elainegrey

So i had overnight buckwheat last night which was pretty good. But then i had some thoughts about safety. I'm guessing from the stats here https://wholegrainscouncil.org/blog/2021/07/can-you-eat-raw-grains i've roughly 1/100 chance of getting sick. Piffle. I guess i can quasi sprout the buckwheat -- not as much as i did for malt -- and the roast it for my own kasha, and then buy kasha in the future. And here's an article about the nutritional benefits of cooking grains https://jenniferskitchen.com/2021/11/whole-grains-should-you-avoid-grains.html.

The cake is WONDERFUL! I need to fix my notes about the agar agar -- I used 1% the weight of coconut cream and the eggs and boiled it earlier in my instructions, i think, but my scale seems to be .. wonky at the single gram level. And i added 2/3 c confectioner's sugar to the coconut cream. It set up beautifully. Also, i love parchment paper. I am not sure it would have un-molded so well? I need to do an Bavarian cream mold test, i guess.




Monday i learned how to make a shakshuka-like meal. In making the cake, i screwed up separating two eggs, and i had the more liquid part of the can of coconut cream. Googling those ingredients eventually led me to a coconut curry shakshuka recipe that i proceeded to basically ignore. I had leftover oven roasted onions and a dab of left over bell peppers and some leftover stew (made with leftover rice. Broiling the sauce with the egg was new to me and ... i liked it! Will do again!

When i got the spices out, i found i have sumac in the house. I forgot to add it to the eggs baked in sauce. [1]

I had ordered "[brand] - Himalayan Black Rock Salt - ... - Kala Namak - Contains 84+ Minerals - Perfect for Cooking, Vegan Tofu, Vegan Omlettes" in late December from Amazon and then received two notices from Amazon that the order was delayed. When given the choice to cancel, i did.

I'm looking now at fair trade vendors and keep going down spice rabbit holes. I have been looking at Turkish and Syrian peppers, milder than the chipolte and different than the ancho pepper. And then there's mesquite powder which looks fascinating.

And sweet grass is on sale, three plants, at Prairie Moon. I wonder how well sweet grass and lemon grass would grow together?

I have a small clump of Lemon grass i have persisted by bringing it in overnight.

We don't eat out that much (if i disregard pizza and Chipolte). Actually, i guess i've eaten at the Community College training kitchen (yum!), the nearby Greek fast food place, the amazing Indian food from a gas station with my sister. That's been a pleasant change of pace.

Fortunately, i have a small pause button so i can be confident about the sense of ordering because, i am waiting on a replacement debit card. I experienced the weirdest debit card hack last week. Someone used my debit card to place an online order a $600+ flat screen tv from Lowes to be delivered to the house (??!!) while i was getting an X-ray last Wednesday. (Yay, no pneumonia!) They used an email i never use for buying things. I don't understand "the angle" unless they thought they could get the delivery destination changed? Because it was one of my email addresses, i got the order and could cancel it. Our Lowes account had cards that were expired in it, but not the card they used. Utter mystery. However, i am now impatient for the new card.

[1] I don't like runny eggs, so i'm going to call it baked, and taking shakshuka and making it a curry and then making it random fridge ingredients -- well, let's just be generic and not create a cultural expectation. So, eggs cooked in sauce and note to self that 1/2 teaspoon (guestimated from contents in a tea spoon) of ancho is about enough for something filling the whole small cast iron pan. I've just stopped sniffling,

Happies!

Figs from Dad's tree, figs from my tree, pistachio kernels from the bag where some had been dosed with fig juices during the trip, and yogurt for breakfast.

Savoring.

I might have a word for this year. I am trying to savor, both to slow down and be more mindful, and to ground myself in what is a lovely life (that i fill with worries and stress and irritations).

Last night we had cheese -- a very nice cheddar, store brand blue and brie, and a very nice Asiago -- a loaf of the store fresh breads, a rosemary boule (now costing more than ever at at .88 lbs instead of 1.5 lbs), kalamata olives, leetle dill pickles, grapes, a star fruit, and a little bit of honey in a bowl. We played gin rummy, had more hands of gin than ever, and with Christine seven points from winning, i came from behind with gin when she still had lots of unmatched cards. We went for a while before i won a game at all, so i am delighted to be learning the strategy. I also successfully knocked yesterday, which is a little bold for me.

