kitchenmage

In Love With Lovage

2013-04-11T06:35:16-07:00

...from the archives...

Lovage (Levisticum officinale) is one of my favorite herbs you have never heard of. The herb's lack of public recognition always seems odd to me. It's a versatile herb with a palate-friendly flavor a lot like celery, yet more complex and nuanced. Fresh, young leaves are mellow enough to use whole in a salad, but it also stands up to long cooking in soups and stews.

The obvious presenting flavor of lovage is celery, but the flavor is more complex than that. Along with the concentrated celery is a large dose of the bright green flavor of parsley and a hint of something sweetly earthy. I use it as a celery substitute whenever it is available and find it slightly sweeter and stronger than celery, something that I really like.

The hollow stem, a section of which can be up to a foot or more in length and an inch in diameter, makes an excellent straw for drinks, such as a Bloody Mary, where a celery flavor is desired. Lovage stems can be candied, like angelica, as an unusual sweet treat.

Excuse me a moment of excitement, but I just discovered a new trick for lovage stems: sliced lengthwise and put in ice water, they curl like the ridged curling ribbon they make for wrapping presents! This offers all sorts of possibilities from the sublime (make a brush for putting melted butter on corn on the cob) to the ridiculous (edible icons of the Flying Spaghetti Monster). Curlicue garnishes. Hair for Halloween monsters. This could be fun.

Lovage is also a beautiful addition to your herb garden. Unfurling from asparagus tip-like bundles in early spring, lovage quickly becomes a hip-high bush of soft green foliage.Midsummer sees flower spikes shooting to eye level before opening golden umbels that slowly mature into marvelously tasty seeds, something the birds know as well as I. Come fall, the birds and I vie for the mature seeds, with my winnings finding their way into stews and breads over the winter.

Gardeners appreciate lovage because it is easy to grow, tolerating most soil condition and even a bit less water and sun than large, leafy herbs. (It is easy to tell when lovage is thirsty; mine, which is in direct sunlight, droops noticeably on hot days. Fortunately, it revives just as quickly with a bit of water.)

A perennial that, like tarragon, requires a period of cold dormancy, lovage is often grown as an annual in warm climates. If you have to do this, you can save your own seeds, stored in an airtight jar in the refrigerator, over the winter for spring planting.

On a personal note, I'd like to thank you for sticking around while I have been absent of late. Let's just say that there have been years when everyone around me was healthier than at the moment and I'd really like to go back to one of them. I hope to be back to more regular writing soon...really soon.

Reflections Upon an Herb Garden

2013-02-25T06:15:16-08:00

from the archives... [updates in italics and brackets]

Sage flowers look like itsy-bitsy orchids.

Once upon a time, the kitchenMage had the herb garden of her dreams. Wisteria draped the entrance arbor, opening onto a herringbone path interplanted with thyme and moss and edged with lavender and a plethora of mints. Herbs, both common and rare, filled this garden and new finds were constantly finding their way there. Rare thymes and more mints than she could name filled the beds, and the air, with intoxicating scents. A few choice trees also lived there: the prized sweet bay, a pink dogwood bent near horizontal from its attempts to survive its old home, and the maples (no two the same) that defined the border.

Oh, I'm sorry! I was daydreaming there for a minute.

While I would love to have that herb garden again (and it is worth a look, though I apologize for the old, not so great photos) the sad fact is that I don't. Worse, I won't have anything like it for a few more years to come. [It has been about four years and the garden is still sparse in spots. While I finally have established thyme, my tarragon has never lived beyond its second year. Establishing a garden in a place that gets 10 feet of rain a year is not easy.] A few summers [ha ha ha] from now, I expect to once again walk through a garden like that, although not too much like that.

