The Pig and I

And once again, the trees are laden in pollen. I always forget the midwinter episodes of crippling allergies. Since I feel like I have the flu due to tree pollen, I figured I should make some gentle stew so I'm still getting some nutrition while eating is hard. This recipe should be adapted to whatever is in your house that needs to be used up. I went through my produce bin and found a lot of "half of this, half of that" in there. Those all feature here. Whenever I'm feeling under the weather, the stews tend to be comprised of whatever I was able to easily forage from the fridge, pantry, freezer, and/or garden with a minimum of effort. This should serve 4 people on its own, but if you put it over rice, pasta, or similar, you can stretch it to 6 or so people. Hope you enjoy! In a 2-quart saucepan, combine the following: 1 tablespoon each: sesame and veg oil 1 cup beet stems, chopped into 1" pieces (I pre-chop these when I buy the bunch of beets, since I ...

Whenever we buy a watermelon and it has rind to speak of (a lot of the little personal sized ones don't), I carefully trim away the green skin, then the rind, and cut it up before storing for later use. Interestingly, the rind of the watermelon is the most nutritious part, despite the awesome of the flesh. Today, I managed to get the Pig to take a nap, as she'd had a pretty long few days and even longer month following the death of our beloved cat Aleister. But I was starving . She'd already requested butter-poached fish, sauteed broccoli, and rice for dinner, so I didn't want to go flesh for my lunch and did want to bump up my veggies for the day. After poking about through the fridge, I discovered half of a small onion and a quart of rind, so this formed the basis of the meal. Poking about the kitchen further, I found a sad tomato that the Pig and I bought from a farmer on our way back from our last trip to Austin, as well as a bottle of ají picante that I'd re...

Granola is always awesome, but it's very expensive to buy at the store. Making it at home is inexpensive and just takes a few minutes of active prep time, plus 80 minutes in the oven. For the blueberries, I buy fresh blueberries in massive quantities when they're in season and deeply discounted, then dry them. Typically I do this until I've got about a gallon dried total. If you don't have a dehydrator, you can either oven or sun dry them (If you've opted for sun drying, freeze them for 72 hours after they're finished to kill any possible insect eggs that may have been laid anyway and then store in the pantry). If you want some clumps, squeeze the mixture well once you've put it in the half sheet pan. Otherwise, it will be more like loose cereal. 4 cups rolled oats 1/4 cup each: wheat germ, wheat bran, flax seeds 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 cup sliced almonds 1 cup dried blueberries 1/2 cup each: vegetable oil, maple syrup  1/4 cup honey Preheat ove...

And, the last of the blackberry jams. Hope you enjoy! 2 pounds blackberries 2 cups sugar 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1/2 vanilla bean, split and scraped 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns Place peppercorns in a tea strainer or similar. Combine all ingredients in a large pot and macerate 1-2 hours. Bring to a boil and let boil for 5 minutes before removing peppercorns and vanilla pod (save the pod, rinsing it well, to toss in a jug of bourbon or to put in sugar for vanilla sugar). Finish boiling until it reaches the gel-point, then water bath process for 15 minutes. Makes 4 half-pints.

Here's the blackberry-bergamot. If you don't have access to bergamot, feel free to use a regular sour orange. It will change the flavor but will still be tasty. Hope you enjoy! 2 pounds blackberries 2 cups bergamot sugar pinch salt 2 tablespoons lemon juice 2 tablespoons bergamot juice Combine and macerate 1-2 hours. Boil to the gel-point and water bath process 15 minutes. Makes 4 half-pints.

