·:[ Sweet Pea Cooks ]:·
• • • • •

This is my house. It’s in these boxes, and the other half-dozen or so around the floor. I don’t cook much these days, as I mostly just put things in boxes and try not to melt. It was in the low 70s all weekend but now we’re in the steamy 90s, so I’m avoiding the oven pretty much entirely. We’ve also begun our Farewell Tour of eateries and friends around town, so that’s keeping us from our kitchen, as well. Yesterday I went hiking with a friend of mine in the sun most of the day; that night I met my cousin for dinner with his friends and forgot I was both dehydrated and hadn’t eaten in a while. A little bit of wine went an awful long way. 

This is a photo of round two of one batch of jam. I love to can things, but jam and I are not friends.

I had some berries about to expire, so I cooked them down with sugar as instructed, and boiled them to a certain degree, and then jarred and put them in a water bath. Nothin’. So then after several days I opened them, poured the guts into a pan, and added pectin, a powder derived from apple juice that’s supposed to make this process easy, following instructions. This was Saturday. Today, still nothin’. I’ve put them in the pantry so I’ll stop peeking at them. This time I even did a gel test with a spoon and it passed and STILL no jelly. Jam. Preserves. Whatever. I’m giving it two weeks before I try one last time, following the pectin packages “didn’t set?” instructions and hoping for the best.

The ironic part of all this is that last time I tried to make strawberry jam, many years ago, it turned into a brick. Ha.

Do any of you have experience with this and can make some suggestions? It’s making me batty. It tastes so good, too, which almost makes it worse. Sigh.

Hi!

I’ve been working on a freelance project pretty much nonstop for June, up until yesterday. Today I am finally free. Though I spent most of my time in the last few weeks on the computer, I tried to avoid doing anything fun there in order to get myself back to work. This made me into a news junky, which, given the news lately, has made me into a cranky old crab.

Anyway. Today was my first day of freedom and it’s not too hot, not too humid–probably because I left the house early enough that these two hadn’t settled in completely. Today I went to city hall and officially dissolved Sweet Pea. It had to happen eventually, and there it is. Nearly all the paperwork for related things like sales tax is completed; it’s pretty much a done deal. This is good, because it’s time to start packing it all in not simply metaphorically, but quite literally. We move in three weeks.

I loathe packing. But that’s something else.

Lately most of my cooking has been limited to things I know I can cook quickly and well, in order to get myself back to work. I’ve also done some recipes from other blogs, but I didn’t want to post them here and seem as though that’s all I do, borrowing from other people.

Among the few things I made that went well and were fairly new was homemade barbecue sauce and pulled chicken. After reading Omnivore’s Dilemma some time ago, I’ve been working on limiting my intake of corn syrup. In addition to that, our bottled sauce was long expired. In any event, I made my own. This is part of a new project of sorts for me–making my own of things I buy and take for granted.

Now unfortunately, the main ingredient here was ketchup–seeing as we had a full bottle I wasn’t about to make my own, and our full bottle is loaded with high fructose corn syrup. You just can’t escape that stuff. So my bbq sauce does contain plenty, but I have good intentions to someday, when our bottle of Heinz is gone, make my own.

I put about half the bbq sauce yield in my slow cooker with some boneless skinless chicken thighs and turned it to high for a couple hours, as they were still frozen; I then turned it down and let it simmer away. They cooked for probably five or six hours. The last hour, I left the lid off so that the condensation inside would begin to evaporate and thicken. I was rewarded for my efforts–the chicken easily just fell apart as we loaded it onto bread and ate it with some cole slaw. While the slow cooker does generate some heat, it really wasn’t too bad and didn’t make my kitchen terribly hot, especially if I left it on low.

The sauce recipe is from Joy of Cooking. I made a half-batch.
1 1/2 c ketchup
1 c cider or red wine vinegar
1/4 c worcestershire sauce
1 c packed brown sugar
2 T dry mustard
4 T chili powder, or to taste (I use less)
1 t ground ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T veg oil

Combine in a medium pan over medium heat and stirring often, cook until it comes to a simmer. Simmer 5 minutes. Keeps 2 weeks.

This turned out well…much better than my next project, strawberry jam…

I apologize for the wonky formatting. I’m not sure why, but my changes won’t save.

