I've been doing a reasonable amount of research into local CSAs, without much success. Most of them don't deliver, and either have to be picked up at weird times (between 3 and 6 on Tuesdays? but I work on Tuesdays!), or have to be picked up at the farm 30 miles out of town. But while I was researching, I found Jolie Vue Farms. They do a CSA box - of meat. They deliver, once a month, on the weekend. And if you aren't home, you can just leave a cooler and they'll fill it for you.

I signed up a few weeks ago, and my first delivery was this weekend.

The farm foreman actually brought the cooler. It came with a newsletter, a cookbook, and lots of very frozen meat. It's supposed to feed 2 people, 3 times a week, for a month.

Off the top of my head: A gorgeous Top Round Roast 2 huge Pork Chops 2 bone-in ribeyes several pounds of sausages all-beef hot dogs A whole chicken Beef for stir-fry 2 pounds of ground beef 2 big packages of soup bones. They weren't labeled more then that, but I think they're beef.

I'm excited. I'm roasting the chicken tonight, and making vegetable soup tomorrow with one set of bones.

( More meat pictures... )

In other news, I made an amazing batch of homemade BeenieWeenies last night. I used this bean recipe, only I put them in the Crockpot instead of the oven, and I added a package of cut-up hot dogs for the last half an hour. They're really good, and they make a great lunch.

Tags: cooking, photos, recipes
Current Mood: excited

On one of the recipe blogs I read, I saw a recipe today for roasted brussel sprouts. We both like them, and neither of us were starving after work, so I picked up a big bag of fresh ones on the way home, along with a loaf of olive bread and a container of hummus.

I tossed mine with finely minced garlic, Italian seasoning, and a bit of olive oil, then roasted them. Roasting is becoming my default method of cooking vegetables these days, because they so often come out tasting wonderful. And it seams healthier then boiling, and less bland then steaming.

I didn't get a picture of them, but last night, I made these corn tortillas. I think I liked the flour ones slightly better, but the corn ones will make better chips. The tortilla press makes the whole process go much faster then rolling them out by hand - I'll probably make them far more often from now on.

(I'm trying out Flick as a photo host. Friend me (tripacerdriver) if you have an account there...)

Tags: cooking, photos, recipes
Current Mood: cheerful

For Christmas this year, Mike got me a cheese-making kit. I picked up few gallons of milk and tried it this afternoon.

That's a basil mozzarella. I had some spare basil, and I figured it would make it easier to mix in the salt if I could see it, so I tossed it in. I should have let the curds set more, because I lost a good bit of them because they were too small to fish out of the whey, but I've got another gallon of milk in the fridge to try again later. That's a dessert plate it's sitting on, so it's not an enormous amount of cheese.

(Random aside: Someday I'll have enough light in my kitchen to take pictures without having to color-correct them in Photoshop every time)

In other news, I'm finally back in flying currency. I did my BFR this afternoon in a Citabria. I really should have waited a few more weeks - my wrist was killing me at the end of an hour. It was okay if I kept it trimmed, but power changes were difficult, since I needed my left hand for the throttle, the trim, and to help with the stick, all at once. But I made it.

Now I can actually legally fly the Tripacer again as soon as it's back together.

Tags: christmas, cooking, flying
Current Mood: accomplished

First: I'm making a batch of boudin and a batch of chicken and apple sausage tonight. If they turn out well, I'll post recipes for them this weekend.

Second: In yet-another of my moves to organize my life, I've tackled my email.

( Moving to Gmail, cut because it's a bit long )

So far, I'm happy. We'll see how it goes.

The best part? Reconnecting with all the people who I haven't sent email to in years.

Tags: cooking, geeky, gmail
Current Mood: accomplished

The starting point: Prepared foods from the supermarket taste better then they did 5 or 10 years ago. This is probably due to some new chemical compound that we'll find out 5 years from now causes cancer in lab rats, but that's a rant for another day.

For example, I remember Swanson's pot pies. Compared to the Marie Callender's pot pies you can get today, there's no comparison.

Next point: There are two types of cooking. There's the "dump a can of this and a can of that and some rice with some chicken breasts" cooking. The type of people who do this don't seem to be the people who really enjoy cooking - they do it for other reasons. They feel they "should", they think it's healthier, whatever, but they don't do it because they love to cook. Then there's the "everything from scratch" cooking, with fresh vegetables, fresh herbs, and the like.

I suspect that at this point, the taste and value of prepared foods is so close to the "combine nearly-prepared foods" type of cooking that many people who don't cook for the fun of it will just stop bothering. Why bother baking chicken breasts in cream of mushroom soup when you can get better tasting food from Lean Cuisine (and I'm pleased to note, more and more manufacturers are cutting down on the incredibly high sodium levels in their products, but that's another rant for another day)?

