Dirt Sun Rain

Making Tracks

2008-02-16T13:01:00.007-05:00

The weather is fantastic today. Sunny and around freezing, not cold enough to make going outdoors unpleasant, but not warm enough to ponder rearranging the garden shed.

The yard has been a busy place today and the snow has recorded it all.

A course-correcting Jack Russell and basketball.

A cousin on the way to hockey practice.

A rabbit that stopped quickly and moved on.

Everyone ends up under the bird feeders sooner or later.

Piglet tracks a crow. She hates them.

Speaking of making tracks, this will be my last blog post for the next couple of weeks. I'm headed to Georgia to do some work on another project and get my living situation sorted out. I'll probably lend a hand with my friend Jon's garden and get some plants started for my restaurant's container garden while I'm down there so there may be sporadic posts.

I'll keep track of everyone's blogs via Google Reader and participate when I can. To those of you with seeds started, good luck and to those of you South of the Equator, good harvest!

My Valentine

2008-02-13T22:33:00.002-05:00

Here's my Valentine to you dear readers, specifically the head of St. Valentine. I can't believe I'm dragging out the vacation pictures again. What's worse is I took the picture so I'd have something to post four months later. Click on the picture for a better view.

Blog Filler

2008-02-12T09:52:00.000-05:00

There isn't much to blog about garden-wise when the temperatures have dipped into the single digits. I don't want to think about the wind chill factor. It's just cold people.

The house was built in the 80's and is well insulated, has double-glazed windows and a brand new furnace. This is all good stuff, but it also has these aluminum framed sliding glass doors which transmit the cold very efficiently. If it gets cold enough, the moisture in the air will condense on the frames and you get frost and ice. Yes, the doors are going to be replaced at some point, just not this week.

There was a bit of a problem with the plumbing last week, the WC in the basement wasn't flushing properly and I had a plumber out. apparently there was some sort of blockage down the line just before the vent stack and hydrogen sulfide gas was collecting in the pipes and bubbling up. What a great day, bitterly cold outside and the house reeking of rotten eggs. Fun for everyone! It gets better. The previous owner of the house covered the clean-out with the front deck. I was out in the snow with my circular saw making an access in the deck.

Late January, early February are eagerly awaited around here. Forget football, it's DOG SHOW SEASON! The AKC/Eukanuba, The Westminister AND The Puppy Bowl all happen within two weeks of each other. Roughly twelve hours of dogs, dogs and more dogs on the teevee.

Which means twelve hours of Piglet jumping around and barking at the dogs on the teevee. One of these days she's going to knock it right off the stand and I'll be forced to buy a wall-mounted plasma flat screen .

Coverage of the AKC/Eukanuba was great, the Puppy Bowl on Super Bowl Sunday is always a winner (Sadly there's been an outbreak of parvo and at least four of the puppies have died), so it was a huge disappointment when The Westminster's live telecast sucked. Too much talking, not enough dogs and just when the Terrier Group was starting, the program ended and coverage was shifted to another channel that isn't part of the eighty billion in my cable package.

Something To Rant About

2008-02-10T11:14:00.000-05:00

I spent my teenage years at Ground Zero for 1970's Environmentalism. Marin County, California had a mixture of hippies and affluent Progressives who preached recycling and water conservation long before it was fashionable. The water conservation part was a no-brainer, Marin County had a prolonged drought in the late seventies and flushing your toilet until it was absolutely necessary was a major faux pas.

Marin County is still pretty crunchy, but nothing like the seventies. There are McMansions in Bolinas, a town that used to remove the signage along the back roads so tourists couldn't find the place. For what it's worth, Bolinas was where we got all our good pot when we were teens.

Anyway, all this exposure to Hippies, Yuppies and proto-Eco Politics has had an effect on the rest of my life. You don't rub elbows with the likes of Stewart Brand , Werner Erhard and Jerry Garcia when you're kid and not come away with something to show for it. In my case it was disdain for hippies; I spent High School in a motorcycle jacket and green hair, but I made sure to separate my trash and take my cotton net bags to the market.

"Get to the point" you're muttering, I am, I am.

Scrolling through the NY Times today (electronic edition, not dead tree, thank you!) I read an interesting article, that hit on one of my pet peeves; Suburbs. In the interest of balance, I live in a suburban setting and have for most of my life so I'm a hypocrite AND a qualified critic.

