Grumpy Pretzels

Some anthropomorphic frozen pretzels I got:

Some things from the farm

This was a really good week at the farm.

Cherry Belle radishes, French Breakfast radishes, baby overwintered leeks.

French B-fast.

This is burdock. It's an edible root that grows as a weed.

Sliced burdock.

Burdock and leeks, cooked in butter.

Orach--it's like spinach. I'll put up a picture of baby orach, which is a lot prettier. This grew as a volunteer in the high tunnel.

Soda

4:50 p.m.

Today I was working at North Park Village, a recycling site run by the Resource Center, the non-profit which also runs the farm where I usually work. In addition to being a depository for people's recyclable materials--glass, metals, paper, cardboard, plastic, etc.--the site has an area where people can leave household goods and knick-knacks that they no longer need but that others might find useful. For most of the time that I've worked there, there has been this guy who comes, on average, once a day and loads pretty much all the household goods and knick-knacks that are not complete garbage into his Jeep Cherokee. I've never thought it worth the trouble to confront him about his disproportionate usage of this feature of the site, but I can only hope that he's giving all these items to a charitable cause and not selling them for some trivial bit of money--he doesn't look as though he needs it.

At any rate, I was working at North Park today, and the guy comes and loads up his car, and as he's leaving he holds out a duffel bag he had just found, and jokingly tells me to place my work gloves in the bag. Given his track record, I did not find this funny, and so faked a chuckle. He put the bag in his car, and then, as an afterthought, turned and handed me the can of soda pictured below.


















I asked this fellow what was in the can, and he replied "It's either Coke or Pepsi--it won't get you high," and drove off.

Reassuring words, to be sure. At any rate, the drink is currently chilling in the freezer, awaiting a taste test. I am not hopeful, given the dubious character of its giver and the not-so-recent expiration date printed on the can.


5:10 p.m



















VERDICT: The beverage is definitely some variety of cola. I'm about 95% sure it's not diet. It tastes slightly more syrupy than it should and leaves a slightly more unpleasant aftertaste than a typical cola, but it is otherwise unremarkable. Oh well. I guess we know now that cola ages reasonably well.

Le Snax

As many of my readers know, I enjoy making meals, and especially snacks, that I imagine to be quintessentially French. This is my latest iteration thereof: A little slice of a baguette. Beef terrine (a chunky paté that I got at Butcher and Larder, a trendy butcher shoppe that just opened down Milwaukee). Parmesan from Le Trader Joe's. A sliver of Black Spanish radish, which is really cool-looking.

A note about Butcher and Larder: meat-eaters reading this in Chicago should totally check it out. I was concerned about prices and/or excessive trendiness when I went there, because of how much hype it's gotten, and how they chop up one animal at a time and sell it bit-by-bit, etc., but it was actually pretty affordable and the people there were nice. I got a hunk of terrine, a hunk of Italian-style head cheese, and a big Italian sausage for under $10 total, and they answered my many questions about weird meat concoctions.











The terrine.












The Radish.












Here's kind of a cool one I made while writing this post, for which I sliced the radishes super-thin.












EDIT: This is the head cheese, which is much tastier than it sounds, and can also be eaten with bread and radishes.

Braised lamb shanks (and no famous pizza)

So the other day I had just gotten back from MOSES, this organic agriculture conference in La Crosse, WI, and it really had me in the mood to eat some meat that was grown around here. Whenever I get reminded that I'm a small farmer, it makes me want to go buy stuff from other small farmers. Plus, ever since I stopped being a vegetarian three years ago, I've been on a quest to get better at cooking meat that I never used to eat before I became vegetarian. Anyways, I went over to the Dill Pickle and got some lamb shanks from Mint Creek Farm. They were actually pretty reasonable priced, I guess because shanks are supposed to be tough and not a choice cut, as it were.

I wanted to braise the lamb and I wanted to involve root vegetables, preferably celery root (which I hadn't eaten since I had bad experience trying to bake it into bread a few years ago), so I found this recipe and followed it very loosely. Braising is really easy, I discovered, and I don't think there's any reason to really follow a recipe, except to find out how long a particular type of meat should cook. Here is what I did.

