Days 3,4 and Beyond...

We left Tampere this morning and are on a train to Savonlinna, a beautiful town in eastern Finland. There is a famous castle there, built on a massive rock on an island. We are staying at a B&B on a farm, complete with animals and gardens and orchards and a sauna house on the edge of the lake. Meals come mostly from what is produced on the farm (and surrounding farms) and I look forward to cooking a bit in the public kitchen located in a Laplandish hut not far from the main house. Cooking and saunas and swims in the lake between trips to town to play tourist. 

This contrasts sharply with our visit in Tampere, a vibrant city in western Finland where we met our cousins, had a whirlwind tour of the city by the most accomplished tour guide ever and a meal with many of our Finnish relatives. It was heart warming and bittersweet to meet these relatives for a few hours and then say good bye knowing full well we might never see them again. This was especially true of the grandmothers, Laura and Laila, at almost 80 and 86. I saw a familial resemblance and felt it in my heart. I'm sure they thought we were silly Americans when Doreen and I teared up with the wish our mother could have been there to meet them. Mom-these pictures will have to suffice, but know we were thinking of you!

 With Laura (Juha's mother) and Laila (Jyri's grandmother)

Doreen with Arja (Jyri's mother and Laila's daughter)

From left: Laura Niemi, Arja Siimes, Laila Nieminen, Jukka Nieminen, Jukka's daughter tucked behind him, Pekka Nieminen and Eija "Tiina" Aho (Juha's sister) 

This was the amazing meal we had! Reindeer quiche (one with a gluten free crust!), rhubarb bars with a vanilla cream sauce, a quark cheesecake (quark is a milk product that falls somewhere between cream cheese, sour cream and yogurt) and, in the pitcher on the right hand side, red currant juice made from red currants in Tiina's yard! What a feast!

 

Our cousins and tour guides extraordinaire, Juha and Jyri!

Day 1. Helsinki

Our first view of Finland from the plane.

The day before I left for vacation I told a neighbor that it would take me three weeks to learn to relax and one week to enjoy it. If the rest of this trip is anything like today, I have nothing to worry about. Of course, when I was awakened at 3 a.m. because of light streaming through the window, I had my doubts. We experienced about 3 hours of twilight last night...not darkness, but enough light that we could sit on the deck and read a book. Already sleep deprived from the flight over, this did not make me hopeful about my energy level for the day. The Finnish people are the biggest coffee drinkers in the world and now I know why. Doreen and I immediately fell into step with them and in addition to our morning ration, we supplemented throughout the day. By 8:15 we were at the bus stop beside the hotel and just minutes later caught our ride to downtown Helsinki. First stop, the train station to get our tickets for our trip to Tampere tomorrow, about 2 hours north of Helsinki. There we will spend a few days with our new found cousins.

Train station in Helsinki. So practical and easy to navigate! And most all the clerks speak English!
After procuring our tickets we took off to explore the city on foot. I had a rough map with suggestions of things to do written in the margins and we headed out to look for the open air Market by the ferry docks. I knew we were heading in the right direction because a young Finnish woman (studying for her PhD in linguistics at the local University) who spoke excellent English must've thought we looked pitiful standing on the street corner with a map. She walked with us for a few blocks, telling us of Finnish history and then we parted ways with her pointing down the road to our destination.  We passed a large church up on a hill and stopped to take pics.

After cresting the hill and turning a corner, the Market was before us with over a hundred booths and beyond that ships docked in the azure water.