My problem with suburbs are pretty universal. Inefficient usage of land, destruction of wildlife habitat, chemical drenched lawns, lack of pedestrian infrastructure.. The list goes on and on. The classic suburb is over-reliant on cars, breeds hideous strip malls and consumes massive amounts of resources to prop up an ersatz "Country" lifestyle.

The suburb's most dubious achievement is the Gated Community with it's attendant HOA. The Home Owner's Association is a great idea in theory, property values are protected, common spaces are maintained and amenities are made possible. The problem is that HOAs often get taken over by the more Totalitarian-minded residents and things like vegetable gardens, compost piles and clotheslines are ruled out as blights.

The point of my rant is this: If you're going to live outside the city, why would you abandon the very things that make the country-side so attractive? Why bulldoze woods and replace it with acres of golf course-like lawns that your job in the city won't give you the time to maintain on your own? Why, oh why do you find neat rows of tomatoes and clothes drying in the sun so offensive?

In many cases, that zero lot line McMansion plopped down in developments with twee names like "Northpointe at Creek Run" used to be an actual farm, with actual crops and animals and presumably land values got to a point that the original owners were resigned to cashing out.
Farmers who hold out may eventually find themselves in court for so-called "quality of life" issues like odors and escaped livestock. I'm not going to mince any words here, anyone who moves next door to a farm and starts bitching about the operation deserves to be buried in the annual out-put of manure from said farm.

Marin County saw the writing on the wall over twenty years ago. The mostly agricultural western half of the county was being eyed as prime development land and the ranchers and farmers banded together with environmentalists to form The Marin Agricultural Land Trust.
The sprawl that exploded into the East and South Bay Area in the 1980's could have easily happened in the coastal hills of Marin if it weren't for MALT. I am not anti-growth and I will defend anyone's right to live where they choose, but farms and ranches have a greater value to society than a gated enclave full of mock Tudors, lit up at night like casinos with punched-in landscaping.

As a suburbanite, I try to practice what I preach. I grow a considerable amount of my own food in my yard. I compost my leaves and lawn clippings, keep my car trips to a minimum and sort my trash religiously. I need to make a better effort at harvesting rainwater and diverting my grey water. I gave up on the lawn a long time ago and if it weren't for the size of the lot, I would have gotten rid of the lawn tractor. Obviously, I'm not living a completely green life. My business is closely tied to suburb-dwellers, but I'm making an effort to balance my own use of resources.

In a perfect world, we would all be carbon-neutral and self-sustaining, but that lack of perfection shouldn't deter us from trying. We don't have to replace every light bulb in the house all at once or turn the whole lawn over to food production, but we can set goals for ourselves and our communities to lessen our impact and edge closer to a greener suburb.

I Wish I Were Making This Up II

2008-02-08T14:44:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my birthday, something I don't make a huge fuss over, but the piece of mail in the picture above arrived with a couple of birthday cards. They say the years between 40 and 50 can be rough, but was this really necessary? To make matters worse, the man in the picture vaguely resembles me.

The Perfect Storm

2008-02-07T13:02:00.001-05:00

A combination of work, a new cookbook, a video game and good weather have conspired to drag my attention from posting, a Perfect Storm of distraction.

To begin with, a friend and I are doing a consulting for a caffe north of Atlanta. The owners are very nice and the business is good, but it could be better and we're fine tuning the menu and operation. Its difficult to do business long-distance so I'll have to head down there some time at the end of the month, but in the meantime there are recipes to test, drawings to pore over and paint chips litter my desk.

The weather was uncommonly good at the beginning of the week and I spent an entire day collecting fallen branches and pulling weeds in the garden. The Winter has been unusually warm (I get the feeling this is the new normal). The Lake hasn't frozen over and there are already goslings on some of the ponds. It felt nice to get out and do some work on the garden, despite the muddy lawn and I'm having a hard time accepting that the garden will probably lie fallow this year unless someone in the family wants to maintain it.

I'm looking for a place to do my gardening in Georgia, but I don't think I'll be gardening on the same scale for a season; however there is no way in hell I'm going without home-grown tomatoes and herbs, fear not!

