A sense of self

I haven’t been the happiest person of late. A lot of this can be blamed on the simple truth of lack of sleep, or possibly the continued interruption of my body’s natural circadian rhythms (getting up an hour earlier for my not-new-anymore job continues to throw off my balance). But being unhappy also throws me into a state of self-analysis: if I’m not happy, then, what does make me happy? What helps me feel satisfied with life?

It’s fun to think about these things, but what’s even better is to act on them. This weekend (which I made a three-day weekend because I could, and because I was kind of sick on Saturday anyway) I am making an effort to experience all of these good things, listed here in no particular order.



While making this list, I realize that making lists should be on the list. It is tremendously satisfying. Making a list generates order out of chaos. It relaxes my mind and makes the insurmountable suddenly doable.



Being outdoors. The absolute best day of my recent vacation with my husband was spent on a bicycle ride. 
I also really enjoy hiking (most folks know this) but I haven’t done any hiking this year at all. Part of this is weather, allergies, and poor planning. Part of it is honestly not wanting to drive to a mountain when I already spend so many hours in the car each week. But I don’t have to go that far. Today I will drive 20 minutes to a small hill outside of town, and get a hike in.



Cooking good things definitely belongs on the list. For me, that means using local foods when I can, chopping and dicing and transforming them into healthy meals. Recipes usually come from EatingWell or Cooking Light. (Minor segue: Cooking Light, I think, saved my life. I am so grateful to have discovered it when I was 24, still naturally thin, and genuinely interested in how to eat healthfully. Now that I am 41 and gain weight at the drop of a hat, I am putting the lessons I learned to good use).

Today I will make this week’s yogurt. I will also make a tried-and-true Chopped Greek Salad with Chicken for dinner, and prep what I need for Crispy Vegetable Quesadillas so I can make those tomorrow night.





Knitting and watching old movies are also on the list. Fortunately, these things can sometimes be done simultaneously. Today, I will begin working on the right-hand Junie Marie Mitts. These are a gift as part of a birthday swap, so I won't show a photo of mine yet. I am so freaking happy with myself -- I knit the first mitten in two days. Two days! The first pair I ever made took more like six months - I had no idea what I was doing. So this is pretty awesome. I kind of got in a knitting rut this summer, but these mitts are getting me out of it. This is a good thing.

For a movie... I do not know. Romances of the 1930s or 1940s? Or sci-fi of the 1950s? The Day the Earth Stood Still is still on Netflix. Or, perhaps a re-watch of Double Indemnity? That's a great one. I'll have to see what is available. I enjoy them all.

I also need to do my laundry. Not because I enjoy doing laundry, but because it's on a mental must-do list. And the best part of making a list is crossing things off the list.

Yogurt mojo

If I thought I was becoming a outdoorsy hiker type who enjoys cooking local veggies, this year is trying to prove me wrong. I have not hiked to the peak of a single tiny mountain. I have not been to the farmer's market. I did not join a CSA this year. And it's JULY. And not July 1, or 2, or 3, oh no. It's the middle of July. I am a hot mess.

My only defense is that pollen season was so bad this year that I was, literally, sick for about a month. I still believe I had some other illness, because it honestly felt like the flu for about a week there, and the person who originally examined me was convinced I had strep. But no... and so I suffered. And then, when I got to feeling better, the bugs were bad. And then... well, then I was just lazy.

Fresh yogurt!
Image from http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Yogurt

In an effort to regain my mojo, I made yogurt last weekend. In my previous yogurt-making experiences, I initially found success, but the last couple batches failed to thicken. Now there are plenty of cultures who enjoy a nice yogurt drink, but that really wasn't what I was going for. I complained about this to my dad when I visited him in April, explaining I was pretty sure switching from full-fat to two percent fat milk was causing the problem, because that was the only thing I'd done differently. He made fun of me a little, saying it really doesn't make that much difference as far as calories are concerned, and that I should just use the full-fat milk.

And so, I did. And you know what? Worked like a charm. I have delicious, creamy yogurt with a pudding-like texture. I Googled how many calories are in six ounces of homemade yogurt made from full-fat yogurt, and held my breath.

And then I laughed. Dad was right! My little jars of yogurt hardly contain more calories than the cups of Yoplait Light I was buying. I guess when you figure there aren't any added sugars, etc. this makes sense.

Okay, so, one problem solved... up next, how to simplify dinner preparation.

Defeat by vegetable

With two weeks left to go in my 20-week CSA season, I concede. CSA, I am completely defeated.

