Marco Polo Pizza

With Obama visiting New York (as he often likes to do) it took me an inordinate amount of time to get home tonight. After beating the traffic I sparked up the grill, ran inside, and put together a quick salad.



I combined the red leaf and mizuna then topped it with some of Jen's mustard vinaigrette, leftover mozzarella, Marcona almonds, and grape tomatoes.



I cooked up some bok choy and garlic sausage and tossed in some ricotta then took this outside with the remaining ingredients. I threw some pizza dough onto the grill then topped it with pizza sauce, the sausage mixture, mozzarella, and basil. After I grilled it for a bit I brought it inside and threw it under the broiler for a couple of minutes to brown up the cheese and served it.

This pizza was sort of like a lazy version of east meets west. It's like Marco Polo returning from the orient and saying, "Mama Mia! Look-a at this a-funny looking cabbage! We should a-make a nice a-little pizza with it!"

No, it's exactly like that.



For a drink I enjoyed this Milk Stout Nitro from Left Hand Brewing Company in Longmont, Colorado. I've had their regular milk stout which I really enjoyed so I figured this one would be a no brainer. Without tasting them together I couldn't really draw a comparison but this one was certainly, at the very least, every bit as good as the regular version.

I followed the directions on the back and poured it hard and it had a beautiful head that fluffed right up.



I can't recall ever seeing an artist credited on a beer label (though I'm sure it has happened) but I found it amusing that this rather spartan label credited the artist by name. Don't get me wrong, it is a very sharp looking design and it is designed very well, but I found the artist credit to be oddly out of place.

But, hey, they could credit Hitler for all I care. This beer is fantastic.

Noodle Bowl Night

Monday night, after dinner and writing the blog, we decided that watching the third period of the hockey game at home would be too boring so, instead, we went to the hospital and watched it there while they monitored Jen's blood pressure and the heart beats of the babies.

Everything was fine and the doctors seemed very blasé about the whole thing. They assured us that if you have twins you just end up in the hospital three or four times before you give birth. That's just how it goes.

So at 9:30 AM, after spending twelve hours at the hospital with no sleep and the echo of the babies kicking their fetal monitors ringing in our ears, we returned home and I went straight to work. I figured it was good practice for what it's going to be like in a few months when this is a daily occurrence. It turns out I need the practice because I'm quite bad at it.

By the time I got home I had barely enough energy to boil some capellini so we could eat it before passing out.



Jen has not enjoyed lettuce or salads lately. This is unfortunate given that the farm share usually opens up largely with lettuce and this year was no different. I threw together some baby greens and topped them with jicama, peanut, sesame seeds, red onion, radish, rice wine vinegar, lime, and sesame oil. Even given Jen's pregnant dislike for greens she completely finished her salad.



With the bok choy and Chinese cabbage from the farm I chopped them up and sauteed them up with some fresh ginger, red pepper, local New Jersey shitake mushrooms (no really), rice vinegar, sesame oil, and chicken stock from the freezer. After it cooked down I tossed in the leftover beef mixture from the enchiladas the other night and served them up with some cooked udon noodles in a bowl with tomato, cilantro, lime slices, and fresh jicama.

It was a good use of some of the greens but I'm going to have to get creative in the next few days to figure out how to use the rest.



To keep things thematic I had this Hitachino Nest 2011 Commemorative Ale from Kiuchi Brewery in Japan.

This was a very nice beer which I unintentionally aged in my beer cellar (read: cabinet) over the past 8-10 months. If you'd poured this beer and not told me what it was I would have guessed it was of Belgian origin which means I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I was going to keep things thematic with dessert as well but instead I opted to try and clear out the freezer of random frozen treats while we watched Eureka and enjoyed a new found appreciation for the slowly dwindling nights where we'll be afforded a full night's sleep.

Those little hell beasts can't take that away from us. At least not yet.

New Year of Farm Share

Today was a modest day of work. I only had to assemble five items from Ikea and rewire the light in our ceiling. It almost felt like having a day off to be honest. I think I may be done the majority of the Ikea building and I'm really not sure what I am going to do with all the time this frees up in my life when I'm done. Surely two screaming babies will not be enough of a time suck to make up for the twenty-four-hour-a-day furniture building.

Surely not.



As well as all that building I also headed out to pick up our first farm share delivery of 2012. As this season begins I am hopeful that the 2012 NHL season ends as the L.A. Kings prepare to face off against the New Jersey Devils. By the time the game ends it will be way too late to comment on the blog. It's all I can do to stay awake until the end of the games these days.

For the first week we got six garlic scapes, a bunch of Suehlihung Mustard Greens, one bunch of mizuna, two bunches of bok choy, a head of Chinese (or Nappa) cabbage, a bunch of rhubarb, and a bunch of Cherriette radishes.

I've never heard of Suehlihung Mustard Greens before but given the fact that it is indistinguishable from mizuna I suspect the farm is pulling our chain.



As I put dinner together I put out this cheese and bread to snack on. We've had cranberry Wensleydale before but I've never heard of or seen its blueberry cousin. Since blueberries are a little more appropriate this time of year I picked it up. My cheese snob friends would not like me to say so but it was pretty tasty. It tastes exactly like I would have expected, just like a blueberry version of the cranberry cheese.



For the main course I chopped up the mizuna and tossed it with grape tomatoes, avocado, grilled corn, sliced radishes, lime, olive oil, basil, salt, and pepper. I blacked a few really nice sea scallops and put them on top of the salad. We had three scallops between the two of us as a way of being a little more budget conscious since they're fantastically expensive. It ended up being just enough with the huge salad.