I've also been in the kitchen a lot, trying out pizza recipes which seems like a win/win situation, but as I get older I'm getting more lactose intolerant. The Gelato Binge of 2007 in Rome was probably my last hurrah as a dairy eater. This sucks because I love cheese and gelato. Lots of chewing pizza and spitting it out going on in my kitchen this week.

I've also got a new cookbook that I'm dying to get into. 1080 Recipes by Simone and Ines Ortega, a bruiser of a book that covers most of Spain's cuisine. I guess the best way to describe it is that its Spain's Joy of Cooking, like it's Italian cousin, The Silver Spoon. The reviews I've read have been mixed, but its a handsome book with beautiful illustrations and color photographs. I have one complaint: The photographs are stitched into the book on much smaller pages and I don't see them surviving the level of abuse I dish out to my books.

The biggest distraction lately is Tiger Woods 2008. I couldn't find this game for months and after looking in three different cities at many many stores I finally scored it. I guess everyone that got a Wii around Christmas was my competition. I don't even LIKE golf, but I'm hooked on this game. There's worse ways to spend the long, dark nights in Winter I suppose, but my video golf game is ruining my video tennis game. I'm a dork, right?

Synchronicity

2008-01-29T09:37:00.001-05:00

I was just answering a comment in the last post about Jeph's bird feeders drawing predators and something caught my eye outside. The picture sucks and you'll have to zoom to barely see what's circled, but in short; a coyote just traipsed through the neighborhood in broad daylight.

Bad news for Piglet who's all of twelve pounds. I was working on a house in Woodside, California about fifteen years ago and my employer's Jack Russell Terrier, Martha was taken by a coyote in about the time it took to let her out the back door. Piglet is going to lose some of her freedom to roam for a while. (she has an electronic fence that circles the property).

I don't want to write any "a dingo et mah baby" posts. *shudder*

I Wish I Were Making This Up

2008-01-28T16:52:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to take pictures of this, but it is so damn odd I had to report it. Yes, odder than keeping a falcon's head in the freezer. I know... Hard to imagine.

Those of you who live in climates with four discernible seasons are familiar with snow, the shoveling of snow and what needs shoveling. Some of you will even be versed in the use of a snow blower and will really get a kick out of this.

My neighbor spent the better part of yesterday afternoon running his snow blower over his front and side yards. Not his driveway, walkways etc. His lawn. He cleared the freaking snow from his lawn! This isn't the first time he's done it either. If you've never had to clear snow I can only explain that using a snow blower to clear your lawn makes as much sense as pushing your car to work. The only thing you could do that was more useless than clearing your lawn of snow with a snow blower would be to do the same thing with a shovel.

Not only will you waste a lot of time, make a lot of noise and waste some gasoline, you will also expose your lawn to the elements, drying the soil out and possibly killing the roots. If the ground is still soft, you will tear up turf, put ruts in the lawn and possibly suck yard debris into the snow blower. Worst of all, your mean neighbor will blog about your idiocy and then trade snarky comments about you with his mean blog friends.

The Hunter Becomes The Hunted

2008-01-26T09:23:00.000-05:00

I told you things would be back to normal around here. The little dramas that go on in the garden unobserved continue.

I noticed a patch of disturbed snow near one of the feeding stations yesterday. There were feathers laying around and it looked like there was quite a struggle.

The strange thing is most of the feathers were large and striped, something I associate with the various hawks and falcons that harass the sparrows, jays, cardinals, etc. that visit the yard. I neither encourage or discourage the raptors, they just are and everyone has to eat, right?

In this case, one of the larger hawks seems to have caught a smaller falcon off guard and made a meal of it. Further investigation of what was left of the falcon leads me to believe that it was an older bird as one of it's eyes looked to have cataracts.

It sounds a bit creepy, but I'm going to keep the head frozen and lay it on the grass in a safe spot when the weather warms up. The ants and other insects will pick the skull clean and I'll add the skull to my collection of bones, stones and other curios dug up in the garden.

The Reveal

2008-01-25T10:28:00.000-05:00

It's a bit anti-climactic, but in short; Dirt Sun Rain is moving South to Johns Creek, Georgia.

I've been puttering around the garden here in Pennsylvania for the past five years in a state of semi-retirement and while satisfying and healthy it's a life I'm meant to be living about fifteen years from now.