I come to you today from my kitchen, paralyzed by the onslaught of vegetables from a local farm. There is an acorn squash, two delicata squashes, a pile of garlic, and an unidentified orange sphere (approximately the size of the acorn squash) in the bowl on the dining table. On the counter is a large, dusty turnip, a bag of approximately 20 orange carrots, a baby butternut squash, a wisp of fennel, four peppers, and a watermelon. Those things on the counter all came on Thursday, and I haven’t yet figured out where or how to fit these in the fridge.

Speaking of the refrigerator…

There’s another bag of carrots in there — most of those are the golden variety. I used some in a recipe for Glorious Morning muffins that I took to work, but there’s probably still 20 good-sized carrots in that bag.

There’s another watermelon, three ears of corn, four purple kohlrabi, a cucumber or two — no, wait, those have gone bad — a pound of beets, five more peppers, two heads of lettuce, six or seven leeks, a daikon radish, and several bunches of either kale or chard (or perhaps both). Oh and there’s also a head of cabbage that came a few weeks ago. If I ever get to that part of the refrigerator again, we’ll see if it’s still any good. There’s also a large bag of jalapeños. I gave a whole mess of jalapeños to two different friends who love hot things, but I still have enough to make a restaurant-sized appetizer.

In the pantry is a pound and a half of very small, very dirty, red potatoes.

Last year, I took on my CSA as a fun challenge. Being faced with eating only what is available in the here and now was interesting and eye-opening. But this year, I just can’t bring myself to expend that kind of energy on this. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s absolutely no point in paying what divides up to $20 a week for a whole bunch of perishable food that I don’t have the energy to prepare or preserve. I sit in my kitchen, staring at all this fantastic local produce, and I really, really want to make this right. I really want to cook it and eat it, reveling in our local bounty. But I’m tired of trying to figure out how to prepare unfamiliar things (like that turnip… and what is that orange thing?), or how to sneak in the familiar that I don’t normally buy much of (like the peppers, including all those jalapeños)!  And I have to wonder: even if I were better at throwing things together, and even if we incorporated all these veggies into our breakfasts and lunches, and not just dinner — would we really be able to eat it all? There are only two of us.

When I think about how much of this I gave away this year, and how much went in the trash, I conclude that this is the last CSA year for me. It’s true that at farmer’s market, I won’t get half as much produce for my $20. But if I’m giving it away or throwing it away, what’s the point? I’d rather just get only what I need.

Inspiration

Living in a state like New Hampshire, there are a few unique things one learns to avoid. Driving north at the beginning of the Independence Day weekend, for example. With the copious amount of Massachusetts license plates sprinkled with a few New Hampshire plates (no doubt commuters who live at the southern end of the state) all driving north to the lakes and mountains, it is folly to think the usual weekend trip north to the farmer’s market on Saturday morning is possible. In fact, to try this is downright foolhardy, unless you actually enjoy sitting in completely stopped traffic (for both interstate and local roads). I write this from experience.

In fact, living in the center of the state means the traffic going any direction is likely to be ridiculous, and therefore, any thoughts of hiking or exploring are curbed. In a way, though, this is a gift. Much like hiking through the woods can relax one’s soul, sitting at home and deciding to do anything but housework can also be inspiring… or at least, provides time to think and work on one’s hobbies.

An enormous amount of time was spent this weekend knitting Sock #2. I wrote about my sock adventure on June 17, when I explained this would be my very first knitted pair of socks. Sock #1 was finished on a business trip last week (gotta love all that airplane time). The photo generated more than a couple of LOVE clicks on the Ravelry discussion board, which made me smile and encouraged me to finish. While I knit Sock #2, I am paying more attention to the construction, to try and better understand how it works.

While I rested my fingers, I looked more carefully through my new book, The Vegetable Butcher, also a benefit of last week’s trip. The author, Cara Mangini, did a short chopping demo at the What’s Cooking stage at the American Library Association conference in Orlando, and her publisher provided a free copy of the book to all of us in attendance. She answered a lot of questions, too, such as how to keep okra from getting so slimy. (Remove the seeds, she said. It wouldn’t totally solve the problem, but would definitely make a difference. Who knew?!).

On Thursday, I received three very large zucchini in the CSA box, so I looked in the zucchini pages to see if she had any unique insights into the easy-to-chop vegetable. None on chopping (that’s pretty intuitive, really), but she does have a great illustrated page on cutting it into ribbons. Very cool. And on the next page, a fantastic recipe for Zucchini with Cumin, Basil, Mint, and Ricotta. Oooooooh! I thought. We have a giant basil plant that needs trimming, and mint is easy enough to get. And I could use Claudia Lucero's One-Hour Cheese cookbook to make the ricotta! With my cookbook-inspired inspiration in hand, my holiday weekend at home was now a success.

