Lettuces

I will buy no more lettuce--for a few months, anyway. The winter-overs are lovely and rich. I harvest them a leaf at a time and soak them in cold water to plump and crisp.

Yummy.

So, I don't have much to say tonight except--I am eating those wide lettuce leaves, smeared with hummus.

I am drinking a homemade hard apple cider--one of the few left from the fall.

Life, while waiting to see if the gov shuts down, is quite delish.

Soup of the Evening...Again

Do you make your own soup stock? It's easy and the potential for delicious is fairly high.

Tonight I put some schmalz, carrot ends, a baked chicken carcass, the tough greens from spring onions (which wintered-over in the garden) into a big pot and simmered the lot for a couple of hours. I strained all that mess out and added back in some carrots (chopped), lots of onion, fresh kale and spinach. I simmered that another 45 minutes until everything was soft and the flavors had blended a bit.

It's the kind of soup that will age well--if we leave around to age.

We do like soup around here.

Getting Me to the Greek

I have a light dairy allergy and so I don't do a lot of dairy, including yoghurt. But a couple of months ago I had to do a run of antobiotics and chose to bring back the eco-system in my gut with some pro-bio Greek yoghurt.

It made me cough a little and gave me a bit of a runny nose but it seemed to get my "personal culture" back into shape quickly.

Plus, delicious!

So we did a yoghurt taste test around here to decide which brand was best. I found that the one with the best taste was 2% rather than 0%--no surprise there. But it was hard to find plain 2%.

Plus, pricey!

So I Goodled Greek yoghurt and found out that it's simply plain yoghurt that is drained of much of the whey, giving it that rich thickness. I dug out the out Salton yoghurt maker, gave it a very good cleaning and decided to try it.

I bought a half gallon of--oh, my goodness--full fat milk. Yes, I know. Crazy, right? I did two batches of yoghurt, draining each batch through a cheesecloth-lined strainer.

Friends, it is mighty tasty stuff. (cough cough) It works out to be about 35 cents a container, about the same price as commercial yoghurt and much cheaper than commercial Greek yoghurt.

Now, I want to play around with all kinds of milk and see how it works.

Boiled and yet delicious

I don't often eat beef any more but with The Day yesterday, I thought I'd do a pot of corned beef, cabbage and tatties. It's terribly easy. (It's easy if you buy your beef already "corned.")

Cut the beef into big chunks and boil it up in water. No need for salt but you might add some pepper, rosemary, a bay leaf or two.

Simmer the whole pot until the beef is tender, then add in the tatties...maybe some onions and carrots, too. Last thing in is the loosely cut-up cabbage, which doesn't take long to cook. Let it all simmer another 15 minutes or so.

Serve it with some lovely fresh soda bread and a pint of the black stuff. Corned beef and cabbage is not traditionally Irish--I also like to boil up a pot of colcannon--cabbage, tatties, bacon and some butter...maybe a little greens (like kale).

Boiling meat is popular in many rural cultures because you could use older and tougher meat.

It's Pi Day...but I haven't any

March 14. 3/14. Pi. Get it?

All I know is that I have no pie.

I do, however, have cake.

My daughter--who is the best kid ever--made me a birthday cake while she was home for spring break. She started her cake-making adventures years ago with boxed mixes and canned frosting. Then she moved on to cake mixes and homemade frosting.

This cake is a moist chocolate two-layer--from scratch. And it is iced with a rich cream cheese/butter frosting, with just a hint of nutmeg.

Delicious, not too sweet, very rich and flavorful.

Birthday cake will have to do on Pi Day. We'll have Pie later in the week.

And speaking of later in the week, I've got a nice corned beef to make for Thursday. Some colcannon, a loaf of soda bread and a gallon of the black stuff.

That sounds like a good St. Patrick's Day, I think.

Haggis En Croute

It has been so long since I've posted here that I need to go back a bit and tell you about the whiskey-soaked celebration that was Burns' Night.

I have no idea what inspired me but I determined to celebrate it with some friends this year. We all brought small bottles of whiskey and I made what actually passed for haggis.

Well, sort of. If you squint your eyes and aren't too much of a purist. It had all the unmentionable offal parts--most of them, anyway--but instead of stuffing it all into a stomach, I rolled out a thin and buttery crust.

I baked the whole thing in a cast-iron pan and it came out piping hot and quite edible. Served it with a couple of different kinds of mustard, with chippy sauce and a green salad.

Haggis en croute--it's either a brilliant modern take on a classic cultural mainstay or it's an abomination. Either way, it was awfully tasty.

Why Pagans Should Get Busy

This article in TIME suggests that the "foodies" among us are poised to help revitalize and drive the environmental movement. Lately the news has been full of scary stories about Monsanto and genetically-modified alfalfa, and many of us have been feeling kind of helpless. As Michael Pollan has pointed put more than once, food legislation is a rather cloak and dagger affair in this country. That's ironic given how so much media attention is being given to this issue lately, and how passionately many people feel about eating healthy food.

So, news flash: people who enjoy food and care about food safety are often the same people who care about the environment. You can't grow good crops or raise healthy livestock if you destroy the land with pesticides and toxic waste, after all; you can't get safe salon out of polluted oceans. Clearly the best people to help raise awareness about these interconnected issues are foodies, and environmentalists.

Or, ya know, PAGANS.

So I want to suggest that more of us step up and get involved in strengthening this movement. Of course maybe you're already well-informed, and you support your local farm markets and buy organic and maybe you even grow your own vegetables or raise chickens. But are you working to help others and your community gain access to healthy foods and better information about nutrition? Are you researching the laws regarding food safety in your area? Are you finding out how to stop that old orchard from being razed and sold to developers, or how to start a community garden program in your community? The possible ways to engage in this movement are endless.

What are YOU doing? What would you like to see happen? Let us know.