A New Year’s Resolution

My latest project is to increase our fun quotient. You know, go out to a family movie, do a 1000-piece puzzle on the dining room table, go ice skating together and stop for hot cocoa on the way home, get a babysitter and have a date night, sleep late on the weekend and have a family snuggle, get a tickets to a show, write a letter to a friend.

Also, I’ve resolved to make food that is more fun. You know my usual fare; most of my tried and trues are on this website already. And they are great. But I’m tired of the same old same old vegetable and bean dishes. Yeah, they still taste good—but everything seems a bit flat. I’m in serious need of a shake-up. A little ham in my bean soup. A little bacon on top of my salad. A little CRAB on my plate! And what better way to eat crab than crab cakes! I know, I know, it seems obvious…  but FRYING IS FUN!

Read On »

My friend Virginia sent this recipe to me several months ago, and I’m just now getting around to making it! It’s a very easy, healthy and delicious dessert! I had some d’Anjou pears that were going from rock-hard to mushy, and this recipe worked great to use them up. Next time I make it, I’m going to try putting a little olive oil or almond oil in the batter, just to make it a little more tender, I think. Or maybe grind up some almonds to add? Anyway, it’s great just as is, and I hope you try it! Thanks, Virginia!!

Read On »

Mother’s Day Brunch

I’m not really sure if this is the right name for the delicious dish I ate for Mother’s Day brunch this morning, but I think that “Florentine” in egg dishes generally means it contains spinach. Dan and Meredith asked what I wanted, and I requested poached eggs on toast, with fresh eggs from my friend Mara’s chickens. But I was dreaming of a layer of creamy yummy spinach in between the buttered toast and the perfectly cooked (runny-yolked) poached egg. So I pulled out a recipe from Crescent Dragonwagon’s Passionate Vegetarian for country spinach that I’ve made before, and modified it to make my breakfast fantasy a reality. I didn’t have hollandaise sauce, but I didn’t need it, because of the runny yolk and the creamy spinach. YUM!! This recipe is really not that time-consuming, and it’s really healthy, too! It would make a great, speedy dinner!

Read On »

biking to girdwood

The first bike rides of the season always feel like a gift, especially after a long snowy winter!

On Sunday we drove to Indian and parked across from the Brown Bear Saloon, intending to bike the Bird to Gird trail. We found the trail was still piled with snow in the shady patches, though, so we ended up biking on the shoulder of the highway. On the tandem, Dan captained and Meredith stoked, (Check out the child’s stoker kit on the bike!) and I rode my own bike. There wasn’t too much traffic, but we did battle against a stiff headwind. Kudos to Dan for being able to draft off me even with Meredith’s irregular pedaling. (Her game is sporadic sprinting.) We enjoyed a picnic lunch in the Girdwood playground, then rocketed back to the car, propelled homeward by a well-deserved tailwind.

I remembered my camera, but when I pulled it out to take a photo of Dan and Meredith pedaling along Turnagain Arm, I realized that my battery was dead.  ARGH! So I made them get back on the bike when we got home and ride up and down our road so I could get a few shots—if not the scenery, at least the bike riders! 

Read On »

spring blossoms

Even though my yard is still deep in snow, the south- and west-facing garden beds along my house are sprouting with all kinds of early perennials! My favorite early plants are the little yellow primroses, Primula elatior. I bought a few of these lovely little plants many years ago from my friend Lorri at In the Garden Nursery, and since then, they have grown and reseeded in a delightful (but not invasive) manner. I love them with the little blue hyacinthoides bulbs. They are such a happy and bright harbinger of spring—even with snow all around, and the nights still getting down to freezing! They are tough little plants, which I really appreciate!

Lorri’s website says that she will probably be opening on May 19th…  In the Garden is located at 7307 O’Brien Street, West of Lake Otis, off 72nd Street. Maybe I’ll see you there!

Read On »

snowy, sunny spring!

My friend Nancy asked me to ski with her across Eklutna Lake up to the glacier last week. What a great adventure! It was a beautiful sunshiney day, with absolutely no wind! The skiing was really fast on the huge frozen lake, and then when we got to the river valley, we had some interesting bushwhacking through tangled saplings and branches to avoid the open water. We only had to splash across one stream.

On the way back down, we found a rutted snowmachine trail to follow. When Nancy asked whether I’d prefer “roots or ruts?” I quickly chose ruts. Nancy, light, quick, agile and strong, makes much better progress through the deep, soft snow, slipping neatly around and between trees, bushes and shrubs. I feel more like a large mama moose wallowing through the deep snow, with skis to hamper my progress by getting caught under loops of branches and on the wrong side of small trees.

With the ice melting and the snow softening, I think this might have been the last possible day of the season to make this ski trip. I’m so glad we caught it! Thanks, Nancy!!!

Read On »

the end of the produce box business

Three years ago, with my farmer friend Arthur, I started up a year-round local produce box business—otherwise known as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Our aim was to fill the local demand for boxes of produce, but to use as many Alaskan vegetables as possible. We were competing with a company who flew their boxes up from Washington, and their produce came from all over the world.