I have a new house and a new "yard" — if one can call nine acres a yard — but after two years, the new garden remains unplanted. [The herb garden is still confined to the beds around the house, while some trees have made it into the yard. So, yeah, still mostly unplanted.] When we arrived, the little beds around the house's foundation looked like builders had done the planting: some unkempt low junipers and dozens of pansies, in a stunning array of magenta and white--one shade of each. Boring! (When the foxglove and daisies that had been hidden in winter, when we bought the place, first emerged, it seemed fitting somehow that they were also white and purple.)

Frankly, the only thing to recommend the gardened areas was the blueberry patch. The untended space, mostly Douglas firs (originally planted for timber harvest) with fern-laden undergrowth edged up against wild fog forest, has more to recommend it, including the wildlife. At least most of the time.[In what I consider a major victory, the blueberries have been fenced and we get the bounty now while birds screech at us from nearby trees.]

Call me naïve, but I really hadn't counted on the sheer volume of critters in the yard. In addition to the deer and small creatures common to the cusp of field and wood, there's an elk herd — numbering from a dozen to many times — that wanders through on their way from on valley to the next. I don't even want to think about what the neighbor's escaped cows did to the poor magnolia!

There was a bit of momentary panic at the thought of doing without any herb garden while I wait for fencing to protect my treasures from marauding beasts. Really good fencing. Elk-sized fencing. Luckily, it was winter and I really couldn't do much beyond sulk at the idea of life sans garden. That and watch the critters. [About that fence...let's just say I am considering a new site called "WillBlogForFencing"]

Over the first couple of months, I noticed that nary a critter has ventured close enough to the house to see, let alone nibble, the beds of evergreen blobs and rampant pansies. Go figure.

One day it dawned on me. They never came close to the house. [duh, geez, I am so smart...as long as we don't discuss how long it took me to realize this. Also, it's not a hard and fast rule, elk have come within 5 feet of my front door to nibble roses on a 15 degree night.]

Those beds, filled with plants I found neither useful nor, truth be told, attractive were rapidly emptied and replaced with an herb garden that, while not quite so poetic as the old one, is wonderfully functional and quite lovely in its own way.

This small scale gardening has also been a learning experience. The prominent location and shallow beds call for plants that are beautiful as well as aromatic and tasty so I have selected colorful varieties of some favored herbs: Tri-color and golden sage, variegated mint and thyme, and golden oregano, along with lots of edible flowers brighten front edges, while a swath of many mints thrives in the back, dry stripe under the roof overhang.

My favorite rosemary [which died in a long, hard freeze — shiva has been sat, candles have been lit, dishtowels have been rended...] has a home and creeping thyme softens the hard line between concrete and garden Best of all, there are chive clumps everywhere! [We had our first chives of spring over the weekend. This is about a month earlier than usual.] And I must admit I love being able to step outside in bare feet to harvest herbs, something that was more difficult in the large garden.

Establishing some plants has been a struggle. The first winter killed all the expensive new tarragon plants [successive winters have continued the tradition...I now think of tarragon as an annual.] and last winter's freeze/flood cycle took out half of the rosemary yearlings. Those plants sometimes died at the old place too, but with room to plant a hundred rosemary cuttings, rather than a tenth that, half of them dying isn't quite so sad. [This winter has been mild. Most of my rosemary cuttings made it. This is far closer to 100 than I care to admit.]

After two years though, almost everything I need for cooking is here. [After eight years, there are still herbs missing from my usual stock.] There isn't a lot of some things, the thyme collection is short a few things (lavender and caraway evade me — well, I found them and they died the second winter.) and I can't find any lime mint. [Lime mint emerged from nowhere a couple of years ago and has established a decent patch. But I truly don't know how that happened. I am betting on pixies.] But there is enough to cook with daily and share with friends. And it is lovely, not looking at all like it was planted as a functional garden. More than one person has commented that it looks like a park.

This garden has also led to my conviction that any small space — even yours — can be transformed into a gorgeous herb garden that will rock your culinary world. Thoughtful plant selection and placement can result in a garden that will improve both your cooking and your yard.

