Fast Food, Slow Food
My baker was really starting to slack. He was supposed to bake for a New Year’s eve party. I would make pate, he would make bread, our hostess would “ouh” and “ah”. A 911 call came in. As a member of a local rescue squad, …
Quacking from Rappahannock (our blog)
S is for Super Easy Smoothie
This is why I pick and freeze berries – and other fruit – in the summer when they are at peak flavor. And for cobbler and clafoutis too.Yeah… I suppose nobody needs a recipe for smoothie? Indulge me a little. It’s a locavore post after …
Just In Time for Sipping the New Year In
It’s been aging in the dark closet under the stair since July. This morning, finally, it was time for bottling. You do remember the peach liqueur we made, right? YOU did make it, right?, when the peaches were full of flavor and fragrance last summer?
Thanks to the magic of photo editing software I “transformed” one of my pictures of peaches into a “watercolor”, and used it to make pretty labels.
Then looked for an attractive clear bottle – all the better to show the pale color of the liqueur (here a recycled Port bottle), carefully poured the fragrant liqueur from its aging container – and: voila, a fine bottle to sip on new year’s eve – and beyond – with memories redolent of summers past and with hope for summers to come.
Cheers! Happy New Year. May the winter be not too hard (but hard enough to kill the bugs and let the trees be dormant) and may the harvest be good next year.
Note for tLocavore Log: the peaches were immediately local!
True Coq au Vin
For those who don’t know, “coq” means “rooster” in French. Therefore, “Coq au Vin” means “Rooster cooked in wine”. The dish is a staple of French provincial cooking, a dish originally made by using extra roosters culled from the chicken yard or an old chicken …
Oven on Fire
- Melted plastic tray in the oven. Saved by baking soda!
This is why you should NEVER – EVER – store plastic in your oven. Metal or heat-proof glass containers, yes, but plastic? Repeat after me: Do not store anything plastic in the oven. Don’t. You think you’ll remember, but one time – and it only takes one time – you won’t.
This is also why you should ALWAYS keep a big container of baking soda handy. Large handfuls of baking soda will smother a fire with a lot less of a mess than a fire extinguisher. While the fire might have burned out by itself – eventually – in the (electric) oven, the fumes might have be poisonous – they were pretty obnoxious even though we caught the fire early. I am sure it would have been a real mess (and a 911 call) if that had been a gas oven though…
And if you must ask. No, those photos were not taken at my house. They were taken at the house of a lady – who shall remain nameless – and of whom we were guests for a couple of days recently.
I was told that once the plastic cooled off and hardened, it just lifted off the floor of the oven and off the rack.
Nonetheless, say after me: “don’t store plastic in the oven and go buy a really large box of baking soda NOW”
Chayote by Any Other Name
I know. It’s not in season. But I am dreaming of it, because of a post from Elise on Simply Recipes. Chayote shoot is a taste of my childhood. Around the holidays, don’t we reminisce about good memories? At some point I’ll post more info …
Simple Pleasures from the Quasi-Winter Garden
The lettuce beds are looking lush and fluff – if you lift the agricultural fabric swaddled over them, that is – providing huge bowls of greens, but, with the temperature regularly dropping below freezing (at night only for now, thankfully), I am hungering for soup.
(Alas, since no picture of tonight’s soup was taken, you must look at pictures of the winterized kitchen garden beds, and the still lovely lettuce – of which I am quite proud.)
A quick walk through the garden yielded enough to make a nutritious hearty soup, what I call my garden soup. What goes into the pot depends on what I have – the secret being to use a super rich broth*. Today’s picking was symptomatic on a late fall day – quasi-winter really. Continue reading Simple Pleasures from the Quasi-Winter Garden
Consider the (Cranberry) Shrub
Cranberries are not a shrub, you say? You are right, but they can be turned into a shrub, the sweet-tart refreshing drink that was popular before colas. Today – if the word is recognized at all as a drink – shrub is often understood to …