Co-Op 2010: Weeks 1-3

March 6, 2010 in food by spinstah | 1 comment

This year, as last, the Mill Valley General Store is offering a co-op that works similar to a CSA. You pay in advance, and each week for a set amount of time (13 weeks in this case) you get a variety of items. Much as we did with the CSA, I’m splitting a share with Paul and Danielle. We opted for the full share, which means that each week we get four produce items and two “value-added” items to split between ourselves. Here’s what I’ve gotten so far, in various quantities shared between us:

Week 1
Onions, potatoes, grapefruit, ground bison, apple cider.

Week 2
Cabbage, carrots, oranges, butter.

Week 3
Apples, beets, turnips (which I thought were parsnips, oops), yogurt.

Week 4
Boston lettuce, sweet potatoes, sausages, rutabagas, yogurt.

Week 5
Bacon, lettuce, eggs, cinnamon raisin bread, red potatoes, oranges.

This obviously differs from a CSA in that not all of this is grown locally — the citrus comes up from Uncle Matt’s Organic Farm in Florida; the yogurt came from a dairy in New Jersey. The bison comes from Gunpowder Bison in MD. But just like with a CSA, I love that it forces me to try new things and search out new recipes, some of which I hope to share here soon.

On Waffles

February 3, 2010 in cooking, food by spinstah | No comments

I have a waffle maker, which has become a heavily used appliance in the last several months. Making waffles from scratch is easy, and the variations are endless. I use the recipes in my Betty Crocker cookbook, which provides a basic recipe and several variations — most frequently, I make the whole wheat version. I’ve also made waffles with cornmeal, and have tried buttermilk waffles (though they aren’t as good as buttermilk pancakes for some reason). Usually I make a half batch of the batter, which keeps for a couple of days in the fridge, and eat them for breakfast and snacks. I’ll throw all kinds of things on the batter before I close the lid — flax seeds, wheat germ, chopped nuts. Depending on what kind I’ve made, I’ll add fruit, chocolate chips, butter, brown sugar, honey or maple syrup on top. My waffle iron makes round waffles with four segments, so it’s easy to control the portions.

I made a batch of waffles this weekend, and tried a new recipe. When I opened the fridge to get the milk and eggs, I spied a half-empty container of sour cream, and figured I’d see if I could find a recipe to use that up. My Betty Crocker didn’t have a variation, but a quick Google search led me to Alton Brown’s recipe for Sour Cream and Pecan Waffles. I had just enough sour cream — sold!

As I have found with the buttermilk, these were good but not stellar. I didn’t feel like they really tasted all that different from a plain waffle, which is too bad because sour cream is tasty. I will probably put a stickie note with the proportions next to waffle recipes in the Betty Crocker, as it’s a great way to use up some sour cream that you want to get out of the fridge. But I can’t say I would go out of my way to make them. Read the rest of this entry »

Brunch Ring

February 1, 2010 in baking, cooking, food, review by spinstah | 2 comments

This was the other dish I made for my January brunch, and is yet another recipe from the January 2010 Vegetarian Times. This one was a big hit. Tasted great, looked impressive, and was easy to make. Essentially, it’s a tofu scramble encased in puff pastry. In this case the scramble uses some Indian spices, but you could really use any favorite tofu scramble recipe, so long as the volume is about the same.

In terms of wrapping the pastry around the scramble, I learned a couple of things — there will probably be a few extra pieces of crescent roll dough, and it works best to shape and mold the scramble, rather than just try to pile it on. I had trouble getting the points of the dough all the way around and underneath the ring, so I just pulled them into the middle and poked at them in hopes that this would work, and it did.

I didn’t modify this recipe a whole lot — in this case I just changed the spicing. As written the recipe is vegan, and calls for 1/4 C nutritional yeast. After some online research and a chat with the lovely SparkleJ, I decided to omit it and just include more spices. Since the recipe called for turmeric, I poked around and decided to add in some ground ginger, coriander and cumin. (In reality this meant I could have just used the curry powder in my cabinet, but I thought of this too late.)

