seeds and string

red hot blood: morcilla.

2011-11-05T01:11:00.019-04:00

I wrote this piece last winter. Now that the air's getting brisk again, I felt the need to revisit my autumnal blood-sausage adventure of 2010. I've enjoyed several good meals off of this pig since the day of slaughter; thanks to Nora (the pig-raiser), Mary (the butcher), Anna and Tex (the buyers) and to Jess, who was my willing assistant throughout the morcilla-making process. Photo illustrations are my own. More photos from the process online here. Enjoy. -AMH

The thermometer read five degrees in Wallowa the day before Thanksgiving. No amount of wood could warm the ranch house to comfort, and we wore layers of extra clothing under our outerwear. Snow-covered mountains and a silver sky loomed over a crisp white blanket of day-old snow. Seven of us walked across the yard: me, the nursing student, with a butcher, a chef, a cowboy, and our guests. Upon our arrival, the pig looked at us curiously.

While the butcher prepared her pistol and her knife, I looked down at the roasting pan in my own hands and then at the gently snorting animal. Blood was throbbing through the pig’s arteries, dripping through its veins, oxygenating and circulating, bringing perfusion to all of its vascular tissue and around its delicious, fatty bits. I was here to take that blood.

Months earlier, in September, I found out that I would get to watch a pig slaughter. My friends had found buyers for their piglets in springtime and fed them well throughout the summer. As the temperature dropped and fall descended, it was time for this pig to be butchered, and the only part of the pig that didn’t already have a designated use was its blood. I could use the deep, bright red blood, teeming with platelets, fibrins and clotting factor. But how?

“You have to make morcilla,” my mother said when I told her of the slaughter. She had memories of her own mother in Cuba holding the pig between her knees, slitting its throat in one quick movement and then putting fat, meat, spices, hot pepper and blood into intestines that had been rinsed twice and soaked in bitter orange essence, for cleansing, overnight. I looked up morcilla recipes online and started to source some bitter orange sauce,mojo de naranja agria. I had only seen something by that name in the Goya section of the Mexican market, and upon closer inspection the ingredients were all wrong; mostly salt and oil. Not the true bitter orange oil I needed.

I didn’t know how to clean intestines, and I couldn't find the orange oil, so I asked my butcher friend if she could seek out casings and she did. Frozen, packed in saline, the casings were spectacular balloons as we rinsed them clean before the slaughter: cloudy and translucent, expansive and flexible and strong. Just like our bowels.

What else goes into blood sausage? Nearly every culture has its own variation on the theme of blood-filled innards. German blutwurst, British black pudding thickened with oatmeal, French boudin noir. My mother’s experience was of the Spanish morcilla, traditionally filled with rice. Morcilla is defined by its smoked paprika pimenton and nutmeg seasoning. Most types of blood sausages share a combination of meat, fat, blood and grain, rice or bread for fill and texture.

I delved further into the research; few cookbooks featured recipes for blood sausage. I found several recipes online that seemed dependent upon store-bought pigs blood. The main directive I saw on the recipes online was that everything should be cold: cold bowl, cold whisk, cold blood. I assumed this was to prevent coagulation. The same cold that forced us to wear two pairs of wool socks and multiple pairs of pants would keep the blood flowing smoothly into the casings as we made the links of sausaged blood.

I’ve been eating meat for years, on and off, but never seen an animal die; with all of this Michael Pollan and Jonathan Safran Foer and even Moby writing about animals and death and eating, I wanted to watch a slaughter for myself. During my childhood, I had often watched (and smelled) my parents gutting fish. The meat that went into my burger, however, came from the cold, bright displays of the grocery store. In a generation, something had been lost.

Return to the cold day and the warm pig, still breathing, heart still pumping blood. The slaughter began when Mary, the butcher, aimed her handgun and shot neatly through the pig’s head, and deftly ran her knife across its neck. Suddenly, chaos: bright, arterial blood spurting as a one of the buyers, a chef, held the roasting pan under the pig’s neck. The blood sloshed in the pan, leaving the snow colored a cadmium red. The local cowboy, John, yelled “Hell, Mary, you nearly gutted me with that knife!” as he straddled the dying pig. “Oh, John, I’ve been trying for all these years!” she joked as she assisted to steady the pig’s convulsing body.

Watching the severe seizing, my nursing school test-taking skills rolled through my head: ABCs first: airway, breathing, circulation, the pig is in shock right now. The pig has a high heart rate, high respiratory rate, low blood pressure. The roasting pan was half full of foamy, sloshing blood. There was more blood loss than the pig’s circulatory system could handle. The pig would die soon. Do pig’s heart rates compare to ours? Faster? I should have been thinking about sausage and here I was imagining the pig as part of a code.

