Catching up with Cooking

Like much of the world, I am staying in lockdown.  While I don't have any of the medical markers requiring self-quarantine, I am staying home to avoid dragging the virus around.  I go out of my neighborhood by car about once a week; I get mail at a post office, not at home, so I have to collect it.  This past week I went out on Thursday because I had a discount coupon for Walgreens that expired that day, and it turns out they didn't have anything I wanted, so I'll be back to a Saturday trip next week.

When the weather is good I try to go for a walk outside the neighborhood.  On Friday I put an out-of-office message reading "Following the recommendations of our leadership for self-care, etc., I have gone for a walk.  It's lovely out today and the weather this weekend is supposed to be drek.  I'll respond to email and review things when I return, which will be before sunset."  And indeed the weather this weekend is not conducive to walking:  From sunny and mid-60's(F) on Friday, it's been between freezing and low 40's(F) with waves of sleety rain alternating with heavy rain all weekend.  I was very glad I'd gone walking when I did.  I walked down to the reservoir and back, about three miles, and I saw a lot of cars parked on the north side of the road.  It seems they had decided enough people were there and they closed the reservoir and were turning away even people on foot.

The strangest thing to me about being at home All The Time is not having to constantly pack a suitcase or overnight bag for each week's travel.  It was odd enough before to have a week when I didn't travel, although I enjoyed being home to do local activities.  Now I've put away the suitcases into the closet, and I'm participating in some local activities that have moved online; SWAN DAY shifted to ten nights of online concerts from some of the performers.  It's fun to do even further away things that I might not get to see or hear, such as the Metropolitan Opera's daily stream, or Paris Opera, or touring museums, and going back in time with Playbill's weekly showing of a musical.  I'm hugely excited about some of the shows the National Theatre (of Britain) is going to show.

All of this does mean that my reading has slacked off considerably.  Oh, well.

Since I posted last, there have been several holidays for which I've done cooking.  First up was St. Patrick's Day, and since I don't do corned beef and cabbage, and I had to work with what I have in the house, and work was going NUTS because we had to figure out how to respond to the COVID-19 effects on our customers, I didn't have much time to do anything elaborate.  Of course, I did make soda bread:

Whole wheat flour, oatmeal, baking soda.

Stir in buttermilk, form.  One half had caraway seeds added,
then cut into quarters or "farls", the other dusted with oatmeal.

Finished!  Hot and buttered and YUMMY.

When I finally had time to prepare supper, I was too hungry to bother with pictures.  It was supposed to be a venison casserole, but I made it as a stew because I have ground beef.  So instead of flouring and browning chunks of meat, I browned the ground beef in some bacon fat, added onions (should be browned in the fat, but I'd missed getting fresh ones in the panic stockup people did so had to use dehydrated) and the rest of the ale from the Apicius cooking a few nights before, plus the seasonings: juniper berries, allspice berries, orange rind, ground pepper, cider vinegar, and a bit of stock.  The upside of ground meat is that it cooked fairly quickly this way.  I have a photo taken the next night, when I ate leftovers:

Stew on soda bread with roasted brussels sprouts,
because they look like miniature cabbages.

The last bit of pear and
blackberry pie for dessert.

I had a bit more time on St. Joseph's Day to make "Carpenter's Pasta".  It should be spaghetti or something similar, but I'm not fond of long noodles so used rotini, which I have on hand.

Step 1:  Brown breadcrumbs.
They are supposed to represent
a carpenter's sawdust.

Step 2:  Soften onions and
garlic until they are golden.

Step 3: Add chopped tomatoes,
basil, and oregano.

Pasta cooked, tomato sauce over, breadcrumbs on top.
Steamed asparagus and fresh figs, the latter of
which is also associated with St. Joseph.

It was easy and rather tasty.  I used soda bread crumbs, of course.  When the bread got a bit dry, as it does due to the lack of fat, I toasted slices and put butter or cheese on top.  Still rather yummy.

I've done some cooking since, but nothing very photogenic.  I tried making pumpkin waffles, to use up the pumpkin from the Ides, but my waffle iron is old and not cooperative.  So the batter became pancakes and I added the rest of my fresh blackberries:

As you can see, I was eating "at work".

Last night I made a Tuscan Stew using a packet of herbs I'd gotten some time ago.  The idea is that you follow the recipe using the premeasured amounts in the packet, and then keep the recipe (it's on a punch-out card) so you can remake it later.  I had everything on hand except chicken, so I used some extra-firm tofu that has been waiting in the refrigerator.  I also subbed frozen greens (put in the freezer last summer) for fresh spinach, and swapped half the beans with some potatoes that needed to be cooked and eaten.  Overall, the result is very good.  It does make a LOT of stew, so I have meals until well into the workweek.