Our business was a success in some ways, but a struggle in others. We had wonderful, supportive customers, and it was great to work with Arthur. My husband Dan pitched in, and we had a great crew of packing and delivery guys. But the challenges of getting produce from Outside when our supply of local Alaskan vegetables dwindled were often maddening—not to mention expensive.  And there were so many variables beyond our control.

If you want to read a more complete explanation of why we decided to call it quits at the end of the summer, you can visit our Glacier Valley Farm CSA website. Suffice it to say that although we were sad to have to stop the service, it has also been quite a relief to all of us. Arthur’s Glacier Valley Farm is thriving, and he is selling local produce out of a renovated barn next to the highway to Palmer. Dan and I are back to just owning one business, Rise & Shine Bakery, and we are happy that our lives are simpler now. We have more time for ourselves, and to spend with our daughter Meredith. And I have time to try new recipes and write a post now and then!

As the end of the summer approached, I knew that I wouldn’t be getting my usual two boxes of produce each week from our CSA business. I had to get busy stocking up for the winter! I prepped, blanched and froze gigantic amounts of broccoli and collards, and put up a fair amount of peas and cauliflower, too. Then, after I had brought home six more gigantic heads of cauliflower from the farmers market, I realized that I was starting to run out of freezer space. And I had the perfect recipe to make with my cauliflower: a macaroni & cheese recipe by Mark Bittman that used pureed cauliflower instead of the usual béchamel-based cheese sauce to bind everything together.  I didn’t have the recommended Gruyere cheese (just cheddar), and as usual, I changed up the recipe here and there to make it a bit healthier.

I launched into the project with gusto—I think I ended up making a sextuple batch (I did have six giant cauliflowers, after all), which filled up every baking dish and bread pan in the house. I put them all in the ‘fridge overnight. At the time of making the mac & cheese, I had already bought way too many other vegetables at the farmers market, and I was trying to get them all cooked and eaten. I didn’t have room in my menu plan to even try the cauliflower mac & cheese. So into the freezer they all went. Tasting them would have to wait for another day, after the farmers market was closed.

You might have already read my precepts for cooking for and eating out of your freezer: NEVER freeze anything you don’t love. You won’t be tempted to thaw it out and eat it later, and it will just languish in your freezer, taking up space and making you feel guilty every time you see the label. Better to feed it to your neighbors, or your dog, than put it in the deep freeze. So I admit to feeling a little trepidation when I froze all that mac & cheese, using a recipe I wasn’t familiar with, and then not even tasting it first. But after all, I had all that cauliflower! And how could I go wrong with mac & cheese? Still, I was nervous to try it.

For the last several weeks, we have been living out of the freezer, slowly making our way through the frozen bounty. And I have good news: the macaroni & cheese tastes great! What a relief. It’s lovely, rich and creamy, but healthy and full of vegetables at the same time. It’s great comfort food!

Read On »

The Carrot Challenge

On the last day of September, I got a message from my friend Amy Pettit at the Alaska Division of Agriculture, advertising their new Farm to School program. The Division wanted to raise awareness of their new program by offering lots of neat prizes for schools to participate. I forwarded the message to my first-grade daughter’s teacher at Rabbit Creek Elementary School, Mrs. Duprow, and told her that I would love to help her out with a project, if she wanted to plan something.

Mrs. Duprow jumped right on it, emailing the Division with her idea to do a taste-testing of our local Alaskan carrots vs. carrots from the Lower 48. She asked if a farmer could come and talk to her class, since they are learning about soils, and maybe they could include the whole school by bringing carrots to the cafeteria.  Before I knew it, the project had grown to a carrot taste-testing for the whole school!

On National Food Day (October 24), Ben VanderWeele delivered a huge bale of his farm’s Alaskan carrots to the school. Here’s a great YouTube video about how the carrots were harvested!

Johanna Herron from the Farm to School program came from Fairbanks with a method for counting votes, along with prizes for the students; Diane Peck came from the Alaska Obesity Prevention and Control Program with the rival carrots (the ones grown Outside) and little plastic shot glasses to hold the carrot samples; Alaskan food promoter Chef Clayton Jones came with a big hotel pan of delicious caramelized carrots for Mrs. Duprow’s class to eat while he talked about using local food in his restaurants; and I came as general dogsbody: carrot peeler, provider of kitchen equipment, and guide to show people where the cafeteria was.

What a fun event! It was a blind taste test, with orange cups for the Alaskan carrots, and clear cups for the Lower 48 carrots. Reporters showed up from the newspaper and television news, so luckily, the kids really COULD taste the difference between the Alaskan carrots and the Lower 48 carrots. The Alaskan carrots won by more than a two-to-one margin! Our carrots really ARE sweeter and juicier!

Click on the links for the Anchorage Daily News photo gallery and the KTUU Channel 2 News piece on the project. Thanks, Eric Hill and Rhonda McBride, for such great coverage of the event! The funny thing was, of all the people who put this project together, my picture ended up on the front page of the newspaper—and I hadn’t done much of anything! I want to take this opportunity to thank the folks who really DID make it happen: Christine Duprow, Johanna Herron, Diane Peck, Amy Pettit, Ben VanderWeele, Clayton Jones, and the staff at Rabbit Creek.