The first booths at the Market were fruit vendors and the fragrance of fresh strawberries was everywhere. Most of the fruit was from Spain (there was snow on the ground a month ago, so it is a little early in the season for veggies and fruit here) but there were some very small strawberries from Finland. They had huge blueberries, cherries and apricots-all from Spain. Most all the produce was marked with country of origin. Further down were vegetables-tiny cauliflowers the size of my fist, fennel bulbs, zucchini, fat white asparagus, even tomatoes. And then there were the potatoes, bin after bin filled with piles of the tiniest, most uniform potatoes I've ever seen, still covered in dirt and sold by the kilo. Even though we had a small kitchenette in our hotel room complete with a two burner stovetop, there were no pots or pans ( do Finns travel with cookware? Doubtful...). How I wanted to buy a half kilo and boil them up and coat them in butter and dill! We saw wonderful Finnish hand crafts; lots of felted wool hats and scarves (the most unusual ones from an exotic looking woman from Santa Barbara who married a Finnish man and now makes her home in Helsinki), carved birch coasters and kitchen utensils, elegant leather gloves, pottery the colors of the ocean and so much more. The food booths all served variations of the same meal-roasted salmon, vendace (small fish similar to smelts which are rolled in rye flour and fried), the tiny new potatoes dripping with butter and dill (if I couldn't cook them at least I could eat them!), and mixed vegetables. The variation we chose included a bit of squid rings also.

We sat at a picnic table in a huge orange tent which gave our skin a healthy glow. Doreen and I thoroughly enjoyed our meal!

Travel as a Job

About 5 years ago, while Scott and I were on a vacation in Europe, I remember telling him, "I sure wish I could get paid to travel!". The following year, I received a phone call asking about my availability in September to work in Heidelberg, Germany. It was known that I would be traveling in Germany at that time and it sure seemed a good opportunity to save on airfare if I was already going to be in the vicinity. The rest is history for me. I just completed my fourth year working in Germany (but now in Kaiserslautern) and tomorrow I leave for my second trip to South Korea. Two more trips to South Korea are planned for this year. I've also had the opportunity to travel domestically-Augusta, Georgia; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Columbus, Georgia; Clarksville, Tennessee. The work is interesting and challenging and I am so grateful that I get to do this. But there have been sacrifices-I haven't planted a real garden in 2 years: that does not mean my garden is barren as I have kale and chard and beet greens most all the time. But I am always hesitant to plant tomatoes and beans and eggplant because they need a bit more tending than the greens. I have 5 tomato plants that I am planting today with hope the rain predicted in the next few days will make them feel at home enough to flourish until I return. And I feel my Farmers Market work suffers...who wants to get hooked on a particular type of bread if there are times when it just won't be available? As if the work travel is not enough, my sister and I will take off for 4 weeks the end of May to travel through Finland and the Baltic States-(specifically Lithuania, but we will travel in Estonia and Latvia also). It will be wonderful to be on our own schedule and move about freely-a freedom I don't have as a civilian working on military bases around the world.

While I was in Germany a few weeks ago my colleague Rebecca and I finished work a bit early my last day and we headed to the spa. Last year she suggested we visit the spa and just never got around to it. She was not going to let it slip by this year. We ended up spending almost 8 hours there. The original name of this post was going to be On Nudity because this spa trip challenged ideas we hold on to dearly here in the States. My own personal feelings on nudity are out of the norm for the place I live. And, through the spa experience, I have come to realize they are much more in tune with the European model. Obviously, one cannot generalize about a country-or a cluster of countries-and their mores and habits. But I do see a different mindset in Europe when it comes to the human body. On one of our first trips to Europe, Scott and I saw a commercial in which a woman dressed in a white jumpsuit walked to the edge of a silver lake, unzipped the jumpsuit, stepped out of it and, completely naked, dove into the water. I was stunned. This was a commercial during prime time TV. We would never see this in the States.

At CUBO (the spa) http://www.cubo-sauna.de/ -you bring your own towels, robes and spa shoes (flip flops or clogs) but at all the saunas-and they have many different kinds-you hang your robe up outside and sit on your towel inside. The saunas hold lots of people-some had 15 or so, but others were packed with thirty or more men and women. Most were our age and older-some obviously in their 80's, but there were a few twentysomethings. No one sat there and stared, you made eye contact and smiled and sometimes conversations took place. Sometimes we clapped when the music got lively and we gasped when ice chips were flung about the room. All these folks sitting in one very hot room together naked. I am not one who is uncomfortable about my body. It is the one into which I was born and the only one I have. I didn't have a choice to have longer legs or smaller breasts, what I have is what I have. And this fact was brought home to me on a very deep level sitting in that room. ALL OF US have the bodies we have and they are simply our bodies. They don't say much-if anything- about who we are inside. When the sauna was over we would walk into the robe room, grab our robes, slip on our shoes and walk out into the garden area where there were row upon row of lounge chairs. We didn't put on our robes, just placed them on the chaise and laid ourselves down...naked. We drank water, had a snack and talked and no one seemed self conscious or uncomfortable. I walked to one of the outdoor showers after a particularly searing sauna and a German woman about my age was in the shower next to me and she turned and asked, "You like?" I smiled and told her, "Very much!" She smiled back at me and walked away.

