One month!

My old, beloved "Elvis" the Subaru has headed north. As it's my second set of wheels, I can live without it for a month.

It is now 30 days and counting until we leave the state of California for the Pacific Northwest! Our current home is in escrow, our future home is getting some maintenance done before we move in, and one of my cars has already been shipped up there and is in our new barn.

As we're getting packed up by the moving company a couple of days before the actual move, there is not much to do right now except get business in order. Utilities need to be notified. Things need to either be cancelled or forwarded. All this while the clock ticks down.

These pieces will become the wood frame for our Oregon chicken run.

Yesterday I had an afternoon where I was able to do absolutely nothing, and it felt wonderful. No showings, inspections, or paperwork to wrangle. I took a nap, sat in the sun and read. No apologies. It's 86 degrees here right now, which feels horribly early to break out the sleeveless shirts, but soon enough we'll be in a colder clime where we can wait for summer to arrive at a more appropriate date.

Perhaps someday I'll miss the seven month summers....or not. I have had fun recently buying up some cute spring raincoats for our new and colder life up there, but I sure can't wear them here right now!

Say yes to flourless chocolate wine cake when stress eating is advised.

A leak and a party

If you look at the mid-right hand section of our weather station, it indicates over 13 inches of rain just since last October! That is close to our yearly average and it's only 4 months into the season.

This last week has been one for the books as far as rainfall goes. We've basically received our yearly allotment of rain for the entire rain season already -- and historically February through March are also usually quite rainy, so it looks to be a banner year for this part of California as far as the wet stuff is concerned.

Greening up nicely.

Of course this does not really get us out of our drought since it's so entrenched and has gone on for so long, but it does help on a short-term basis. It will be nice to see our spring wildflowers in moist-enough soil to thrive, and there is standing water everywhere right now and creeks running that we've never even seen before. So I expect everything to stay greener than usual if we keep getting regular installments like we've just had. Fingers crossed.

So last week we had a leak, caused by a loose vent on the roof, which put a little spot in our bedroom closet ceiling and led me into the attic with a flashlight, a bucket and a tarp. Big Ag is having shoulder issues and can't climb up there but I wanted to make sure all my clothes and shoes stayed dry during the deluge. Luckily the leak was easy to find and fix, so now everything just has to dry out -- and our clothes are safe. 

Since our geographic area tends to relocate to the damn surface of the sun in the summertime I have no doubt that the drywall will air out with no mold issues, so that's good. And we already removed all the wet insulation.

Winter Table.

Dig in.

So the middle of the storms and leak, I did the logical thing one does in the face of terrible weather and decided to have a big dinner party at our house (on a night when we only had showers expected instead of a downpour).  We called it "The Essentials" and asked all our friends to bring a bottle of either red or white that they adored, and always made sure to have on hand when they were having wine at home. I made ribs and sous vide turkey breast, so you could sample appropriate food with your wine, as well as roasted potatoes, a pot of beans, and garlic bread. It was sort of barbecue meets elegant, or whatever passes for elegant at this homestead. I thought the brown and white table decor came out rather well.

I am also learning to not be afraid to use shortcuts in some areas when entertaining, in order to make myself more accessible to guests and so I don't need to start drinking at 4 pm to take the edge off my stress. I try not to fix things that need a lot of babysitting, instead doing some store bought things (like the garlic bread) but giving the main courses my full attention. 

Need to call the sommerlier to choose a winner from this bunch.

But even Yoshi the Somm is undecided.

So a lot of wine was drank, massive amounts of food consumed (so glad I don't have self-conscious friends who merely graze on stuff, this group really digs in) and a homemade apple pie, brought by one of my guests, for dessert. A spontaneous after-party ensued at my neighbors' house and featured slot machines, cards, beer drinking, popcorn and karaoke. 

No one even discussed politics, despite the inauguration being held the day before and the marches taking place that same day. Which just goes to prove good wine really does make everything (seem) better.

As you can imagine, Sunday was enormously quiet due to small but significant hangovers for both Big Ag and myself. Oh well. We watched a shameful amount of television, ate what we pleased, and expected nothing productive to occur.  It's been too long since we spent a day doing nothing. And unless you are sick or hung over, doing nothing is harder than it looks. Chores sing the siren song of the Puritan Work Ethic, but sometimes you just need to resist for the sake of resisting.