There was no call for CPR, however. “Get a whisk!” yelled the chef. The blood was clotting; I could see a massive, jello-like block forming in the center of the roasting pan. I ran through crunching snow back to the house, looking for a whisk in the ranch’s old kitchen, while the housebound rancher himself yelled directions at me from the woodfire-heated living room, “Whatcha need?” Breathless, I replied, “A whisk! The blood is clotting… nothing I read referenced this. Is it too cold outside? I don’t understand.”

The chef’s sister and Jess came up, the bucket of blood in hand, and we knew we need to work fast. The rancher said, “I reckon you need to keep it at body temperature… 98.6, then it won’t clot one bit.” I set up a double boiler. My mother called me. I tried to answer without getting the sticky blood on the phone’s keypad, an unanticipated struggle. “Amy, I meant to tell you, don’t heat the blood. Whatever you do don’t heat it. Then you’ll cook it before it’s stuffed!"

I ignored all directions and we began by straining the blood using a metal colander, sorting out the huge clots and the little pieces of hay and dirt that had been in the pig’s beard. We mixed the strained, liquid blood in with caramelized onions, crumbled, stale baguette, diced up lard, nutmeg, black pepper and pimenton.

Another interesting twist: we didn’t have a sausage stuffer. With no grinder to chop the bread, lard and onions into very tiny bits and no stuffer to ease the process of filling the fine casings, we used a funnel and the narrow end of a wooden spoon to fill the sausage. We tied off one end of the endless casing, filled the sausage quickly and then twisted off the links afterward.

The rancher, our host, popped his head in part way through the bloody process, and said, “Wow, y’all almost look like you know what you’re doing.” Key word: almost. At one point in the process, the chef’s sister said, “I keep wanting to lick my hands, as if this is batter. And then I keep remembering: this is blood.”

How did they taste, these coagulated, red links? After post-stuffing boil, we hung the sausage to dry off of wooden spoons over a bucket. Two days later, after the cold had lifted and our Thanksgiving feast had been consumed, the morcilla was my breakfast: browned in butter, crisped to delicate blackness on its edges. The morcilla tasted like nutmeg. A slightly over-seasoned, and yet perfectly spreadable soft sausage. Downright indulgent on crisp fresh bread.

From any protein that we find stationary or mobile in an animal’s body, we can make a meal-- even blood! A strange meal, foreign to a palate trained on boneless chicken breast and neatly sliced bacon, but a meal regardless. “It’s different than my grandmother made,” said the rancher. I could only assume that this variation on morcilla was also different the sausage that my grandmother made for my mother on that warm, distant island.

There was a moment during the sausagemaking when, after a lifetime of mostly eating meat, I stood in a kitchen with my hands covered in blood, the counters covered in blood, filling sausage while watching pig hooves and organs coming through the door. I had finally seen a slaughter.

AMH

form and function.

2011-05-08T20:49:00.009-04:00

I saw this photo of Melanie making artwork for the Land's Sake farm stand and I had to pass it on. My lovely, tough, smart farmer sister is also an effortlessly brilliant artist. Can't wait to see the finished results!

Here's a shot of Mel in the bountiful green house last summer:

AMH

abloom.

2011-04-07T14:07:00.008-04:00

It's been a while since I've had the time or inclination to continue this casual blogging venture. I'm still in Portland, the food here is still amazing, except now it's springtime.

I'd like to begin with a little bit of bragging, as big sister Mel has gotten a lot of media attention lately. Firstly, she was featured on the cover of Transitions, Prescott College's magazine. View the issue here (pdf). Mel was also featured by the Trustees of Reservations for being a former Trustees apprentice who has continued on to manage a thriving vegetable farm! Article here.

I have garnered no such media attention. I am, however, more than half done with my nursing program! I've had to relocate and I now live on the top floor of a beautiful old apartment building with no room for anything more than a tabletop indoor garden. I've also upgraded to a larger kitchen (yes!) with a larger stove (yes!) that's electric (sigh).


clockwise from left: mac + cheese. latte/stumptown. charcuterie board/clyde common. the new stove. toads in a hole. drinking chocolate/cacao.

I've had no shortage of inspiration, culinary and cultural, since my relocation to Portland. For you coffee lovers who are curious about exactly what's going on in Portland, coffee-wise, I recommend this article from the ever-witty Willamette Week. If you needed an excuse for visiting Portland, that write-up might just provide it.

image: wweek.com, cameronbrowne.com

I hope all is well out there! More to come.

AMH

lavanda y miel.

2010-09-29T16:15:00.008-04:00

A friend in her second year at a California law school occasionally emails me perfectly delicious-sounding recipes. These recipes fill my inbox and tease me, and like all things notyetdone, loom on the horizon of my life. They are neatly idealized in their future existences: recipes that I will one day attempt.

I made one of these recipes recently, a honey lavender shortbread. It was adored by all, praised and heralded as "perfect," and "with just the right amount of salt." The shortbread was dessert at a meal that included a variety of good breads and cheeses, roasted root vegetables, beef shank with bone marrow that spread smooth like butter, brussel sprouts cooked in bacon, spicy kale salad* and roasted duck. All the meat was from animals that either Mary and Mark (the hosts) had some connection to the raising and slaughtering of. It was amazing.