On the first Monday of spring, we had a snowstorm:

       

It didn't daunt the crocus:

Pi Day and the Ides

The title sounds something like a one-hit-wonder band, doesn't it?

Yesterday, I made a pie, as I do on Pi Day:

This year's is pear and blackberry, combining recipes from an old favourite cookbook and baked in a 6"x3" springform because I don't have small-sized pie plates and didn't want a full-sized pie.  Not for just me.  I used the recipe for a single crust, mixing:

• One cup whole-wheat flour
• One half-cup all-purpose flour
• Half a stick of cold butter
• Enough cold water to make a paste

Then I rolled out about a third and cut a lid, using the pan as a measure.  The remainder (and trimmings) rolled out to fill the pan.  I chopped up about three cups of peeled pears to about the same size as the blackberries, and mixed them with not quite all of a six-ounce box of blackberries from the shop; a few went into the cook to determine sweetness of the filling.  I added about a tablespoon of lemon juice, a tablespoon and a half of sugar (quite a bit less than the recipes said, because I do not like sweet pies), and about two tablespoons of all-purpose flour.  Filling in, lid on, sealed, and the traditional π cut for juices to escape, although as you can see, they ran out around the seal as well.

Today, Ides of March, and I decided to pull out Apicius.  Often I do roasted carrots, but I've had a carrot-based curry this weekend, so I decided to do something else.  First to figure out what I can do with what's in the larder; a recipe for Pumpkin and Chicken intrigued me (ditto a more Thanksgivingesque option), but couldn't find poultry in the freezer.  I did find a package of ground bison, and decided to split it between Roman food for the Ides and something for later in the week.

Some more browsing turned up recipes I may try in the future (especially a nut tart) but being limited to what is onsite, I decided to substitute a patty of bison for roasted meat, make a sauce for it, and have pumpkin on the side since I've got pumpkin.  Changes I had to make was using ale instead of wine (because I have the former, and need a partial bottle later in the week) and skipping some of the greens I don't have, such as lovage, which to be honest I never have.  The result is:

• Broiled bison patty with a sauce of ale (4-5 oz), honey (about 2T), allspice (5 berries), and pepper (about 9-10 peppercorns), based upon a recipe for Roast Neck.  Many of the recipes include cumin but since I have it in the vegetable, I looked for a different combination here.
• Pumpkin (one cup) mashed with oil (1T), oregano (1/2 tsp.), cumin(1/2 tsp.), caraway (generous 1/2 tsp.), and onion (generous 1T minced), a combination of recipes 74, 78 and 79.
• Salad, because I have a little, and the Roman dressing is oil and vinegar, much as today.  I used olive oil and red wine vinegar.
• Asparagus, because I have some, and Apicius mentions it just cleaned and boiled.

Overall, it's nice, although as noted the two green things didn't have much done to them.  I simmered the sauce to about 3T and strained it over the meat.  In the future, I would use half the cumin and caraway, as they overpowered the rest of the flavours in the pumpkin, but it wasn't unpleasant.  The photo shows about half the pumpkin; the rest went into storage for lunch tomorrow.

It's definitely a week for creative cooking, since I'm staying home except for once or twice a week, important things like the dentist (an old crown needed replacing, with some infection underneath) and post office.  Upcoming are St. Patrick's Day, and y'all know I don't do corned beef and cabbage, and St. Joseph's Day.  Catching up a bit, I made boxty for the first-Sunday brunch this month:

..... remembering too late that it was St. David's Day and I should have done bara brith or some other Welsh thing instead.  These, being similar to American biscuits, were well-received.  Most boxty are a sort of pancake,  but I have a scone-like recipe and used it.

A few days later was the North Texas Irish Festival, and despite COVID-19 becoming serious, I went.  Good thing, as Performer Products (the area where I work) was understaffed - not enough volunteers, one manager flaked out, and another ended up in hospital with an allergic reaction.  The rest of us pulled together and it all worked, and I got a few minutes to go out and see dogs in costumes, and stormtroopers in kilts, and hear music at stages other than the one next to our booth.

  
I will say, there's a benefit to being a manager, when you go to the staff-and-performers-only hospitality area:

Leap Day!

What does one do on Leap Day?  I went to yoga, did errands, and worked on projects at home.  Pretty much the same as any Saturday.  Keep Hartford Warm held a distribution event; I dropped off a toddler jacket that I was given to pass along, but did not stay.  It's been a busy month, and I needed to catch up on laundry and decompress.