I still have some things to prove to myself business-wise and my priorities for what I want when my working life is over have changed. I want to expatriate to Europe at some point and that takes money. Money I can't pull together here in quiet suburban Pennsylvania.

I've signed some agreements, taken meetings and spoken with well over fifty people in the past week and I'm going back into the wine and restaurant business.

I'm not shilling for my business on this blog, it will always be about what I like to do and grow, but I'm going to be forced to find a way to integrate my passion for growing my own food into my business. My living situation will change and I'm on the search for a patch of land where I can grub around in the dirt and let the dogs run amok.

Meanwhile, there's tons of things to do here to get the garden ready for the next season and life goes on as usual

Dragging It Out

2008-01-24T10:10:00.000-05:00

One final clue to drag it out. Frankly it's been a looooong week away and I'm dead tired, but not so tired I can't screw with you guys. One. More. Day.

Most American travelers will recognize this airport, even if the picture is crap. We've all been through it at one point or another and surviving the experience gives you something to chat about when travel comes up in a conversation.

A Clue

2008-01-21T15:52:00.000-05:00

I'm headed home tomorrow afternoon from my Mystery Location. The supense is killing you right?

(They say the mind is the first thing to go. I checked my reservations and I'm not going home until Wednesday. I'm not getting enough sleep on this trip.)

Teaser

2008-01-20T07:47:00.000-05:00

Just a little teaser. I won't be home until Wednesday, but here's evidence that I actually work on occasion.

Have fun figuring out what I'm up to!

Left Hanging

2008-01-10T09:33:00.001-05:00

In another shocking, but unsurprising example of my sloth; I give you this picture of some Baci di Satana chiles that have been hanging in the basement since I left for (all together everyone) Rome.

A bit of math and we divine that this was three months ago. More than enough time to deal with the chiles and also enough time to stop jabbering about my vacation. The reason the chiles are hanging in the basement is simple. I had all these nearly-ripe chiles just before I left (for Rome, have I told you about my vacation?!) and no idea what the weather was going to be like while I was gone. I uprooted the plants and hung them from the floor joists so they could ripen and dry( I haven't tried it, but this is something you can do with end-of-season tomatoes as well. Uproot the plant and hang them in a warm dry basement and the tomatoes will ripen).

At some point I need to do something about them, but just as they're left hanging, I'm going to leave my readers hanging for a couple of weeks. I'm burning some frequent flier miles early next week for some fact-finding related to the major changes I've mentioned.

A few feet away from the chiles are dozens and dozens of Dinosaur and Birdhouse Gourds I hung from the very same joists two years ago and they're still waiting to be used. The chiles are worried.

(By the way, several of you know where I'm going and what I'm doing and my words to you are: I will email my Site Statistics to your employers and show them just how much time you spend on the internet at work if you let the cat out of the bag. Fear me!)

Rabbit Irony

2008-01-08T08:45:00.001-05:00

Thanks to some unseasonably warm weather, I got to take a good look at what's been going on under all that snow and I'm not pleased.

Something has been eating the puntarelle I was saving for myself as a Winter treat. That something being rabbits.

Even better, said rabbit(s?) has been making a cozy nest for itself in the mixed herb bed under some thyme. The irony I'm alluding to in the title is that when I go all Watership Down on Mr. Rabbit, I'm going to use the herbs from it's bed to stew it in.

Some of you will say "But Steven, don't you have a Jack Russell Terrier, a dog bred to clear vermin from barns and fields?"

Yes, I do. She's much too busy with her Winter Sports to trifle with vermin. Spoiled Bitch.

Three Random Things

2008-01-07T13:39:00.000-05:00

No pictures today, just three random things that have happened in the past couple of days that are completely useless.

1) This time last week it was around 15F and snowy. Today it is 65F, sunny and all the snow is gone. What isn't gone is all the dog poop that was hidden by the snow. That took a while to clean up.

2) With the snow gone it turns out I have some decent, but cosmetically challenged arugula in the garden. Arugula, guanciale and fresh mozzarella pizza for dinner!

3) I almost nominated myself for a Darwin Award taking down the artificial Christmas Tree yesterday. I nearly gave myself a lobotomy via one of the wire branches going up my nose.(Don't ask, I have NO idea how) That shit hurt.

