As we hibernated indoors yesterday, away from the stifling humidity, most of our energies wound up in the kitchen. I had been wanting to make Peter Reinhart’s recipe for Casatiello, and Italian Brioche, studded with bits of spicy salami and gouda cheese. What I love about his book is the complete thoroughness of instruction; he describes the process of how the dough will evolve, and what to expect. This dough has a high butter content, and after the butter has been added, the dough is very sticky, and altogether messy, resembling cookie dough. His instructions tell you to work the dough for 12 minutes, for in that amount of time the butter will distribute evenly and your sticky mass of dough evolves into a beautifully smooth, tacky ball that cleanly rotates around the mixer bowl. It was definitely one of those angels-singing marvel moments as I watched it happen. I baked it in a square springform pan to make one loaf; you can bake it in bags and in smaller sizes more typical of Brioche, too. It’s delicious, and made me wonder about other cheeses and even adding snippets of fresh herbs, such as the French tarragon that is always looking for something to creep into…..

In-between my dough mixing and shaping, James took over the kitchen and used the mixer’s food grinder attachment to make an amazing tomato sauce. The food grinder is great, because you get all of the pulp and meat and juices of the tomato, while efficiently discarding the seeds and skin. We have almost all heirloom tomato plants, and the flavors of these tomatoes are out of this world. Describing a slice of Carbon uses similar language as describing wine… smokey, bold, strong finish. So when you mix all these robust, intense flavors together, and cook them down all afternoon, you have a sauce that literally sings to you. He also incorporated caramelized onions and banana peppers, plus some sauteed chicken tenders. As James put it: summer in a bowl. It was excellent.

So where’s dessert? Well, this is a good example of how mistakes happen – even to those of us who’ve been cooking and baking for over 30 years. We had leftover egg yolks, because earlier this week, James had made zucchini bread, and one of the most awesome ingredients he uses is candied nuts. He’d done both pecans and walnuts, and the candying process uses a bunch of egg whites. So, what to make with egg yolks? Well, certainly a custard comes to mind – and with the heat, why not ice cream? Sounded good to me. Some things you take for granted, some things you don’t think about, and sometimes, even when you’re standing right there at the stove, stirring your mixture of cream and sugar and eggs and bits of natural vanilla bean, you take your eyes off what you’re doing to talk to your spouse, and the next thing you know, you have bits of cooked egg separating rapidly from your liquid. Gah. I tried plunging it into a water bath, stirring madly, but there are chemical processes that just don’t reverse themselves. I pitched a fit, pissed-off with myself for forgetting how quickly chemistry can happen, and then had to decide what to do.

I decided to give it a try, anyway, because the flavor was amazing, and not eggy, but the big question was texture. I chilled the custard, then put it in my Krups machine that I’ve had for 20 years. And waited.
It never froze. I think it was the fact my custard was too warm, still. So what to do? This is when experience is a good thing, because it makes you more resourceful. Rather than focusing on the failure of ice cream, I focused on what was wrong with my dish, and what could I turn it into? I had it: Milkshakes. I strained the custard through a sieve, removing the bits of hardened egg proteins. Then I added frozen strawberries to the blender until it was completely full. I figured that if any of the egg had made it through the sieve, the texture would be masked by the presence of strawberries (and keep in mind, the mixture never scorched, and was utterly, vanilla-ey delicious, despite the overcooking.)

The result was stupendous. My husband declared it to be one of the top 5 milkshakes of his life.

What was leftover was poured into a dixie cup, popped in the freezer with a fork in it to make a makeshift ice cream bar. The texture on that might be a bit grainy, but at least we know it’ll taste good!

Now it’s Sunday, and I think I’d like to go out for brunch.

I love broccoli. A few years ago, the Wo planted broccoli Rabe and we snarfed it up. This year, he planted a Rapini variety called “Rapa Senza Testa”. Wellza, Weza Liked itz a Lotza!