For beer I decided to go with this Gumball Head Wheat Beer from 3 Floyds. This was another 3 Floyds beer brought to me by my amazing, thoughtful, and wonderful sister-in-law who had nothing but my beer enjoyment in mind.

Oh, except the stipulation that I had to mention her in this blog that has about six readers. There you go, Lauren!

This "deal" goes for anyone that wants to give me free beers I've never tried before. I'll be happy to give you a shout out after consuming the beer.

This was not what I expected at all. It was a hoppy wheat beer which I'm pretty sure I've never had before. It was quite tasty and a good mix for this late spring/early summer dinner.



For dessert I chopped up the rhubarb and cooked it down with some fresh cherries, water, and a little sugar and served it up hot with some vanilla ice cream.

All in all this was a good way to ring in the new farm share year. I think we'll need to take advantage of the next few weeks of creativity before we resort to donating all our farm share vegetables to a soup kitchen and getting some Chinese take out before we pass out on the couch.

Fruit and Flowers and Beer

Friday was our fourth wedding anniversary. We had kind of made a pact not to get anything for each other. We did this last year except that we got each other a two week trip to Switzerland and France. This year we broke our promise again on an extremely small scale.



Jen got me three fruit-themed beers as the fourth anniversary is supposedly the "Fruit and Flowers" anniversary. I got Jen flowers and also some apricots and peaches to round out the theme. It's probably our lowest key anniversary to date. This would be a tremendous savings if it weren't for the enormous expense of rapidly approaching twins' birth.

We had a guest in town this weekend, Jen's friend Amanda. For our anniversary we ate dinner at a local pub. This was every bit as romantic as our anniversary dinner last year and about ten times better an experience. Last year we waited 45 minutes to get our drink order taken at a restaurant we had previously been eager to visit. While it was an awful experience it has given us plenty to complain about over the past year and that is something I am very grateful for.



Tonight I grilled up some corn and made a version of Mexican street corn with a sauce of Cotija, sour cream, mayonnaise, lime, chili powder, hot sauce, smoked paprika, salt, and cumin.



For the main course I made enchiladas. I haven't made enchiladas since one of our first blog entries in 2008 where I made potato kale enchiladas. Tonight's were notably less vegan as they were made with garlic, onion, cabbage, ground beef, chili powder, cumin, salt, and corn tortillas. I topped them with Cotija and fresh cilantro.



One of the fruit beers Jen got me for our anniversary was this Black & Blue from Dogfish Head. It's a Belgian-style beer brewed with blackberry and blueberry puree. I can't tell if she got this for me to fit the theme of our anniversary or simply to annoy her father. Either way it satisfied both of those objectives nicely.

This was pretty standard for Dogfish Head in that it was not standard at all. It was very tasty though I don't think a very good pairing for Mexican food. That being said I enjoyed a glass thoroughly. This beer packed an incredible punch. After one glass I was feeling it two hours later. It was 10% ABV that drank like 4% ABV.

That's six whole percent of sneaking up on your ass!



After dinner we walked to Longford's for dessert. With no hockey on tonight we were left to recline in our apartment and pause briefly before returning to the tremendous amount of work left to be done to get ready for the babies.

Tomorrow I get back to work on finishing up the apartment and the long-awaited return of the farm share.

For a few weeks anyway we'll try to use the farm share vegetables creatively before the babies come and the vegetables wilt and rot in the fridge while we sleep on the couch.

It's gonna be great!

Jicama Mama

I'm getting a little sick of this. The people who compile these baby-to-produce size charts should really be ashamed of themselves. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to how these charts progress. Nevertheless, Jen entered week thirty-two today and since I started this idiotic pursuit I might as well finish it.



Today, according to babycenter.com the babies were the size of jicama. According to thebump.com they were the size of squash but since that's exceptionally vague I chose to go with jicama even though jicama are much smaller than cantaloupes which they were purportedly the size of three months ago!



It may not make any sense but I do enjoy jicama so I quickly turned this jicama into a salad with avocado, tomato, lime juice, olive oil, hot sauce, salt, and pepper over mixed greens.



I purchased some leeks to caramelize for dinner but there was something wrong with them and my knife was unable to penetrate their woody core. I guess I could have used them for something and not have been so wasteful. Maybe they could have been stitched together to fashion a mean walking stick.



After throwing the leeks away I made a quick change of plans by serving this seared pork loin steak over slices of cornbread with a scoop of quince spread on top. This was probably better than it would have been with caramelized leeks anyway but I was still annoyed by their wooddy betrayal.



For beer I had this Torpedo from Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. I've been looking forward to this one for a long time ever since I learned that the basic process was them passing beer through a torpedo filled with hops to achieve the flavor. It was extremely aromatic and tasty, nowhere near as bitter as I'd expect after being passed through a hop-filled torpedo.



Since berries are in full swing already I served up some sponge cake with whipped cream, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. In the past couple of years I have continuously dropped the sugar levels in my whipped cream until I reached my current recipe which involved only cream.

I wonder if the jicama-sized babies will grow up to find this level of sugar adequate. In my younger days I would have required approximately a one-to-one ratio of sugar to cream. Now I find sugar-free whipped cream an excellent accompaniment to cake and berries which are already sweet enough.

It would probably be beneficial for the babies to eat slightly less sugar than I did as a child. I guess we'll have to see if their palates crave sugar naturally or if they are able to cope with a more sensible level of sweetness.

Only time will tell. Luckily in one week's time they'll have blossomed back to the size of honeydews, approximately the same size (and sweetness) they were twelve weeks ago.

Ah, the miracles of expanding and contracting fetuses.