Winter Interest

2008-01-05T11:21:00.000-05:00

Winter Interest, sloppy clean-up, whatever you call it, it's nice to have something poking up out of the snow to catch the eye. The snow has it's own beauty, but after a while the bland blanket of white can get on my nerves. I've never seen a pristine, white room in a magazine that I haven't had the urge to splash with paint.

There' are little reminders of the garden poking up everywhere like a single sprig of thyme.

Or the sedum I never got around to cutting back after it bloomed in the Autumn. Sloppy of me.

I'm admiring the frozen, snow capped artichoke now, but I'll need to cut it back before Spring so I don't get wind-blown seeds everywhere. Ditto for the cardoons which are MUCH hardier and can be a problem.

This is also the dog's favorite time of year. There's balls to be pushed through the snow and all sorts of critters tunneling just below the snow's crust. It's difficult to get her to come in on days like this, but she's so single-minded she'd freeze to death if I let her. Terriers!

Pigs and Rats

2008-01-03T11:48:00.002-05:00

The Chinese Lunar Calendar gives names to the year, 2007 is the Year of The Pig and since the New Year doesn't begin until February I'm celebrating the last month with pork. The upcoming year is a Rat year and I have no plans to cook rats. Rabbit maybe, rats no. You can relax now.

One of my Christmas presents was guanciale from Niman Ranch. Guanciale is cured hog jowls and is similar to pancetta, but fattier and more flavorful.

Guanciale is the key ingredient for one of my favorite dishes bucatini all'Amatriciana and I waited to make it until New Year's Eve.

The Babbo recipe I linked to is heaven and if you're feeling flush, get yourself some guanciale and try it.(It isn't that guanciale is expensive, it's the shipping that bumps it up. I have to say that Niman Ranch did a very thorough job of packing with an insulated bag and several cold packs.) I was very pleased with the Niman Ranch guanciale, it had great flavor and the fat was a spectacular snowy-white. If I were more sure of myself in the charcuterie department I probably would have hung the guanciale in the cold part of my basement a few weeks to dry it out a little. The guanciale in Rome is cured in this manner and it has a more complex, funky taste.

I debated bringing a few pieces of guanciale back from Italy, but thought better of it. Losing the seeds to Customs was bad enough. Losing guanciale would have sent me over the edge in my sleep deprived state.

New Year's Day was another Pig Day. I braised some local country-style pork ribs in sauerkraut with some guanciale and caraway seed added to the pan after browning the meat to give it some extra flavor. The house reeked of sauerkraut for a while, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Starting The New Year Right

2008-01-01T12:20:00.000-05:00

Organic Gardeners and Foodies for the most part are a hopeful and positive bunch of people. Sure we can be smug and boring at times about our compost and artisanal cheeses. We're easy targets for epithets like "snob" and "hippie" in the same breath, generally from someone who doesn't recycle, drives a Hummer and has Burger King Breath.

So I'd like to draw a line in the sand to start the New Year right. I'm on the elitist, granola-eating tree-hugger side and then there's the jackasses who came up with this abortion of an idea on the other. Upraised middle finger!

The Obligatory List

2007-12-31T09:54:00.001-05:00

The end of the year is a time for looking back at what we've done and looking forward at what we hope to accomplish. It's also a time for lazy writers to make lists. My list is low key, nothing earth-shattering happened this year and hopefully next year will be more of the same.

In no particular order of importance, here's a list of things that went on in my corner of the blogosphere.

I pretty much stopped buying fresh herbs this year. I've got thyme everywhere and the rest of the herbs did well. I've got plenty dried to carry me through the Winter and Spring, so Wegmans will have to find another sucker willing to pay $2 for a sprig of rosemary.

I grew a lot of cucumbers and didn't write down the variety. I am a bad gardener.

I grew some decent tomatoes. The season was cold and the flavor wasn't perfect, but the harvest exceeded my expectations.

I made too many pickles, the result of planting too many cucumbers. On the other hand, I'm not buying any pickles for a while, so Wegmans loses again.

I had a great crop of shallots as well. Onions were good and potatoes and carrots came in strong. I guess what I'm saying is this: Wegmans lost a lot of my business this year.

Oh hi Wegmans, I haven't bought any canned tomatoes from you in almost five years now. Sorry!