CSA summer, week two

Ah, summer. When the days grow long, the sprinklers start sprinkling, and the local breeze becomes welcoming (as opposed to that frosty gale we’ve been used to for so long) it’s time for 20 bountiful weeks of Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA.

The particular farm we use, Brookford Farm in Canterbury, NH, selects vegetables and packs them for you. All we have to do is make a weekly visit to our local farmer’s market to pick up our box. There are other CSAs where the client can choose the vegetables, but I kind of like getting a weekly surprise in a box, and the farm does an excellent job providing as much variety as possible.

Buying fresh local vegetables directly from the farm is overwhelmingly a positive experience, but it’s also a bit of work. Every new box comes with veggies that need to be sorted, washed, and packed for the fridge. (This farm does wash the veggies before they arrive, but the veggies nearly always still need one last bath to remove that last bit of grit). Last week, we received one enormous bag of spinach; two different varieties of lettuce (one head each); one bunch each of garlic scapes, dill, and green onions, a pint of strawberries, and a bag of sugar snap peas. The strawberries I trimmed and washed immediately before packing them in a Tupperware for the fridge. Because I got home late, the rest of the greens were stuffed in plastic grocery bags without washing — I would deal with that later.

I’m not good at cooking food on the fly — virtually everything I cook is from a recipe. I just can’t function any other way. My favorite moment during CSA time is when I find a recipe that brings together two or more of the items received. This week, that moment happened when I stumbled upon the Summer Vegetable Pasta with Crispy Goat Cheese Medallions recipe from Eatingwell. Spinach? Why yes! We still have half a bag, even after eating giant spinach & strawberry salads earlier in the week. Dill for rolling the goat cheese in? Why yes! There’s just enough in this little bunch. My joy was expanded when I figured out I could use the garlic scapes instead of the onion and garlic called for in the recipe.

The rest of the food did mostly get eaten, although I did give one head of lettuce to a colleague at work, and half of the other is still in the fridge. Week three’s box will arrive tonight, but I’ll be out of town for a conference the entire week. It’ll be up to my husband to figure out what to do with our bounty.

Yogurt without the fine print

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a class of my dreams: Cheesemaking 102, with Sarah Carroll, daughter of the famous "Cheese Queen" in Northampton, Mass. I originally read about the workshop in Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal Vegetable Miracle, and, as an avid cheese lover, was excited to experience the class for myself.

In the intervening years I acquired the book One-Hour Cheese by Claudia Lucero, which showed me how to make my very first fresh cheese. (I highly recommend it for anyone new to cheesemaking). The workshop definitely expanded upon what I had already taught myself, but the biggest surprise was the yogurt.

Historically, I am not a lover of yogurt. Many years ago, I had a boyfriend who would eat yogurt like it was going out of style; he would buy a large tub every week. Under his influence, I decided to give yogurt another try, and bought a few containers of Yoplait. I found I could stomach the Whips! or the Thick and Creamy varieties -- nothing more yogurty than that. But if there's such a thing as a gateway yogurt, those sweet varieties of Yoplait must be it. I grew accustomed to the taste and eventually actually began to find the Whips! to be much too sweet. Lately, simple Yoplait Light has been my go-to, and I actually like it now; I'm not just forcing myself to eat it.

But the yogurt at Sarah's workshop! Oh my gosh! Delicious! And much like applesauce, salad dressing, or mashed potatoes, one wonders why we spend money on the prepared stuff. It's not difficult to make. You heat the milk to 185 degrees, hold it there (stirring occasionally) for 20 minutes, add culture, and... let it sit. That's where the yogurt-making appliances come in -- the milk has to stay warm for many hours while it sits around becoming yogurt. Sarah's workshop provided three different flavors to taste (each flavor resulted from using a different culture), and each one was pretty delicious. Much like Mikey in the beloved Life cereal commercial, I liked it.

And so, instead of coming home with cheesemaking supplies, I came home with a yogurt maker, complete with seven 6-oz glass jars with lids. The next morning, with a bottle of typical pasteurized milk, I made yogurt. When the timer on the yogurt maker beeped seven hours later, my husband and I peered cautiously into the jars. I tilted one. The white stuff didn't move. We sniffed. "It smells like yogurt!" we exclaimed happily. Quickly we screwed on the lids and put them in the fridge. Yogurt for a week! Yay!

A week later, I repeated the process -- this time being more careful to stir the milk occasionally on the stove (I admit I was lazy about that the first time). Either because of the stirring or because I was better this time at keeping the temperature constant, the yogurt in the second batch came out thicker and creamier. Total success.