Without making a resolution of it, I've sort of decided I want to entertain a lot more in 2017 and think the enjoyment of friends, good food and wine may be what it takes to have a great year. Between my garden, my home and those people I most enjoy being around, I'm thinking "Make The Homestead Great Again" will be a mandate we follow through on.

Of course we all know the homestead is already great. But you gotta have a good catch-phrase.

Reincarnation

A couple of nights ago I finally got around to making a recipe shared by another blogger online a couple of weeks ago. It was a rice, vegetable and salmon dish, and I was really excited about making it. The only problem was, I must have done something wrong because my end result was a very bland-tasting entree. 

To add some zest and pizzaz to it, I brought out a concoction guaranteed to make any chicken or fish dish sit up and smile: 1/2 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup plain yogurt, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper. I mixed it into the salmon and rice and voilá. Instant deliciousness.

The fact that I know this trick is owed to nothing more than living 55 years on the planet and picking up a few tricks in the kitchen. I also know a few tricks for the garden and around the house, and some in dealing with people.

But here's the deal: What if the Buddhists are right and we reincarnate over and over? Do all those tricks I've learned over 55 years of trial and error (emphasis on error) vanish into the ether when I'm born again and I have to learn it all over again....over and over?

Oh, you say, but it's the spiritual lessons that count, really. All the other stuff is inconsequential. Well, that's easy to say until you taste a bland salmon and rice dish, or have to deal with an idiot contractor, police officer, boss or doctor, or can't figure out how to fix a busted irrigation line in your pasture.

I'll tell you what. Being able to turn a bland meal into a stunning one, use a life hack to restore a kitchen sink, or deal with demagogues and difficult people are not small and inconsequential skills. They're what makes life better all the way around and are therefore important.

I hope I don't have to come back and re-learn all this stuff. I used to think the concept of reincarnation had so much merit -- it seemed so egalitarian --  but now that I've amassed a sizable body of life hacks and knowledge, I'm wont to give up my Life Skills Toolbox and start over again.

Perhaps Heaven is the place where we show up with all our learned knowledge and find we're the same age we were when we made all the mistakes that taught us those things -- but we know everything we do now. 

Now that would be another lifetime worth living again. To arrive with one's mental toolbag intact, stuffed with all of the good knowledge and none of the neuroses that generally goes along with it all. 

Now that's a lifetime I'd love to live for sure. Groundhog Day, Version 2.0.

Things Could Always Be Worse -- a Foodie Prepping Primer?

It seems like every time I start canning season, I also begin thinking of emergency preparedness. I'm not a Collapse of Western Civilization kind of gal, but I am most certainly a 7.0 Earthquake kind of gal, having lived through two of those suckers in my lifetime.

And so I reasonably ask myself at times like these if I'd be happy eating the stores I've canned and/or put up on my shelves. If the power was off for, say, two weeks or so due to a large quake, assuming we are well enough to have an appetite, the question then becomes 1) do we have enough food to survive, and 2) exactly how much fun would it be to eat what we've put up? 

Relishing (left) the apocalypse.

These are the only two questions that matter if you and your loved ones are in a disaster and are already safe, with a good source of water and shelter from the weather. It will come down to food. Doesn't it always? Whether it's a housewarming party or the End of The World As We Know It, that's what you will remember about the party when it's all said and done. So even at the conclusion of the future Earthquake Party, the question will be: What did we have to eat?

If you remember Jim Bakker, the preacher involved in some juicy evangelical sex scandal in the 1980s (with a wife who could not keep her mascara from fleeing the scene of her badly made-up eyes), he basically disappeared. Or so I thought. The other day I was channel surfing and found him, now hawking survival food supply kits on QVC. "It's our $99.99 Special 20-year Survivalist Package featuring MEXICAN food!" he extols. 

While I find him strangely amusing, there's one thing he and I agree on....just because the world ends, it doesn't mean Taco Tuesdays have to.

Anyway, I don't count what's in my chest freezer at all in my accounting of foodstuffs, since chances are it would be warm enough that within a few days anything we cannot consume immediately will spoil. This means for the first three days we'll be eating nothing but steak, ham and chicken. (Note to self: stock up on emergency, End Of The World-strength laxatives.) But ultimately, the safest and longest-lasting emergency source of food lies not in the freezer, but rather in the canning cupboard and the pantry selves.