I planted actual flowers this year and enjoyed it. I couldn't eat them, but I did start all the marigolds from seed. Sorry Lowes!

I got two crops of Artichokes this year. Not enough to cover my needs, but enough to make it worthwhile.

The salad greens, spinach, chard and arugula crops were fantastic this year and I didn't buy so much as a scrap of leafy greens from anyone for almost half of the year!

All of the savings from the garden were squandered on gelato in Italy. One cup of gelato came to about $7 USD, we ate two or three each a day for fourteen days. We were the most haggard-looking, happiest tourists ever.

I baked a lot of stuff this year. Bread, cookies, cakes. I baked it. Then I fed it to other people because I have this insane desire to wear things that aren't labeled "easy fit" or "relaxed". Thirty more pounds to go.

My constant companion finally had enough of the Holidays and chewed the zipper off of her bed and crawled inside of it. I know the feeling.

It's been a good year and next year looks pretty bright. Things may change a bit around here, major changes and I'd be a crappy writer if I spilled the beans right away. I'll leave you to wonder about it and those of you who are in the know are sworn to secrecy!

Happy New Year!

Pile Up At The Finish Line

2007-12-26T09:07:00.000-05:00

Christmas, Festivus, Saturnalia, whatever it is we celebrate happens at the same time each year (wily Hannukah and Eid ul Adha aren't fixed dates , I can't fathom trying to keep up with that and Easter doesn't count since I don't do anything special then), but I never seem to be ready for the actual day. I wasn't really certain of what I was serving for dinner until I'd made my last grocery run so I was at a disadvantage when it came to advance preparations.

The menu ended up a compromise between quality of ingredients, my own interests and some cousins with irrational food issues. I usually serve things in courses, but with a big crowd there's something to be said for a buffet. It means more work for the cook, but also more time to sit and socialize after everyone has a plate. I've also learned not to put out any sort of nibbles prior to dinner with this crowd. They resist more civilized items like cheeses and olives and will gorge on junk if made available. Last year I made a mistake in putting out some upscale junk food and they picked at dinner afterwards. I was eating Prime Rib for a week thanks to that.

Menu For Christmas Eve 2007

Smoked Honey-Brined Turkey Breast
Bacon Wrapped Loin of Pork
Roasted Sirloin of Beef

Italian Sausage and Bread Stuffing
Mashed Yukon Gold Potatoes with Pan Gravy
Butternut Squash with Maple Syrup, Cranberries and Hazelnuts
Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Grain Mustard, Honey and Bacon
Assorted Breads

Individual Tiramisu

I was too busy minding two ovens in two different parts of the house to take pictures until the end of the meal when I was assembling the tiramisu , but my family ate me out of house and home and the picky eaters were relieved to find nothing challenging on their plates. I don't want to scare anyone, but my family can really put the food away when they're properly motivated. I cook with leftovers in mind and I thought I was being really generous putting out eighteen pounds of meat for seventeen people and there wasn't a lot left.

Other than the huge amount that had to be done at the last minute to get everything ready at the same time for dinner, the evening went off without a hitch and the only drama was the recurring struggle with some cousins who want to clear the table and do dishes which I absolutely refuse to let them do. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, "You're here to eat and have fun, not work." I start regretting it after everyone is gone and I'm cleaning until well after 1:00 AM, but I'm never putting my guests to work.

Christmas Morning arrived way too early for me with the sound of my newspaper delivery person's car backing over a metal t-pole at the end of the driveway and I couldn't get back to sleep. I made coffee and spent the morning opening gifts with my Mom, Grandmother and of course, the mutts. It's uncanny how my Jack Russell knows which gift is for her and she spends a week staring at it until I tell her she can have it. The rest of the day was spent in a daze playing my new Simpson's game on the Wii, punctuated by phone calls and coffee and around 6:00PM I cobbled together a nice dinner from leftovers. I think I was in bed by 10:00 PM and today is another day of cooking and cleaning since the whole crew is back tomorrow night for a Birthday dinner.

I'm going to be good to myself and make it a Margarita and Fajita Party. I know it's more appropriate for a Summer's Day, but it makes for an easy, boozy party and not a lot of work other than the prep. Who knows, maybe I'll let someone do dishes?

I hope everyone enjoyed their Holi-Daze and that the New Year brings you Happiness and a great Gardening Season.