I wish I could clearly convey how this entire experience touched me. I was raised in a household of all females and my own children grew up mostly the same way. We were not terribly modest around the house and thought nothing of walking to and from the bath unclothed. Indeed, living in Texas in a house without air conditioning it was not unusual to walk around without clothes in the summer. It did not then and does not now seem weird or unhealthy or shameful.

I am not passing judgement with this post just wanting to let you know what an amazing experience the German spa was for me and how I felt right at home there. I have been to a few spas here in the States and saunas were taken with towels wrapped around you. There was no walking around the grounds without some sort of covering. If you have the chance to have a spa day in Europe, I encourage you to go. I would be very interested to hear of your experience. Personally, I don't think I will go to Germany again without somehow fitting in an afternoon at the spa and I am looking forward to taking quite a few saunas with my sister while in Finland. I hear there is one sauna to every 2 people there!

A Few Versions of a Quick Spring Salad

It is 85 degrees out!! And that's no April Fool joke! A cool front is supposed to move in tomorrow and even bring some much needed rain, so this morning I put a big pot on the stove and filled it with 2 chickens leftover from our Easter celebration yesterday, tons of veggies, some dried morel mushrooms foraged here on the ranch and wild rice from my sweet friend Jan in Minnesota. It smells delicious and I predict we will eat chicken soup the next few days. But today, on this bright, warm lovely Spring day, I wanted veggies and as close to their raw state as possible. Yesterday, one of my contributions to our Easter party was a Brussels sprout salad that was so satisfying and SO easy that I could have eaten just that and been quite happy.



I would have loved to recreate that salad for lunch today, but alas, all the Brussels sprouts were used yesterday. But I did have a few bundles of asparagus and so did a slightly different version. It was equally delicious. Here are both recipes!

Our Easter Salad:

Brussels Sprouts, Dried Cherries, Pecan and Blue Cheese Salad

serves about 6-8 as a side

2 pounds Brussels sprouts, stem end trimmed and cut in half

1/2 cup dried tart cherries

1/2 cup toasted pecan pieces

1/4 cup blue cheese crumbles

1 1/2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1-2 Tablespoons balsamic syrup or balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

 

Bring a pot of water to a boil and add Brussels sprouts. Cook about 8-10 minutes until slightly tender-they should still have a bit of a bite. If your Brussels sprouts are small it will take only about 5 minutes. Mine were huge and 10 minutes was about right. Drain and put in a bowl to cool. Cut each sprout in half again (so now you have quartered Brussels sprouts) and place in a serving bowl. Add remaining ingredients and stir to mix. Serve.

Yes, that's it. So very easy. It can be refrigerated to serve cold (in this case I would add the pecans just before serving so they stay crunchy) or serve it with the Brussels sprouts still quite warm. We ate it room temp and it was very tasty. The blue cheese was the perfect foil to the strong tasting sprouts, the dried cherries a burst of sweet/tart and the pecans added a crunchy richness.