Work took me to Chicago, then I went to North Carolina to see Kinky Boots with family (DNiece #1 loves it as much as I; over Christmas I introduced my nieces to the original film) and stayed for the discussion afterwards.  It was not about the show, as talkbacks usually are, but about LGBTQ+ persons and their lives in North Carolina.  My mother ended up talking to one of the panelists about adoption and all kinds of things, until we all were kicked out so they could set for the next show.  If you haven't seen the show - you must do, if only for the showstopping Act I ending.

I stayed a couple days for a recital by Lawrence Brownlee, which was wonderful.

From there I went to Stitches West to help friends at their booth.  As I said last month, my mini-resolution was to make a sample bag from their hemp yarn.  That didn't work out because I was rushing and the yarn was snarling and it was a bad combination.  So on the day home between trips I grabbed a couple hanks of Makimo that I had lying around for other purposes, and before Stitches West ended they had a sample of the bag in their own yarn:

Closeup of the bag bottom
and the lace pattern.

The small pink balls are all the yarn I had left after finishing the bag.  There is more pink on the handles than the pattern instructs; I was using the Makimo doubled (the original used a worsted weight cotton, and Makimo is a DK weight), which gave a little less yardage than the original yarn.  I started the pink when the purple ran out.  So you can make the bag with two hanks of Makimo.

I bought almost nothing (some stitch markers as a gift, and a couple patterns) because I don't need yarn and didn't find anything that made me excited to dip into my purchasing money for DFW Fiber Fest.  The big names that I really like will be there, and I enjoy buying from small indie dyers who mostly cannot afford to be at Stitches events.


I returned just in time for Fat Tuesday.  A local makerspace held a Fat Tuesday party but it was also Science on Screen night at Real Art Ways, so I made a cameo, dropping off some from-the-pantry jambalaya on the way to the talk and film.  It was fairly interesting, the talk more than the film.  I look forward to the next two but may be out of town for one.

Wednesday I went to a library cookbook club that I'd just found out about, where they cook from a specific cookbook each month, sample and talk about the recipes.  This month's choice was Food52's Genius Desserts, and since I didn't have time to swing by the library to select a recipe I did some online research and chose World Peace Cookies.  We agreed that having nothing but desserts was a LOT to take, even if you just do a bite of each one - and most were too good to stop at a single bite.  Luckily for me, about tw0-thirds contained chocolate, so I didn't have as much to taste as the others.  But what I did taste was fantastic:  Lemon cookies (with a hidden ingredient of avocado); Guinness stout cake that was like the tenderest gingerbread ever; espresso gelato; blueberry cake with pecans; the famous 62nd Street Lemon Cake; almond cake.  Most of these I would make, yes.

Not for tomorrow's monthly brunch, however.  If I had Guinness around I might make the cake, but I decided to make potato cakes instead.  These are something between boxty, which is a griddle-cooked bread, and scones.  I doubled the recipe and am leaving out the seasoning, so they will be plain and make nice sandwiches - if any are left!

Resolutions for March

As noted above, I completed the knitting mini-resolution I set for February.  For March, I am going to make a baby blanket for friends.  I bought the yarn some time ago, and thought I knew what pattern I'd do, then a new one came out and I decided to do it instead.  No photos until it's delivered in April.

Then I have to finish the items I am making for Mittens for Akkol's grads program.  I signed up for four:  a purple scarf, a blue and orange hat, and a red and yellow (or gold) sweater and scarf.  I chose these because they will use up yarn in my stash.  I have a purple scarf, but decided I may offer it for sale at an upcoming sheep-to-shawl-and-beyond event, plus I had some other yarn reclaimed from the sweater that I pulled apart, making the multicolored yarn used in part of it into a scarf.  I'm using broken rib stitch and it's going fairly fast.

Books:  Still finishing The Ballad of Frankie Silver.  I don't have much sit-and-read time, but I am enjoying the historical chapters, which are written in the first-person voice of a young frontier lawyer and court clerk.  So I'm behind on the February book but decided to finish The Agony and the Ecstasy, which I started some time ago and put aside for an unremembered reason when I was halfway through.  Hopefully I'll get caught up in March.  I do have the "book with a nature word in the title" set aside, and it's fairly short - more about it in the next post, once I've started reading.

In Other News..........

Covid-19 is big in the news.  With stories like Communion of Dreams and others, could it become a truly devastating pandemic like the 1918 Flu Epidemic?  I guess we shall see.  My parents are pressuring me to skip the North Texas Irish Festival this year.  I am a manager and we are shorthanded and I hate to not go.