I hope you can find an equally suitable occasion to enjoy these cookies-- I know that two shortbread recipes are too many for so few posts lately, but those of you still following my blog will have to endure. I'm working evenings and enrolled in five classes at nursing school, so there is little time for the luxury of writing about the amazing things I eat.

Honey Lavender Shortbread

Makes 30 cookies. Adapted from Milk & Cookies Bakery.

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon dried or fresh lavender

6 ounces unsalted butter, softened

2 tablespoons honey

1/2 cup sugar

Procedure

1. Combine flour, salt, baking powder, and lavender in a medium bowl.

2. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter, honey, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

3. Spoon dough out onto a large rectangle of parchment paper and roll in the paper to form a log. Transfer dough to refrigerator and chill until firm, about 1 to 2 hours.

4. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut the log of dough into 1/2-inch slices. Place the slices on sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart, and bake 8 minutes, or until light golden brown.

AMH

*Toss hot olive oil, garlic and spicy seasonings with fresh, crisp kale to create a light wilting that retains a bit of crunch and a spicy kick.

blackberrying.

2010-08-13T02:37:00.015-04:00

"Blackberrying" was the first poem I ever read by Sylvia Plath, and the time is ripe (!) to bring it back to the fore. Berries are plump and waiting all over Portland. They are so plentiful, and so tempting, that I often find myself with berry-stained hands when just walking from here to there. I remember finding this poem so joyful-- did I only read the first stanza?

Regardless, here is the poem, yours to devour.

AMH

yes we can.

2010-08-05T01:32:00.010-04:00

I found this recipe for shortbread on the fridge of my Portland hostess, Carol. I asked, as you may, "Why is this recipe special?"

Two quick reasons.

Reason number one: it has anything to do with Michelle Obama. The JD-touting, beautifully muscled, elegant and well-spoken woman who is married to the man who runs the executive branch of our great nation has endorsed this cookie. The New York Times references a similar Fannie Farmer Cookbook recipe, and then explains that somehow Cindy McCain's cookies won the Family Circle First Lady Cookie competition, making Obama's the first victorious candidate's wife's cookie not to win since the competition's inception in 1992. From the Times piece:

Hillary Clinton’s comments that she could have stayed home and baked cookies — but didn’t — inspired a cookie contest at Family Circle magazine between her chocolate chip cookies and those made by then-first lady Barbara Bush. Magazine readers were instructed to vote for their favorite, thus predicting the presidential contest winter.

Reason number two: this shortbread is absolutely delicious. Buttery, citrus-sweet and almondy, this is the kind of cookie that makes me want to add the letter "y" to words it shouldn't be a part of. In fact, I brought a box of extra cookies to school and they were gone in roughly 2 minutes. They're that good.

Here is the shortbread, fresh out of the oven and pre-zesting. Below the fold, the recipe and an image of the final presentation.

Michelle Obama Shortbread.

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1-1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons Amaretto (or almond extract)
1 teaspoon each orange and lemon zest
3 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 beaten egg white
Diced almonds

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 325°F. Line a 17 x 12 x 1-inch baking pan with nonstick foil. In large bowl, cream together butter and 1-1/2 cups of the sugar.

2. Slowly add egg yolks, and beat well until smooth. Beat in Amaretto and zest.

3. Stir in flour and salt until combined.

4. Spread dough evenly into prepared pan, flattening as smoothly as possible.

5. Brush top of dough with egg white; sprinkle with nuts or fruit (if using) and with remaining 2 tablespoons sugar.

6. Bake at 325°F for 25 minutes or until brown, turn off oven and allow cookies to sit in oven (with door ajar) for 15 minutes. Cut while slightly warm.

AMH

meet and eat. and meat.

2010-08-03T14:26:00.003-04:00

I originally conceived as this post as a cute (yes, cute) reflection on my first experience meeting an animal and then eating the same as a piece of meat. That was, until I happened to read (or happened to inhale, in a day) Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, which has left me unsure of the viability of the ethical, selective meat eating advocated by foodies of privilege (Michael Pollan, myself at times, many of my peers). The truth is, I often say "I like to know where the meat I'm consuming comes from," but I usually don't know. This not-knowing is defined by what I actually do know: the meat I eat is usually from a factory farm. The meat I eat, and you probably eat, and we all mostly eat, is usually from a pathogen-infested, shit-feeding-and-eating, employee-abusing factory. I've eaten that meat my whole life, and it's possible that you have too. This post is the story of one time I ate meat that definitely wasn't that meat.

My dad is a recreational fisherman. In my childhood home, our seafood was almost never store-bought. All other protein consumed might as well have come from the sky. I had no interest in where my meat came from, because meat came from Stop and Shop. My mother had been raised on a farm where animals were playmates, beasts of burden, dinner. And yet, my sister and I grew up eating the variety of fish our dad caught, and birds and beasts that were genetically altered, shoved, plumped, crushed, slaughtered, shipped. In one generation, the connection between the animal and the plate was severed. Our world, and our connection to the animals we eat, has shifted.

