I'm on a roll!

Beef with Cumin (zi ran niu rou) from 'Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook' by Fuchsia Dunlop.

This was super fast and easy - shockingly so - and it was delicious!  I'm on a roll with good dinners this week.  Oh, and I think I have a new favorite in basmati rice.  It's so much better than the generic medium grain rice I had on hand before.

Angel Oak

Angel oak is a beautiful, old live oak tree near Charleston.  'Live oak' is the name of the tree species, not the health status, just like white oak or burr oak indicates the species.  Some have claimed it is the largest, oldest tree east of the Mississippi.  The visitor center (a delightful little cabin with a welcoming porch) has some literature (and by literature I mean a piece of paper taped to the door) saying the oak tree is 300-400 years old, but LEGEND says it's 1500 years old.  Either way, it's pretty spectacular.

We also went to Beach Walker Park at Kiawah Island.  It was a bit cold and windy for beach walk, so we didn't linger long.  But, we did see some cool jellyfish washed up on the sand.  Neeto.

Chicken Tikka Masala (aka Butter Chicken)

I've been craving Indian food for a while now, and while we do have two good Indian restaurants in town (maybe more), we don't go.  It's expensive to eat there for dinner, and lunch is a buffet and you leave feeling gross.  And besides, I like to cook, and I can totally handle Indian food....if only I had some recipes. 

Enter the Public Library.  I LOVE the library.  Ours has a great cookbook section, and I've been known to check out cookbooks just to read them, with no intent of ever cooking something from it.  Yes, I'm weird.  I call it 'idea gathering'.  America's Test Kitchen is probably my favorite source of recipes (they also have Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country).  They have a nearly perfect track record for good tasting recipes for me.  However, this time I checked out the book Indian Home Cooking and pegged about 20 recipes I want to try (some day).  I made two recipes for dinner last night - Chicken Tikka Masala and Parathas (a thin griddle-cooked bread that Steve called "Indian lefse").

The chicken dish was surprisingly easy.  Sure, it used a few more dishes and pans than I normally like, but nothing about it was hard and the ingredients were pretty straight forward (i.e. no eye of newt or terribly strange spices).  All of the chopping happens in a food processor, so even the prep went pretty quickly.  You marinate the chicken then bake it separately.  I baked it while I was making the sauce and then put everything together and simmered it for an hour until Steve got home from work, though the recipe doesn't call for the simmering part.  The final dish was really, really good too.  I'll absolutely be making this again.

The parathas were also very good and pretty easy, though also pretty tedious.  You make a simple dough of 1c. wheat and 1 c. white flour, 1 t. salt, and up to 1.25 c. water, and knead it together until a soft dough forms. Divide into 14-16 pieces.  By the time I'd rolled out 8 of these I was ready to be done and still had several more to do!

Roll out into 5-6 inch circle.  Brush with a light layer of canola oil, then to make nice flaky layers cut a slit in one side and roll up like a cone.  Squish the cone flat and roll out again to 5-6 inches.  Stack the rolled parathas with plastic wrap between them.

 

Cook in a skillet (preferable cast iron says the cookbook) on both sides, brush both sides with butter or oil, flip a couple of times until golden spots are on both sides.  See, they're tedious, but really tasty.  I rolled out more than we could eat so they're in the fridge.  I'm hoping they'll keep well or maybe even freeze well.  I don't know that I'd have the patience (or time) to make these very often, especially because you can buy them in the freezer section of our local Asian market...

This one is a wonky since it stuck when I pulled it off the plastic wrap.  The rest were definitely rounder.

Ambrose CSA

We joined a Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) program!  Starting the first week of April we'll get a weekly 'medium' share of produce and 1 dozen eggs for about 14 weeks.  The program benefits farmers because you pay in advance (a big expense in farming is seed and startup costs) and share the risk (hurricane?  You'll probably lose your whole crop).  In exchange we get fresh, locally grown, mostly organic produce. 