We had more snow today - the weather went from clear and sunny, to a snow squall, and back to sunny within an hour:

Many years ago in Dallas, I worked for a company called Affiliated Computer Systems, or ACS.  After I left, they were acquired by Xerox.  A couple weeks ago, the building where I worked was slated to be demolished.  The usual way to do it in a city these days is by a controlled implosion.  However, that didn't work.  It's been fun to watch the reporting (a wrecking ball is now in use, slowly), and I have to say that this is my favorite photo so far, titled "They finally brought in an expert":

Baking Beans and Watching Playoffs

Because what else does one do on a snowy Sunday in January?

We had a bit of a snowstorm last night.  Only four inches landed where I live, but since predictions were up to six inches or more, people hunkered in.  One of the Connecticut police departments had posted this last year, and it circulated again this weekend:

I did not plan as well as some, and so didn't have soup or anything simmering or ready to simmer while the snow was falling.  I decided to make old-fashioned baked beans, so started the beans soaking last night.  I also looked up recipes, and found that most modern baked bean recipes either used canned beans, or dress up pork-and-beans, or some combination.  I was having trouble finding an old-fashioned recipe using soaked beans.  So I went to one of my reproduction cookery books, which has a fairly basic one:

 

I didn't want to make that much, so I used a cup of mixed dried beans, soaked overnight.  Then I drained, rinsed, added fresh water, boiled, and simmered until a bean was soft when tested.  I drained them again and scattered them into my Dutch oven.  Give the quantity of beans, and the size of my onions, I used a half an onion, which I cut into four wedges so they could bury in the beans, which were a bit thinly spread in my Dutch oven:

At that point, I added about a quarter-cup of molasses, and rinsed the jar a couple of times with water to clean it and make sure I had all the molasses.  I doubled the proportion of mustard, adding the full two teaspoons, as I thought it would be better a bit spicy.

      

I also put in two cloves of garlic (one whole, one split) and a bay leaf for added taste.  I left out the pork, having none, nor any other meaty thing that would substitute.  Then I covered the pot, put it into the oven, and left it to bake.  I gave it a look and stir at ninety minutes, then another ninety minutes took another a look and added a cup of water, stirred, and back into the oven:

Then I had a nap, so the next check was after two hours, when I added more water, and at the end of about six-and-a-half hours I decided it was done enough and put the oven to warming until I was ready to eat.  At this point, it looked nearly black and the beans were quite lacquered:

I put the beans in a white bowl to make them easier to photograph.

VERDICT:   Meh.  Rather sweet, of course, and not much tang from mustard, onion, or garlic.  Definitely something you need to eat with other things, to balance the meal, or additional spicing is needed.  No wonder so many of the recipes I found were for dressing-up or added things to the pot.  Some of the beans were also still quite firm, so maybe more water and simmering instead of putting it on low?  Lighter molasses, not blackstrap?   (I'd wanted to finish off the jar, which a friend left when moving out of state.)  Maybe some smoked paprika; one vegan version used liquid smoke, substituting for the pork, and that might have balanced the flavours better, but I don't have any.

I thought about adding hot sauce or some other spices while the beans were cooking, but I wanted it to be reasonably close to the original recipe, so I didn't.  However, when I portioned out the beans for storage, I put a portion into a small dish and added some ground allspice, as I thought cloves might be nice but I have only whole ones, and allspice is similar.

The remainder, about two portions, I put into a larger dish and added most of a can of Ro*Tel fire-roasted tomatoes with green chiles.  I think that will be a nice counter to the sweetness and heaviness.

Will I do this again?  Yes, but with many adjustments to the seasoning.  I've seen recipes use half maple syrup and half molasses, or all maple syrup, and will try that the next time.  I will add more onion and/or garlic, and maybe more mustard (but not if I use all maple syrup), and some ground pepper.  I might do it in my crockpot instead of the oven, as that limited what else I could do in terms of cooking today.  I've been doing roasted brussels sprouts a lot, and also a modified version of British jacket potatoes (partly cook in microwave, finish in very hot oven), and those are yummy.

Resolution Check-in

While I am here, an update on my resolution for January:  Finish Scarves.  I have finished four of the ones I listed:

• Browns - Bernat Super Value Stripes in Beechwood, knit, and Caron Jumbo in Chocolate Variegated crocheted on the sides.
• Patons Lace in lavender and Porcelain.
• Red Heart Fleece Hugs in Jungle.
• Stitch Studio Sweet Dreams in Creamsicle.