This can be made ahead — you can do the whole thing right up to baking and then just chill it in the fridge overnight, covered loosely with plastic wrap or foil. I didn’t do that since I had enough time to make it before my guests came, but if you have folks staying over, this might be a nice thing to be able to offer pretty quickly in the morning.

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Knitting? What’s that?

January 30, 2010 in knitting by spinstah | 1 comment

One of the things I want to do this year is get my knitting and crocheting mojo back — I barely did any last year. To get myself started, over Christmas I cast on for a simple roll-brim hat, using some leftover wool. The recipe came from Last-Minute Knitted gifts, and was a quick and easy knit. I used Malabrigo (Marron Oscuro) and made a few thin stripes with Rio de la Plata (Burgundy). Then I came back from the holidays and ignored it until a few days ago. It turned out pretty well, though I think it’s a smidge small for me. I will probably give this to someone, but I’m not sure who yet. Feel free to lobby for your cold head.

Another step towards working on some new projects has been to unravel two sweaters that have been stalling out and preventing me from working on anything else. I have officially given up on the Icelandic Turtleneck from the Crochet Me book, as well as the February Lady cardigan I had started.

The pullover had been giving me lots of trouble — I think it’s a project that really relies on using the yarn that’s called for (what I picked wasn’t as stretchy) and I was also having trouble getting it to fit correctly. There was lots of ripping back and re-doing in this project, and ultimately I just wasn’t happy with how it was going. So, that’s all unraveled.

As for the February Lady, I didn’t get very far, but the neckline didn’t seem right — it seemed like it was too big when I rested it on my shoulders. I haven’t unraveled that yet, but that will be next. Read the rest of this entry »

Pear & Cranberry Bread

January 29, 2010 in Uncategorized by spinstah | No comments

I served this Pear & Cranberry Bread from Coconut & Lime at my January brunch party, along with a delicious tofu-based entree, the recipe for which you will see in a couple of days. :)

This bread was quite easy to make, though it does require a food processor (or at least a better blender than I have). It was very moist and delicious, and the presentation is just beautiful. I think this would make a great gift, either as a full loaf or two small loaves.

The only substitution I made was for the allspice, as I didn’t have that on hand and rarely make things that call for it. I believe my little substitution book said to use equal parts of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. I can’t remember exactly what I did, but I think that since the recipe already called for nutmeg, I might have tossed in just a little more of that, then 1/8 t each of cinnamon and cloves. I think it was a little too clovey, so in the future I will cut that down a bit.

One last note — I found that I was able to get the full amount of pear puree from a single pear. I’m not sure if mine was larger than theirs, or I chopped up more of it or what, but just something to keep in mind. You can probably get away with buying two total, and just reserving two nice big slices for the top when you start to make the puree.

PJ Pants

January 29, 2010 in sewing by spinstah | No comments

Here’s a little break from all the food posts. This weekend I finally had some time to get going on a sewing project that I’ve been looking forward to — a pair of pajama pants. I used Kwik-Sew 2662, which includes markings for shorts that I’ll be sure to do in the spring. I chose a fun black and white cotton fabric: Jane’s Hothouse Garden from Westminster Fabrics.

The pattern was quite easy, and included a couple of new things for me — pockets (not that hard, but something new nonetheless) and sewing on elastic, which was a little tricky until I figured out a method. The inside bottom edge of the waistband isn’t finished, but I decided that since I used pinking shears to cut out the pieces, it’d be fine. (I should also admit that I didn’t feel like sewing over the elastic for a third time, which seemed to be what the pattern was calling for.) Read the rest of this entry »

Tofu Tagine

January 27, 2010 in cooking, review by spinstah | No comments

This was a quick and tasty dinner that was quite easy to put together. The recipe comes from a little book of Rachel Ray recipes. Despite the fact that I find her annoying as a TV personality, she makes some good food. This book is also the source of my turkey chili. I haven’t made a lot of the things in it, but what I have made has turned out well and been quite good. I came across the recipe will trolling through the indexes of my smaller cookbooks, looking for inspiration. I tend to cook primarily from recipes I find online, and treat my cookbook collection more as a reference tool. This was a great reminder that I need to make more use of them!