This would seem to divide the world into people who don't cook at all, and people who cook almost entirely from scratch. That would seem to raise pretty high barriers-to-entry - if you had to transition from microwaving a frozen dinner to choosing good ingredients and cooking them all from scratch, a lot of people would give up. And if less and less people cook, those ingredients will get harder and harder to find, raising the barriers more...

Is cooking as a hobby going to someday go away entirely, or at least become the purview only of the rich?

Tags: cooking
Current Mood: contemplative

The pork didn't turn out as well as I thought it did. My earlier entry left out an ingredient - it also got a bottle of BBQ sauce. And the sauce came out pretty bad. It tasted like it had been simmered 10 hours - it was over caramelized, and generally icky. The meat was still good, though, so next time I'm going to use more onions, more garlic, some hot peppers, and some vegetable stock instead of the BBQ sauce. Then I'll make a separate sauce for it.

Next cooking project, though, is pesto. I have enough fresh basil to do a batch - I just need to toast some nuts.

I had to buy a new crockpot yesterday - my old one got put too close to the stove in the old place, and I discovered I'd burnt through the cord insulation. I tried cutting the cord and putting a replacement plug on it, but the biggest one I could find was a 10amp, and I'm pretty sure the crockpot pulls more then that. I got an oval West Bend, with a programmable timer. We'll see how it does.

Tags: cooking, recipes
Current Mood: calm

--------------------- Kernel Begin ------------------------

1 Time(s): device lo entered promiscuous mode

Huh, huh, huh. It said "promiscuous mode".

I really do love my patio. I've been spending hours out there, just sitting and reading. The mosquitos are starting to get bad, but I might try to find a citronella candle to keep them away. I never expected the patio to be one of my favorite places....

I made pulled pork last night in the crockpot. I threw a pork roast, half a finely chopped onion, and lots of garlic in the crockpot, and turned it on before bed. I woke up this morning to a house that smells of fresh BBQ. It's great - I didn't touch it with a knife - it just all fell apart with a fork. It'll be lunch.

Tags: cooking, geeky, townhouse
Current Mood: content

I love my new convection oven.

It really does work just as well as all the books said it would - everything comes out perfectly even, and perfectly browned. Two nights ago there were chocolate-chip cookies, and last night there were homemade pop-tarts. My co-workers love me.

Tonight, I'm thinking sugar cookies. It's so nice to have a countertop big enough to roll out dough on!

Tags: cooking, recipes
Current Mood: cheerful

I love my crockpot.

It's full of pork stock, pork bits, onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, and split peas. By the time I get home from work, it will be full of split pea with ham soup. Okay, it's not corned beef with cabbage, but it is green!

One of the things I'm looking forward to most is being able to have all my various appliances in places where I can get to them, not buried in the back corner of a cupboard somewhere.

Tags: cooking
Current Mood: awake

( the recipe )

Tags: cooking, recipes

Despite the wonderful weather here this weekend, I spent it home cooking.

I'm still making candy. Last week, I did a batch of creams, a batch of caramels, and a batch of jellies. Saturday, I dipped the jellies, and did another batch of caramels. Then I took a big box (heavy on the jellies) to my mother, who loved them. I'm getting closer to tempered chocolate - the last batch actually got properly tempered, but towards the end I got it a bit hot, so some of the last ones have a bit of streaking. It's much better then the early versions, though.

Sunday, I made tamales. I used this dough and filled them with this. I didn't want to bake them, so I steamed them traditionally.

Michael's parents were supposed to have gone home Sunday afternoon, but there was a blizzard that closed Newark, so they stayed until this morning. So, for dinner last night, I picked up some takeout rice and beans and took the tamales over there. They were quite a hit.

I was telling some of the women at work about this, and I may end up having to teach a tamale-making class at the office. I find this amusing, since I've done it once, and now I'm the expert?

Anyway, now I have a dozen leftover tamales in the fridge. I'm thinking that the next batch will have spinach in them instead of meat. I'll sautee it with a bunch of garlic, and maybe some chili powder and cumin. I'm afraid without the chili spices they'll be too bland.

Besides cooking, life's been going slowly. The Valentine's Day World Of Warcraft content was way too much fun. I'm not usually a fan of holiday content, but I really enjoyed the quests, and I have 2 new purple dresses and a black dress to show for it. I was sick a lot of last week, but I think a weekend of taking it easy helped a lot.

