment to our dinner. It took me a really long time to make dinner. I need to get used to how to make dinner while getting constantly interrupted to feed, burp, and change one baby or another.

I don't even want to consider what it will be like when it is just Jen and me here. I'm pretty sure the babies will make short work of us.

It's been nice knowing you all.


For dinner I made a cabbage slaw with cabbage, chilies from Lauren's garden, carrot, salt, cumin, chili powder, cilantro, red onion, lime, and a splash of hot sauce.

I also made a salad with black beans, grilled corn, grilled poblano peppers, heirloom tomato, cumin, chili powder, cilantro, red onion, lime, olive oil, and hot sauce.

I grilled up some corn tortillas from Hot Bread Kitchen and made tacos with sliced avocado and lime.


For dessert we had a brownie sundae with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and fresh blackberries from the farm. The farm told us that we needed to use the berries "immediately" so I tried to shovel as many of them as possible into my face before going to bed.

Tonight we have devised a cunning plan which we hope will finally defeat these little baby beasts! I am going to sleep in the living room with Elliott while Lauren and Lisa try their hand with Martin in the nursery.

Divide and conquer. Or divide and be conquered. Only the dawn will tell the true tale.

The Return of the Dairy

I've been on a stictly vegan diet for the past three-and-a-half days. This followed on the heels of a horrible reaction to whatever I ate on Thursday. Perhaps it was the abundance of pickled herring. Maybe it was my body rejecting the celebration of excess in Jen's absence.

Serves me right for having a single beer. I need to know my limits.



Speaking of beer, I decided to start the night off with my first beer since the ugly ordeal. I selected this Big Moose Ale from Saranac Brewery. The label states: "We don't call it Big Moose for nothing!" I'm not really sure what that is supposed to mean but the beer is pretty good. It's an American Pale ale with a nice hoppy flavor from being dry hopped.

It's similar to other winter seasonals, most notably, Sierra Nevada's annual Celebration brew. This one, however, features a festive moose tearing across the tundra.

+1 for Big Moose Ale.



At the farmer's market yesterday Jen spotted some cauliflower and had a sudden craving for a cauliflower soup. I obliged this evening by making this cream of cauliflower soup with rendered bacon, butter, garlic, onion, cauliflower, turkey stock, salt, and pepper. I pulsed it in the food processor and served it up with some Gruyere cheese toasts made on slices of fresh baguette.

This soup marked a very nice return to the world of dairy. Jen's idea was a good one and, so far, I haven't become supremely ill.

If I do have a reaction to this then clearly I'm just not cut out to eat meat or dairy anymore and I will return to a diet of thrice-a-day miso soup.

That won't get old.

Tummy Jet Lag

Today we woke up around 5:00 AM, ready to go. I wasn't really that ready to wake up but I was starving. I think I have jet lag of the stomach after this trip. My sleep hasn't been all that disrupted.



I made Jen some waffles with the farm apricots and blueberries. The apricots aren't quite as good as the ones we'd gotten in Switzerland but they're pretty good. This left us with only currants left from our fruit portion of the share this week. Still not sure what to do with those.



Later this afternoon, for a snack, I made a spread by throwing some garlic, and Thai basil into a mortar and pestle and smashing them together with some almonds and canned pinto beans from the pantry. Without any additional oil this was a great spread for some sliced baguette.



I must admit that I'd never heard of Aperol until our dinner in Zurich with Gregg and Ross. Ever since that dinner Jen was on a quest for Aperol asking in every restaurant we went to for the rest of the trip. Sadly no one ever had it. The only thing we really did today was to go out in search of Aperol and we finally found it at a liquor store down the street. We made these spritzes with Aperol, lime, ice, and some Sophia Coppola champagne that Jen's sister brought back to us a few weeks ago. We'd given this to her at our wedding as a gift over three years ago and she had just decided she didn't want it. Her loss, our gain.

Our sort of expired gain.



For a salad I used tossed some tomato wedges with mint and Thai basil then served them over the Solix Red Sail lettuce with some cucumbers, olive oil, salt, pepper,and lemon.



In a sort of replay of last night I cooked up some farro and tossed it with sauteed garlic, onion, carrot, summer squash, tomato, Thai Basil, mint, salt, pepper, and olive oil.



We spent much of the day watching the highlights for all the Tour de France stages we'd missed while (ironically) we were in France. During dinner (and long after) we watched the Tour on our laptop. The All Access Pass is not perfect but it's great for those of you out there that don't have cable and want to watch the Tour de France.

In America I suspect we may be the only two that fall into that very narrow category.