I wonder if i would be better at chess now. In college i was a miserable chess opponent because i played defensively and did not really think about ending the game, ie winning.

Christine suggested the star fruit needed sugar, which is her reaction to the tartness. I thought that was over much, but wondered about the honey -- and the complexity of star fruit's tart floral and honey's acid sweetness was fascinating.

For lunch i'd made a salad of celery, carrot, blood orange, avocado. I had pickled some red onion in late January, and the pickling vinegar makes a nice dressing.

Violets are beginning to bloom but the rabbits are ravaging the plants. I moved some violet crowns around in my garden last weekend: here they are generally considered aggressive weeds. I look forward to them acting as both ground cover and a purple delight in my salads. I have three tiny European sweet violets started in my garden and if the rabbits don't exterminate them, i dream of that violet scent and flavor being added as well.

Lunch adventure - no, not eating out yet. This was eating some produce.

First there are Tough Beans. It's hard to find the green beans, and i'm leaving some that seem far too mature for dried beans. But there's the borderline beans, where there are lumps in the bean pod from the seeds forming, but not yet looking past the green stage.

Then there's the between-stage squash. The vine died before it got to the mature winter squash stage, but it was past the summer squash stage.

Finally, there's pulverized okra, made from the too tough pods.

So, a soup: a couple cups of water, a cup of squash cubes, the tough beans, and a tablespoon of okra powder, salt, and my herb seasoning mix.

Um, too much okra powder. The ... slime ... was just a little too much. The squash is just on the edge of too old, but i think i can eat it this week. The beans were perfect.

Conclusion: the powdered okra did thicken up the soup. It's worth making, especially since it's compact dry storage. I can imagine with tomato paste it could be really quite pleasant.

Sage flowers are quite yummy. If you like lavender flowers in culinary applications, i think you'd enjoy sage. I'm thinking of steeping some in vodka, and mixing some in with my drained Greek yogurt that i eat spread on Wasa crackers for breakfast.

Tonight i tried roasting my Egyptian walking onions and a very bitter chicory. The chicory, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar tasted wonderful on Italian bread -- it was a bit tough. Good to know i can eat them like this.

Egyptian walking onions don't make big bulbs. They divide into additional bulbs over time. They are particularly known for their tops that, instead of becoming flowers, become little cloned plants, "bulbils". (I've you've had a spider plant that had bayb spider plants on the stems -- those are botanically bulbils, too. The walking onion bulbils however look like little onion bulbs.) I've been growing them for years now, generally just letting them multiply -- the bulbs in the ground dividing to make a clump, the bulbils falling on the ground and making new clumps. I've had the green onion leaves in my mixed sauteed greens, but i really haven't been using the plants.

This winter i ripped out my old patch in the fenced part of the garden and moved them out of the fence: deer don't eat onions. There are a few clumps in various places from previous year propagation attempts, so i've been pondering what to do with them. The bulbs and bulbils are not particularly mild onions. One attempt at pickling last year didn't go as well as i would have liked.

I pulled up three. At this time of year the base is a little broader than the rest of the plant, but it's more like a scallion than a spring onion (no round bulb at the end.) From that end to the top, it's about two feet or 60 cm.

Onion scapes (or garlic or leek or tulip or lily or gladiolus scape) are "a peduncle arising from a compressed or subterranean stem, with the lower internodes very long and hence few or no bracts except the part near the rachis or receptacle." Cough. It's a hollow stem for the flowering part of bulbs to be far less precise and much more clear. So the stem and the flower buds of onions are edible, and there were scapes on these plants. The top six inches are tender, but the rest is a fairly rigid hollow stem. I cut them into sections of the hollow tubes. I trimmed the leaves from the bases of the onions and cut them in half laterally. I left the tough scape to see whether it would be edible after roasting.

These i drizzled with (too much) olive oil and salt and pepper. Roasting at 400°F for half an hour produced some very crispy bits (didn't get oil on those) and some very mushy bits. It caramelized up nicely,so that's a plus. The lower parts of the scapes were kind of tough: if i was serving to guests i think i would remove them.

As an experiment i think it turned out pretty well. Moderate my olive oil use in the future, do a better job coating, keep the tough bits out of what others might eat. I'm eating them on my salad tonight.

