An end to vegetarianism?

 It has been nearly a year since Drew became a vegetarian and I cut way, way back on meat intake.  I estimate I've eaten meat on average about once every two to four weeks.  Mostly, I am a mostly-vegetarian because the meat available in the supermarket is raised in an environment that does not make for high quality food.  Eating less meat is also one thing I can do to make my impact on this planet smaller.

However, I am also very frugal about food; I hate to waste it.  There has been a Utah-grown grass-fed top quality roast in our freezer for a year.  I either needed to give it to someone who could use it, or use it myself.  I have also been gaining weight and wondering if I should try to reduce my carbohydrate intake.

I'm headed out in the field next week. I get hungry doing field work.  I eat crackers and chips and drink sweetened lattes when that happens.  Perhaps I need a more satisfying snack.

Enter that roast, a 1970s era electric food slicer given to me by my mother-in-law, and my trusty food dehydrator.  In other words, I made jerky.

It turned out pretty good. It's totally natural because there are no artificial preservatives or MSG and I have enough to last for months, especially since Drew is not eating any.  I will use my Foodsaver vacuum thingy to package it into portions that will last about a week when unsealed and then probably freeze it. This will probably get me through the darkest of winter nights when the urge to eat cereal late at night is strong.

 

And in other homesteading news, I tried out my new yogurt maker today.  My first attempt at almond mile yogurt is culturing now.  It would be nice if it works out, since Drew really misses yogurt since he gave up dairy and the dairy-free yogurt at the supermarket is expensive.

My sourdough starter is feeding nicely too.

Birthday fun

I used to hate having a birthday in the summertime because all my friends at school who had school-year birthdays got all the glory.  Now it's the best because: summer parties!

Drew busted his chops to get the yard looking fabulous for a friendly get together in honor of another year well and Happy Flag Day!

While he was toiling, I was tending to other important things, like getting myself ready

Jeeze my feet look skinny.

And making birthday pie

A ceramic pie bird in the center of one of the double crust fruit pies. The bird is formed so that steam from the filling can enter the hollow inside of the bird and come out its mouth, thereby venting the pie and eliminating the need for cutting slits in the top crust. It worked great.

 I made three: peach, strawberry rhubarb, and sweet potato.

My friends gathered to enjoy the pies and humor me with a game of Cards Against Humanity in the backyard

The "Card Czar" of each round had to wear the flag hat as my birthday request. The hat makes everyone look so cute!

There were no pies left and I lost count of how many bottles of wine we drank. Drew laughed so hard at the game that he said his tear ducts were dry on Sunday.

Sunday I requested a ride on which I could try out my new seat dropper post. Friends rode down Corvair trail in Deer Valley with me.

Fun new toy that dropper post.

Then dinner at Vinto in PC.

Blowing out the candle on my birthday scoop of ice cream.

Another year around the sun. Life is good. Can't complain.

Happy Easter

Easter has become one of my favorite holidays.  I am not religious and I don't believe a man actually rose from the dead.  I like the holiday because it was the first one Drew and I got to spend together way back in 2005.

D&L's first Easter 2005

Drew had to work until late Saturday night this year.  I was to pick him up at the airport at 8:30 PM, which was fine with me because I needed to stop at work and do a few quick things to prepare to for an early Monday morning field trip. 

Unfortunately, he didn't land until 1:10 AM.  I got more work done than planned.

On Easter morning he hunted for his Easter baskets over coffee. Then we rode bikes to Fiddler's Elbow for brunch before gathering the mountain bikes for a real, if short, ride on BST.  We saw several friends out enjoying the wonderful weather and spring blooms.

Disclosure: this picture was taken last week, not actually on Easter, but you get the idea.

 Then home to cook the turkey I had brined using this recipe.

Had to use something heavy to hold the turkey down.  What does a geologist have around that is heavy? A cobble of Little Cottonwood stock quartz monzonite! 

While the turkey was roasting, we colored eggs.

Then our friend Monique came over and we toasted to spring and friendship and ate juicy delicious turkey (the best I have ever made, and that includes all three turkeys) with Monique's strawberry rhubarb crisp for dessert.

Easter is definitely one of my favorite holidays.

Homemade pasta.sauce

Tonight I made my own pasta sauce using our homegrown tomatoes, wax peppers, bell peppers, a bit of shredded zucchini, and the last of the non-flowering basil. I used store bought onions, carrots, and garlic.  This picture is the two jars of yellow tomato sauce. We ate the one-meal portion of red sauce from the brandywines.  The red was delicious over speghetti and sauteed zucchini.

I didn't can. These are in the fridge, so come on over and have some pasta - we'll be eating it a lot in the next week or so.

How does your garden grow?

Yesterday I canned 10 half pints of low-sugar plum jam from the big basket of plumbs I picked off our tree in the front yard last Monday.  It got me thinking about how I love to watch a garden grow and then harvest it.

Here is a series of pictures of our garden taken over the last 10 weeks.