Black Garlic . . . If You Please

Black garlic is something I've been trying to get my hands on for a few months now. Sure you can order black garlic online but that's only if you want to pay $3.99 (plus $7.49 shipping) to receive two bulbs. Listen, folks, I'm not made out of money! Of course you could donate money to me. That way I'd be able to afford such luxuries!

That said, I am more of a thrifty chef. A "frugal gourmet" if you will.

I heard rumors of a shop in town that sometimes had black garlic. When I asked the man who was toiling amongst the shallots, white garlic, and onions he knew nothing of this. He asked someone else who told me of a man. This man could be found at the other end of the store, far past the green onions, prepared sandwiches, and salmon fillets. It was said, in legend, that he would be the man to ask about this ancient relic.



He reached under the counter and took out a ratty old paper bag from which he removed two bulbs of garlic, one slightly moldy. "One dollar," he said.

Just one dollar! I took two. Mostly because I needed to throw away the moldy one.



I had some remaining Malfadine noodles from Severino as well as some dried porcini mushrooms which have held a mailing address in our cupboard for some time now. I'm not even quite sure why I purchased them in the first place.

Typically I will crush these up with a mortar and pestle to make a flavorful crust for veal or pork. Instead, to keep with this recent vegan-cooking phase I'm going through, I coated some cubed tofu which I'd pressed for ten hours in the fridge under the crushing weight of some sesame seeds and a quart of vegetable stock. I fried up the cubed tofu in a little olive oil/sunflower oil mix.

I carmelized some whole shallots with a little olive oil and black garlic then tossed in some whole shiitake caps with some fresh time and white wine. After simmering for a bit I added almond milk, reduced down, then tossed in some cubed sweet potato (which I'd previously par-cooked), some of the remaining porcini dust, and the cooked malfadine. I even put one more ingredient that's secret that I need to keep secret until Jen eats it first because she'll be super skeptical. To see what the ingredient is click and drag your mouse down over the white space below.

Nutritional yeast! Jen is very leery of this ingredient. It's a little bizarre but it can lend a certain type of cheesiness to a dish. That is when it's not just reminding you of fish food.



I laid down a bed of sauteed garlic and Swiss chard mixed with baby spinach, topped with the pasta mixture, then topped the pasta with bits of the fried porcini-crusted tofu.



To accompany the dinner, some white wine from Sharpe Hill Vinegard in Pomfret, CT. Connecticut makes wine! Who knew?

The result was interesting. I think Jen might have actually liked it more than I did despite the fact that she immediately identified the nutritional yeast!

I think I might have flown a little close to the vegan sun with this one.

I think my wax wings are starting to melt.

It's All About The Vegetables, Baby!

I had another day of feeling vaguely achey and gross. I think I have a touch of the H1N1. Maybe I'm just slightly ill. Once I got home I had a little tea and a snack and still felt gross. However, after a little pseudophedrine I was flying high! Is pseudophedrine just a fancy pharmaceutical term for magicks?



For a salad I tossed some arugula with avocado, tomato, lemon, and olive oil. Also, for good measure: some garlic scapes.



I've got precious little time before leaving the state and a precious lot of vegetables left in the fridge. Combined with my recent mild mystery illness I opted for another night of soup. I used the farm onions, garlic scapes, turnips, potatoes, broccoli, and kohlrabi along with some sliced almonds, white wine, cayenne, cumin, and thyme to make the soup.



The resulting soup was pretty darn good. I resisted the temptation to add any milk, cream or cheese and it turned out that it really didn't need anything additional. The only thing I would have changed was putting a little bit less cayenne in the soup. I have this incredibly potent cayenne pepper that I got a while ago. Each time I use it I use less and less but it just seems to be exceptionally strong, so much so that a scant quarter teaspoon in a huge pot of soup left me sweating afterward.

I hate to talk about my own culinary brilliance, but I think adding the chopped almonds was a fantastic idea. Basically I'm as much of a culinary genius as Jacques Pepin for coming up with that idea.



I realized that I'd worked myself into a vegan corner so, rather than break the trend, I made a vegan dessert with some blueberries from Dzen Tree Farms and farm peaches that I tossed in some lemon zest. The peaches were not perfectly ripened so I drizzled a little agave nectar on them and served it over crumbled graham crackers with a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Nine times out of ten I will pick a chocolate-based dessert over a fruit-based dessert but this combination happened to be extremely delicious. It was just a bunch of stuff lying around in the pantry that "inspired" it but I think I stumbled upon a real winner. I may look at making again in a more composed form.

Maybe I'll also top it with melted chocolate and whipped cream. Or crispy fried pancetta!