Blackberries are deeply, deeply on sale right now, which is my cue to get ready for a lot of canning even if it's a food I'm not harvesting myself. I've purchased quite a lot of them and am doing three styles of jams: blackberry-lemon (today's post), blackberry-bergamot (tomorrow's post), and blackberry-vanilla-black pepper (Monday's post). Each one uses the same basic methodology I use for all jams, so those of you who've read other preserve posts will be familiar with this method. These are lovely as gifts, and also for eating oneself on toast, in cookies or tarts, as a pie base, or over ice cream after heated to thin. Hope you enjoy! 2 pounds blackberries 2 cups sugar juice and zest of one lemon pinch salt Put all ingredients together in a large pot and let macerate for 1-2 hours on the counter, or overnight in the fridge (covered). Bring to a boil, stirring, and remove from heat once it hits the gel-point. Water bath process 15 minutes. Makes 4 ha...

There are a million ways to make these, and I pretty much think they're all good. But I like this way for days when you're having sausage and kraut. Hope you enjoy! 8 ounces sliced button mushrooms 3-ish tablespoons finely diced red onion 1 large or two small cloves minced garlic 2-ish tablespoons white wine (I *think* this was a pinot but I froze it ages ago so can't remember for sure) 1-ish tablespoon lemon juice pinch each: salt, lemon peel, dried thyme 1-2 tablespoons olive oil Heat the olive oil in a small pan over medium to medium-high heat, then add the mushrooms, onions and spices. When they're about 3/4 of way done, add the remaining ingredients. When the liquid is gone they're done. Serves 2 if you feel like sharing.

The fig trees have been ripe a couple of weeks now and I've been busy preserving, preserving, preserving. There's a tree on the property of the condos we live in and there's also one at Ross' Nana's house. This has put me in good supply of figs, though I'm not convinced one can ever truly have enough of these little gems of yum. Ross' family prefers a Southern fig preserve with strawberry Jell-O, so I made around 3 cases total for him and them (last year I didn't make enough for him at half a case and it was gone in a month or two so I promised not to make this mistake again). I've also made some jars of the regular fig preserve I like (figs, sugar and lemon juice only). But in the middle of all that we started what I refer to as "monsoon season" in Houston, which is NOT good for figs. I ran over to the on property tree and saw that what I thought would happen did happen. Figs were overripening faster than I could get them, even with the Pi...

I got some buckwheat a while back, intending to make it with beets. Then I forgot all about it until today when I discovered some beets in the house that needed to be used. This was substantially more delicious than I expected it to be, and we all ate it up with gusto. Hope you enjoy! Buckwheat: 1/2 cup buckwheat groats 2-2 1/2 cups water 1 teaspoon salt pat of butter (optional) Put water, salt and butter (if using) in a pot and bring to a boil. Stir in the buckwheat and boil for 10 minutes, stirring every so often. Strain out remaining water and serve. Serves 2. Veggies: 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 tablespoon lemon juice 2 beets, peeled and diced 2 carrots, peeled and diced 1 onion, diced 1 cup celery, sliced 1 small jicama root, peeled and diced 1/2 red bell pepper, diced 1 cup grape or cherry tomatoes, sliced in half 1 teaspoon each: garlic powder, salt Heat oil in a skillet over medium, then add beets, carrots, onion, celery, jicama, garlic powder, and salt. F...

The Piggy loves eggplant and chick peas and has been harassing me to do something with the eggplant she's been seeing in the fridge. I wanted part of it to crust with potato and parmesan but didn't want to make the whole thing that way so I also made this for her. Hope you enjoy! 1/2 globe eggplant, peeled and diced 1 can chickpeas 1/2 red onion, diced 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 1 tablespoon za'atar 1 teaspoon salt juice of 1/2 lemon 1 8-ounce can tomato sauce In a skillet, heat oil over medium. Add onions and eggplant with salt and fry lightly. When the eggplant has slightly crisp exterior, add chickpeas, za'atar and lemon juice then cook down 1-2 minutes. Add tomato sauce and simmer until the sauce is slightly paste-like. Serves 4 as a side or 1 as a meal.