June 2, 2012. Just after planting.  Note the size of the pumpkin and zucchini.

 June 17.  2 weeks in. Growing nicely.  Drip irrigation gives each plant water every morning.

July 1. 4 weeks. Broccoli is almost ready, but one of my four plants is severely stunted by aphids.

July 21. 7 weeks.  Notice the new addition of the Tower of Pumpkin to the left of the cucumber trellis.  The one pumpkin plant was taking over half the garden, so we threaded it up through an 8-feet-tall tube of 6-inch wire mesh leftover from our garage build several years ago.  It pays to hoard. 

 August 12.  10 weeks.  Basil has gone to seed and the broccoli I didn't get cut is flowering, but everything else is producing well.  We have 5 pumpkins in the tower!

I'm getting big harvests once or twice per week.  

Today's harvest basket.

Apparently it was too hot for tomatoes to set fruit in July, so the tomatoes are just now starting to ripen.  Look out!

Pie Smackdown

This blog thing started out innocent enough for us.  Post a few pictures of what we've been up to to keep the family informed, keep a journal for ourselves, etc.  What I didn't know is that I would really start to enjoy reading other people's blogs, too, but that reading them would get me in trouble.  Back in November*, SkiBikeJunkie was bragging about how fantastic his wife's pies were on his blog, and in a moment of foolishness, I challenged her to a pie-baking duel. It was an offhand comment, but a small blogging circle picked up on it, and before I knew it, we had a flavor (pecan), date (P-day), and time set up for the pie contest, complete with neutral judges UtRider, Blackdog, and Watcher, only one of whom I had met before.  I knew that Rachel was a good cook from browsing her blog and from tasting her amazing brownies at a Revolution team party.  This would be a challenge!

* Isn't November national pie month or something?

Between November and P-day, I practiced my pie making with at least eight pies.  I was having trouble with the crust getting too tough and, in one instance, down-right crunchy.  I finally realized it was the butter-flavored Crisco* I had been partially substituting into an all-butter recipe for flakiness.  Once I switched to about 2/3 butter and 1/3 regular Crisco**, the crust came out perfectly.  On P-day, I left the pies in the oven just a tad too long so the crust was over-browned, but it was still delish.

*In most food I make, I strive for all-natural ingredients.  Hydrogenated vegetable oil, a.k.a. Crisco, is by no means all-natural, but it makes a darn flaky pie crust that is easy to roll out.  Unless you are eating eight pies in two months, it probably won't kill ya.

** My Mom, maker of fantastic pies for decades, uses lard, real lard, like from a pig.  The lard sold in grocery stores these days is mostly hydrogenated oil packaged as lard.  I have shopped around for real lard at two health food stores, but they shooed me away, probably because lard isn't exactly a health food.  I never got to a butcher shop, and just settled for Crisco.

Watcher and his wife were kind enough to host the event - neutral turf and all.  They also understood the importance of ice cream and coffee to a true pie-eating experience.

The pies arrived.  Rachel's (two on the left) were clearly prettier than mine, but how would they taste?

We served

 

They ate

and ate! Almost all four pies were devoured.

 

But in the end, my pecan pie was judged to be just a tiny bit more to these particular judges' tastes, so I took home the crown and Rachel got a squeaky horn.  However, Rachel's pie was more to the liking of the special Youth Judging Panel, and since Rachel has to feed her children, it is probably a good thing that they love her food.

What a fun night eating pie with new fun people.  Drew was definitely glad he could participate as an eater, even though he was disqualified from judging because he might have voted for my pie (that is, if he ever wanted me to make more).
  
For an impartial account of the contest, written by Watcher (whose blog, by the way, is always chock-full of way awesome posts about the natural world in Utah), surf to here, where you will find a full explanation of this picture.

Thankful we have a home to renovate

Most of this week we worked on two home improvement projects:  1) The fabulous outdoor room, and 2) the 100% restored fireplace.  I will post pictures of each of them as they come along, but for now I will report that in order to prepare for the two different contractors we have hired for these projects, and to save us some money, I spent some quality time (like to the tune of 6 hours) with an electric demolition hammer, i.e. a jack hammer.

Using one of these and a shop vac in the house is not recommended unless absolutely necessary.

After I had thoroughly contaminated our house with mortar dust, I used the jack hammer to remove some of the excess* concrete from around the vinyl fence posts and the neighbor's garage footing before a snow storm hit.
 * At least I hope it wasn't structurally necessary.

Then Drew and I did some more manual labor digging holes for the trellis wall beams, until we finally rented a post hole auger.  The rest of the time has been spent lovingly removing 8 layers of paint from the fireplace and salvaging matching old wood from this crazy place called George's Architectural Salvage.