I can make this delicious.

Rice, beans, quinoa,  various pastas and grains would probably become our staples, along with flour for making bread.  Beans would be especially important since lacking refrigeration, we'd also probably be lacking in animal protein after our chest freezer binge-feast (belch), except for fresh eggs. Since I'm mostly vegetarian, I would be OK here, and everyone else would have to be too. 

But the issue then becomes how to dress up all those beans and grains so that they are tasty, or at least interesting, since they'll probably be eaten two or even three times daily (perhaps with some canned salmon or tuna, which I've also put by). People in this situation always say something like well, things could always be worse, but really, I can't think of anything much worse than having to eat rice, beans and quinoa for two weeks straight. 

Of course having a good stock of wine, beer and other alcohol could help immensely, so that should also be at the top of any emergency preparedness food list in my opinion. Everything tastes better with expensive alcohol to wash it down.

But I think having a good stock of spices, jams/chutneys, relishes, and little gourmet items will ultimately make your family's life livable during times of crisis, as much as warm blankets and shelter do. You need to be able to dress up your staple ingredients with flavors, textures and surprises to keep those Lord of The Flies instincts at bay and keep civilization afloat. Sauces, sprinkles, marinades, aoli and other spreads (we have chickens and oil and therefore eggs and therefore aoli -- yum!). 

For me, I would plan on cooking everything in the solar oven (which even works on cloudy days, things just take longer to cook) or on the grill, and so that gives me lots of options for different tastes and textures as well.

Everyone should have one.

I do not plan on eating squirrel or gopher in stews, or insects, or nearby neighbors. That is not my kind of disaster. But vegetarian paella with canned mushrooms, peas and asparagus with some hard-boiled deviled eggs on the side, a fruit galette for dessert and some '10 Cabernet to accompany it all? I could live with that. 

I am sure there is a survivalist cookbook out there, but I like to see myself as a kind of a "San Andreas meets Ina Garten"-type heroine, creating lovely meals for my family spontaneously and cheerily, while the tremors rumble through, the stucco falls off in sheets and the National Guard personnel carriers pass by the road.

It's Bon Appetite at the end of the world, baby. And I feel fine.

Pretty Little Challah

All ready for tonight. A day late, sure, but my chances of getting my husband home by sundown on a Friday night are about the same as actually getting Elijah to come in the front door. 

It tastes just as good on a Saturday, anyway and a rest is just as pleasant on Sunday. I don't believe in being dogmatic about it. In this society, if you can rest every seven days or so, I don't think what day you rest particularly matters.

Hope you are all having a restful weekend.

The View from The Other Side

Another day at the office.

These last couple of days I've felt an immense sense of satisfaction with my life. My surgery is over and the hip/back problem I went into hospital to have fixed does, in fact, appear to be repaired. My scheduled tasting room shifts are done with and I am pretty much setting my own schedule at the garden at the winery, planting squash, herbs and tomatoes and enjoying the cool mornings down there where the California quail, jackrabbits and lizards are my company in the quiet of the early day.

(And the grapevines of course, which are budded out and growing happily. I have nothing if not a beautiful "office" to work in.)

And last weekend, for the first time in I don't know how long, I took a Sabbath day and rested. Well, what passes as rest for me, anyway. I hung a couple of loads of laundry out on the line in the sunshine, puttered in the garden, and observed some God time in study and conversation. But I enjoyed it all -- my pace was slow, the work was easy, and there was lots of down time in between what little work I did.

Plus the house was quiet. The television was not going on all day, the computer did not beckon, and we received no invitations which took us out of the house. 

I guess that's one good thing about recovering from surgery...folks assume you're down for the count and leave you off the guest list. 

My garden sent me this beautiful get well bouquet. Thanks Mother Nature!

And the result is peace and quiet. I think there's an emotional dividend that pays off big when we prioritize our life where we put peace first. For me, it's a sweet spot I can feel -- putting the things that give me peace at the top of the priority list and removing things that distract/stress/hyper-activate me. You can't do it forever, those bills need paying, those phone calls need to be made and decisions need to happen -- but maybe for just one day, sundown to sundown, we can leave those things be.

