Beginning to stir

The heading of my latest list is, in case you can't see: Things I'm Going to Can This Year.

Ahem.

This should come as no great surprise to those who've been reading my blog since last canning season. They know that for the months of August, September, and October, canning was the topic of this blog, and that was that.

You must understand. Last year was The Year I Learned to Can. I'd never done it before. I approached the challenge with appropriately maniacal fervor. Yes, for three months of last year, my kitchen was a cannery. My stove became a jam-splattered mosaic. My countertops were chopping blocks and cooling racks. My dining room table became a Can Labeling Checkpoint, lined with proud brigades of jars awaiting their long winter repose in the cellar. My husband became temporarily confused and distant, tentatively venturing onto the first floor of our house only occasionally, waving away the clouds of fruit flies to calmly address his wife. (Having been married only three months, he must've wondered what in the hell he'd gotten himself into, with me.)

For the sake of my marriage, my home, and my friends, this year will be a less fanatical canning encounter. For one thing, I have a job. That helps. For another, well... let's just say there's about forty half-pints of jam still in my cellar, and I'll leave it at that.

This year, I am planning it out (evidence above). I hope to have two or three weekend-long canning parties with myself, and bang out a couple after-work batches of pickles, and call it a summer. So, there are lists taking shape. There is the rummaging, the dragging out of canning books and recipes I used last year. And oh yes, the sweet dreams of that pair of tongs in my hand...

Last night at Barnes & Noble, I just happened to find myself in the cookbook section (right), and just happened to find myself staring deeply at the canning section, and just happened to pick up Well Preserved. I opened the front cover and couldn't put it down. The layout is just beautiful, the photos, and the recipes are the sort of unfussy-but-interesting ones I love. Strawberry Mint Jam, for instance. Cranberry Ketchup.

Strawberry picking season begins next week, and I can hardly wait. Canning is joy, and I can scarcely wait to hold those tongs and fills those jars with their bright innards.

The fruit flies and jam splatters can wait, though.

Thrifty Kitchen: Eat your stems! (and tops, and greens...)

Buy three pounds of broccoli, and get a full pound of stems.

Stems. No one likes 'em. They're tough. And stringy. Full of fiber, sure, maybe, but the bottom line is: they're not what you wanted when you bought that broccoli. You didn't want a bundle of unsexy, woody things skulking on your countertop, flavorless as firewood. But, like it or not, there they are. What to do, what to do.

Broccoli stems. Lettuce stalks. Beet greens. So many vegetables come with baggage, unwanted parts you can either throw away (waste your money!) or find a use for. As I've said before, wasting food (no matter how unsexy) makes my heart hurt, so predictably I tend towards the latter.

Lettuce stalks, I've decided, are the perfect faux bok choy. After stripping all the leafy green parts from a head of romaine, I save the crispy white innards for a date with soy sauce, sesame oil, sliced carrots and bamboo shoots. Broccoli stems get turned into little green coin-shaped slices and thrown into the pot a few minutes before the florets go in. The extra cooking time is enough to soften them up, and they taste great. I've also been known to substitute broccoli stems for asparagus in stir fries.

Beet greens are one bonus vegetable product I never have trouble eating. Whether I've purchased them or grown them, I love them almost as much as the beets they precede. Garlic, oil, and vinegar is really all they need, but last night we were feeling a little lavish.


Just a little.

The combination of pecans, blue cheese, sherry vinegar and chopped tomato is one we stole from a local restaurant, (Just a Taste) but there's no need to stick with it exactly. Parmesan or feta cheese would be tasty as well, toasted breadcrumbs or any other nut or seed would work in place of pecans, and if you don't have sherry vinegar, don't sweat it. A splash of white wine vinegar or lemon would be fine, too.

Garlic Braised Beet Greens with Creamy Polenta

The Polenta

4 cups good-quality vegetable broth (homemade, if that's your penchant)
1 cup medium grind cornmeal (I used Bob's Red Mill brand)
2 tbsp heavy cream
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt (or more to taste)

Bring the broth to a boil in a large sauce pan. Holding a whisk in one hand and the cornmeal in the other, sprinkle the cornmeal into the broth, whisking all the while. Lower the heat to a gentle simmer, and cook, stirring constantly, for about fifteen minutes. This is a drag, but so worth it. Mix in the salt, cream, and butter, taste and adjust, and call it done. Set the polenta aside.

The Greens

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 lb good-looking beet greens, in bite-size pieces
1 tbsp sherry vinegar
1 tomato from a can of whole tomatoes in water, chopped (don't use fresh)
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese

Warm the oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic, stirring over medium heat until lightly browned. Lower the heat and add the greens, cooking another minute more until wilted but not mushy. Remove the pan from the heat and add the vinegar, tomato, and pecans. Sprinkle in the blue cheese and give it one last stir.