Last week, I helped feed three colossal pigs being raised at a friend's ranch. Hulking and oinking things, they clamored for scraps and barreled through the grass, with food always their ultimate destination. My friend, usually a rather fearless rancher, seemed to be timid and tense around the pigs, and when I pressured her for a reason, she explained that "...pigs won't hurt you when you're standing up, but if they knock you down, they can eat you. Pigs kill ranchers." A rancher's life is gruesome and perplexing to me, and so I shrugged my urban shoulders at this, and focused on the strange, aardvarkish movements of the pink pig's twitching nose.

My trip ended, I came back west to the city and heard that pigs I met were being butchered by a mobile kill unit. I didn't think about this much. Yesterday, when my friend's sister shared some homemade pig liver pâté from the same few pigs, I realized that I had never met a mammal before I consumed it. In our childhood summers on the water, I had certainly caught fish and then eaten them, but fish are not usually human-sized, and are otherworldly in their sparkling scales, slivered gills and deep, salty sea smells. Pigs are like us, sizable, earth-bound, and sentient. After 28 years of eating, I finally ate part of a mammal that I had met while it was alive. It was delicious and a wholly different experience of meat eating, conceptually.

Deliciousness aside, I am a part of a system through which I hadn't seen even one animal I've eaten, of the thousands I must have consumed. I can't disagree with eating animals, and I don't want to stop eating animals-- but I certainly can't justify doing it the same way I have so far.

AMH

*Stranger yet, the most beautiful part of the pâté is the lacy white embroidery that is artfully created on its top by lining the baking tray with caul before putting the dark, jiggly mass of seasoned liver into the oven. Caul isn't the frilly, fanning mesentery that holds together our intestines, as I originally assumed it was, but is actually the greater omentum, or a layer of fatty tissue that caps the abdominal cavity in humans and pigs alike (more information on caul here, if we are to trust the ivy league). Observe the tasty pâté, with mom's recipe for potaje, cherry tomatoes and some hakurei turnips in the background, and spread on a cracker.

including eels.

2010-07-11T12:21:00.006-04:00

A change of plans brought me to Powell's bustling city of books yesterday, where I unexpectedly happened upon Liz Crain's Food Lover's Guide to Portland. The selection of cheese, chocolate, coffee, soda, beer, meat (including lamprey) and everything else imaginable featured in this book is so comprehensive that it even impressed food-loving lifelong residents of the Rose City. As a newcomer, I'm glad to have a thorough food guide in my hands.

If you're looking to visit or are already located in Portland, I suggest you grab a copy while they're on a 20% off sale at Powell's (online as well, for a limited time). Liz Crain will be speaking at Powell's Burnside on August 2nd, 7:30p. Her blog highlights her own culinary endeavors.

AMH

well-done: stakes, etc.

2010-07-11T11:14:00.003-04:00

At yesterday's the Mississippi Ave Street Fair, I encountered sunshine, beautiful art and a few spectacular culinary surprises and innovations. Firstly, roadside juicebar MoxieRx sold me some watermelon limeade (read: amazing).

I then discovered from Trevin Miller of Mr. GreenBeans (opening next week on Mississippi) that, for roughly $5 a pound, you can buy your coffeebeans sweet and green and then roast them yourself. I had no idea that this smoky process could be brought into the home! Worth thinking about. I wonder how the flavor compares!

The Meadow let me taste several of the 300-plus salts they sell in their North Portland shop, including a to-die-for Iburi-Jio Cherry Smoked salt and Black Truffle Salt.

Finally, a clever artist named Michelle Kolososki has taken to making ceramic garden stakes to mark rows in herb or veggie gardens. My permanent-marker-and-popsicle-stick combo has never made it through a season, and I've been looking for more a permanent solution. I was happy to find these! There certainly isn't a better-looking way to mark your rows, especially since these can be glazed in bright custom colors. Here are the stakes in white:

If you want some of these for your garden, drop me a line at seedsandstring at gmail dot com for Michelle's contact info. She doesn't have a website just yet, but I grabbed her information in case anyone else thought this was as great an idea as I do!

AMH

club: soda.

2010-07-07T03:07:00.008-04:00

I have arrived in the beautiful, bountiful Pacific Northwest. My classes have started, and I'm lucky enough to be a temporary houseguest in a cozy home full of wonderful conversation, delicious food, lovable canines and something called a SodaClub. What is a SodaClub? Why, it's a countertop carbonator. A carbonator that makes tart, bubbly, fizzy, wicked easy carbonated water, right on your kitchen counter.

I won't lie, in my sodamaking adventure this spring, I felt slightly overwhelmed by the complexity of force-carbonation using a CO2 tank. I thought, "Well, hey, I'll cross the bridge to CO2 tanks and hoses and fittings when or if I ever come to it on my own time." Which I still might, one day. For now, what if I don't have to?