While I know this isn't my old herb garden, it will do for now. In fact, even after the large garden goes in, the little one stays. I just need a cat-sized wisteria arbor.

(my herb garden set on flickr)

DIY Pizza Party at The Happy Place

2013-01-24T03:40:02-08:00

The Thump-thump-giggle-gigglers stopped by for the day recently and when I mentioned that dinner was "DIY Pizza" there was (literally) dancing in the seats. I guess that means your very own, very special, just for you and nobody else pizza with EXACTLY what you want and plenty of it is a hit with kids of all ages.

Go figure.

Pizza dough and sauce were both made the day before and kept in the refrigerator overnight. Meat that needed precooking, like sausage, was also prepared ahead of time.

This time around, one of the kids was drafted to wash the vegetables and then they all sat around the table and cut them. This got competitive which made all that slicing and chopping go by pretty darned fast.

For each pizza, cut a piece of parchment paper. Roll and stretch the piece of dough into the desire size/thickness. Each person prepped their own crust, allowing for variations in thickness. Then the fun begins... (bunch of photos after the jump)

You could make a chicken.

...or a Cthulhu

A funny face...

...or a funnier one.

Visual puns can be pleasing as pie...latticed pie, of course.

For those of you who have been here a while, an homage to my ring.

Finally, you have to go to this lnk to see the one cheeky pizza that can't show its face here. (I promised BlogHer and Land 'o Lakes — who sponsored that ad up at the top of this post — that I would keep it clean.)

While the pizza was cooking, people assembled salads from fresh romaine, a few fresh vegetables and leftover pizza toppings. So efficient. (Leftover fixin's went into omelettes the next day.)

The only dish I had to put real effort into was homemade cheesecake, also made the day before. This resulted in one of the most relaxed days with company in a while for me. It was almost lazy. I really have to work up more party plans that work like this.

Credits

Photos — courtesy Kat, the maker of the chicken pizza. (I'll fix the actual image copyrights soon.)
Ad at top of post — Land 'o Lakes via BlogHer
Endless slicing and dicing so I could sit and talk — everyone at the party
Cupcakes in edge of funnier face — Crave Bake Shop (GF treats Kat splurged on)

What are your favorite pizza toppings when you can have exactly what your most private and innermost heart desires on a pizza of your very own that you don't have to share with anyone?

OFVP: It Came From the Northwest

2013-01-18T20:29:48-08:00

...and if you never see me again it is because that freaky looking cloud really was the aliens...

1600x900 image for your desktop

On Recipes...

2013-01-11T11:45:05-08:00

My family's traditional chocolate birthday cake.

with apologies to Kahlil Gibran

Your recipes are not your recipes.
They are the signs and sigils of Food's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your tweaks but not your goals,
For they have their own goals.
You may house their results but not their ingredients,
For their ingredients dwell in the house of others,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to perfect them,
but seek not to make them your own.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with crediting.

You are the bows from which your recipes
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and she bends you with her might
that your recipes may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as she loves the cook that creates,
so she loves also the cook at every table.

A Christmas Miracle

2012-12-24T01:52:17-08:00

from the archives ...being the true story of a Christmas Miracle, for Megan and other foodies at the 'rents for the holidays, with apologies to everyone else...

Come on over and sit with me Megan. Let me tell you a story. Now this is a true story, though some folks doubt it. But I was there that Christmas Eve and it happened just like this...

Way back when your mama was just a wee thing, there was a great storm. You can find mention of it in the history books, things like this:

"On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1945, 20 hours of continuous snowfall blocked roads and required snowplow operators to work the holiday in southern Minnesota."

But they don't tell the true story. Not the whole story.

They don't tell you about The Thing that happened on a dark road, way out of town...

Picture it. A small town in southern Minnesota, Christmas Eve, 1945. It wasn't like now, where you can order everything under the sun with just a click of your mouse. No, in 1945 if you wanted something you had to go to a store, so near everyone in town was out that fateful day.