I first learned of this practice in a fermenting group where someone was doing it with cranberries. This is delicious. Everyone should have these in their lives. I make mine exclusively with blueberries since that's the Piggy's current favorite fruit, but friends of mine make them with other berries with equal success. I think you pretty much could use any fruit and still have it be full of win. If you're going to feed this to kids (1+ years old, please!), don't let them see the container or you'll regret them knowing where these are. Hope you enjoy! 24 ounces blueberries honey Fill a clean, quart sized Mason jar (or other quart sized vessel not made of metal) with blueberries. Fill with honey until the berries are completely submerged (this takes a while because the honey has to worm its way around all the fruit). Place a non-metal weight on top of the berries (I like to use the tealight holders from Ikea. The small size works in a standard mouth jar and the l...

So basically, I'd made a bunch of quinoa for the stuffed squash, since I wanted enough for that and then an equivalent amount for "something else." I had a lot of ideas on what that something else should be, but at the end of the day had to accept that I'm pretty lazy most of the time and so this "something" should be fast and easy. This is what I ended up deciding on and after a few revisions I'm pretty satisfied with it in this form. What I like the best about this is that it's nutritionally diverse in a single package, so you know you're getting good "growing food" served without having to mess with a bunch of stuff, and that has become really important to me since Ilana has effectively transitioned completely over to table food. Because it has both quinoa and eggs in it, it's very high in protein. Watermelon is the dessert of choice for this meal in our house. 3 cups cooked quinoa 1/2 cup each: chopped caramelized...

As you all know, I'm a pretty big fan of stuffed squash. They're relatively easy to make, despite there being a lot of steps, they're very healthful and they're effectively a "one pot" meal which means significantly fewer dishes to wash (this is important to me because dishes are the Death Star of my soul). They're also highly customizable and can be done with pretty much anything you have on hand at the house so long as you have a squash (of any type) to fill. I typically will select a high-protein grain for these because I nearly always make them either vegetarian or vegan, but meat could easily be added if that's your preference. I wanted to make one for Ilana since she'd never had it before, and since I'd found a large and beautiful acorn squash it seemed like a great opportunity. She ate this like it was going out of style, and to my surprise plowed through just under a quarter of the squash. Ross told me he thinks this probably belongs in...

I picked up a watermelon recently (yes, I know. WAY out of season) because Ilana is a huge fan of them and likes to mash her pieces around, bite off too-big chunks, and try to feed them to me. Since we're a small house I typically buy the person sized melons. It was quite a surprise for me when I cut it open and found a rind thick enough to eat and so I peeled the green part of the melon carefully and then cut off all the white rind before dispensing watermelon chunk treats. This is a really fun recipe, since watermelon rind tastes a lot like cucumber and in the States that's not something we typically cook before eating. It also, of course, cuts down on food waste. Since Ilana (aka the Piggy, so named after the pig-like sounds she used to make) spends a lot of time in the kitchen "helping" me cook I figure starting her out from the very beginning with an aversion to food waste is the way to go rather than trying to instil this concept later in her life. Hope you enj...

My body appears to have an understandable bias against the air in Houston. I don't know if it's the pollution or if there is some other kind of weird allergen in the air that bothers me more here than anywhere else I've lived, but the allergies have been hitting me hard in that debilitating, nearly flu-like kind of way. This is probably compounded by the fact that I really do have a bad habit of running myself ragged and only stopping when my body freaks out on me. On account of this I decided I should make some elderberry syrup to take daily, and since the Piggy (this is Ilana's nickname) also appears to have my allergies, for her to take daily as well. Although I make this for medicinal reasons (tablespoon daily for adults, teaspoon for little ones) it also has a lot of fun culinary applications. You can use it in place of maple syrup on waffles or pancakes, it goes well on ice cream and frozen yogurt and can be part of a sauce to top delicious things like lamb chops....