Countertop carbonators are press-a-button easy, and surprisingly affordable at roughly $100 a piece, plus easy screw-in CO2 canister refills at $15 each. The downside? The main trick to using this device is that you can't add anything (not even a splash of flavor) to the water prior to carbonation, unless you're seeking out a bubbling, foaming, fizzing mess. This caveat is severely limiting if you're a homemade soda connoisseur.

For me, non-connoisseur, the "add-ingredients-last" rule is an opportunity to create syrups and essences that can transform soda water into more subtle and interesting varieties of pop. So far I've experimented with a lightly flavored, unsweetened coffee soda (delicious! refreshing!) and a salt and pepper soda (disgusting! don't do it!)

If you like soda and soda water but you're not ready for fermentation-based carbonation from growing microbes, or for legit CO2 force carbonation from a big heavy tank of non-combustible but potentially murderous compressed gas, try one of these little sodamakers on for size.

I'll have to find a Portland cocktail shop comparable to the Boston Shaker where I can find some flavorful bitters... until then, it's homemade coffee soda for me.

Images from my Amtrak trip across the USofA.

AMH

transplant.

2010-05-27T19:39:00.037-04:00

Come June 16th, I move to Portland, Oregon.

Of many things I have to look forward to in Portland, I count the world's largest independent bookstore, much delicious coffee and beer, an exciting new city and several great friends (not to mention the ones I haven't met yet!) Most of all, I'll be starting an accelerated nursing program that I've been working toward for years.

Roses in my Somerville garden, today.

Yesterday, the high temperature in Boston was a sweltering 92 degrees. I was wilting in the heat and I got a call from a friend in Oregon. I described the burning sun, the oppressive heat, the cooling sea breeze and she laughed and told me: "It's gray and 55 here. I'm wearing a wool sweater." Her reality and mine were wholly disparate, and I remembered (or realized): I am moving to a very different place. To a rainy, mountainous and western region that I have romanticized to death, and that I am excited to explore, and that also seems distant and distinctly other right now.

I will no longer share the ever-important commonalities of time zone and weather pattern with those of you on the Eastern seaboard. This is the start of somewhere else. Somewhere that looks like this, on a clear day:

When I was first looking for a city from which to start my medical/nursing career, I was drawn to Portland and went as far as to enroll in prerequisite coursework there before I decided to stay in New England instead. That was five years ago, and I wouldn't trade the experiences I've had in Boston for anything. I am so happy with the friends I've made, the work I've done and the time I've had so close to my family-- and yet, here I am, moving forward onto a distant coast, and another city.

I've heard that gardening and growing in the Pacific Northwest is a whole other ballgame, and also that I will have a longer harvesting time for my beloved greens and herbs (yay for temperate climes!) And yes, I will be far from many well-cultivated friendships, both personal and professional, and my family, and this wonderful, unique, nonsensical city. The impending distance fills me with apprehension and anxiety, but more than anything, I can't wait to see what my next adventure holds.

As a function of my coming transition, my Somerville garden has been pared down to a tiny container herb garden (the plants before the planting, here). I hope to resume full-scale backyard growing next year, or this fall as time allows. Mel will be staying in the Boston area, still running her farm, and I hope to continue to share our culinary, farming and gardening adventures on this site.

I hope you'll tag along.

AMH

rows and rows.

2010-05-27T08:15:00.015-04:00

Here is the second of Mel's CSA newsletters from Land's Sake. I love getting an update from the farm-- I hope you all enjoy it as well. Photos courtesy of Mel's smartphone.

AMH

First, I would like to send out a great big thank you to those of you who made it to our first two CSA orientations! The rain held off for the first one, thankfully, and last Saturday was a gorgeous day to be at the farm, if not just a little bit windy. The final orientation is scheduled for this Saturday, at noon. I am looking forward to it--the weather is supposed to be spectacular!

When I look at the calendar I am always shocked at how the days have gone by, but the speed with which time passes is apparent in so many different ways at and around the farm: the birds we see, and the way their behaviors change from week to week; the swiftly increasing size of the very first crops we popped into the ground; what moves into and out of the greenhouse; the crew's growing expertise and confidence; the buds that are turning into flowers on the perennial fruit crops; the longer days filled with sun; the fields that change rapidly from green to brown to dotted with green again as we do our tractor work the fields and then plant into them. I recently took an extra day off and returned to find that everything in the greenhouse seemed to have doubled in size, in just two days! Every season I notice these same things and the wonder I experience never goes away.

The threat of frost is decreasing and so the plantings of our more tender crops (tomatoes, summer squash, winter squash, cukes, peppers and eggplants) are fast approaching. As I type this, flowers are being planted in our front pick-your-own flower garden and our second tomato planting is being moved from the greenhouse into a holding pen where they will harden off, or acclimate to the more harsh outside conditions before they get planted into the soil.