It helps to like greens, and broccoli and spinach, if you’re going to cook with Rabe or Rapini.

Here are the cleaned leaves from the plant:

I picked a variety of leaves – some bigger and older, some were newer and greener. With the older leaves, I tore the leafy part into goodly-sized chunks, and avoided the stem, especially at the base. (That part can get tough.) I left more of the stem on with the younger shoots. Two plants yielded about 5 cups or so of the green stuff – and while that sounds like a lot, you will quickly see how it disappears when cooked!

I started with a big ol’ Vidalia onion, and sauteed it in olive oil until it was semi-soft. Then I added some minced garlic. (So as to not burn the garlic, since it takes a lot less time to cook.)

Once everything’s soft and cooked, here comes the mound of Rapini:

Which quickly becomes this:

Meanwhile, a quick trip to Fritz’s yielded the protein in the dish (Sweet Italian Sausage Links):

Now, you can use a spicy sausage, and it doesn’t have to be in link form – you can cook it up with the onions, just drain off the fat. I’ve made similar dishes with spicy meat and it’s equally delicious. These links are pre-cooked, so I didn’t have to worry about cooking time. Just sliced them up into delicious rounds, and added them to the mixture.

I added freshly-ground pepper, and about a cup of water with a couple chicken bouillon cubes half-dissolved, and let it simmer. This is a brothy pasta topping, and since the bouillon already had plenty of salt, I didn’t add anything else. Since you’ve got a stronger component with the greens, balanced with the sweeter meat (or robustly complemented, if using a spicy version), you really don’t need a lot of herbs or other seasonings – of course if you want to throw in some basil, or something else, experiment away!

Spoon it over a nice curved-shape pasta – these were called “gnocchi” even though they were actually just a little fancier shell-shape. Trumpets, corkscrews, rigatoni – you want shape and the ability to grab a little extra juice. My photo got a little blurry, but you get the idea. Top it with some fancy Parmesan, or powdery, depending on what you did or did not remember to get at CostCo, pour yourself a nice cheerful white wine to keep it light, and savor the flavors!

In other gifts from the garden, here’s a shot of the stir fry I made the next night, with four days’ worth of snow pea harvesting:

Despite the less-than-bumper crop of tomatoes this year, and despite the fact it wasn’t blazing hot, we sure got a lot of jalapenos harvested. James made pepper jelly, and then we didn’t pick for a while – so the next harvest was filled with large, thick-walled jalapenos, and I decided to make them into jalapeno poppers, one of my favorite appetizers ever.

Man, that was an undertaking. Probably because I made over 100 of them, and I spread the steps out over a few days.

First, I thought I didn’t need gloves, because I was only coring them out. WRONG-O. I cored them and then stuffed them with cream cheese, and then put them back in the fridge. The next day, I followed a recipe that had me dunk them in milk, then in flour, then back in milk, then in bread crumbs, and I was supposed to do each type of dredging a couple of times. Perhaps if one were making, say, 12, that wouldn’t seem like a giant pain in the ass. I did get them all coated, and then I layered them on a cookie sheet, with wax paper dividers, and froze them. Eventually they got bagged in food saver bags of 12, and I must say, they’re really good. Worth all the effort. Here’s a pic of them all ready to be bagged up:

The other appetizer you can make (courtesy of my pal Bekah) is cut a slit & remove the seeds, or cut them in half (still remove the seeds), stuff with cream cheese, and wrap with bacon. I used about a third of a bacon slice per jalapeno, and the second time I made them, I didn’t even mess with toothpicks. Place them on a cookie sheet (I put down tin foil, since I prefer lazy-easy clean-up), bake in a 375′ oven until the bacon is crisp, and yuuuummmmeh time awaits. I mean, bacon and cream cheese make everything better in general, why not combine them? And you’re still getting some vegetable… lol.