 

Today's Salad:

Asparagus, Dried Cherries, Pecan and Parmesan Salad

serves 2 as a meal or 4 as a side

1 bunch (about 3/4 pound) fresh asparagus, ends snapped

1/4 cup dried tart cherries

1/4 cup toasted pecan pieces

1/4 cup shaved Parmesan cheese

2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

1 Tablespoon balsamic syrup or good aged balsamic vinegar

1/2 orange, juiced

salt and pepper to taste

 

Heat a cast iron skillet over medium high heat. Add asparagus spears in a single layer (I had to do this in 2 batches) and let them sit for a few minutes. They will blister and slightly blacken in spots on the underside. Shake the pan to turn them over and cook one more minute. Remove from the pan with tongs and repeat with remaining asparagus. Let cool until you can handle them and cut in inch long pieces. Place in serving bowl and add remaining ingredients. Toss to mix. Serve!

 

These salads are so quick to make. You could change this recipe up easily-use green beans instead of asparagus or Brussels sprouts, currants or dried cranberries instead of cherries, toasted walnuts or macadamias or sunflower seeds instead of pecans, feta or Gorgonzola instead of blue or Parmesan. You could even add chopped crispy bacon which I think would be especially good with the Brussels sprouts version.

 

I hope to be back to posting regularly-at least monthly if not more frequently-as my "work travel season" is about to begin. And in June, my sister Doreen and I are traveling to Finland and Lithuania for a month to meet relatives we've never known. We will travel to towns where our ancestors lived and bask in discoveries of our own personal history. I will blog throughout the trip. I am above and beyond excited!

 

Enjoy your Spring!

 





Countdown to Thanksgiving

Started working on my Thanksgiving job out at the Ranch today. I feel like I am behind because Thanksgiving falls so early this year and because some of the guests are showing up earlier than usual. All the behind the scenes prep work happens now...the work that makes Thanksgiving week run smoothly. Pie crusts get made and frozen, the homemade meat sauce for Saturday evening Lasagna simmers for hours and I make the Orange Cranberry Sauce. Well, that was really all I got done today because I also did two and a half hours worth of shopping, the first trip of many spent filling multiple carts at our local grocery. I really encourage you to try this Cranberry Sauce. Not only is it incredibly easy, but it keeps forever-really months-and takes no time at all. I could eat it by the spoonful (and I do!).

Ingredients: 2 cups sugar, 2 cups water, 1 large navel orange (organic, please), 2-1# bags of fresh cranberries and a few grinds of nutmeg.

Here's the recipe:

Wash the orange and cut it into quarters, then cut each quarter into 3 or 4 pieces. Cut off the "navel" and the small part at the stem end. Toss the chunks (yes, peel and all) in a food processor along with one bag of the cranberries and process it until the orange is in small pieces. This takes about 20-30 seconds in my food processor. In a saucepan, place the sugar and the water and turn the heat to medium high. Stir a few times to help the sugar dissolve then dump in the contents of the food processor and the other bag of whole cranberries.

Cook this until it comes to a boil, stirring every now and then. Then lower the heat to medium low and let it simmer for about 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally. It will get thicker and a bit jelly like.

As it cools, it thickens even more. Remove from heat and let it cool for about 15 minutes and then grate about 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg and stir to mix. Let it cool completely and put the sauce in a covered container and refrigerate. It will last for at least 3 months. Nothing better on a post Thanksgiving turkey sandwich! But it's also pretty darn good on vanilla ice cream...

Come visit me on Saturday mornings at the Farmers Market at the Cibolo in Boerne. I sell my breads and assorted other goodies. Winter hours are 9-1. Hope to see you there!

"Quick" 3 Ingredient Jam

It has been EXACTLY 5 months since I have posted anything here.  FIVE. MONTHS. Unbelievable! I started traveling for work the end of March and finished up the middle of May. I was home less than 2 weeks total in that time and, I've got to say, it ate my lunch. The traveling was great...Augusta, Georgia was lush and green; Seoul, South Korea was stunning and incredibly clean for a city of over 10 million people (not to mention some of the best food I've ever eaten); Kaiserslautern, Germany was like "old home week" and more fun than work should be (Thanks Rebecca!!) and Fayetteville, North Carolina was a nice finish to it all. Still, I marvel at folks who travel all the times for their jobs. I never fully unpacked in those two months, just washed clothes when I was home and packed them right back up. The experiences were enriching, the work fascinating, but home suffered, the garden almost unrecognizable by the time late May rolled around. After I reintroduced myself to my family (hey! remember me?), I started trying to fall back into the farm schedule while playing catch up with everything else. On top of it all, I was out at the ranch cooking 10+ days in June. Eventually the garden got planted, the house got pulled together a bit more and I got back to work on projects I have going on.