Why do I only do this when something takes me out of the game enough that I have to call a time out? Why did it take a surgery for me to unhook myself from the yoke of scheduled socializing and work and just sit still for awhile?

Today I was back to work, and when I went into the winery my favorite chef was there, experimenting and making fruit chutneys with our late harvest wine. Since the chef's garden I manage is not a customer-service oriented position where I need to be johnny-on-the-spot, I can now be in a position to spend a few moments in the kitchen or behind the bar talking to the coworkers I love to be around. Anyway, Chef let me sample the chutney and it was absolutely divine. So this afternoon I'm making a small batch here at the house, which I'll use as a sauce for some barbecued meat I'm grilling for dinner.   

Steak with grilled fruit chutney -- yum.

Cooking is a signpost for me, I have noticed; if it's happening, life is proceeding at a decent pace -- when it stops, I've become too busy. I think for many of us, we stop cooking when we lack the time and  motivation to create good food.  It's kind of like being in a rowboat in a survival situation...it's interesting to see what gets thrown overboard when we're just paddling to save ourselves. Hobbies, rest, household chores, or even family? Interesting to think about what we get rid of and what we keep "on board."

And so, with the craziness of traveling out of town for surgery behind me, healing in the works, and a job change in progress, I've decided this is a great time to do some rearranging; perhaps pulling some things back into the lifeboat that I left to dog-paddle in the water for awhile.  

Peace will come first, followed by work of course. But peace first.

It occurs to me that if you place peace and quiet last on your priority list, by the time you get to enjoy it you will probably be asleep. Work will always be there (in some form or another) but peace is fleeting and best captured through planning and foresight. 

So my advice is this: Take a look in your lifeboat and pull those things you threw into the water back into the boat with you while they're still floating beside you, whether that's time to converse with people you enjoy, cooking, prayer time, or even just hanging some wash in the sunshine. 

What good is a lifeboat if your life isn't even in it? 

The changing of the light

There is nothing better than the feeling of returning indoors after a productive day of working outside. This morning I managed to dig up two good-sized blueberry bushes from the pasture that have been struggling down there for three years. I dragged them topside into our backyard and re-planted them in pots, adding them to some nice acidic potting mix which I hope they will love. 

As soon as I pulled them out of the ground I saw what the problem was -- heavy, wet clay soil -- exactly the opposite of what they need. Poor blueberries. I'm amazed they did as well as they did, but they won't have to work so hard anymore. Now that I've learned you can grow blueberries in containers, I'm going to control their environment and give them the nice cushy life they deserve. I just hope they repay me with abundant fruit. They'd better.

And the irony of dragging something out of the pasture to put into a pot was not lost on me. It's ironic in the sense that you can own a couple of acres and still need to do some container gardening after all. It's not just for apartment balconies. Learning to grow things in containers is a skill I'm convinced all gardeners and homesteaders should have in their toolbox. 

I also dragged my citrus plants outside for some fresh air and sunshine, since the temperatures are going to be in the 70s all week. Everyone should be playing outdoors in that kind of weather, including lemons and limes.

Anyway, after a good day's work, at about 4 p.m. I came back inside to find the "changing of the light" happening; it's that time of day when everything takes on a golden hue and you feel yourself satisfied with a day's work done. It's a time for settling in as the light becomes warm and soft and you instinctively feel yourself winding down in preparation for night, like a dove into the nest at day's end.

It's far too often I fail to realize the perfection of these moments. If only I could grab them, every single day, and realize they are enough. There is nothing more to want. There is nothing more to crave, purchase, achieve or discuss. The moment is enough. Or should be.

Dinner consisted of an asparagus, mushroom and black olive frittata (thank you, hens) and some homemade biscuits, along with a very big, dark beer called a Velvet Merlin, produced locally. And then there were store-bought blueberries with some homemade creme anglaise topping them for dessert. Yum.

Days like this I realize I am blessed beyond all imagining, and that the blessing does not change -- only my perception of it does. 

100 year apple pie

In general, it's safe to say that I love all things vintage. Especially vintage cooking and dining ware --plates, pots, pans, napkins, etc.  But you can't help but notice that 100 years ago, everything in the kitchen and dining room was much much smaller. As were we.