At any farm, it is a race against time to stay on top of the weekly to-do list. Some tasks, the less crucial ones, often slip by undone. For the most part, the season has been smoothly pulling us along and luck has served us well these past couple of months. It has been a dry spring, but just when we start to get worried, the sky opens up to provide our crops with the long, steady drink of water they need. Just in the nick of time, our new tractor was delivered--we used it one week later to cultivate in our first Brassica planting. We ordered our fertilizer later than is ideal, but in time to make sure that our delivery was included on a truck that was headed in our direction, the very next day! We love it when things work out like that around here.

I look forward to working with you in the fields!

Melanie
Farm Manager
Land's Sake Farm

cream soda results.

2010-05-25T19:47:00.024-04:00

The homemade cream soda project was a success, but I've been busy enough that I haven't had a spare moment to document the deliciousness. My family loved the flavor, which was subtly cinnamon, wholly vanilla, perfectly carbonated (thanks to Sean and his force-carbonating setup). An extra-special touch: the soda was flecked with vanilla seeds from my homemade vanilla extract.

We added heavy cream a la old-style soda fountains, and enjoyed the golden hue of the soda as well as the creamy indulgence of the treat. Thanks again to Sean for his assistance!

AMH

coming soon: cream soda.

2010-05-11T15:22:00.004-04:00

I have a multi-talented friend who, among many other impressive feats, makes his own sodas. Sean has invested in the gear (mostly little mini-kegs and force-carbonating equipment), the miscellaneous, rather simple ingredients (usual kitchen staples like sugar, cream of tartar, spices, plus some essential oils and an emulsifier called gum arabic or gum acacia). Most importantly, Sean also possesses the know-how to make a killer ginger beer, which I've tried and enjoyed but never knew how to make.

We've had plans to make a soda using my homemade vanilla extract since a snowy sunday in December, and we finally got around to the first step of the process last night.

The recipe we used came from this neat and informative book, which I recommend you buy at that cute little brewing store on Mass Ave. I think I'm going to. Especially interesting are the historical recipes and sidebars in the book, such as New Hampshire's 19th century spruce soda recipe! The cream soda recipe involved turbinado sugar, a stick of cinnamon and the aforementioned homemade vanilla extract.

Sean made the ginger beer in parallel, grating pounds of fresh ginger and adding fresh lemon juice as well. We heated and then cooled and diluted the sodas with cool water. Below, the beautiful red hue of my soon-to-be cream soda, and a few photos of the spicy, golden ginger beer in process.

On Wednesday night, we carbonate.

AMH

early to rise.

2010-05-07T09:25:00.011-04:00

Mel and I both left home before 6 this morning, arrived at our workplaces accompanied by long, golden rays of spring sunlight and started on our day's tasks. The main difference: I was arriving for the early shift at the inner-city clinic where I work, and Mel at the organic vegetable farm she manages. Even though Melanie only lives on the other side of the river, I often feel like we're in totally different worlds.

Mel brightens my inbox many days with smartphone snapshots of new plantings, and her well-crafted CSA newsletters-- reminders that my closest friend is out in the elements each day, sowing and weeding and harvesting (well, no harvesting yet).

In my inbox today, I found a photo of her farm's pretty new tractor. Here is the photo, for your viewing enjoyment, and below, Mel's first CSA newsletter for the season. I hope they brighten your day like they do mine.

Greetings CSA shareholders,

For those of you who are returning, thanks for joining us again. For those of who are new, welcome to the Land's Sake Farm CSA newsletter!

We will be sending you bi-weekly updates about what is going on at the farm until early June. At that time, your weekly pick-ups will start and the newsletter will be sent out on a weekly basis to accompany your share with recipes, stories from the field and news about upcoming events.

To kick off the season, I'd like to give you all a quick update on the recent goings-on at the farm. If you ever wonder what a farmer does in the winter months, it's a whole lot of planning and repairing and preparing for the upcoming season. We attended wonderful farming conferences and round tables, spent a bunch of quality time with Excel spreadsheets and coffee, ordered lots and lots of seed, and generally put a lot of thought, intention, time and energy into what we hope will be a successful season here at Land's Sake Farm.

In March, Stephanie and I opened and cleared out the greenhouse, cranked up the heat (to a whopping 50 degrees!) and right away, started seeding our onions, leeks and scallions...we filled up more than half of the greenhouse with the thousands and thousands of alliums-to-be! Now, nearly two months later, they are sitting outside, waiting to be planted later this week. They will be planted in the Concord Road field, which some of you may be familiar with, or may pass in your daily commute. Keep peeking over there to see when they appear in the long, long beds we have prepared for them.

The beginning of April marked a turning point in the season in many ways. Our crew more than doubled. The simplicity of most of March, with its quiet, cold greenhouse work was long gone. Suddenly, everything needs our attention--field preparation, field plantings, tractor repairs, greenhouse watering on super hot days (we've had them already!)...the general logistics of the day get much more complex as the season goes on. It is an exciting time on the farm, which is rapidly waking up!