I took my two lamb shanks (about one pound each), and rubbed them with lots of salt and pepper and a few Tbsp. of oil with chopped onions, garlic, and rosemary mixed in. I let that sit for about three hours, though the recipe said to marinate for up to 48 hours. I wish I had had the time, but I think it was fine anyway. Later, I seared the shanks and some more onion and garlic in a pan, and then put them in a casserole dish with diced parsnip, celery root and some City Farm carrots I had lying around (I meant to put in potatoes, but ran out of room and am kind of glad). I covered all this with chicken stock and some (not-so-good) hard cider I had made a while back, and put it all in the oven, covered, for about 4 hours. Because I started it late, I braised at about 325 degrees rather than the called-for 275 degrees. I think that was fine, but I'm looking forward to braising other stuff at lower temperatures for longer times. This was really good, though. I ate it standing up in the kitchen at about 11:30 at night, and felt French. Ah, and I also made a potato-celery root puree that served as the bed for the lamb, etc.


In other food news, I stopped in Madison on the way home from the conference, to go to the Capitol and stand in solidarity with with the workers and protesters there, and also to eat a slice of the now-famous donated pizza from around the world and put it on my food blog. Unfortunately the Capitol had been locked by the time I got there and I was unable to enter. Still, long live the struggle and long live pizza!

Late Nite Mac&Cheez

This is actually how I always make boxed mac&cheese, but in this instance it was late-nite--after the second-ever concert of my new fave chicago band, Close Hits.

First you boil the noods, in this case $0.99 Trader Joe's not-organic mac&cheese. Drain it, and then melt about 2 Tbsp. butter and 1/4 cup milk together. Grate a large amount of sharp (preferable extra or Seriously sharp) cheddar cheese and parmesan. Mix them in with the mix. Add the cheese packet, mix it all together, and put in the noodles. Add cracked pepper and then sprinkle on dried basil and dill until the top of the noodles in the pot are more green then yellow. Mix it all together and eat it. What a treat!

I promise to post soon about the lunch I had at Google HQ when I was in San Francisco, btw.

Vday

Last night Miriam and I made a dinner and, in a departure from our usual method of choosing things to make, we took an interactive quiz on epicurious.com to find out which romantic dinner menu would fit our style. The answer was Casual Comfort, comprised of Roast Chicken with Rosemary-Garlic Paste, Caramelized Shallot Mashed Potatoes, and Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Lemon and Bacon.

Is it a violation of foodblog ethics to just link to the recipe instead of writing it out? Oh well.


The roast chicken was a pretty good recipe, overall. I don't know if a roast chicken really needs a thick paste like this one in order to be herby and juicy--I think a slathering of butter and some salt and pepper and ground up thyme and sage is enough, with maybe some garlic cloves under the skin and tucked under the legs--but this was a nice idea and came out pretty tasty. The chicken we used was only about 4.5 pounds and got a tiny bit dry, but oh well. It was good. Also, I like the method that this recipe calls for, of cutting out the backbone and flattening the chicken out to roast it faster. Mark Bittman has a video for this involving a turkey, and it's a pretty great method. Unfortunately we couldn't find bulk juniper berries and had to buy a whole bottle (we only needed 5), so if anyone in Chicago needs juniper berries, let me know. You can have them.


The potatoes were probably the best part of this little menu. Miriam made these. The sweetness from the shallots was everything that's been missing from even the best mashed potatoes I've had. This is really a recipe to hold onto for life, and to have around for a number of instances in which it would be the perfect thing to make.


The brussels sprouts were probably the weakest part. They were just a little too lemony, and the bacon didn't really get crisped even though I pre-cooked it for a bit before putting it all in to roast. They were good, but just not the best part of dinner. I have a way of making brussels sprouts where I sautee them in butter or bacon fat with garlic, leaving the lid on so that they get browned and steamed at the same time, and I think my way is better. Maybe I need to experiment more with roasting them, though. If you make this recipe, use about half the called-for amount of lemon and make sure you get the bacon almost crispy before you put it in to roast. Actually, though, this would be a pretty good recipe if you made it a little more subtle.

Anyways, it was a really nice dinner. We drank Portuguese Vinho Verde from Miriam's boss's husband's really cool wine store, Cellar Rat. That's going to be my summer drink for sure. I also got a bottle of Biodynamic (!) rosé that I'm saving for a special occasion.


Get it?