People drank tea all day, for instance, but out of tiny, delicate tea cups. One good-sized coffee mug today can easily hold double an older one's volume of a hot beverage, because we live in a culture that's become super-sized. 

Today's large wine glasses are even worse (or better depending on how much you like large quantities of wine) Today's red wine glasses are actually capable of holding a full BOTTLE of wine in them, as opposed to more old-style glasses, which hold the standard 6-ounce glass' worth. Not hard to imagine why we have people becoming inebriated after having "just one glass" of wine these days. Look at the glass.

Plates are the same way...the older, usually the smaller. I have a friend who acquired some early 20th century charger ironwood serving platters and actually uses them as plates. And when you have dinner at his house, you notice nothing awry, because those platters (which your average Victorian cook used to serve the entire entree for four on) is now just about the right size for ONE hearty portion of dinner.

But if you are trying to keep your weight off, that late 1800/early 1900's cooking and dining ware is your best friend.

The other day I used up the last of our apple harvest in some nice pie filling, but did not want a standard, 21st Century deep-dish apple pie hanging around going bad. It's just too much for two people. Heck, it was too much at Thanksgiving for five people! 

So I used a couple of 1940s pie/cake tins and split the recipe in half. I cooked both crusts in the oven, then added my pie filling to each, cooked one and froze the other for some later time. We enjoyed the first pie over two or three days, but there was no pressure to eat it all up before it spoiled because there just wasn't that much of it. What a nice change.

It was so nice to have pie -- delicious, wonderful pie -- in manageable portions we did not have to feel guilty about. Because in addition to the circumference of the pie shell being much smaller, the older pie plate was also not as tall, and therefore held much less filling.  Call it a slim pie. 

As I've bought more vintage wares, I've found smaller plates also work well if you're interesting in serving smaller portions. And for side dishes, 75 year-old muffin, cupcake and popover tins serve lovely half-sized (to us) portions of the stuff you probably shouldn't be over-indulging in, without having to actually cut portions in half. Half for us was normal for those living 75 years ago.

I do wonder about the future of a culture that has spent their years of abundance turning healthy portions into gorging ones, though. It seems as though our 100 year ancestors understood a lot more about how much food we actually need to be healthy and survive than we do.

And so I look to the wares in the vintage kitchen more and more as I try and rein in how much food we consume. Very few of us had obese grandparents or great-grandparents, and perhaps this was the reason.

Best. Turkey. Ever.

So I think I mentioned in a posts several months ago that my blogging friend Stephen Andrew Jones ( http://stephenandrewblog.blogspot.com ) wrote a post that sold me on buying a sous vide system for cooking, due to his gorgeous, magazine-worthy pictures of his perfect Thanksgiving turkey. The other option was to show up at his house for the big day and just enjoy all his hard work, but since that's technically stalking (but is it still stalking if you bring really good wine?), instead I bought a sous vide system for myself. Stephen Andrew has several good posts on making a perfect Thanksgiving turkey on his blog, so if you've suffered through the curse of dry meat this year please check out his holidays posts from years past, as well as a couple of links I'll post below. It will change your life.

The sous vide uses vacuum sealed bags with the food inside, cooked at very precise temperatures, to cook meats and poultry to perfection. They cook at a lower temperature, for a longer time, making them safe to eat. I will never, for the record, knowingly eat a dry, briny, 165 degree bird again. 

Here at the homestead we've seen more than our fair share of dried up breast meat and under-done prime rib around the holidays and the stress of not knowing if we'd have another disaster every year was making restaurant reservations in town look extremely attractive.

Ollalieberry mimosas using my favorite sparkling Marsanne!

And so it's especially nice to be able to report that our home-cooked Thanksgiving turkey was, by far, the best any of us had ever had, whether at home or dining out. And for me, it was, by far, the easiest Thanksgiving prep I'd ever had. Thank you Stephen Andrew!

There were several factors working towards making this -- bar none -- the most delicious but also the easiest Thanksgiving ever.  The vacuum seal system I bought alongside the sous vide allowed me to vacuum seal anything, and so I used that opportunity to pre-make ALL the side dishes in advance and hold them in the fridge without fear of spoilage or flavor changes (including stuffing, which stayed moist and delicious despite not being cooked in the bird).  So all the side dishes were done by Wednesday.

Behold the stuffing cooker.