The leaves -- which are the diameter of say two drinking straws -- i've cut up into small pieces along with small pieces of celery leaves from the garden and some sage and sage flowers. I'm dehydrating them, and i hope to blend them into a powder. I made an onion-celery-sage mix with store bought onion and sage a year or so ago, and it was nice to mix into things. I'm hoping this will be an intense seasoning mixture.

Friday morning, Saturday morning (25°F), and Sunday morning had frosts or more. Some things seem no worse for wear. The saucer magnolia's open flowers all turned a rust red and will fall over the next few days, but new buds and leaves will quickly take the place of the frozen flowers.

The mulberry leaves crumble at the touch. Little bits of chestnut and fig leaves that stick out from the buds do too. Stilt grass is unfazed.

The good of the past three days was taking the time off and being outside. Also a brief gather with parents, L, her husband and daughter. (Sister and parents fully vaccinated, brother-in-law and myself one shot of Moderna). Her son is off on a vacation with a friend's family on a catamaran in the Caribbean. This is life like my brother's family, not familiar to me, but i'm glad for both him and my sister for weighing the risks and letting him go. Christine stayed home knowing she was in no place to see people.

Invasive plants here:( an interstitial where i distract myself )

I am surprised that no where in the threats is Duchesnea indica, a strawberry-like plant from India that sprawls EVERY where. It is, i have found out, an edible green. A little fuzzier than i prefer, but i tossed it in with my salad last night - violets, garden sorrel, radiccio, the celery that is looking like celery!, lemon balm and anise hyssop, an onion leaf. It was fine! There's no way i can eat it out of existence, but it's nice to know.

Christine's blues have gotten to me off and on, triggering my own tears; i'm trying to let it pass through me and move on.

I hope that i can return to work with a crisp focus. I did spend some time on the Meeting this weekend -- over an hour on a memo about the previous weekends meeting. I did get a somewhat manipulative email from C hoping i would stay until the new structure is in place. I indicated i hoped we'd be done before my deadline too.

I do feel i have such high maintenance needs.

Tears watching the light show from London, watching the celebration of the NHS and Black Lives Matter in the sky. I grieve this country, but i am also understanding how broken this country has been all along. As i become more aware of events like the lynching of Wyatt Outlaw (1870) and burning, massacres of the Black communities in Wilmington, NC (1898,also a coup) and Tulsa, OK (1921), i become more aware of how brutally my fellow Americans have been terrorized. My beliefs of "what we used to be" are false. The grief is for the myth.

Meanwhile, the house still smells strongly of scorched food. My sister gave us a steamer bucket that was delivered yesterday. The water boiled off far faster than the instructions implied. Christine was triggered by the idea of crab -- the killing of the creatures -- so i did as i did so often with Dungeness crab in California and picked through the exoskeleton to harvest the meat, to eat it in some dish where meat would be separate from dismemberment. I wonder about the wisdom of giving such to Mom & Dad: i hope the delight and the memories over weigh the mess and the fuss for them. Dad will have to do all the work to help Mom eat. On the other hand, this sort of seafood was a joy for my parents.

I don't find augury to be meaningful, but the temptation to wonder about what such a smoke scented New Year's day presages. (On the other hand, i can't remember new years 2020 at all.)

I've had Christine's composition for CC Mixter as part of my sound track for the past weekend: http://ccmixter.org/mixup/winter_2020 -- hers is the remix of Briareus “Alone Together.” I'm delighted to see and listen to gurdonark's remix and remixed piece, too.

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Monday lunch featured chickweed. I finally ate some of this winter weedy growth as garnish on a sandwich. I picked through the bundle i had ripped off of a rampant carpet, selecting the last couple inches of the tips. That reduced the numbers of stems that i find unappealing. It wasn't bad: it had a grassy note. I've not been excited about eating it as i pull it as a weed -- it seems cleaning it and selecting tips might be too much fuss for the reward. And perhaps the early season flavor is better.

Worked late on Monday night. Tuesday night was a terrible headache.

Tuesday lunch was leftovers plus a salad made up of things found in the garden -- more chickweed. A little diced sunchoke from a root i missed in the harvest. A little chicory that is rebounding from the misery of summer, plus depredation of rabbits, plus rotten leaves from rain. So far the rabbits -- who left calling cards -- haven't mown down anything, but their presence is clear. If i can get the soil fertility up, maybe i'll have plenty to share. The celery got their attention this time.