Lots of Spring rains led to a very dry Summer. We put in new water catchment tanks in the midst of all the traveling and they were soon full to overflowing. Thank goodness as I need it now to keep things alive. The fig tree took forever to put on figs and then, BAM, they began ripening faster than we could eat them! They are big and really tasty, maybe the best ever (I wonder if I say that every year). So out comes the stock pot and I make jam. I am a lazy jam maker, never using pectin or additives...just fruit, lemon juice and honey. And enough water to keep it from scorching. Here's how I do it.

Rinse your fruit well and then cut in large chunks. Place in a stock pot and add enough water to reach about halfway up the fruit. I used 8 cups halved figs and 2 1/2 cups water.

Add the juice of a lemon (about 3-4 Tablespoons) and turn the heat to medium. Begin to mash the fruit lightly to break it up.

Cook for a few hours, mashing the fruit up every now and then. It will get thicker as some of the water cooks off. It should have a slow bubble going on. Not really a full simmer, but some movement in the pot. I check on it every 30 minutes or so and give it a good stir, mashing up any larger pieces I see.

After it cooks down-today it was about 3 hours-I use my wand blender to make it smooth.

I don't know what I would do without a wand blender. I use it almost every day. I have a number of them that I use for different purposes. It is invaluable for making soap as it mixes the ingredients much better than I could by hand and brings the soap mixture to trace so very quickly (but that's another post, isn't it?).

If you want smooth jam, I can't imagine another tool so easy to use. You could always dump the hot fruit mixture into your blender and whiz it smooth, but that seems like more work and mess than I am up for (I told you I am a LAZY jam maker!).

Once it was smooth, I let it cook down even more...about 30 minutes for this batch. It spit and bubbled and I stirred it more frequently now. I was in the kitchen setting up the pot of water for the water bath and getting my jars and lids together. When it looked ready-not super runny and it would mound up on a spoon-I added the honey. For this batch, I used 1 1/4 cups of raw honey. You have to stir pretty consistently for a few minutes to incorporate it well. The color gets a bit darker. I don't cook it much beyond this as I don't want to negate the benefits of using raw honey.

I ladle the jam into clean jars and screw the lids on and place them in a pot of boiling water. When all the jars are in the pot, the water should be at least two inches above the lids. I cover the pot and keep it on a fast simmer (or slow boil) for 15 minutes. Then I remove the jars (with a jar lifter...a real handy kitchen tool if you can frequently) and place them on a clean kitchen towel to cool. They ping! as the jars cool and the lids suck in.

I've used this same recipe for peaches, plums, strawberries and it worked great for each.

This is my second batch of fig jam this month. I love using it for jam bars in the Fall. Shortbread crust with a thick layer of jam on top and then shortbread crumbs on top of the jam. Love. Maybe I'll get to post the recipe for jam bars sometime soon or maybe I'll wait until Fall...

And of course it is wonderful on toast, Scott's favorite use for it.

Have fun and SMILE!

Real Creamed Spinach. Really!

I can't say I ever ate creamed spinach as a kid. Or really as an adult. It just always seemed somehow...creepy...to me. I love spinach-in salads and sauteed with garlic-but creamed? Blech! When I began my cooking job at the ranch, the freezer was stocked with quite a few boxes of Green Giant Creamed Spinach. I used them and bought more and now it is common to have it on the table there-especially at Thanksgiving. I tried it once and it wasn't terrible (not quite an endorsement, huh?), but I still preferred spinach sauteed with garlic. Until now. My garden is full of spinach and I've been looking for different ways to use it. Last week a recipe showed up by email and after some fiddling around it has become my very favorite use of spinach. So much so that we've eaten it twice in 2 days and the recipe that supposedly serves 4, leaves Scott and I wanting more. Here's how I make it:

Pick 12 cups of spinach (about 12 ounces)-or buy a 12 ounce bag of spinach-and remove the stems. I used all spinach the first time I made it, but today I used a mixture of spinach and chard.