Thursday was Pie Day (we celebrated dinner on Friday, so Thursday was a prep day), using pumpkins I'd harvested a couple of months ago and Olallieberries harvested and fast-frozen in spring.  All I had to do was make two pie crusts and cook it all up, which wasn't hard.

Then our Friday Turkey Day arrived, and it was time to cut the raw bird up into pieces. I decided to only cook the breasts in the sous vide system and sear and then braise the legs in the oven, in a red wine reduction sauce (I got 99 problems, but lack of wine ain't one of them). I also pulled all the breast skin off (sous vide cooking means no crispy skin sadly, but there are alternatives for making this happen!). I slathered the peeled-off skin in bacon fat and a little salt  and popped it into the oven on a sheet of parchment to roast by itself. I roasted up nicely, but shrunk a lot, so next year I will be covering it with another baking sheet to hold it flat and help keep it's shape and size.

I then seasoned the two breasts and trussed them together to make a kind of "turchetta," popped it into a vacuum bag and dumped it into a stock pot with the sous vide cooker. Both the breasts and the legs were scheduled for exactly 2 1/2 hours of cooking. With about an hour left in the cook time, I took out all the side dishes out of the fridge and stuck them in the oven too. The stuffing I cooked outside in the solar oven to help keep it moist.

EXACTLY two and a half hours later, I had a perfect Thanksgiving dinner -- no stress whatsoever. What a cooking revolution. So nice to be able to tell people you're going to eat at 2 pm and MEAN IT. Commitment kept! There was literally no guesswork at all, which was so helpful to me as I started heating up side dishes and getting the table ready.

Generation Two, minus our son Groceries who is stationed in South Carolina.

We had two of our three kids home and I'm happy to say they absolutely loved the meal! So did Big Ag, even though he's not in this pic because he's off in the kitchen somewhere getting himself a drink.

Here is a link to the two recipes I used for this year's feast:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/11/food-lab-sous-vide-turkey-crisp-skin-sous-vide-101-thanksgiving.html

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/11/red-wine-braised-turkey-legs.html

Big Bird Day

As I get ready for Thanksgiving dinner on Friday (kids will be in transit on Thursday so we'll do the sit-down thing Friday afternoon), I can't help but remember all the happy Thanksgivings at my godmother's house.

As so many artists do, she kind of created her own loosely-knit colony of "family" members, including her kids, several ex-lovers, friends of her kids, and anyone else who was kind of at loose ends on Turkey Day. After my father died and my mom left the country I spent many happy Thanksgivings at her place, a grateful "orphan" to whom she was a second mother. 

Awkward moment as I decide I need to begin drinking. However, note that I am ROCKIN' those 1980's suspenders!

 My boyfriend and I used to spend the day at her place before heading up to Big Sur for the long weekend. One time she invited one of my ex-boyfriends who was at loose ends for a place to go, and somehow I ended up sitting with them both (pictured, ex on the far right). Can anyone say, "awkward?"

These are the kinds of things that happened all the time at her place.

She's now in a memory care facility and I'm sure will be spending the big day with one of her kids. I'm sad that she no longer remembers the crazy Thanksgivings where we never knew who was going to come through her door, but it's a memory I'm still happy to have.

So often in life there's more to be thankful for than resentful against. No one's life is perfect, and none of these Thanksgivings were either, but I treasure their memory more than if they were made of diamonds and gold.

This is one of the last paintings my Godmother did before losing her ability to paint, and I'm especially thankful to have it hanging in my house this year. 

I hope each and every one of you has an absolutely wonderful day, and may your friends and family (and whoever else is in your particular "colony") have a perfectly imperfect day. 

Painted perfection....moonlight on the water.

Pumpkin Day

Next week may be Turkey Day, but here at the homestead today was Pumpkin Day.  Pumpkin Day is when all the pumpkins (the ones I grew over the summer and harvested back in September) become pumpkin puree, so they can go into all kinds of delicious seasonal dishes.

Pumpkin Day is very different from Pumpkin Spice Day, which happens in the stores and shops around August and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with real pumpkins. It's now possible to have pumpkin bagels, pumpkin coffee, and pumpkin fabric softener, all of which contain NO pumpkins whatsoever (maybe a good thing in the case of the last item).