We have already gotten our first lettuce and beet plantings into the ground, along with our potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, carrots, turnips and peas. In addition to our onions, another planting of lettuce, our new strawberries and some chard are going into the ground this week. Let's hope for some rain because all of these baby plants sure could use some. In the greenhouse, our tables are getting crowded with thousands of baby tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and hot peppers. Our flowers are also looking strong in the greenhouse.

Happy spring!

so, spring arrived.

2010-05-04T14:41:00.003-04:00

There have been many days since our first hot day (early April) and since the plants started growing in the garden (mid April). I am just now sitting down, starting my planting and posting back on Seeds and String.

Mel and I taught an urban gardening workshop at a local public library last month. The workshop was a good opportunity to share our shared urban gardening experience, and Mel her extensive plant-related knowledge. It was fun to share our excitement and know-how around planting with a group of ten amateur gardeners. Powerpoint to come soon, once I figure out how to upload it.

The workshop was a bit of a time crunch, as Mel's farming is in full swing. She's been leading a team of farmers planting and nurturing thousands of plants into growth on these hot sunny days (and on the rainy ones too). Below, please enjoy photos that I took in the garden in (hot) early April, when I cleaned out the yard, discovering many left treasures from last planting season: beans, morning glory seeds and one lovely ladybug.

AMH

mesmerizing.

2010-03-25T14:23:00.009-04:00

I looked up from my books this morning to see that there are already tiny green weeds bursting through the dirt in front of my house!

It's officially spring, and yet I still haven't planted a single seed. I also can't stop thinking about the hot evenings I spent relaxing in front of swaying palm trees on a recent trip to Puerto Rico.

It'll take this New England gardener some time to adjust back to a springtime that began while swimming in tropical seas.

AMH

dissections.

2010-03-07T18:36:00.010-05:00

Where've I been, since I've barely been writing on the blog? Taking classes full-time and working full-time. Oh, and taking a couple vacations. Amidst it all, I've been cooking but barely posting. I drafted this post a while back, and I've left it in draft mode until now. Here goes.

This post is about a hot black pepper and my favorite organ: the heart.

Last Saturday, my morning started in Anatomy lab slicing through a brown, formaldehyde-scented sheep’s heart. With misplaced bravado, my lab partner and I sliced down what we were sure was the right (the right, and also correct) edge of the anterior side of the heart. When we opened the heart, instead of two neat halves, two pairs of atrioventricular valves, two atria, two ventricles, we just had a bit of a mess, including an improperly bisected tricuspid valve. We were on the wrong side of the heart. It was a mess-- quite different from the first heart dissection I ever completed, which was fascinating and satisfying enough to inspire this painting.

Later that night, I found myself preparing a meal at home, up a culinary creek without a much-needed hot pepper. The only one in the house was especially treasured, the only fruit growing and ripening on the pepper plants by the window in my kitchen. The black pepper, pictured below, at left of the frame:

I reluctantly cut the pepper down, all 2" long of it, and sliced it open to check out the color and the flavor of the pepper. I was pleasantly surprised to find a subtle heat and a lovely deep red color inside of the pepper. I realized, after I made the first incision, that the pepper and the heart were some strange bookends to my day. Both were fragile and spectacular gifts to explore-- a heart from some unknown animal in a distant place, and a pepper that I very nearly left outside to fall victim to the cycles of snow and frost.

AMH

dutch babies.

2010-03-07T18:28:00.007-05:00

A friend made these German pancakes for me (from memory-- I found smittenkitchen.com's version today) while I was staying at her place and I was intrigued. Dutch babies are like thick, baked crepes-- eggy as all hell, beautifully browned and great with lemon juice and sugar, or with honey, blueberries and yogurt, as I chose to enjoy them today. Delicious.

AMH

whole wheat muffins.

2010-02-07T00:38:00.005-05:00

One day I'll actually watch Mark Bittman's instructional videos before preparing his recipes. Until then, the digital versions of his recipes will remain my guiding light. I stumbled upon this whole wheat muffin recipe and immediately recognized an opportunity to put to good use some whole wheat pasty flour I had kicking around.

According to Bittman, the trick to these muffins is first the use of the whole wheat pastry flour, a finer-milled cousin of the heavy whole wheat flour I usually have to cut with white flour to keep my baked goods light. The second secret is the addition of one cup of mashed fruit-or-certain-vegetables in lieu of water. I used mashed zucchini and was satisfied with the neutral flavor and smooth texture. I would imagine that fruits like peach, apple or banana would impart much more flavor to the muffin, which could be a plus or minus depending on your fruity preferences.

My muffins came out moist, therefore smoother-battered and lacking the lovely texture in Bittman's photos and videos. I hypothesize this is due to my use of waterier-than-potato zucchini, thin and improvised "buttermilk" (1 teaspoon vinegar per cup of milk) or perhaps my larger muffin tins.