Last, but not least, a really awesome addition to a crudite platter is to halve jalapenos, and stuff them with crunchy peanut butter (or you could use cream cheese) – a fantastic upgrade to celery. And there’s always the fun Russian Roulette of if you’re going to get that jalapeno that’s blazing hot! But the peanut butter helps minimize the burn fairly quickly, and most everyone I know loves ‘em. So, if you’re still harvesting peppers, these are some good ways to use them now, and save some for later, when it’s actually cold outside and you want a little summer heat flavor.

Yes, it’s possible. And, actually, delicious!

We’re in high harvesting mode with the garden, and while we can always freeze or can the tomatoes, coming up with a new way to eat zucchini or yellow squash can get a bit challenging. A few weeks ago, I remembered one of my favorite breakfast joints in Minneapolis, and how they specialized in egg scrambles loaded with non-traditional breakfast things – namely, vegetables. So I gave it a whirl, and darned if it isn’t just as tasty as I remembered it to be – and now I’ve created my own version, with summer squash!

I’ll admit up front, measurements and precision aren’t my thing when making dishes like this, especially because I think you can be flexible and include what you want. This isn’t a chemistry-based dish, where you need the right amount of leavening agent or a proper ratio with your flour. Experiment yourself! And you can get your veggies in before noon….

Very Veggie Scramble

1 onion, diced

1T vegetable oil

About 3 cups sliced vegetables (I used one small yellow squash and one small zucchini, a few jalapenos and a bag of frozen broccoli. Fresh broccoli is even better. Cauliflower would be delicious, too. Mushrooms. Peppers. You get my drift!)

1 fresh tomato, diced

4-5 eggs, beaten

3/4 cup cheese

salt, pepper to taste

Saute the onion until it’s softened, then add your veggies to the skillet. You want to cook the veggies to a stir-fry consistency, so there’s still some structure and bite in them, not mushy. Right as the veggies are nearing that stage, pour your beaten eggs over the whole thing, and gently stir and turn in the pan, cooking the eggs. Once the eggs are done, I added the tomato and then the cheese. I basically wanted the tomato to get to the same temperature as the dish, but without any further cooking, since it was the softest veggie in the mix. Season to taste – and devour! It reheats well in the microwave, so save your leftovers. You could extend this even further (and add a starch) if you folded in prepared hash browns right before the cheese-melting stage.

If your tomato crop is running over, hubs has a great bruschetta recipe on his tomato blog.  It’s a wonderfully tasty summer appetizer – we made this into dinner one night, it was so good. We used fresh mozzarella, which is definitely more traditional, but if you like goat cheese, I can’t recommend going that route enough. The tangy goat cheese definitely takes it to a whole new level!

…and I am very grateful to the person who invented air conditioning! Gah! We’re under an extreme heat warning now through Wednesday, as our mid-to-upper 90′s are combining with our excessive humidity and making it feel like, I don’t know, EXPLOSIVE, in both Celsius and Farenheit.

The heat also makes tempers a little shorter, I think. I just fired off an email to some feller over in Roeland Park KS who has used some service that keeps autodialing me with a recorded message pushing his city council campaign. First of all? I am at work and it’s not legal to telemarket or call people at their place of business. Two? I’m in freakin’ MISSOURI, so I can’t even vote for you. STOP IT.

Got through Father’s Day… we watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Saturday night, and that made me teary, as did numerous other things all weekend long. Heightened sensitivities, to be expected, I guess. I’m irritated with social media turning into one giant playground, with people friending and unfriending and blocking and behaving like it’s high school. Oddly enough, they end up being the ones looking foolish, so there’s hope the universe isn’t devolving as quickly as it feels, sometimes. I’m irritated that my insurance company kicked back a bill for a mammogram because it had the layer of diagnostics attached to it. I see. Yes, Yes, I should have to pay out-of-pocket for more expensive x-rays and a sonogram, since we were checking a lump – if everything’s a-ok, then it’s covered. If you THINK you might have cancer, we don’t want to cover that, we’ll just pay for tests when you’re healthy. Logic. The insurance industry Does Not Have It. Actually, after a call to them this morning, and being put on hold a few times, resulted in a ‘re-evaluation’ and the conclusion that it was processed incorrectly. Ya think?