The war was finally over and the troops were starting to come home to their families. After the last few holidays which, as you can imagine, were not festive affairs, it seemed that the entire town was having a party...

"Dashing through the snow..." red-coated carolers, dusted with snow, as if they had, indeed, been dashing through the snow themselves stood next to a man selling roasted chestnuts and other holiday treats. Parents struggled to control their overly-excited children before relenting and letting them join in the snowball fight outside. "Happy Holidays" and "Good Christmas to you!" rang out in the shops and streets. This year, there was a lot to celebrate and celebrating they were.

Folks were hurrying to finish shopping as night, and the temperature, fell fast. One by one families piled packages and bundles of hats, coats and boots containing children into their cars and headed down the dark road. Near 50 cars full of people left town that evening, most of them with a long drive home on some rough country roads, and by closing time snow was blowing so hard car lights were instantly swallowed by the snow, as if they never been there at all.

The first people came back about half an hour after they drove away, on foot. "Snow's so deep, darned car just stopped. Right in the middle of the road." the driver said, looking towards the snow-hidden road, "None of those people are making it home tonight."

"Santa could save them with his sleigh" his daughter offered. Grim smiles were exchanged by the adults who knew that, even on Christmas Eve, Santa held no hope for those families driving into one of the worst storms that ever happened hereabouts.

Well, one thing small town people are is resourceful, and this town had tractors and sheet metal and a welding shop. They also had a very smart woman, who had gone away to work at the Minneapolis-Moline tractor plant and come back with an engineer's skills and knowing a thing or two about tractors. She made a sketch and had a brief talk with the welder and in just about an hour, a brand new blade was being welded onto a tractor and a couple of guys were wrapping blankets over their coats so they wouldn't freeze themselves while driving the crazy-looking thing.

While all this was going on, a shop was opened so everyone who wasn't working could get warm. Kids clutched mugs of steaming hot chocolate while adults talked quietly in the corner.

A woman said, "Everyone won't be close to home. Some of them are miles out. Even if they can walk out, it'll take a long time. Maybe we should send food..." She trailed off, looking at the shelves, mostly bare after the holiday rush.

What there was a lot of was Cheerios. The Cheerios salesman lived up the road a bit in Lake Woebegon and he was in a great big hurry to be done with work. He had to get home, pickup his family and get to Tyler's Landing in time to catch the last tobaggon to St Olav before the storm set in. When he got to our little town, he had unloaded the contents of his pickup truck onto the store shelves and called it a day. Some had sold, of course, but more than a dozen boxes remained.

"Wait!" the welder yelled at the plow driver, as a group of people ran out the store door, arms loaded with cereal boxes. Boxes were handed up to the second man on the hastily fitted plow. 1, 2, 3..5...10...15...18 boxes in all. This was followed by a thermos of hot coffee and a round of "Good luck...hurry back..." from the crowd and a quiet "Be safe" from the driver's wife.

Watching them lurch along, we could tell that the weight of the plow-blade made driving that tractor really awkward and it didn't have lights--who drives a tractor at night?--so the guy who wasn't driving was balanced on the edge of his seat, one light in each hand, shining them down that now invisible road.

The rest of the tale, well...I'll have to tell you what the driver told me that snowy night.

Right after we couldn't see you anymore, just where the road runs alongside the creek, we slid sideways and just about lost it. Bobby here fell out of the tractor along with all that cereal. Well, all but one box. I reached out to grab his hand and caught the last one just before it slid out. Everything but Bobby and that one box went into the creek.

When we got to the first car with people in it, I started pushing the snow away on the road side while Bobby went around the passenger side to make sure everyone was okay. There were two small children who were very hungry, it being long past supper time by now, and they had a long walk home so Bobby gave them that last box of cereal. I just shrugged my shoulders, we didn't have enough to feed all the kids we were going to help any more so it didn't really matter which one got the cereal.