Now, of course I want to crow to my friends about how I am making this awesome yogurt, and "it's so great, because I know exactly what I put in it!" which is what I usually say when I make something from scratch. But this time, that phrase gave me pause. What exactly did I put in it? A package of culture I bought from the Cheese Queen. Y5, they call it. But what in the heck is Y5? What, indeed, is a "culture"?

According to the National Yogurt Association's home page, the culture is actually a living organism -- well, two: Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus. The culture causes the milk to ferment, creating the thing we know as yogurt. I have of course heard all about "live and active cultures" in yogurt, and I know they are thought to have health benefits. But giving Latin names to the word "culture" still didn't really do it for me. What is this organism we named Lactobacillus bulgaricus? What about that organism's buddy, Streptococcus thermophilus? Sounds like a disease to me.

Fortunately, I'm a librarian and know how to figure these things out. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains: "Genus Lactobacillus, any of a group of rod-shaped, gram-positive, non-spore-forming bacteria." Further, "various species of Lactobacillus are used commercially during the production of sour milks, cheeses, and yogurt, and they have an important role in the manufacture of fermented vegetables (pickles and sauerkraut), beverages (wine and juices), sourdough breads, and some sausages." They didn't have as much to say about Streptococcus thermophilus, other than to note that it is partially responsible for the ripening of Swiss cheese. But I get the picture, and I imagine that slightly different bacterial strains are likely responsible for the differences in the yogurt flavors. We'll explore that topic more in a later post.

So how about that. I also recently developed an appreciation for fermented vegetables... maybe this is just a result of my taste buds changing as they age. Whatever the reason, I am super excited about my new yogurt-making adventures. I think I might buy the double-decker to our yogurt maker. Why just make seven jars when you can make 14?

"Lactobacillus." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica Academic. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 16 Jun. 2016. <http://academic.eb.com.libproxy.plymouth.edu/EBchecked/topic/327373/Lactobacillus>.

Mmmm Scallops

Anyone who's watched Top Chef knows that sea scallops are a risky business. More than one contestant has landed on the bottom and even had to pack up their knives and go home due to their inept cooking of the delicate white bivalve mollusks.

And the cost! I've never seen sea scallops for less than $12 a pound in my New England supermarket - and that price appeared so briefly that I failed to take advantage of it. Often I will order scallops in a restaurant, simply because I believe it is the one dish I could order where the cost is actually less expensive in the restaurant than it might be if I made the same dish at home.

But, sea scallops can be so delicious. And they are particularly delicious when prepared as part of the recipe for Seared Scallops Over Bacon Spinach Salad with Cider Vinaigrette, from the March 2008 issue of Cooking Light. This recipe with the absurdly long name is freakin' delicious. And so, when I found myself in the grocery store one evening without a plan and without a list, I decided I would make it for dinner.

Normally, other than cutting everything in half to accommodate a two-person household, I follow recipes to the letter. (Except for red onions. No dragon breath for me). Anyway, I did look at this one on my phone before I went into the Data Dead Zone (aka grocery store), but when I got home I discovered that not only had I intentionally compromised by choosing to use the romaine heart salad I already had (instead of spinach), and a Fuji apple instead of Granny Smith (because it was on sale), I had also unintentionally neglected to buy apple cider, AND, to top it off, the bacon in the fridge was fuzzy. Gross.

Fortunately, I managed to successfully work around this.

• Since I didn't have any acceptable bacon, I found a jar of Hormel Real Bacon Bits. Not quite the same, but it did the trick.
• Since I wasn't cooking real bacon, I couldn't saute the shallots in the bacon fat. Instead I used a tablespoon of olive oil.
• Since I didn't have the apple cider to cook down and mix with the shallots for the salad dressing, I decided to make a modified version of my mother-in-law's simple salad dressing. With the tablespoon of olive oil (now infused with delicious carmelized shallots), I added two teaspoons of honey, and less apple cider vinegar than the recipe called for -- about a teaspoon. This was super fun because my honey was a granular rock, and therefore had to be soaked and stirred in a pan of hot water before I could do a thing with it.

But, it was worth it. The resulting salad dressing was freakin' delicious, and made enough for the two of us.

Compared to all that, cooking the actual scallops was easy. Just dust them with seasoning (cumin, salt, and cayenne red pepper for a bit of a kick), and plop them in a frying pan with olive oil for three minutes on each side. They were halfway done when my husband came home. "Wow, we're eating rich tonight!" he exclaimed when he saw the scallops frying. Indeed we did.