What’s to be cheerful about? Well, vacation is approaching, and the new pool is up, full, and not leaking. Thank heavens. And I’ll be turning the page on the ol’ Calendar of Life in a couple weeks – I do still enjoy the b’day celebrations. All the plants are bursting along in the garden – hubs started a gardening blog, you’ll have to check it out: http://kctomatotimes.wordpress.com/ The man knows a lot about gardening, that’s for sure!

We have an abundance of basil, so I made pesto yesterday, and then contemplated the abundance of Thai basil that we have. It all got whacked, so it will continue to thrive and grow and not put effort into creating seed, so everything got a healthy trim. There is one basil variety that has a strong licorice taste to it, so I got creative and boiled the leaves and stems with about three cups of sugar and three cups of water. Let it cool, strained it into a mason jar, and popped it in the fridge. Made a cocktail combining about 3 parts Basil Syrup to 2 parts Gin, and a squeeze of lime. Shake on ice, strain into a martini glass. It was sweet, but with enough tang and flavor to not be syrupy. I’m thinking about trying it in some pineapple juice next!

I need to decide what knitting project is going along to Mexico with me, and what the pattern should be. I want to do something lacey, maybe with some of the Handmaiden Sea Silk I have in my stash, and I want a pattern that’s visually entertaining but not mentally taxing, but not feather-and-fan, either. Hrmph. Suggestions?

Alrighty, that’s the report for today. Hope you’re staying cool, wherever you are, and your positives are greater than your irks!

Well, I am heading out tomorrow to St. Louis, to attend The Loopy Ewe’s Spring Fling. Knitters (and spinners!) will be flying in from all over to attend, including three amazing teachers – Wendy, Cookie & Anne – and then the dyemaster herself, Claudia, of Wollmeise.   I’m also excited to finally meet Sheri herself!

But the excitement doesn’t stop – there are going to be sooo many people there to meet, greet, hang out with, knit with, laugh with, all of it. I’ve made so many ‘internet friends’ between Ravelry and Plurk, I know it’s going to be a bit of an overload to match everyone’s little avatar and personality up with their real-life selves. Plus you have the thin sheen of anxiety that goes along with travel and big groups – did I pack everything? How’m I going to carry all this stuff? What if everyone hates me and I spend the weekend in my car, weeping? You know. The basics.  There is also the chance I’ll be breaking bad news to my husband, because George Clooney is shooting a movie in St. Louis, and a group is already planning a sushi dinner on Friday night…at the location where Mr. Clooney has been spotted every Friday.  I’m just saying. George probably has had his fill of tall, willowy model-types, and he might just be looking for a rotund, short, brassy sort of  knitter to round out his experiences in life.

(Probably not.)

(But when my co-workers asked if I’d knit him socks, the answer was an unequivocal, bellowed, “HELLZ YEAH!”)

Meanwhile, work crazes on, and it’s whack-a-mole times.  Partly because of the vacation time I’m taking (all whopping 2.5 days of it, whoa nelly!) and partly because the demands are there – this business has a crazy broken roller-coaster-ness to it, where things are slow and plodding and then suddenly you’re hurtling along at 100 mph and hoping your cart doesn’t go off the rails when you crest the top.

I’ll also be going to Trader Joe’s while I’m in STL – I can only hope that they ask for our zip codes when we checkout, as I know the Kansas City contingency plans to hit their store close to our hotel pretty hard before we drive home on Sunday. Listen up, TJ! Kansas City wants/needs a store (more than one would be awesome!) and we want it NOOOOW! (I’m bringing a cooler. And shopping for co-workers -  Three Buck Chuck, of course.  Perfect for the aforementioned roller coaster!)