Melt 1 Tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium heat and add the greens. You can dump them in all at once if your skillet will hold them or wilt them in 2 batches.

Cook just until wilted and then transfer to a colander placed in the sink to drain.

Take 2 large peeled shallots and slice them thin.

Melt 1 Tablespoon of butter in the skillet and saute the shallots over medium heat until they are soft.

Add a 1/4 teaspoon of salt and then pour in 1/3 cup of white wine. I use a St. Gen Sauvignon Blanc-Texas made, inexpensive and a perfectly good cooking wine.

Increase the heat to medium high and cook until the wine is all but evaporated. This only takes a minute or two. There will be a thin sheen of liquid in the pan, but not enough to puddle.

Lower heat to medium again and add 1/3 cup of heavy cream. Stir until the cream thickens a bit, another minute or so.

Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 2 or 3 grinds of pepper and some freshly grated nutmeg.

Throw the drained spinach back into the skillet and toss it around to mix thoroughly with the cream mixture.

Sprinkle with 2 Tablespoons grated Parmesan or Emmenthaler cheese and serve!

Here's the recipe (adapted from a recipe from Fine Cooking):

Creamed Spinach with Shallots

2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
12 oz. spinach (about 12 loosely packed cups)
2 medium shallots thinly sliced
1/3 cup white wine
1/3 cup heavy cream
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Freshly grated nutmeg
2 Tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan or Emmenthaler cheese

Melt 1 Tbs. of the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the spinach and cook just until wilted, about 2 minutes (you can do this in 2 batches if your skillet won't hold it all). Transfer to a colander in the sink.
Melt the remaining tablespoon butter over medium heat and then add the shallots. Cook until softened but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add the wine, raise the heat to medium high, and cook until almost evaporated, about 2 minutes. Lower heat back to medium and add the cream. Simmer until it’s thickened, about 1-2 minutes. Season with 1/2 tsp. salt, 3 grinds of pepper, and the nutmeg. Stir in the spinach and toss it around to mix thoroughly with the cream mixture. Top with the cheese and serve!  
Makes 2 generous servings

Homemade Almond Paste and The Garden Revisited

I love almonds. And I love anything made with them. Almond cake, almond cookies, almond paste. I make quite a few recipes that use almond paste and there have been times when our local grocery was out, as was my pantry. And really, a 7 ounce tube runs close to $6 and something in me (the cheapskate) cringed everytime I bought one. I've been making a new recipe that I so love. I think it is one of the best desserts I've ever eaten. It is called a Pithivier (pronounced P-T-V-A) and it is an almond dessert extraordinnaire! I saw it in Paris called a Galette des Rois,(click on this link for the most beautiful Pithivier I've ever seen. It was made by Tamami, a friend and fellow baker in London) but I believe at different times of the year, it is called different names (gotta' love the Parisians). The dessert consists of a puff pastry top and bottom filled with the most exquisite almond filling. An entire tube of almond paste goes into the filling. I've made a few of them and they are not inexpensive to make-especially because of the $6 tube of almond paste in the filling (we won't talk about the massive amounts of butter). So I went on a search for a better source for almond paste than my local grocery. I got the price down to about $4.85 for 7 ounces. But that still seemed crazy, I mean it is almonds and sugar, more or less. Well MORE I found out, but totally manageable to make at home with pretty simple ingredients. I made almost 4 pounds of almond paste from scratch this morning in less than 30 minutes. And it's good-I mean it's "cut off slices and snack on them all day" kinda' good. The ingredients:

Blanched almond flour, sugar, honey and almond extract. I forgot to put the sugar in the photograph. I found the almond flour online through a company called Honeyville. If you sign up for emails from then, you receive discount emails. Mostly 10% off. I bought 5 pounds of blanched almond flour for just over $30 including shipping. This is enough to make over 20 tubes (7 ounces each) of almond paste. Here's my recipe:

ALMOND PASTE

1 cup plus 3 Tablespoons sugar (250 grams)

1/4 cup honey

7 Tablespoons (a scant half cup) water

3 cups plus 3 Tablespoons blanched almond flour (500 grams)

1 1/2 teaspoon almond extract

about 2 teaspoons soft butter

Place the sugar, honey and water in a saucepan, mix well with a whisk and bring to a hard boil. Place the almond flour in the food processor. Remove the boiling sugar water mixture from the heat and, with the food processor running, slowly pour over the almond flour. Blend until smooth. Add the almond extract and blend again for another minute. You may have to scrape down the sides and push the paste around as it is quite stiff. Dump out onto your counter and grease your hands with the butter. Remember the almond paste will be fairly hot! Knead the almond paste until smooth and cooler-about 5 minutes.
Divide into ounces needed and wrap and store in the freezer. Makes 4-7 ounce "tubes" plus about 3-4 ounces more.

I know these measurements seem odd, but in my kitchen I weigh out ingredients, and usually in grams. My kitchen scale gets used most every day.

I noticed on the label of commercial almond paste there is no almond extract listed. Upon further research I discovered that a particular type of almond is used for almond paste-similar to bitter almonds. Very strong almond taste. I just added almond extract (also made from a variety of bitter almonds) to make up for using regular old almonds. So now my freezer is full of individual packages of homemade almond paste. I see Pithiviers in my future...

I read on Wunderground (weather underground...you mean you don't have a few different weather sites you check each day...really?) that rainfall amounts in Central Texas from December 2011 through February 2012 were in the top 10 since the late 1800's. I measured 12 full inches (my neighbor disputes this, but I think I get a bit extra each time it rains just 'cuz I'm a weather geek). My garden could feed a small country. Look at these pics compared to last month...

Native hollyhocks on the right, poppies and cilantro on the left.

Artichokes in the background, lettuces and chard in front.

Two different sugar molds with lettuces.I have started picking the outer leaves.

Mustard in bloom. The bees have been loving these tiny yellow flowers.
 Lily and I have been taking forays into the woods looking for morels. Even though we didn't have much cold this winter it was quite wet, so I'm hoping we'll have a small crop.
Nothing yet, but it is a few weeks early. It's just been so nice and warm, I thought they might pop out of the ground in response. We'll start hunting in earnest in a week or so, but for now it is nice to take walks with her. 
Enjoy these last few weeks of winter!

Texas Gardening-Expect the Unexpected!

For all my years of gardening in Texas, I've maintained that the garden looks picture perfect for about 15 minutes sometime in early April. Well, this year it looks like it may be early February or maybe the 15 minutes will stretch into a few months! After last years weather -blistering hot temps day after day for months and no rain at all- this year has been a gift. Over 5 inches of rain in December, 2.5 in January and here we are the first week in February and I've already registered just under 2 inches. Amazing and nothing short of magnificent as far as the garden is concerned! I can't keep up with all the greens: 5 kinds of lettuce, mustard spinach, regular spinach, 2 kinds of kale, chard, broccoli raab, beet greens, cilantro and arugula. The cauliflower and broccoli are putting out nice fat heads along with scrumptious leaves. The sugar snap peas that just pushed out of the ground a week and a half ago are growing at record speed. Flowers that haven't been in the garden for years -poppies, larkspur, native hollyhocks- have shown up and are growing like they're on steroids. It's all incredibly encouraging. And a good life lesson for me...sometimes things just need to sit in the soil and wait for the perfect opportunity to burst forth. As good as our intentions may be, if the conditions aren't right, our seeds (and dreams) will not come to fruition. Patience, patience, patience. Not my strong point.

A native hollyhock flanked by cilantro and oregano.

Poppies are everywhere...in the beds, in the paths and between cracks in boards. What a riot of color the garden will be in another month!