We've gone with Ambrose CSA.  Their farm is only a dozen or so miles from our house.  Unlike Wisconsin (or even Maryland) there aren't a lot of CSA's around here; I've heard of only 2 or 3.  We opted to pick up our share at the Stono Market each week, instead of paying a bit extra to pick it up at a drop point near our house.  I figure it will give me an excuse to get out to the market and see what else they have on hand and maybe partake in some of the 'pick your own' specials at the farm (some things are just too labor intensive or fragile for them to include in the shares).  Yesterday we got a notice that they have pick your own strawberries available for $2.50/pound.  Farmer Pete at Ambrose farms plants a huge variety of produce and it will be fun to try some new things.

We've signed up for the 'spring' harvest - April through about July.  They also have a 'fall' (October-December) and 'winter' (January-March).  I think it's funny that there's nothing in the summer - too hot!

I can't wait to see what's in our first box.  And I need to start thinking of ways to eat eggs...a dozen a week will be a LOT.  Maybe we can find people to share them with...

I've been holding out on you

Arizona and retirement communities go hand-in-hand.  It's got mild winters and low humidity.  There are whole towns built for the over-55 crowd (I know, we stayed in one and it was pretty awesome).  You know what else that means??  Totally Awesome Garage Sales.  Old people have old stuff, and old stuff is great.

We stopped at one, and only one, garage sale while we were in Arizona and I scored, big time.  Yes folks, for a mere pittance, a miniscule $5, I am now the proud owner of a nearly mint condition red 1971 Betty Crocker recipe box.


Oh, the joy.  Now I can prepare such delights as "Cold meat morsels" (included in the 'Snacks around the clock' category, naturally) or "Green bean bunwiches" (which look like an inside-out sloppy joe with *gag* frozen green beans on top of the top bun).  If I served 'Chicken livers with scrambled eggs' at an impromptu party - do you think people would ever come back??  I mean really, nothing says *Party* like scrambled eggs and liver.  Even grosser (is that a word?) is the round steak, on the right below.  It looks horrible.  Whole zucchini? It may be the most unappetizing picture in the whole set (except for the fish sticks listed in the "Family Breakfast Brighteners" section).

I can coddle my husband with a whole section devoted to "Men's Favorites", starting with this winner "Man-pleasing appetizers", perhaps followed by "Potatoes - The way men love them". Or, my favorite, a whole dinner menu laid out under the category "Be-Good-To-Father Dinner", which includes oven-barbecued steaks, easy broccoli casserole, garlic dill pickles, radishes, pumpernickel bread, and cherry pudding.  Where is the "Be nice to mother" section??  (Maybe it's included in some secret, unpublished "Ways with liquor" section that you have to special order...)

The card on the left (above), with the classy glasses and pale celery contains the recipe for "Pow!" (No that's not the sound of your jaw hitting the floor).  It's beef broth with horseradish and dill, garnished with a celery 'swizzle stick'.  I'm pretty sure my man wouldn't be pleased if I served him that, but maybe I'll try it anyways.

For those who lack basic cooking skills, try this for a new, delightful twist on breakfast cereal:

 

To be honest there are some recipes that sound good.  Most of the food photographs in the book are appallingly bad, and don't look appetizing at all (mostly because of the colors in the photos).  Many of the recipes give suggestions for garnishes - carrot or celery curls, cherry tomatoes and such.  Almost every picture has delightful props or garnishes included...and I'm thinking I need to start doing more of that just to see if Steve notices.

And I'll leave you with these two, which I hope will never, ever grace my kitchen...  A lovely chicken jello dish and a recipe for hotdog soup for BREAKFAST. 

 

Thursday night special: pork rinds

It was far too beautiful outside to stay in for dinner, so we headed to the beach for a walk and dinner outside at a restaurant that we hadn't tried before.  Steve wore his new toe shoes.

We ate at the Surf Bar, which gets pretty good reviews on Urbanspoon.  It was really good food and they had a nice outdoor deck with the wood stove cranked up.  The appetizer special was fried pork rinds with a spicy vinegar sauce.  I think I've tried a pork rind once before (from a bag).  These were different - they looked a lot more like pig skin than the ones out of a bag.  Honestly, that grossed me out.  I ate some, and they were ok as long as I didn't think about what they were.  I probably won't ever eat them again.  Too creepy.

Yard flowers

 

It may not be spring where you are, but it's bustin' out here (don't worry, your time will come).  Our giant azalea bush is about ready to bloom all over, these are a few of the early achievers. 