James will be selling more tomato and pepper plants this weekend – a couple varieties have sold out already, but he’s got loads of great plants left. Cherokee Purple seems to be the hot tomato this year (yes, Virginia, there is a cutting-edge even in the gardening world!) and he has oodles of those.  It will keep him busy & off the streets while I’m gone, I know that much. EMAIL  him at jworley1@ HOTMAIL [dot] com if you have questions or want to place an order! Yes, you have to type out his  email, but it’s faster than leaving a comment – my computer access will be very limited.

So I’m off – I’ll be Plurking from my Blackberry, certainly, and then I’ll report back next week with pictures & stories! See you then!

I’m thinking about these:

Want a table-full yourself? It could be yours! This is a huge year for gardening – I read that the interest in putting in a garden has jumped 19% this year. Growing your own food has come back into fashion. We started a couple months ago, as the garden porn catalogs began rolling in….. which brings me to our own plant sale!

Hubs started selling plants yesterday. He’ll be selling them again the weekends after Easter (April 18th and April 25th),  so take a look at the list & figure out what you want to grow – he’s put tons of time into researching the varieties (and of course, growing the little buggers), and he’s got one helluva lineup of tomatoes, peppers, basil & eggplant this year. Of the tomatoes, 21 of the 22 varieties are American-grown, certified organic; all of the seedlings have been grown 100% organically with his own homemade potting soil with fish emulsion fertilizer (way better for your plants and soil!)   I know the tomatoes, eggplant and peppers are ready to go to good homes, and he needs the room in his greenhouse! (Basil will be ready in two weeks. I can attest to the fantastic-ness of the stuff, especially if you like to cook Thai food!)

If you’d like to pre-build an order, or you have any questions, just shoot him an email at:  jworley1 (at!) hotmail (dot!) com – put “plants” in the subject line so he can rescue you from any spam filters. Plants are $1.50/each, or 4 for $5 – the exception are the eggplants, which are $2.50 each. (He’s got 4 Thai eggplant and one Italian variety.) If you want a “garden-full” of plants, he’s always willing to make a deal!

And if you need to come back to visit the plant list page, just look over there on the sidebar, I added a “pages” widget so you can shoot straight to the NuWo Nursery list.  When I read the tomato descriptions, I almost forget that it’s going to be 20 degrees tomorrow night. WTH?!

I’m already dreaming about that first BLT…. mmmm….

Yep, it’s bizzy ’round here. Big client meeting yesterday. Off to NYC tomorrow, back home on Thursday, then keep dog-paddling because there’s a big meeting/presentation next week to boot. woo-hoo! In the midst of all that, got to keep getting the ‘regular’ work done, and then handle the curve balls on top of it all. Because boy howdy, there was a curve ball, and I seriously wanted to remove heads from bodies with a croquet mallet. Yes, I was channeling my inner Red Queen, and all I can say is, good thing I read the emails at  home so I had time to explode and then calm the hell down by the time I could actually address it. GAH! Life is hard enough, when things are going well, it’s in everyone’s interests to make! things! work!

OMG Tripper is going to start marketing his weapons-grade gas to the government. That’ll help pay the dog food bills ’round here. He is seriously, seriously toxic with his farts. I keep a bottle of Febreze ‘Air Effects’ right by my chair, and it’s almost comical – he gets royally offended when I counter-attack with one puff of “Linens-n-Sky”. Sometimes he even gets up and moves. It’s the only weapon I have, and I have to use it!

Speaking of crazy dog stories – last Saturday night I met up with some of the LSG folks on Ravelry, which was great fun – and when James got home from his banquet duties (MWA banquet in Oregon, MO), I headed for bed & left him to take care of the dogs for the night. Good thing. Polly apparently dashed in the door, and he only caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye, and knew she had something in her mouth. Uh, yeah. “Something” turned out to be an enormous full-grown rabbit that was in dire straits. At least I have a husband who can calmly handle these things, humanely. I’d just shriek and run into doors.  Just a regular Mutual of Omaha around here, I tell ya…..