Dear Santa

2007-12-21T11:51:00.000-05:00

Dear Santa,

I have been ~~very good~~ um ~~reasonably well behaved~~. Okay, nobody can prove a thing. I totally apologize for calling that lady from KLM a stupid cow and I promise to stop ranting about Congress, The President and pretty much everyone remotely attached to the Government until after the Primaries are over.

In return ~~here are my non-negotiable demands~~ requests for this year:

1) A puppy, specifically this puppy who spends her days sleeping in the Piazza Esedra at the entrance to the ruins of Pompeii. She is a very good dog and only chases Police cars and bicycles, both of which pass through my neighborhood so she wouldn't miss Italy too much.

2) A Ducati motorcycle. It's used and a little rusty, but I covet it so. It was the loudest motorcycle in all of Rome and I'm sure my neighbors would enjoy it as much as me.

3) This Tony Duquette resin lamp called "Ghost Snail". There were only fifty made and I'll totally understand if you have to bust the window at Bergdorf to get it. It'll be our secret.

4) This one is hard. I'd like all of my hair back as shown in this picture circa 1984. If you can manage it I'd also like the horsehide French Postman's jacket back as well.

(many thanks to the fabulous Cintra Wilson for the last two photographs)

Home Stretch

2007-12-19T21:27:00.000-05:00

I've been the worst blogger ever these past two weeks and I apologize profusely, but the Holidays have sort of overwhelmed me. To tell the truth, I put off a lot of baking until the last minute and I'm paying for it these past few days.

So far I've crossed the biscotti off the "to do" list, the last of it is in the ovens for the second bake and there's timers going off every ten minutes or so. Very annoying.

I spent the better part of Sunday making Cashew Brittle, sixteen pounds of it and while it's easy enough to make, it's time consuming and bad for the waistline. I had to resort to wearing the custom bleaching trays my dentist made most of the day (without bleach) so I wouldn't nibble the shards too small for gift-giving.

Nut Brittle is probably the most Perfect Junk Food known. It has everything that makes Bad Food so Good. Fat, salt and sugar in abundance and it makes a lot of noise and mess. If eaten properly, it can also incur massive dental bills in the form of lost crowns and extensive restorations.

Here's year three of my chocolate- chocolate chip biscotti experiment. Every year I toy with the recipe and I'm never satisfied. Everyone else seems to like it so they eat my mistakes.

Speaking of mistakes, I had a post written up the other day about gardens in Rome and attempted to embed a link to Google Maps, it didn't work out that great and I lost the whole post, but I'll try to reconstruct it after Christmas. I know my gardening friends are getting sick of seeing food all the time.

In the meantime, I'm going to be one of those ~~losers~~ impatient people standing in line at UPS tomorrow with a mountain of boxes and an empty wallet when I leave.

If I don't post again before Christmas, have a Happy Holiday!

Fennel In The Snow

2007-12-16T08:21:00.001-05:00

Things are a little crazy around here today, so let's take a moment to admire the last of the fennel, soon to be sprinkled onto a loaf of bread.

Holiday Thrift Part Deux

2007-12-12T10:09:00.000-05:00

There were a couple of dissenting comments in my post on Holiday Thrift where I butchered a cheap grocery store turkey and made a roast of the breasts for sandwiches, roasted the bones for stock and reserved the meat from the thighs for future use.

You may recall as well the August entry on Roasted Tomatillo Salsa. I know it seems like butchering the turkey was a lot of work and there's the perception that I do a lot of labor intensive things for very little return, but I know better.

I've been getting the house ready for the Holidays and around 5:00PM I realized I didn't have anything planned for dinner. I looked in the pantry, freezer and fridge and did some quick math in my head. Thaw turkey in the sink, about twenty minutes, some prep work and a little stove-top time another half-hour. I could have a great dinner on the table in under an hour.

I thawed the turkey meat, grilled it in my grill pan, cubed the meat and dumped it into a saucepan with a jar of tomatillo salsa, prepped some onions, cilantro and avocado and had Turkey Chile Verde Tacos for dinner with little or no effort.

In the meantime, I still have half of the roasted breast in the freezer and many quarts of stock for use on Christmas Eve. The labor that goes into the production of these things is never wasted, simply banked for a later date.