I'm taking Old English right now and really enjoying the class. To celebrate the language and culture of the West Saxons, I decided I should bring some Saxon foods to class (I decided this a month or so ago but am actually doing it tomorrow). I had a lot of research to do because I wanted it to be as authentic as possible. Originally I planned to do sloe berries or plums, but that didn't really pan out. And then I saw some crab apples at the store and I got pretty excited because that's way better than plums and an equally appropriate choice (more so if you consider the season). I made some farmer's cheese and some sweet butter, and saved the whey and buttermilk to also bring to class. And then I worked on getting down a good bread that seemed to fit the descriptions I'd read. Lastly, the fruit. Can't have this type of snack or meal without fruit, right? I made everything mostly without modern conveniences, which means I cooked this over a fire. Unless you'r...

I love marrow bones. I love frying thick slices of homemade bread in a stick of butter to eat it with. I love the mouth-feel of marrow. I love the fatty goodness, and how full and satisfied I feel after I eat them. I love how well they pair with pretty much any bright food you want to eat. I love how quickly they cook. I also love how inexpensive they are. I got about a pound and a half for $2, spent about $2.40 on vegetables (we also had roasted broccoli with this), and another $0.90 cents on the loaf of bread I made and the butter to fry it in (even better, if you have stale bread it's perfect for this!). So all in all, we got an awesome meal (plus enough for Ross to take to work for lunch) for slightly more than five bucks, which I love. If you haven't tried marrow, and you're not icked by this sort of thing, I highly recommend this affordable and delicious meal (my version or anyone else's - all of them, actually. I would love to try every marrow preparation known t...

I've been on this thing lately where I've been buying beets that are about as big as my head. I don't know why I'm buying these because it's seriously a lot of food. But I'm glad I have been because it's been an adventure in deciding what to do with 4 cups worth of beet that all has to be used quickly. Once again, I have (half) a beet in my fridge, though it was a lot more. The last head-sized beet probably had half of it eaten in little handfuls of diced beet as I walked on by it and the rest went into things, like an enchilada sauce (that I'll tell y'all about as soon as I remember what I did). This time, I had made falafel for dinner but was out of both sesame seeds and tahini so I couldn't make the type of hummus I wanted. Instead I used the chick peas to make a salad and we all agreed it was a wonderful addition to the falafel. Hope you enjoy! 1 can chick peas, drained and rinsed (or a can's worth of cooked from dry, so about 1 1/2 cu...

Stewed okra is wonderful, don't you think? Well, I guess if you're one of those okra hating people you might not think so. If you're one of those okra hating people, it might be because you think okra is always slimy and gross. But that's not always the case, and the preparation style really determines if the okra will be unpleasant or not. So, if you hate okra give this a shot and see how you feel about it. Ross mentioned to me as I was typing this up that he really enjoyed the okra and was glad I'd done the stewed okra in a way that it wasn't slimy. If you love okra, you might enjoy adding this to your list of okra goodies. Hope you enjoy! 12 ounces thickly sliced okra (I used frozen which I did not bother to thaw first but you can do it with fresh) 2 15-ounce cans stewed tomatoes 20 ounces vegetable stock (you can make this a meat dish by using chicken stock) 2 teaspoons creole seasoning (or regular seasoned salt) 1 tablespoon dried thyme 1/2 teaspoon ...

This is an Israeli style green falafel. Green falafel is my favorite kind, because the flavors of the herbs are so very pronounced. I really just find it delightful, so that's the kind I wanted to do for dinner tonight. This dish is really very easy to make, and tops out at about $3 to make about 36 falafel balls. A lot of people shape their falafel with one of those scoops. I'm personally torn on the falafel scoop, because on the one hand, really cool contraption! On the other hand, it has exactly one use, and that makes it hard for me to justify giving up drawer space to something like that. I'm always looking about to see if there is one for sale at some of my favorite shops, but there never is and that's okay. Spoons and wet hands work perfectly well for shaping these little balls of happiness. Anyway, these are really delicious. They're also shockingly easy to make. With a food processor, it takes less than 5 minutes to put the whole mixture together, and the...