Speaking of wild kingdoms, the seed-planting is well underway, as the gardener of the house starts getting excited for planting and gardens and spring. Since he’d gotten me a Christmas present when we’d agreed not to exchange gifts, I decided Valentine’s Day would be my turn to surprise-treat. I took the rest of the money I’d left in my PayPal account from my Loopy Ewe DPN holders, and with just a smidge extra, I bought him a set of Texas Tomato Cages. After all, tomatoes are the “Love Apple”….and he grows them so extraordinarily well, with all kinds of fantastic varieties, knowing how much I love love love fresh tomatoes. Apparently these things are THE support system for growing tomatoes, so we’re just going to start investing in them and add to the pile as we go.

Let’s see… working furiously on some more knits, including a couple of fun projects for classes I’ll be teaching, and really, just trying to not let too much slip through the cracks.  It feels kind of crazy that tomorrow is already Ash Wednesday, that next week is -yikes- March! and pretty soon we’ll see Spring really settling in, bursting through the ground and in the trees, welcoming us to a new season and another chapter. Despite being agitated about dunderheads, and feeling like I’m burning the candle at both ends, I’m really excited about what’s on the horizon this year – both with work and my life outside of work. (For instance? The Wo and I are going to take a vacation! YES! Where? Dunno! But it’s going to happen, and that’s all there is to it. The pool will be there for later in the summer, yes, but staycation be damned!)  And yes, eventually I’ll be able to throw all the nice facts up about the zombie, proving once and for all, the dead truly can live comfortably in California.

As promised, here’s the photo of all the peppers I procured last Saturday.
(Grown by JWo, of course.) (I’m going to label the individual pepper varieties on Flickr.)

And here’s the scarf I started over the weekend – Gigi, with Tilli Thomas Disco Lights.

I did some garden harvesting yesterday; we’re on the backside of the bounty, with much smaller loads of produce. I did get a small bucket of tomatoes, though picking them has become what I like to call, “Tomato Surprise”.  Because we’re now in the stage where some tomatoes are rotten (but still on the vine), and some have been gnawed upon (and still on the vine) – so the firm grip I had several weeks ago has been replaced with a more gingerly touch.  When you can see the blemish, or rotting part, or bug hole, well, you know, and it influences how you pick it, if you pick it at all. But then you have the duplicitous tomatoes, the ones that look firm and ripe and wonderful, and as your hand closes around it, your nerve endings in your fingers immediately alert you to the fact it is NOT that way on the backside. That’s a Tomato Surprise. Bleah.

So after picking the good tomatoes, I moved on to the pepper bed. I got some absolutely gorgeous peppers – I’ll take pictures tomorrow – we have banana, jalapeno, bell (some have gone red), serrano, purple (stunning!) and habanero.  I pick most of the peppers with shears, snipping the stalk that tethers them to the plant. Peppers are curious, strong where you think they’d be weak, but it’s also easy to pull chunks of living plant away with the pepper. Snipping them is easiest, and doesn’t risk destroying the plant. For whatever reason, I also picked some of the habaneros with my hands (the stems are so tiny!) and a couple popped off at the stem cap, and my brain even thought, “Best be careful, getting that capsaicin on your hands” …and then, par for my life, promptly forgot.

It was warm yesterday, and I was sweating in the midday sun. I came in, took a shower, and proceeded to hang out, surfing on the computer. Wondering why I was SO CRANKY. Turns out, I used my capsaicin-laced fingers to wipe some sweat from my brow, rubbing just under my eyebrows and causing a very uncomfortable rash on my eyelids. Yep. Habanero juice. Lovely.  The red finally had faded by this morning, but the skin is still sensitive. I’m not even sure what we’re going to do with these habaneros, but I can attest to one thing – they’re spicy!

Keep enjoyin’ the weekend – I am!