Tags: cooking, online gaming, recipes
Current Mood: full

Does anyone who reads this know how to temper chocolate? I've now gone through about 5 lbs, trying every set of directions I can find. My co-workers are perfectly willing to eat bloomed chocolate, but I'm getting frustrated.

Tags: cooking

....you calculate the density altitude of your apartment before making candy.

I bought myself a candy thermometer last year before Christmas. I've pretty much stuck with toffees and brittles, but when my mother asked what I wanted for my birthday, I had 2 requests: heat-resistant spatulas and a candy cookbook.

She bought me Candymaking. It's wonderful - creams, jellies, divinity, lollipops, carmels - everything you could want to make with a candy thermometer. My first cream fondant is cooling in the fridge now. I worked a tiny sample batch, and it was incredible (although it takes a lot of arm strength to get it beat well). When the full batch is ready, I'm going to dip them all in chocolate - I'm hoping 120 fillings will be enough to start getting the hang of it.

And if not, well, I'll feed 'em to my co-workers. Later this week: jellies. My mother loves them, and I promised her a batch next weekend.

This morning, I took Steve and did a few approaches in the Tripacer. It was terribly rough, with winds out of the south at 30 kts on the ground. I saw a groundspeed of 134 knots on one approach. For not having flown any approaches in 6 months, mine didn't look bad, although I should have been a bit better organized. Next week, we'll do some more...

Tags: cooking, flying, tripacer
Current Mood: accomplished

(x-posted to whatchacookin)

I cook a lot of eggplant parmesan. But every time I make it, we end up standing in the kitchen and eating half the fried eggplant before it goes into the baking dish.

Last night, I decided to just skip the last step. I peeled and sliced the eggplant (thick!), coated it in egg, tossed it in bread crumbs mixed with Italian seasoning, and fried it in olive oil. They got drained on a baking rack (no paper towels!). I topped about half of them with parmesan cheese and then put them all in the oven to stay warm while I fried the next pan full.

I served them with garlic marinara sauce, pesto, and more cheese. I mostly just spread a thin layer of pesto on mine, while my boyfriend preferred dipping them in the marinara sauce. They turned out better then I thought they would, and wouldn't be a bad finger food for a party.

Not exactly healthy, but...

Tags: cooking
Current Mood: bored

I didn't get around to cooking last night, so I cooked it tonight.

I squeezed it between paper towels overnight, then cubed it, and shallow-fried it in sesame oil with some garlic. Then I added a can of spicy vegetables and some chili powder. It came out as a reasonable bowl of chili, although next time I won't dry the tofu so much - it was a bit rubbery.

Thanks for all the advice. I plan to try all of them...

(also, my photochallenge post for the week is here)

Tags: cooking, photos
Current Mood: full

I have a package of firm tofu in my fridge that needs to be dinner tonight. I don't mind picking up other ingredients, but this is my first try at cooking tofu.

So, comment back with a link to your favorite tofu recipe. :)

Tags: cooking, recipes
Current Mood: bored

Finally, after way more hassle then I thought was possible, I finished the left brake rotor on the twin today. I replaced the brake pads while I was there, because, well, I just put on new rotors. I truly grok the adjustment settings now.

This afternoon, I'm at work, doing a different kind of debugging, even if it is supposed to be my day off.

This evening, I'm going to stop by the grocery store, then make Toffee Butter Crunch.

Tags: airplane maintenance, cooking, recipes, twin comanche
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Conky Tonkin' - Jimmy Buffett

...the time when I get time off from work without having to schedule every minute of it.

Went over to have dinner with driftingfocus last night. Wonderful dinner, great company. Although this idea that families actually talk about things instead of just pretending they never happened is just...wierd. :)

Anyway, it was a pleasant evening. Today, I slept until 10, and now I'm doing the last few batches of peanut brittle (I found a better recipe that isn't so finicky - it's here.), then I have some presents to wrap. Then I'm going to lug all the presents to my mother's so I don't have to worry about driving up there with the car for the rest of the holidays.

Tomorrow, some airplane maintenance in the morning, then in the afternoon I'm going to go help Steve check out in the Pawnees. I was joking when I said I'd prepare a lesson plan, but I probably will at least outline it today.

The scary part is that I really do think of this as "not very scheduled at all" time.

Tags: airplane maintenance, christmas, cooking
Current Mood: awake

The turducken was fantastic. The potatoes (I'll post a recipe tomorrow) were good. The green bean casserole was, well, green bean casserole. I forgot the onions in the spinach, so it was a flop.

I sent the leftovers home with people, so I only have about a pound of turducken left. I ended up with 8 people all together...

Tags: cooking

It's resting. For an hour. Then dinner.

Tags: cooking