I have also made progress on the crocheted one from leftover Ferris Wheel from my grandmother's Christmas vest.  The other two from my original list are pending, as they are not in my current possession:

• Premiere Serenity Chunky Big Ombre in Walnut - in Plano, waiting for my next theater trip, which happens at the end of this month.
• Caron Chunky Cakes in Trifle (red/white/blue) - at my parents', and I will get it next weekend when I am there for the opera.

Unfortunately, the list has grown longer by two, as I found them whilst doing other things:

• Crocheted in Patons Lace in Woodrose (and I have to figure out the pattern).
• Knit in a slip-stitch pattern of Big Twist Premium in Peacock Stripes.

Right now I am working on my niece's mittens and scarf.  I've restarted the mittens and adjusted the pattern for gauge, as I need to use the washable yarn I have and they were coming out huge even though it's a worsted yarn, just not the one the designer used.

Playoffs resulted in the KC Chiefs against the SF 49ers for Superbowl LIV in Miami.  As a lifelong (and fourth-generation) Chicago Bears fan, I am glad the Packers didn't make it.

Martha Washington Cooking in March

No fooling, I did cook from a historical cookbook in March - I just didn't get around to writing the post.  So here it is!  I thought of pulling out Apicius for the Ides of March, then I found the Martha Washington cookbook I'd originally intended to use on President's Day.  So I thought I'd see what she has to offer.  Since I've given up wheaten goods for Lent, I had to ignore all the recipes for baked items, of course, and figure out how to do a balanced meal from the ones included in the cookbook.

As with Thomas Jefferson's cookbook, there were few recipes for vegetables.  Most were how to grow the vegetable, or how to preserve it.

   

Looking at the list, I decided to make "sparragus" (asparagus) which is plentiful in March, and use the Seasonal Pickle from my CSA, which is a lacto-fermented collection of whatever odds and ends they have when they are making that particular batch of pickle.  This one includes carrots, various greens, and some onion.

For the meat I am using fish, and although the recipe is for trout, that's surprisingly expensive, so I went with a filet of tuna from the freezer. Needing a starch, and not being able to bake bread or biscuits, I found a steamed pudding that uses oats instead of wheat flour:

I used steel-cut oats, and instead of letting it simmer all night, pulled out my small crockpot, which I have used to cook steel-cut oatmeal in the past.

I used "high" to heat a pint of milk, then following the 4:1 ratio on the carton of oats, I added a half-cup of steel-cut oats.  After leaving it to cook on low overnight, it was cooked but still milky.

I chopped up a bunch of spinach and about half a bunch of flat-leaved parsley, and stirred them into the oats in the crockpot along with an egg.  I debated whether to use a second egg; it's hard to guess sizes of eggs then versus now, and I generally assume the eggs are smaller, so making a half-recipe meant I could use one large egg instead.

Once this was mixed, I took some muslin and wetted it, then rubbed on cornmeal.  I placed it in a bowl to make filling it with the pudding mixture easier.

 

I tied off the pudding and set it into a pot of simmering water, tying the string to a wooden spoon placed over the top to make it easier to fish out.  Then I went away for an hour or so, checking periodically and adding water once or twice.

The asparagus was just steamed a bit, that was easy.  For the fish, I followed the recipe on "How to Boyle a Trout", although using a single tuna steak instead of a while fish "cut in pieces" - fillets? steaks?  My guess would be the former, but I was working from my freezer.

This is white wine (from a local winery, plus a splash of champagne left from making New Year's celebratory cupcakes), a lump of butter, a bit of minced ginger, and a sprig of rosemary from my kitchen pots.  I thought it might be a bit large, but I like rosemary, so took a chance.

Since the tuna steak was a bit thick, I cooked it for a few minutes, then turned it and cooked the other side until the piece was done to my liking.


At this point, I took out the pudding, unwrapped it, and arranged the plate:

Seasonal pickle is top left, and simply steamed asparagus at top right.  I chose thin stalks and had to cut them in half due to the size of the pan.  The pudding is to the left of the fish, and I thought another egg might have been a good idea because it was somewhat falling apart.  Of course, I'd had to guess at proportions of the "hearbes" to oats, and was trying to not put in too many so the oats would also keep it together.

For the fish, I think next time I will add a bit more ginger and a bit less rosemary.  I love it, but that was definitely too much and starting to overwhelm the dish.  The pickle added a welcome tang to the overall dish.  Definitely a meal I'll try again, with adjustments.

Since there was quite a lot of pudding, I put it into the refrigerator.  Cold, it was much more cohesive.  Warmed, it made a nice breakfast with a bit more pickle on the side.

I've already decided on the April cookbook, and will work on getting that report posted more promptly after cooking.  In the meantime, it's an icy day outside, and I might try the fish again as a nice warming meal.  No fooling!