I’ve been meaning to write about this year’s container garden, which has been growing happily for a few weeks now. We’ve had a really nice spring, save 4 days of what’s really extreme heat for early June, which I’m surely not complaining about given the condition of much of the country. I started my little garden mainly from plants from the Farmer’s Market, which opened in the city a few weeks ago. I have to take 2 buses to get there, but it’s totally worth it. Most of my plants are being grown nearly organically: the majority of them are from Atlas Farm, an organic farm in western Massachusetts; most of them I potted with organic soil. A few, however, have some really old Miracle Grow soil mixed in from last year’s very early containers. I didn’t have any new soil yet, and figured I’d reuse/recycle. So nearly organic, for the most part, will have to do. This first photo is my favorite container out there: it’s a window box that contains a small flat of mesclun and another of romaine. I just added the romaine and I’m a little afraid it may be overcrowded, but we shall see. We’ve already each eaten two salads from the mesclun alone, and it’s due for another pruning. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have some. Atlas sells these flats for $2.50 each at the Copley Square Farmer’s Market.

This here is another Atlas plant, a regular Italian basil. I love basil and can’t get enough of it in this summer. This was a pretty small plant when I bought it a few weeks ago now; it looks small here, but that’s because I gave it a serious pruning last night and made pesto for some fettucine. We ate that with some swiss chard, also from the Atlas Farm, and some garlic scapes from a farm I can’t think of now. Scapes are tasty–I’ve never had them before, and figured I’d give it a go. They’re kind of like garlicky scallions.

I like basil so much I thought I’d start a few seeds. I hope thinning them out won’t be necessary, or if it is, a huge hassle. But I want lots and lots of pesto to freeze for winter, which I don’t want to think about now, but there it is

And here’s this year’s tomato plant, also care of Atlas Farm. I wanted to get plum tomatoes, but this one, a Celebrity variety, claims it’ll grow well in containers. I hope so. I’d like to still get my hands on some heirloom plants, but I haven’t seen any yet this summer. My husband, on the other hand, with an eye to moving in the next six weeks, thinks I have more than enough plants already.

Like this Thai basil, which smells spicier than it tastes, but is delicious nonetheless in a stirfry:

And this rosemary:

And that’s about it. I have some cherry tomato seedlings started, but they’re only an inch tall so I don’t think they’ll really make it for this season. I have some swiss chard seeds to plant, too, after my first seedlings croaked several months ago. Those I might wait until late summer to put in soil, as the chard at the market right now is so tasty and pretty inexpensive.

If you’ve never gardened before, container gardening–and with herbs–is a great and easy way to start. Any garden center will have little plants available, which is a heck of a lot simpler than starting from seed. Seeds and I, as a rule, aren’t friends. But as long as they’ll pair up with a local farm and I can buy the little plants, it all works out.

The perk, as I see it, of closing down Sweet Pea is that I get some time and inspiration to craft again. I’ve decided to make a quilt, which I’ve never done before. It’s made mainly out of scraps in my bin, but also with the scraps of other crafters who were kind enough to share some posh Amy Butler stuff. Here are the pieces, as I tried to lay them out. Because I didn’t have even numbers of rectangles, it was a little willy-nilly. As you can see, I have a helper.

My rows are all set now; they’re in big pinned piles, and soon I’ll start pinning them end-to-end to sew the strips. I’m using this pattern, free from Amy Butler:

Amy Butler Quilt PDF

Wish me luck!

Local berries. So shiny! So warm! So tasty!

One of the things we’ve always had a problem with is letting perfectly good food accidentally sit too long and ending up tossing it.  I’ve been working really hard to reverse that trend; in the last couple of years, I’ve always planned meals before going to the grocery store, which has helped, though it’s not too unusual to have something planned go unmade and d’oh! a zucchini or something rots.  We’re generally good leftover eaters, unless there are really copious amounts that we can’t stomach after a while.  We’re not good at eating the same thing everyday.  Anyway, lately my big thing has been really working on using up all the odds and ends in the fridge.  It’s going ok.  I know there are some nasty scallions that need tossing right now, but I just ate most of the broccoli that had only another few days of life in it, so that’s good.

The other day I sliced a london broil steak in half horizontally; I dusted it with salt, pepper, and a little garlic powder and tossed the halves on a hot grill for just a few minutes on each side to get it medium-rare.  We ate one half  that night; the other day, when it was really hot, we chopped up some romaine in the fridge, a tomato half, a cucumber, and warmed up the steak a minute in a skillet before slicing it and adding it, with some gorgonzola, to the salad.  This wasn’t a meal I’d planned for the week; everything was in the fridge for different intended meals and were generally leftovers.  It made me quite pleased to work all those “extras” into a solid and very tasty meal.

And you’ll be happy to know I resisted the urge for takeout last night.  Joyously, a sea breeze picked up for a little while and made having Alla Checca a possibility.  You chop some tomatoes, basil and garlic and toss with salt and olive oil in a big ol’ bowl and let sit.  When it’s time to eat, you cook up some pasta and toss.  Quick, easy, and relatively heat-free, save boiling the water.  Perfect for the rare occasion the heat wave cracks a smidge.

