a lucky little duck

Our dining room is home to a bookshelf full of cookbooks.  I love them.  I used to have a bunch more, but after starting to worry that I might be hanging on to some hoarding tendencies I gave a couple to one of my sisters and the rest to charity.  I hope they found good homes with folks that will read them with as much love as I did.  I read recipes online too.  And I collect them from friends and family.  I have 2 three-ring binders on this shelf that are full of printed off recipes.

The funny thing is though – when I cook I rarely follow a recipe.  (I choose to view this as an endearing quirk instead of being a crazy cookbook squirrel.)  I use them as a basic structure – but most often I tweak and substitute and pretty much always triple the amount of garlic called for.  I’m trying to get better about writing my own recipes down – so that when I make a dish that is really nummy and Jimmi is all "Let’s have this again!" I’ll remember how I made it.  This is always a risk around here.  I recently created a soup that we both love – and last time I made it I started writing down what I did.  I forgot about it towards the end – so it peters off – but I’ve got enough down for me to make a pretty decent replica.

I also cook using real food.  (Usually.  You may recall the pre-dawn frozen tombstones from the last blog post.)  That’s a biggie in our house – the cooking with real food part – and I’m working on getting closer to my imagined cooking perfection.  It’s better for you, it’s better tasting, and it’s more fun.  It breaks my little cookbook-loving-heart every time I read a recipe that calls for a can of beans, some nonfat-fake-food item, or (gasp!) a package of cake mix.  It’s true.  I recently read a recipe for cornbread (yum!) that uses a box of yellow cake mix (yuck!) as the base.  Seriously?  Why would somebody do that?  It’s bewildering . . .

white, pinto & black - lined up and patiently waiting for a soakin' and cookin'

Making beans isn’t difficult.  The hardest part is planning in advance what you are going to make for dinner the next day so you can get them soaking.  (Okay, not too difficult, right?)  Nonfat and low-fat versions of foods have no flavor – so food engineers strip out the fat and then add in chemicals to make it taste like it would in its regular state.  (Gross!)  You’ll have tastier and healthier meals if you use real food as your ingredients, and not ‘food’ created in a lab.  Seriously.

   

I’m a lucky little duck in many ways – some of which are:   

Jason and some of his bees at the country apiary

Two of my best friends raise bees (one right here in my city, and one in the country part of this lovely state) and share their homespun honey with us.  

ohmygodyum!  In addition to eating it, I also use this honey to wash my face.  Have you done that?  It is the greatest!  So great that it might just be deserving of its own blog – so I’m not going to say anything more about it right now.  This honey also has amazing allergy-ass-kicking abilities that come in super handy for us in the spring and autumn!  I've been thinking about brewing some mead - and might be ready to give that a go come fall.

pretty pretty 'maters, all in a row

When I was whooping it up celebrating my birthday month in September, one of my amigas gave me a whole bushel of tomatoes that she canned.  (Or maybe not a bushel – I think that is actually an exact measurement – but lots and lots of jars, anyway.)  Not only is it loads of fun to squeeze the dickens out of them with your fingers when you are making a tomato sauce – they taste SO much better than a purchased jar of sauce could ever dream of tasting (oh, sad little jar of sauce!  You have your purpose – but nobody will ever love you as much as they love a handcrafted sauce.  I'm sorry, I know the truth can be a harsh reality.)

raw milk, butter, and kefir

I have a great source for raw milk, cream and butter.  Holy crow are they good.  And although I only need to drive to the farm about every couple months or so because the group all takes turns - it's a nice drive and last time I went there were horses wearing plaid jackets standing out in their field.  Do you have any idea how cute a horse is who is wearing a plaid jacket?  They are seriously cute!  In my state of glee at seeing them I almost drove off the road.  The dairy from this farm is out-of-this-world fantastic.  Milk has always kinda grossed me out – but I now get antsy and irritable when our stash is getting low. 

so many colors on the outside - and so orange on the inside

Farm fresh eggs – in a frequent supply.  I get them from my honey-n-tomatoes friend, and I can get them from the farm where I buy my raw dairy.  (I could also get a bunch of good meat from them - but I don't.   But I could.)  If neither one of those two sources have eggs, I buy them from Tangletown Gardens/Wise Acre Eatery.  They are an amazing garden center/restaurant in SW Minneapolis – and  nearly 90% of the food served at their restaurant (animal and vegetable) are sustainably grown/raised on their farm an hour out of the city.

If you haven't had the thrill of a farm fresh egg - I suggest you do whatever it takes to get your hands on some.   The yolks are orange, people.  Not pale yellow – but ORANGE!  (because they get to roam around and eat all manner of creepy-crawlies with their salads.  I wouldn’t like that diet, but I’m not a chicken.  Chickens love that crap.  They don’t like the ‘from hens fed a vegetarian diet’ that is written on so many grocery market egg cartons.  You force a chicken to go vegetarian and they’ll thank you with limp and sad eggs.)

spring buttercrunch lettuce growing on our farm

I grow food on our farm!  I mean, technically it's not really a farm.  It's our backyard - but I call it our farm because not only does it help ease my do-I-want-to-live-in-the-city-or-the-country conundrum, it’s just fun to say.  Wouldn’t you rather work on the farm then just weed the backyard?  I’m also learning how to can and preserve the harvest so that we can make the yumminess last longer.  (Thanks for the hands-on class in my kitchen, Sarah!)  We have 13 raised beds – with at least two more going in this spring.  In them we grow herbs and veggies - and last year we added hops.  They weren't productive enough this season to harvest and brew - but they should be by next season.  Which brings me to . . .

this growler and spattering of bottles all feel so empty inside. . .

I have friends who have perfected the art of the home brew.  For real – this is top-notch hooch!  And the brewing system in the basement of this home not very far from mine is a beautiful sight to behold.  Beautiful, I tell you.  While I don't use beer a ton *in* my cooking, it sure does make the already fun task of cooking even more of a thrill if you can be enjoying a cool brew while you chop and mince all that garlic.

The beauty of writing a blog is that I can write whatever I want to – it’s mine!  So this whole cooking with real food is something that is important to me.  I like cooking, and I look cooking with good food.  It might be a kick in the pants for you, and maybe not.  I won’t know how you feel unless we have a conversation about it.  Also – we all grow and change and develop (hopefully) into our more evolved selves.  It’s part of this life we have.  Who knows where my mind will be on all of this at some other point.  This is what I’m thinking about today.  And as easy as making a pot of beans is – like I mentioned above it only takes some advance planning – some days you just don’t have it.

So on Saturday – when I realized it was 11:oo and I was supposed to be making lunch for Ben (one of the guitarists for the Souls) (and unexpected lunch guest Sadie!) – I trotted down to the pantry to get some salsa and canned beans – because I didn’t think about it the night before.  Thank God for canned beans to come to the rescue when you want to make a pan of the house chilaquiles and haven’t planned more than an hour ahead. . .

4/5 of Jimmi and the Band of Souls
www.facebook.com/jimmiandthebandofsouls

Jimmi says that he thinks I am a good cook.  (But he doesn’t like to cook like I do, so really what else is he going to say?  He’s a smart guy – and wants to keep the vittles on the table.)  I say it’s hard to not make a meal taste good when you’ve got yummy building blocks to play with - and have amazing friends who like to share!  

So – what about you, reader of blog post #3?  Have you got any tips for me on brewing some mead?  Is a pan of chilaquiles one of your comfort foods too?  (Although no longer in season – this is a frequent guest to our Sunday football-watching afternoons.)  Have you never been mellow?