Eaten alone, the polenta would be too bland (and the greens too tangy), but eaten together they are just right. The polenta is sweet and nutty, the blue cheese, vinegar, and tomato juices mingle to make this pinkish sauce that floods over everything... oh man, it was good.

So good.

Back from the wilderness

We're ba-ack! It was a week of lots of hiking, some dampness, great campfires, and ice cream three times. I beat Patrick at mini golf. Raccoons raided our cooler for veggie burgers and soy sausage. We made the best of rainy days, ate some fabulous meals, and donated a lot of blood to the Adirondack Mosquito League. It was great to be gone, and it's good to be back.

I missed you all! And that empowering sound of my fingers clicking out their sentences, on my computer keyboard. Ahh, yeah.

But anyway, right, our trip.

We were on our way Friday afternoon:

Canoe, bikes, and approximately five tons of gear crammed into the demure (though effervescent) Jetta. Five hours later:

Ahhhh. This is what we came for: mirror-still lakes, balsam air, campfires and wildness.

So, here's our week in a nutshell. Are you ready?

There were, as we'd hoped, some great campfires. Is there anything sweeter than watching the one you love build a fire to warm the night?

There were ambling hikes through ferny forests:

And some daring bog-crossing adventures.

There was some rain:

And some inventive drying out activities:

There were long paddles (on handmade canoe cushions):

The Bog River, just south of Tupper Lake, New York.

And sweet rewards at the end of the day:

Puff pastry tart with morels, chives, and local goat cheese, at the Eat-n-Meet, Saranac Lake, NY.

Patrick's Ultimate Veggie Burgers.

Homemade creamsicle ice cream, the Windfall Bar & Grill, Cranberry Lake NY. Our anniversary dinner.

There were encounters with wildlife:

Campground ducks.

A loon on her nest.

But mostly, there was just beauty, beauty, beauty.

Off to the wilderness

Well, as of today we are off on our summer vacation. It's not a long one, I promise. I've been scarce this week, (sorry) in a flurry of packing and prepping and list making and excitedness. There will be canoe trips on silent lakes, loon calls and silvery moonlight, gooey smores, dew-brushed leaves and long talks beside the fire. There will be a magnificent anniversary dinner (June 7th!) at a woodsy little bistro, and Patrick's birthday night out in Saranac Lake. It promises to be a good trip. Adirondacks, here we come!

I'll be back Sunday, the 14th, with lots of photos and stories to share.

Food fantasy revisited

Getting restaurant recommendations from friends is a lovely thing. If it's someplace you've never heard of, all the better. Not only are you discovering another place to eat on a night you don't feel like cooking, but now you know it's good, too. Such was the case when our friends Jen and Corrine recommended to us Hazelnut Kitchen.


Months later, I'm still dreaming about their hand-rolled lasagna noodles layered with spinach-leek puree and topped with a saffron-yellow fried egg... which was possibly the most sumptuous meal I've ever eaten. Yeah, remembering how the yolk oozed all unctuously down the sides, comingling slyly with the emerald-colored filling, oh baby, it's enough to keep me up nights. Until I buy a pasta machine, (or am given one, nudge nudge) that flashback fantasy will remain beyond my reach.

Not so the roasted asparagus. When I ordered it, I had no idea it would be extraordinary. The menu listed simply Asparagus, no portent of what was to come. When the plate of pencil-thin spears arrived, I was impressed. They were perfectly tender, carmelized at the edges and crusted with black pepper. In addition to my lascivious fried egg fantasies, for the past two months I've been dreaming of that plate of asparagus.

Having friends over for dinner this past weekend was the perfect excuse to take a stab at recreating this dish. Try it, while there's still gorgeous, sleek asparagus to be had.

Black Pepper Roasted Asparagus

1 lb asparagus, ends trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces ( a little more than a pound is okay)
1 egg white, beaten
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp crushed pink peppercorns, optional
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp lemon zest

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Whisk the seasonings into the egg white until well blended. Oil a 9 x 13" glass baking dish. Add the asparagus, and drizzle the egg white mixture over top. Using a flipper, turn and stir the asparagus until each piece is (more or less) evenly coated with pepper. Bake for 10-20 minutes, depending on the size of your spears.

And that's it, folks. It's so worth it, and so much easier (in my opinion) than boiling. I'd really like to try this someday using one of those "gourmet peppercorn blends," you know, the kind with the green ones, pink ones, and white ones mixed in? Fancy shmancy.