Just roast.... (two of about 15 total)

If you've ever grown pumpkins before, you know that not only do all pumpkins not look alike, they don't taste alike either, despite sharing pasture/garden space and being the same type of seed (in this case, Sugar Pie). You can even harvest them all on the same day, after all the vines have died back, only to discover some are more ripe than others.

They are damn individualists. A little like people, no?

Anyway, regardless of their shape and size, today is the day when I grant them equal rights to be delicious and cook them all to where they are discolored and droopy, nice and soft, and scoop out the seeds for the chickens, then puree the rest of the meat. Some puree is for now, some for next week, some for the bleak midwinter, when there's nothing more comforting than a nice batch of pumpkin bread or pumpkin soup.

One important thing to remember about cooking whole pumpkins is that the less-ripe ones will need more oven time than more-ripened ones. And you can tell more ripe from less ripe by the inside color. A deep, bright orange means it is ripe. A more pale orange means less. But if you cook the less-ripe ones enough, they are just as edible as their more attractive and ripe siblings (as long as they are fairly ripe -- no green should be present). I do recommend mixing them all together before pureeing however, so you hit a nice middle note between the ripe and not-as-ripe. 

Gut....

The other thing to note regarding cooking whole pumpkins is that, unfortunately, real pumpkins cooking in your oven do not smell nearly as inviting as pumpkin spice goodies do, so my advice is to burn a candle or enjoy a pumpkin-flavored latté while your gourds cook.

Once you are done, your pureéd pumpkin can be stored in the freezer for several months, if you can make it last that long. I have yet to get to Valentine's Day with any left. And since it's not exactly something you crave in summer, my advice is to wallow in its real, natural deliciousness while you can.

There's always plenty of the artificially-flavored stuff to tide you over 'till the season rolls around next year.

And puree.

Livin' La Sous Vide Loca

So I probably haven't mentioned this, but I keep a quarter jar in our living room, where I save my shiny $.25 pieces for a couple of years, and then roll them once the jar is filled and go buy myself something frivolous, sinful and fun, something I might not purchase otherwise.  I give myself permission to blow my quarter money on anything I want. I generally get about $200 from the jar, so it allows me to gift myself with absolutely no guilt whatsoever.  It's a little "I Love Me" present. One time I bought a great pair of boots, another time I actually brought the quarters with me on a cruise and used them to have fun gambling (I won all my money back!) ... and this time I bought a sous vide system.

I first heard about this wonderful appliance on my friend Stephen Andrew's blog (here's a link if you are interested: Stephen Andrew's Sous Vide blog post ) and was insanely jealous at the ease with which he appeared to put together his holiday feasts.  With the sous vide system, it appeared as if he actually had enough time to decorate beautifully AND enjoy the company of friends and family. I have a feeling he could probably do this anyway, but anything I can do to give myself a leg up I will take. Of course for me one immediate benefit presented itself in my mind, which is that I could start drinking champagne at noon without worrying I was going to forget my expensive free-range bird or cut of meat. (like last time) That decided it. I started thinking about buying a sous vide system after that, but waited until Quarter Jar Day to do it.

And so here it is, the Anova sous vide system hooked up to my spaghetti pot, gently cooking a cheap chuck roast for 36 hours as an experiment. (According to the instructions, you can cook a cheap cut of meat in the sous vide system for a long time -- like 36 hours or so, and it will emerge as soft and malleable as a more expensive cut of meat, only needing to be browned up a bit before serving.)

I will be out of the house for at least half the day tomorrow, and so the thought of coming home to a home-cooked meal is tantalizing. It's even more appealing to know that it will happen without 1) the mess and occasional overcooked quality the crock pot's meals sometimes have or 2) dining with a grumpy husband who has accidentally overcooked a meal because he was trying to cook whilst simultaneously talking to one of his vineyard workers who needs instructions on irrigation, and playing a rousing game of solitaire on his iPad -- all at the same time. It happens.

But not with the sous vide, baby. It has one task, and one task alone...to make a silk purse (tender steak) out of a sows's ear (cheap chuck) and I'm believing it's gonna happen.  I'll let you know how it goes.

And as a final note, how grand is it that it will cook dinner without either heating up the house via the oven or needing to physically go outside and turn the solar cooker every half hour or so to follow the sun while I'm cooking out there? 