Clayton, Johanna, Diane and I peeled a LOT of carrots—and at the end of the day, there were about eleven pounds of extra peeled Alaskan carrots. I brought them home, knowing just what I would make! You might already have tried my carrot dip with sunflower seeds—I put that recipe on the blog in August 2009. But since then, I have come up with an even more delicious way to make it. Instead of just boiling the sliced carrots, then pureeing them with the rest of the ingredients, I roast the peeled carrots, halved lengthwise, with a little olive oil and salt. When they are roasted, the carrots make an incredibly rich and delicious puree, and the dip is creamy and fantastic with just the little bit of oil the carrots were roasted in. If you’ve tried it and liked it the other way, try it this way. And if you haven’t yet tried it, buy yourself a couple of big bags of ALASKAN carrots and go for it!

Read On »

St. Patrick’s Day Soup

I get to go in and volunteer in Meredith’s kindergarten class on Thursday mornings. Last Thursday was, of course, St. Patrick’s Day. Meredith wore as much green as she could—lime-green t-shirt and leggings, and a leaf-green polar fleece sweater. She looked like a pea pod. Her winter jacket is also green, and her watch has green alligators on it. I figured she’d be just about the greenest kid in her class—and wondered how many other kids would remember to wear green. So I was completely unprepared for the sight that met my eyes when I arrived at her class to help. Just about everyone was wearing some green, but not just green regular clothes: there were sparkly shamrock necklaces, a huge striped green hat that looked like something the Cat in the Hat might wear, sequined hats and faux red-haired braids, shamrocks painted on faces, and shiny green dresses. Luckily I, too, was heavily be-greened—my green polar fleece sweater, green earrings and green snakeskin clogs assured me that I wouldn’t get pinched.

When I got home, I was so inspired by all that green that I figured it was a good day to make broccoli soup. I was influenced by the recent (March & April 2011) issue of Cook’s Illustrated, which had a recipe for a broccoli-cheese soup, but I wanted to make it without the cheese.  Here’s what I came up with!

Read On »

the advent calendar

When I was a kid, every November my grandma would send my brother and I each a cardboard advent calendar. We LOVED those calendars—every morning bouncing out of bed to search for the correct number, and then prying open the little cardboard door to find a picture of a sugarplum, or a tiny angel, or an elf, or a reindeer. What IS it about those advent calendars that is so enticing? Aren’t they so much fun?

It’s funny, because I always got the impression that advent calendars were to help us kids understand how many more days until Christmas. Now that I’m a grownup, and am responsible not only for holiday traditions and festivities, but also big holiday bread bakery orders, I don’t exactly yearn for Christmas to hurry up and be here. The twenty-fifth seems to race up on me like a freight train. But even so, I love opening those little calendar doors—or, even better, watching Meredith open them.

Meredith is just like I was: the suspense, the thrill of the chase… and then the joy of opening the door and finding that tiny picture. My friend Georgie and her two boys, Henry and Calvin, sent Meredith an awesome little advent calendar Christmas card. Yesterday’s door was a tiny donkey, and today’s miniature was a row of stockings, definitely hung by the chimney with care.

But that’s not Meredith’s only advent calendar—is she a lucky girl, or what? Her other calendar came from her grandma a few years ago, and is a lot more elaborate. It’s made out of fabric, and has twenty-five little pockets with numbers on them, and each pocket gets filled with a tiny treat, so that each day she can take down a pocket, get the goodie inside, and see what the picture is behind the pocket. To her credit, she actually seems almost as excited by what the picture is behind the pocket than by the treat inside. Yesterday was a gingerbread house; today was an ornament.

You can guess which jolly soul gets to fill those twenty-five tiny pockets. Yes… that would be me. Luckily I actually remembered the thing this year—last year was a bust, but I had a regular cardboard advent calendar for Meredith and I to celebrate each day, so we were fine. But this big calendar with the treats: the challenge is that the pockets are pretty small, and they are flat. You know, rather than being like a little grocery bag with pleats, they are like a teensy felt Ziploc with a string handle. So it’s actually kind of hard to find things that are tiny enough to fit, and then to get them all hung up on their buttons. So I brought one of the pockets with me when I went to Summit Spice & Tea Co. and Over the Rainbow Toys, to make sure the little things would fit inside. I didn’t find twenty-five things, but managed to scrounge up enough Christmasy stickers when I got home to fill the remaining pockets. Phew. It felt like a huge victory to get it all filled and set up for her on December 1st. I only dropped it once getting it hung up—and had to re-hang all the little pockets on their tiny buttons. But I remained jolly!

In the spirit of the holidays, I was testing this green bean recipe to see whether I might want to serve it for our Christmas Eve dinner. It is SO GOOD—especially if you use the fresh green beans from Costco. I don’t think I’ll use this recipe for Christmas Eve, though, because the beans are so amazingly good right when they come out of the oven—crispy and hot and perfect, and I don’t want to be messing around with things right at the last minute. But for a regular dinner anytime? Try them—you will LOVE them!

Read On »