The salad burnet is looking lovely, but i'm not sure i'm finding it that interesting to eat. Plants for a future describes a taste difference between acid and basic soils, with my acid soils ending up on the bitter side of flavors. I'm more pleased with sorrel. (So are the rabbits.)

Speaking of soil fertility, best i can tell sunchokes like sweet (alkaline) soil, like tomatoes. My grumbles about sunchoke productivity and the wimpy response of my tomatoes could be that i didn't lime the garden well enough. I've also learned that "mineral soils" (clay) don't need to be deacidified as much as "organic soils." Using numbers for a few staples (tomatoes) i can now translate requirements for more diverse plants (like sunchokes) to find the right pH. I'm going off an old soil test and i am a little frustrated about soil testing as i can see big differences in the soil in my garden in different beds due to different available amendments at different times, then growing different things.

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This year i'll be giving mushroom grow kits to my aunt and my sister. I am pondering investing in the tools needed to place plugs in logs: there's some sweetgum that needs to come down and Shiitake and oyster mushrooms will grow in the logs. We've been stacking cultivation sized logs as zig zag fences where they are colonized by wild fungi and decay. Stacking mushroom plan

With more details about Vacation Day 1.

I went to both the co-op and the grocery store. At the co-op i obtained Local Honey. I spent some time reading up on the honey ... corruption? fraud? and trying to make a decision about how much i was willing to pay for honey. I am not so horrified about raw/not raw. I am not buying honey for enzymes and whatever is the current vogue theory for consumption. I just like honey. But i was taken with the argument about the diluted and fake product driving down the price for honey paid to hive keepers. If i care about honey bees, i should pay for honey i can trust is from bees. I'm not sure about Vietnamese and South American honey -- assuming it's really honey -- being something to turn my nose up at. But, the apparent evidence of syrup instead of honey from some of the larger sources led me to commit to getting local honey. So i did.

And chocolate and kombucha. And lots of roasted peanuts from the bulk section. ANd there was yeast, so i bought it.

Then i went to the grocery store, getting out list of things along with some Special Italian Pasta for the truffles. The grocery store wasn't quite as overwhelming as i thought it would be. It was still familiar. And yet, there was a certain unpleasant tension: every decision seemed to have a little added weight. Everyone was masked and respectful, which seemed reassuring. There were still big gaps in the shelves around the cleaners (which, due to cats, seemed like something worth checking on). The co-op bulk section seemed more troubled than the grocery's baking isle: there was still a sign asking that people to limit amounts they bought of flours.

Dinner was simple and quick, as Christine suggested we not indulge in everything all at once. Just like the holidays, stretching the special foods out over days, and not having one grand overwhelming meal, seems more pleasurable. I washed the mold off the truffle with trepidation, trimmed a few soft bits off (and tossed them under the chestnut trees -- unlikely to infect the trees, i know). They smelled ... woodsy? or was that the mold? I made a butter sauce and tossed the shredded truffle in and realized - ha! I had reinvented cream of mushroom soup! But, it was so much better. I'm not sure the experience of summer truffles makes me want to try the over the top expense of the precious winter truffles, but it was a pleasure that paired well with the wine. I could tell the difference between the wine freshly poured and then after "breathing" for a couple hours. That was lovely. We watched antiques road show (the British version, which is generally more fascinating) as we ate, and then found the cheese cake directions were not so well written. "Keep frozen until use" was followed by "Allow to defrost for 8-12 hours before serving." So we had ice cream with the Italian cherries on top -- just three each -- and oh my, that was divine.

I went for a walk with Carrie, my sister, and one of her dogs at Fearrington Village this morning. She gushed a bit about how my parents should move there. I am in no way resistant to the thought of them moving closer. I do get overwhelmed at the thought of them moving, in the same way i imagine my father feels overwhelmed at the thought. And there is a certain amount of Should-ing my sister does that perhaps reminds me of my mother's Should-ing. But meeting my Dad and Mom there to go for walks this fall could be very pleasant.

I spent the rest of the day reading Gunnerkrigg Court, a web comic. I can't believe i've spent so long on it.

So, very very indulgent. Christine actually worked all day which wasn't exactly to plan, but was OK.When i'm in a book -- apparently including a web comic -- i am gone.

Tomorrow, i may need to address some Quaker things. I've put that aside for a while.