So boy did we deserve the pie.  For Thanksgiving we went to friend John's house in Park City. I made a pecan*, two pumpkin, and a brown-sugar rhubarb.  I used a 75% butter crust recipe I had not tried before.  It was very tasty, but it hardly made enough to complete the pies.  Next time I will make 1.5x the recipe.  The rhubarb I had frozen after harvesting in ~June from our puny garden.  This pie had a meringue topping, which turned out OK, but not great.  I didn't really care for the pie on Thanksgiving night, probably because it was up against pecan and pumpkin after tons of delicious food, but the leftovers were pretty tasty.

*It was the best I have ever made because I accidentally doubled the amount of butter in the filling.

You can see the pies here.  Drew really loves my pie, it just doesn't look like it.  

John is a great cook.  There were two kinds of potatoes, two kinds of stuffing, a Waldorf salad, and New Orleans dirty rice.  Drew was physically ill after all that, but he still had room for pie.

 

Here are John and some of the other guests preparing the meal.

Friday I went for a girls-only ride and Saturday Drew competed in his first cyclocross race.  We'll post about them next.

It was a good Thanksgiving week.  We are thankful for friends that cook, that we have this 100-year old house to renovate, and that we have the physical ability to do it.

Green Tomato Pie

We had a great time at Theresa's house warming party last night. Saw lots of bike friends we don't normally see in the off season. Great food too. I brought green tomato pie. I used about 5 or 6 of the multitude of green tomatoes I picked a couple of weeks ago. I never have known what to do with green tomatoes, but don't have the heart to just compost them. It seems all that water and nutrients the tomato plant used to make the fruits shouldn't go to waste. Now I have something to do with them! The pie was a big hit at the party. It tastes sorta like an apple pie and has the same texture, but there is a little sour/spicy bite to it. Very tasty and super easy - easy as pie.

GREEN TOMATO PIE

Pastry for double crust pie
1 1/3 cups sugar
¼ cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 ¼ teaspoons ground nutmeg or ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups green tomato slices, cut into fourths
1 ¼ teaspoons grated lemon peel
¼ cup lemon juice
1tablespoon butter or margarine
1. Heat oven to 425°F.
2. In large bowl, mix sugar, flour, nutmeg and 1 teaspoon salt. Add tomatoes, lemon peel and lemon juice; toss to coat. Turn into pastry-lined pie plate. Cut butter into small pieces; sprinkle over tomatoes.
3. Roll other round of pastry. Cut slits so steam can escape. Place top pastry over filling; trim overhanging edge 1 inch from rim of plate. Fold and roll top edge under lower edge, pressing on rim to seal; flute as desired. Cover edge with 2- to 3-inch strip of foil to prevent excessive browning.
4. Bake 35 to 45 minutes or until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust, removing foil for last 10 minutes of baking. Serve warm.

Master Chef vs Master Shopper

Which one of us is the master chef? Here is a picture of the banana bread I made last weekend.

The stupid recipe had the baking soda listed after all the rest of the ingredients, so when I was mixing the dry stuff first, I neglected to add in the soda. I didn't realize it until half way through baking.

Or is it my awesome husband, who, for two days in a row, has had delicious mostly-homemade meals ready for me when I get home from my 10-hour work day.
I think Drew wins this cook-off.
But I might have him beat as a professional shopper. Last Friday, my friend Rhonda invited me to go shopping with her at the factory outlet stores in Park City. She had a 30% off coupon for us and the stores were having 25% to 40% off anyway. To do our part as economic stimuli, we shopped for 5 hours! Man did I get a load of great stuff. And I'm not even feeling guilty since 5% of my purchases went to a charity of Rhonda's choosing, plus, I have not bought new clothes for months. OK, so since I was so jazzed about my fabulous shopping experience with my new-found, perfectly matched shopping partner, I thought I could handle a shopping excursion to the shoe store on Saturday with Drew. Usually I don't take him shopping because he says the stores have kryptonite in them. The brat was done in 10 minutes and I still had 10 pairs of boots to try on and test out by walking up and down the aisles for an average of 9 minutes per pair. I got some great boots that look good on Drew too.


To prove that I am the more diligent shopper, I made a rather large purchase on Sunday buying tires for my truck. But to my surprise, my credit card was frozen! I had to use another card while 4 or 5 customers were lined up behind me at the tire store. Embarrassing! A while later, an automated robot called my phone to verify the shocking number of out-of-the-ordinary purchases I had made in the last 3 days. I guess the computer thought someone had stolen my identity and went on a shopping spree. It was just me.
I win the title of Master Shopper.

Yogurt on the brain

I made yogurt on Friday. I like making yogurt. Since I rarely cook and hardly ever clean house, it gives me a sense of providing for my family. What! That is bull, but I do like making it because I know what went into it and it reduces our waste stream by keeping approximately 260 of those little plastic cups out of the world each year. I make it from milk, which we get from a home delivery service which uses reusable and recyclable polycarbonate bottles. I usually use Mountain High low-fat plain yogurt as a starter, so I end up buying that about once a month. That comes in one big quart container, which we use for paint containers.

Drew has not completely warmed up to the idea of growing cultures in our kitchen. I wonder if he would eat cheese if I made it?