If there was ever a day that deserves takeout Thai for dinner, this one’s going in that direction.

It’s in the 90s and really humid again.  We’re not central AC people.  Hell, our house doesn’t even have insulation, never mind fancy ductwork.  It’s nearly 100 years old.  So it’s  a little toasty and not conducive to cooking.

Yesterday I lost my wallet.  I went to a friend’s dance recital at a local middle school and when we got back to his place and I went to get into my car to go home, I realized it was missing.  We drove back to the school and it was locked up tight.  I called several times there today and finally the poor (abused) administrative assistant could report that the custodian had looked and not found my wallet.  My gut says “he didn’t look hard enough!” but I’m sure he did.  There’s the chance that some nice parent or dancer or whatever picked it up and will mail it to me, but I’m not betting on that.  What would I bet with, anyway?  The real bummer is that I had CASH in there, which I very rarely carry.  $26, pooft.  Sigh.   It’s not a lot, but it was mine.  So now I am calling to not just put my cards on hold, but to cancel them and get new ones.  Then I have to get new insurance cards and god knows what else that was in there.

The bugger of all this is that I’m moving really soon and so things like my license, which I’ve ordered a duplicate of, will need to be replaced, anyway.  Life’s a hoot sometimes.  Hilarious.  It’s not that serious or anything, just annoying.  It could certainly be a heck of a lot worse, but I guess I’ll have to bring my passport to bar trivia tomorrow night

Fiddleheads are a vegetable that are only in season briefly every spring. They’ve been at our grocery store for the last couple of weeks and this week they went on sale, so I thought I’d give them a go. Mr. Pea has had them in something before, but last night was the first time I’ve ever cooked or eaten them.

Fiddleheads are in fact a tightly wound young fern. When you get them there are little brown nubbins that encase the ferny bits; these need to be washed/rubbed off, which is a little bit of a process. I had a little under a half-pound of fiddleheads. Once they were clean, I blanched them for just a couple minutes in boiling water before plunging them into an icy bath to stop the cooking process.

The rest of the risotto is pretty straightforward.

Get about 5 c chicken broth to a simmer.

Chop one onion into small bits, and a clove of garlic.
Add a tablespoon of olive oil to a deep saute pan over medium heat, and cook the onions. When they’re translucent, add the garlic, and cook a minute. Add 1 1/2 c Arborio rice (this is a particular rice for risotto–carnoli also works well) and stir, cooking a minute or so until the bits of rice are each translucent but with a white dot in the center. Add 1/3 c of white wine and cook off. Begin to ladle in broth just to cover the rice, stirring constantly, keeping at a simmer. When the rice absorbs the broth, add more. This should take 15-20 minutes.

When you get down to your last five minutes of cooking, drain your fiddleheads and toss in, stirring to cook. Continue with broth until the rice is still firm but creamy and somewhat tender.

Turn heat off. Add 1 T butter, a good couple grinds of black pepper, and 1/2 c or so grated parmesan. Serve with additional cheese. It’s a very lovely taste of spring.

It seems that whenever I say to myself that I will cook every meal, for a whole five-day work week, even, I fail.  The more determined I am, the more spectacular the failure.  I think this partly stems from the fact that I love not cooking almost as much as I love to cook.  It’s also related to intersections of what we have out (thai, last saturday) and what’s left in the house (stuff to make Thai food).  I always end up feeling kind of bad–the money spent!  the environment wasted!–and then pledge to do better.

This week is not off to a good start.

Monday, I did cook.  I made thai-style pineapple fried rice.  Mr. Pea had leftovers for Tuesday lunch.  I, on the other hand, had been craving barbecue, so a friend and I went out for lunch.  I was stuffed for the rest of the day, which meant that Mr. Pea had to order take-out last night.  And because we had no food in the house and no leftovers to eat, he’s ordering take-out for lunch today.  It’s a terrible spiral!  And I feel at the center.  We ate out all weekend long, too.  It’s kind of what we do–some people go to bars, see a lot of movies, we eat out a lot.  So to that end I don’t feel so bad, sort of.  It’s rarely anything extravagant, mind you, but then I feel so useless after a weekend like that.  I did make some bread.  That’s something, anyway.

So I start again.  This week, I will cook Wednesday through Friday.  That’s a pretty small stretch of days before we meet up with friends on Saturday night for dinner.  I’ll cook Sunday, too, and then I think we’ll be back in need of a trip to the grocery store.

Does anyone else have this problem?  Or I am complaining about nothing?  I remember reading someplace not too long ago that many (most?) people eat lunch out every day.  At least we’re not that way.