Homegrown

Nothing like shopping in the garden for dinner....which was a generous slice of frittata, made with freshly laid eggs, plus harvested-today spinach and onions.  Over the last decade or so, eating food that was collected or harvested 10 minutes before dinner has gotten a bit more routine for me, and I will admit I don't feel the same beginner's thrill I did when first doing it. 

But I'll tell you what: it's no less delicious than it was the first time.

Tis The Season (for Food Wars)

Living the life we do means that most of the time we eat very natural foods, almost always made from scratch.  My egg nog recipe has real raw eggs, cream, and lots of liquor in it.  I have similar scratch recipes for other foods which became popular in their commercially-processed states -- stuff like Sloppy Joes, Egg-McMuffin type sandwiches and sodas.  

When you commit to living the simple life, the former convenience foods you loved are suddenly no longer convenient since you're making them from their most basic ingredients, and leaving out all the stabilizers, artificial colors, and preservatives. And sometimes they are worth it. And, yet, to be honest, they often do not taste quite the same. 

Real eggnog

Both Big Ag and myself grew up eating at least some  of what the 1960's and 1970's offered in terms of convenience foods, so adjusting to some of those taste changes when we've "gone natural" has taken time.  But after awhile you get used to it, and then when you pick it up again in its processed form, you actually notice certain flavors are missing -- the ones you first reacted to when you made it naturally.

I remember the first time I bit into a chocolate-chip cookie made with whole wheat flour instead of white and the wheat had a much stronger, nutty flavor than I was used to. I felt vaguely cheated, like my previously delightful sin had somehow been made more respectable and therefore less tasty and fun.  But now, I love the stronger flavor whole wheat has, and much prefer it to white flour in almost everything.

The taste change also happens if you switch from chocolate to, say, carob and if you change from white sugar to honey or agave nectar. I've heard nightmare stories from people who switched from coffee to chikory, although most got used to it after time.

Real mac and cheese

And some foods you cannot reasonably replicate.  The carob-for-chocolate swap is one shining example. It just never tastes the same, and is never as good. Another one happened here this afternoon, when I made my homemade egg nog.  I think it's awesome, but I know that tomorrow or the next day, Big Ag will stop by the supermarket and come home with a carton of that awful, artificially-flavored egg nog from the market because it's what he grew up with and therefore what he prefers.  And my oldest son, who I call TrainMan, will be staying with us after he has some dental work done after the holidays and has already asked that I stock up on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese -- that's right, the bright orange boxed stuff.  Sigh.

Un-real mac and cheese

The fact that I make a killer gourmet mac and cheese with three different kinds of cheeses does not matter, because no matter how hard I try I will never achieve the orangey, tangy, velveeta-textured goo that TrainMan feels is a mandatory part of the Mac and Cheese Experience.  And since its him who will have the sore mouth, who am I to turn a blind eye to his wishes?  (For the record, I never made Kraft Mac and Cheese at our house, but evidently it was on the menu at friends' houses enough that he developed a taste for it.  I guess I should just be thankful they weren't serving meth.) 

So tomorrow I will go to the store and buy some stupid, boxed Kraft Mac and Cheese, grimacing as I pull it off the shelf and throw it into my cart.  And I will also grit my teeth when the artificially flavored-and-colored "egg nog" shows up in the fridge next to my fabulously-natural Colonial Egg Nog (made from a recipe penned by George Washington himself!) as I just know its going to. It's a holiday tradition, just like bad sweaters and Christmas songs by The Chipmunks.  These are all things that must be endured as we plow through the season.  

Un-real eggnog

One thing that makes me feel better is remembering a story natural food guru Michael Pollan told once, about walking through the grocery store with a box of Fruity Pebbles cereal in his cart (for his daughter, who insisted on it) and someone noticing and saying something to him about it.  His response was that, although natural is better, if we have spouses or children we also have to acknowledge that sometimes we're going to have to compromise, and to pick our battles.

Which I guess means that although Kraft, Knudson, and Kellogs may win a round or two here and there, we natural cooks are still committed, long-term, to winning the food war. And so next week I will temporarily surrender on the Mac and Cheese front, open that packet of orange powder and make something that makes my son happy.  

But I have not given up the war. I'm just surrendering, temporarily, on one front.  A gooey, artificially orangey one.

Battleground Lost.