A bed of mixed greens: broccoli raab, arugula, romaine

Sugar snap peas ready to climb the lampshade frames. I've used this technique the last two years and it worked great. No sense reinventing the wheel...

I have a few of these old Mexican sugar molds (ever seen piloncillo -Mexican cone sugar-at the grocery store? It used to be formed in molds like these-maybe still is...). I used them to hold up the ends of a bed. This year, I filled them with soil and seeded them with just a few seeds of various kinds of lettuce. I've thinned them down to one or two seedlings per hole. Since lettuce have a fairly small root system, I think each hole will hold one head of lettuce. These pics were taken a week ago. The lettuce is doing real well so far. I'm hoping the storm due this evening doesn't bring hail!

This is a cardoon. It is an interesting Mediterranean vegetable. You pick the leaves -they get very large- and strip off the leafy part so all that remains is the stalk. You then cook and eat the stalk. Very tasty. However, it looks VERY much like an artichoke (below)...they are related, but different.

You can see small differences in the two...slightly more rounded ends on the leaves of the artichoke and the area surrounding the stalk is also wider. But I put them far apart in the garden so I wouldn't get them mixed up. Artichokes are perennials and you'll have them in the garden for many years if you (and the weather) treat them right. My last batch of artichoke plants bit the dust last year when I struggled to keep ANYTHING alive in the garden. I planted 3 new plants this year.

A bed of mixed lettuces, although mostly Romaine. My aversion to neat rows -or maybe just orderliness in general- is apparent here, but it works for me. I scatter seed and as they come up I pick whole plants for salads to create more room. As they get  bigger, I leave the plant in the soil and just snip off outer leaves to eat.

And of course, cauliflower and broccoli. The weather has been warmer than they like, so some worm is nibbling the cauliflower. But their appetites (or stomachs) are small, so they leave pretty good sized heads for us. The leaves are great shredded and sauteed in olive oil with lots of garlic or added to soups.
I am ever hopeful that this wet winter we've been experiencing will result in some morel mushrooms. It would help if it was a bit colder, but I can't help but think the moisture will result in a crop this year.
Happy Gardening in 2012!

Wine Poached Mussels

Scott left this morning to run errands in the city and Lily and Dawn took off to do some Christmas shopping, so I was blissfully alone to bake, bake, bake. Farmers Market is in the morning and bread was on my agenda. Scott came in around 5 and I knew he'd be hungry, so I made these Wine Poached Mussels. In 15 minutes, we were seated at the table with three big bowls in front of us...two empty ones for us to fill and another for the mussel shells. Farmed Mussels are a sustainable seafood and considered eco friendly. They are also incredibly cheap-our local grocery has them for $1.83 for a one pound frozen package. This is how I make them  (I wish I had pictures but these are so easy, there is no need...besides I forgot to take any). Set a fairly deep skillet (I use a French skillet) on the stove and set heat to medium. Pour about 1 1/2 to 2 cups white wine into the skillet. Add the juice of 1/2 a lemon and about 2 Tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces. Crush up about 3/4 teaspoon saffron into the mixture and let it come to a simmer. Open the bag of frozen mussels (you always cook these from their frozen state-don't thaw them) and pour into the skillet. I used 2 pounds (2 bags) because we are gluttons really like mussels. Cover the pan and nudge the heat a bit higher-medium high-and let the mussels cook for about 15 minutes. After about 8 minutes, take the lid off the pan and scoop the mussels so the ones on top go to the bottom. Cover the pan and continue to cook. They are done when you take off the lid and most all the mussels are open. While they are cooking, slice some good bread (usually in abundance at our house) REALLY thin and place on a cookie sheet. Pop in the oven at about 400 degrees. When the mussels are done, the bread should be crisp. I cut the bread diagonally and we put a slice or two in our bowls, scoop a bunch of mussels out of their shells onto the bread and then ladle lots of the cooking liquid over the bread and mussels. Heavenly. I will admit that after dinner I poured the remaining "broth" into a cup and drank it. It took us longer to eat this dinner than it took to make it. When I am busy, this is my kind of cooking.

HAPPY HOLIDAZE!