My biggest fan

Me, not eating well

I often don't eat well when I'm home alone.  Or maybe I should say, I eat weird.  I'll subsist on coffee until mid-morning at which time I frantically re-heat and gulp down some leftover pasta.  Then I'll forget to eat again until late afternoon at which time I'll slurp down an iced mocha while making a gigantic salad to eat at one sitting.  Or I'll make a meal out of a baked sweet potato.  If I'm feeling emotional, (are you ready for this?) Spagettios may make an appearance in my kitchen.  I pretty much forgo "regular" mealtimes, and just eat when I get hungry.

Axiom #4: You'll eat better if you have someone to cook for.

Which brings me to my biggest fan, Frank Vander Wall.  Here he is, enjoying a turkey and tomato sandwich at our "normal" lunch hour.

Frank, eating well

You see, when Frank and I are home together for lunch, I actually prepare food and we sit down and eat it together.  Same goes for breakfast and dinner. Three meals a day at "regular" times.  I know what you're thinking: this makes me sound totally conventional and house-wifey, but get over it, people.

My sweetheart brings out many of my better traits. Cooking well and 3 squares are just a couple of them.  Many thanks to my biggest fan!

A New Zealand luncheon

Saving seeds

Blunt About Food is ideally a blog about my two avocations:  cooking and gardening.  This post will introduce you to the latter of those two passions, and hopefully shed some light on who I am.

I've been a seed saver and gardener since I first interned at Abundant Life in 1991.  But well before that, I studied ethnobotany at Evergreen and decided, "That makes a lot of sense".  Even before that, I came to the conclusion that if all hell broke loose, I'd want at least to be able to grow my own food.

I inherited the gardening gene big time.  There are many in my extended family who tend a garden, but according to my parents, there are a handful of us who are UNABLE TO KEEP OUR HANDS OUT OF THE DIRT.  This is not a hobby, people.  It is an integral part of who I am.

My cousin, Dan Quickert, shares this trait.  He has been an avid organic gardener for decades, and has quite admirably done a bit of plant breeding along the way.  Last spring, he sent me about 40 seeds of a purple-podded snow pea he developed and named "Midnight Snow".

Here are some fresh results of what grew from those seeds.

Midnight Snow Pea

The pea vines were crazy vigorous - reaching 7 feet tall before they started producing their lovely violet blossoms.  The pods were sweet and abundant; however, I was on a mission to save seeds and so I limited my edible harvest to what's in the photo.  The rest kept growing until the vines stopped sending energy to the pods and began to yellow.

With the help of Lisa (who was visiting from San Diego), I harvested the already-dying pea vines, and laid them on wire racks to finish developing and drying the pea seeds.

Tonight I shelled all the peas, and this is what I got:

Pea seeds ready for planting next spring

These seeds weigh 20 ounces, and 40 seeds equal 1/4 ounce, so my efforts were rewarded 80-fold!  I feel wonderful about this success.  I will send the majority back to Dan, and keep some for myself to grow next year.

There is something special about saving seeds.  It requires sacrifice; with most crops, saving seed means you won't be eating that fruit or vegetable.  It requires vision; you must think early about which plants you'll be saving for seed and designate them to that task.  It requires optimism; you are doing this for future gardens.  These are qualities I don't mind developing in myself as well.

Simplify!

This post will be brief - this is the summer of houseguests!

Axiom #3:  Fewer ingredients is always better, people.


It's kind of like a rule of good dressing I heard once - put on your clothes, jewelry, etc. and then remove one item.  (For some people it may be more like 2 or 3 items).  But you get the idea.  Less is more.

So.  If you have luscious, fresh cherry tomatoes out of the garden, highlight them in your recipe with just a few other ingredients.  Toss those little lovelies in that fresh pasta, use some garlic, olive oil, and crushed red pepper, and then STOP.  Resist the temptation to add the feta and parmesan, and chicken and, and, and. . . .

Of course, there's room in this world for complicated sauces, curries, jambalaya, etc., but really, they've already been invented.  And of course, if your ingredients are not fresh and wonderful you may have to cover them up a bit, but that's a whole other topic (and problem) entirely.

So here's to simple cooking!

I do sourdough.

I don't eat a lot of bread, but when I do, I really prefer a dense, sour loaf.  No surprise when I read that most commercial sourdough breads were actually "sour enhanced" through the addition of citric acid or some damn thing.


That's when I started playing around with sourdough.


Axiom #2:  Sourdough IS NOT rocket science. Ignore all the crap you read on the web about weighing your flour and water and getting your starter from someone's great grandmother.  It's really simple, people.

. . . just feed it once in a while

Sourdough is just a bunch of yeastie-beasties that naturally exist in our environment (like on that lovely, fresh, local wheat flour which you bought at the farmer's market), and would happily reproduce at room temperature with the addition of some water.

Sponge after 9 hours - NO added yeast

Okay, so I'm not going to go into a whole lesson on baking with sourdough here.  I'd have to charge money for that.  (Hey, that's not a bad idea . . . .)  And I'm really not a purist.  I will use a little commercial yeast to get a higher loaf or speed up the process.

Oh yeah, and there's sourdough pancakes (OH YUM) to cover another time.  Definitely superior to any other sort of pancake.

Here's some bread.

A really nice, crusty, dense, sour loaf.

Trust me, people.

I wouldn't steer you wrong.  Not when it comes to food.  Just trust me, people.

Axiom #1:  You can't make good coffee unless you're willing to keep your coffee-making device clean.  Really clean.  Remember how much better your coffee tasted right after you bought your (fill in the blank) machine?  That's 'cause it was CLEAN.  Old coffee shmutz tastes bad.  It will transfer to your cup of coffee.  Especially if your device has plastic parts.

So clean it.  Every time you use it.

We just got an AeroPress.  It's great.  It's cheap and it makes excellent shots of espresso.  The only thing is you have to buy yourself an excellent burr grinder (not cheap), or go to an excellent coffee purveyor, get 1/2 pound ground at one notch coarser than espresso, and be willing to buy it often.