Bobby hopped back in the tractor and we continued on until we found the next car, or group of three cars I should say. The Mortons and that new family were sitting in the Swensons car, kids in every lap, carrying on like it was a regular ol' party or something. Only problem was the kids were starving. Bobby and I just looked at each other, knowing that we had lost the food we intended for them.

"Let me run back to the tractor and see if there's anything there for the kids." I said as I turned away. No, I didn't turn away because of the tears in my eyes. (Saying this, he dabbed at the tears that he denied were in his eyes.)

When I got back to the plow, I looked around it, under the seats and all, hoping to find something to give those children for their long, slow, cold drive home. Nothing. Leaning back to gather my thoughts, I noticed something in the shadows that covered Bobby's seat.

Darned if it wasn't another box of Cheerios.

Walking back to the car with it in my hand, Bobby caught my eye and raised a questioning eyebrow. "I dunno, we must have missed it." I told him. "Good thing we did, too. These little guys look hungry to me."

As we headed back to the tractor, Bobby said, "I would've sworn there was none of those boxes left. Just that one."

"Me too." I said, not mentioning that I'd been really sure and in any case, how did it end up where Bobby had been sitting just a few minutes ago? Riddle me that, young'un. How?

When we got to the next car, we did the same thing. Bobby jumped out to talk to the people while I got the snow plowed away from the car so they could drive it out. As I went by, I heard the question I dreaded, "You don't happen to have anything to eat, do you? We were out late shopping and the children..."

I heard a noise behind me. Just a little rustling, like a mouse had snuck into the warm tractor and was looking for a hiding place. Turning around to look, I'll be damned if there wasn't another box of those Cheerios. Just sitting there, plain as day.

"What the hell...Bobby, come here."

I shook the box at him, then tossed it. As he caught it, Bobby opened his mouth and I know he was going to ask a question I couldn't answer so I just told him to be quiet now and give the lady the Cheerios. He did and got back in the tractor.

Next car, same thing. A noise and then some Cheerios appeared. They were mischevious things, too, never showing up in the same spot twice. Under the seat, on the floor. Why the very last one showed up right on top of the snowplow blade!

With that he was silent for a moment before continuing...

I'll never be able to explain it, we only had one box if Cheerios. I know we did. But we gave away 37 of them. Thirty-seven. Now, I'm not one to say this kind of thing, but I do believe I just saw a miracle:

The Cheerios Miracle

Well, Megan, ever since that day, we here in parts of Minnesota have eaten Cheerios on Christmas morning as a reminder that even in the worst storm, there is always something better coming. It may not be the best thing, or the thing your heart desires, but it will be good and useful and just might save your life.

Like Cheerios in a storm.

Friday Fun: A Few Of My Favorite Things

2012-12-07T15:32:12-08:00

I have written a dozen intros to this and don't like any of my explanations. Let's just say that a Friday during the official buying holiday season is not a good time to watch what passes for conversation online. Every other photo on my twitter timeline is a free thing someone was given (without disclosing the free part) and there's a constant stream of giveaways and gift guides that consist of things the blogger got gratis to review.

Then someone said they missed Oprah's favorite things and my inner cynic grabbed the keyboard from my better angels and started typing furiously...when you sing along in your head (and you will) pick a blogger or two to imagine singing it. I know I do.

A Few of a Blogger's Favorite Things (with apologies to pretty much everyone)

Readers who love me in comments that leghump,
Tweets from a big blog that gives traffic a bump,
Videos proving I really can't sing,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Junkets and coupons and samples from brands,
Posting a photo I made with my hands,
Hanging with people who think I'm a king,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Snitfits on twitter and long sullen flounces,
Having a baby so web traffic bounces,
Home from a conference all piled up with bling,
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the twit snarks,
When the troll strikes,
When my traffic's sad,
I simply republish my favorite things,
Then I don't whine so bad.

disclaimer: This isn't about anyone in particular. Really. If you think it's about a blogger you love, discuss their bad behavior with them, not me. If you think it's about you, trust me, it's not.