We also have daffodils in the backyard that have been up for a while. 

This one looks like it wants to say hello to all the neighbors who walk by...

And finally, Seca likes to lay below my office window.  She never quite gets in the sunshine, but she doesn't seem to mind. 

Margarita Throwdown

Saturday night plans?  We invited a couple of friends over to try two different margarita recipes and see which one was best. Really, it was an excuse to hang out, maybe play some games, and eat guacamole.  Side benefit: margaritas.  :)  To properly prepare, we went out Friday night for Mexican food at an excellent local restaurant and sampled their margaritas as well.

We pitted the 'leave no stone unturned in creating a recipe' prowess of America's Test Kitchen against the veritable King of Margaritas, Jimmy Buffet. The recipes were pretty different.  ATK uses only really good tequila ('gold') and triple sec, with a lot of fresh lemon and lime juice.  The kicker was that you need to ZEST the lemons and limes and steep the zest in the juice for 24 hours (clearly, this could be a fault if you really have a jonesing for a quick margarita, though we have a way around that that I'll share later).  Jimmy Buffet on the other hand uses 'gold' and 'silver' tequila along with triple sec and orange curacao.  His recipe also relies on a bit of fresh lime juice and Rose's lime juice (slightly sweetened and comes in a bottle). 

After zesting my way through a huge bag of limes and a bag of lemons, I was not looking forward to squeezing them all.  Luckily, a friend introduced me to the greatest invention ever - the handheld lemon (or lime or small orange) juicer in the top picture.  To call it a juicer is a bit of a misnomer.  It's really more of a lemon eviscerator.  When you're done, the fruit is inside-out and all of the yummy juice in the bowl.  It's so easy.

Long story short - the clear, hands down winner was the ATK recipe.  It was smoooooooth.  It had really deep citrus flavor without being too sour, although it definitely wasn't sweet.  The Jimmy Buffet recipe was harsher (because of the silver tequila) and really lacked the depth of citrus flavor that the ATK recipe had.  Obviously that's because there's very little fresh citrus in the Buffet recipe.  Of course, both recipes are light years better than the mix you get in a bottle at the grocery store.

How do you get around the pesky 'marinate juice and zest for 24 hours' when I want a margarita right now?  Easy - make the juice mix in advance, steep, strain, then freeze into ice cubes (or into bigger quantities).  That way you only have to bring out all the zesting and squeezing tools once too.  And trust me, the recipe is worth all the work.  :)  If you want the recipe, let me know!

"Bitterly cold"

Hehe.  The news is describing the overnight low temperatures for last night and tonight as "Bitterly cold".  It's going to be a  low of 25 F. 

Is 25 degrees cold?  Certainly.  Is it "bitterly cold"?  I don't think so, but I guess it's all relative (a week ago it was 81 for the high).

Saturday night fever

Steve's working late tonight because the shop is doing inventory.  I had a looooong, mentally exhausting week running a data workshop.  Good thing I went to Trader Joe's today for a totally drinkable ($4) bottle of red wine to go with the super fantastic homemade pizza I just happened to whip up for dinner.

I made Pizza bianca (thank you again, Epicurious.com, you never let me down).  Goat cheese, spinach, garlic.  The original recipe calls for Swiss chard, whatever, I used spinach.  Our house smells divine.  Now, what to do while I wait for Steve to come home??  Oh right, wine.  :) 

Donnelly WMA

 

 
It's the first week of February and it was 75 degrees today.  This does not bode well for summer.  I love (really, really love) spring in South Carolina, and today feels like March or April weather.  In fact, our azalea bush has several flowers starting to show pink.  I should set up a hammock in the yard and read in the shade. 

We joined the hiking club for a 2.5 hour walk at Donnelly Wildlife Management Area.  Because of the mild winter, the ticks and mosquitoes were out in force.  I think I managed to avoid all the ticks and (knock on wood) chiggers.  The hike was mostly through pine and oak forests, with parts through or adjacent to the marsh.  We saw a white pelican, cormorants, ibis, and alligators.  This place wasn't as beautiful as Botany Bay, but it was a nice change of pace for a walk.  And we met some interesting people too.