In this particular case, I did make a significant modification of the recipe, which is actually called Quick Tagine-Style Chicken with Couscous. I feel like I’ve been eating a lot of meat lately, and I wanted to make this vegetarian. So, I subbed in some tofu and I think it worked out quite well. Below is the modified recipe; if you want to do chicken you would just start by browning 1 3/4 lbs. of cubed chicken breast.

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Sweet Potato Shepherd’s Pie

January 25, 2010 in cooking, review by spinstah | No comments

This is the second casserole I made from the January 2010 Vegetarian Times. This one I made to take to a meeting/party, and so I doubled it. One thing I was reminded of is the magic of baking something like this, which changes and improves the flavor — I tasted the individual components as I went, and found that I was not that impressed. In the end, people said they liked it and it did taste pretty good. I should note that I omitted the beans, mainly because I forgot to prep some (I do beans from dried) and didn’t have time to do it when I was actually making the casserole. I should also note that I didn’t have any wine on hand, so I used vegetable broth. Lastly, I subbed dried herbs for fresh, which might also have affected the final flavor. I also think that the bottom filling needs something else — somehow the lovely flavor of the leeks that I expected didn’t come through. Mine were about a week old by the time I used them, but they seemed fine, so I’m not sure if that’s the problem or if it’s in the combination of flavors (maybe increase the leeks and decrease the onions?). Overall I didn’t dislike this, but I’m not sure I’ll make it again. It will probably depend on whether I come up with any good ideas for modifying it and improving the flavor. (Ideas?) Regardless, I think this is definitely a side dish and not a meal in and of itself, whether or not you include the beans.

As I made this recipe, it struck me why people say that they can’t cook, even when they follow the recipe as written. Some recipes just aren’t written that well, and this was one of them. The proportions seemed a bit off (made me glad I’d grabbed an extra sweet potato just for the heck of it) — as written, you wouldn’t have very much sweet potato topping to work with. In the magazine, the recipe calls for “1 medium sweet potato (1/4 lb).” I found that the smallest ones at my grocery store were 1/2″ lb., so I’m guessing that the author didn’t actually weigh the potato, but perhaps just guessed after the fact. This recipe also didn’t include an instruction to preheat the oven at the start, which I’m sure will cause problems for some cooks.
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Indian Samosa Casserole

January 23, 2010 in cooking, review by spinstah | No comments

I have been cooking a lot in the last couple of weeks, but haven’t managed to post about the recipes in a timely fashion. I’m going to try and write up most of the posts today, and set them to post here and there over the next week or so.

This was the first of two casseroles I made right after the holidays, both from an article in the January 2010 Vegetarian Times, which I picked up while at home. All of them are designed to freeze well.

This casserole is pretty straightforward — you make a whole wheat pie crust to cover the top, and a samosa-style filling. The flavors weren’t as intense as getting a samosa at an Indian restaurant, but I expected that given that I was making it at home. Next time around I might increase the spices.

I also found that the crust was rather tough, probably due to one of the following: I modified the crust recipe to use butter instead of vegetable oil since I was out,  I used regular whole wheat flour instead of whole wheat pastry flour (I’m assuming there’s a difference since it was specified), I might have over processed the dough, and I overbaked the casserole by accidentally following the “from frozen” baking time rather than the fresh-made.

I’ll definitely make this again. Next time, I’ll make a point of being sure that I have chickpeas on hand, so I can make some kind of side dish that will turn this into a more complete meal.
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Haiti Relief

January 16, 2010 in personal stuff by spinstah | 2 comments

kwbWhat have you done?

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