Nonetheless, these muffins were very satisfying: slightly sweet, lightly buttery and just whole-wheat-flavored enough.

AMH

best breakfast potatoes.

2010-02-06T16:57:00.007-05:00

This post is taken nearly verbatim from an e-mail I recently sent to a friend. I think the story works pretty well as is, so here it is:

Crispy breakfast potatoes always seemed like a staple that I wouldn't need a recipe for, because they are so obvious and simple. I imagined: salt, potatoes, oil. While in Napa during my mapmaking days, I encountered crisped potatoes that were exactly the size, crispness and flavor that I prefer, vaguely reminiscent of what I used to enjoy at the diner by the seawall in my hometown. The potatoes were so perfectly delicious that I went into the kitchen at the bed and breakfast I where I was staying, tracked down the chef and asked her for the recipe.

That was in 2005, and I've been making these potatoes for brunches and breakfasts ever since. The seasoning instructions are all to preference. I think that the initial high heat, the pre-mixing of the spices (and the simplicity of using just one herb) and size of the cut potatoes all make this recipe work. Sadly, the only photo I have is before cooking, as these hot potatoes have always disappeared too quickly to be caught on film.

Best Breakfast Potatoes

1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

2. Cut 2 lbs of potatoes into small, roughly 1/2" square chunks. I leave the skins on.

3. In a large metal bowl, mix 1 teaspoon (or to preference) of each of the following seasonings: salt, garlic or onion powder (not garlic or onion salt), crushed black pepper, and any herb of your choice.

4. Add potatoes and enough olive oil to coat the potatoes.

5. Mix the potatoes with the oil and seasonings until well-coated.

6. Spread spiced and oiled potatoes evenly on a metal cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes at the highest heat, stirring every 5 minutes and/or rotating pan to ensure an even bake.

7. Adjust heat to 350 and bake for 15 more minutes, or to preferred crispiness.

Serve hot, with ketchup, eggs and coffee.

AMH

a distraction from winter.

2010-01-20T08:02:00.003-05:00

The walk to work this morning was dark, frozen and sparkling. We're in the depths of winter, and a British study says that Monday was the most depressing day of the year. As such, I'm making efforts to bring little bits of summer into my life, at least by eating spicy, warming foods and getting sunshine (what sunshine?) when I can.

This morning I encountered a Bittman piece entitled "Allowing Citrus to Add Su nshine." I'm not sure if it was the slippery walk to work or the tantalizing image (below, from the Times) that convinced me, but I would like to make and consume a beautiful winter citrus salad very, very soon.

AMH

smoky inspiration.

2010-01-17T22:29:00.027-05:00

Pimentón de la Vera is my third favorite culinary discovery of 2009, behind my kitchen garden and the mandoline. I stumbled upon the mysterious "Spanish paprika" in several recipes in October, while preparing a Spanish-themed dinner party in honor of a friend who had spent some time abroad in Madrid. I located the paprika at South End Formaggio, and fell in love. I was a year behind Bittman, and so are you. Buy this spice.

Why do you need it? Because pimentón is paprika's tastier and much more interesting cousin. According to About.com:

Pimentón de la Vera has a distinctly smoky flavor that comes from the process of smoke-drying the peppers with huge amounts of oak wood in the drying houses. Peppers are placed on racks above the fire and farmers turn the peppers by hand once a day. This drying process takes about two weeks.

The smoky, spicy flavor imparted by this paprika adds warmth and character to recipes, and most distinctively a compensatory meatiness in some dishes I had to adjust for my vegetarian guest of honor. For the Spanish-themed dinner party, the recipes I made featuring the pimentón's smoky heat were:

Smoky Chard Sauté. A simple tomato/garlic/chard sauté with a smoky undertone and slight, pleasant fennel flavoring.
Cauliflower Gratin with Manchego and Almond Sauce. There are no words or photos to describe how delicious and over-the-top rich this recipe is. Golden manchego crust, golden-edged cauliflower, a soft smokiness and a subtly almondine sauce. Sigh.
White Bean and Chorizo Salad, revised with the addition of pimentón, "fake" soy chorizo and extra oil to compensate for the lack of real spiced sausage.
Finally, the entrée: a delicious, improvised, slightly blasphemous vegetarian paella that was satisfying in both taste and texture. I combined several recipes and created the rest, so I would need to work backwards through my memory to piece the recipe back together. Instead, I suggest that you don't make vegetarian paella. Make real paella.

I also served many non-pimentón offerings, including vegan moussaka with a pine nut cheese, and a bounty of flan, figs, fresh bread with guava paste, chevre, manchego and gouda, trays of raw and marcona almonds, olives, and a perfect orange-honey-almond spread made with almonds left over from the gratin. This dinner party, for 14 guests, was the first that I had ever prepared. There was plenty of food, and I had done enough prep work in advance that, come dinnertime, I only had to throw the gratin and the moussaka in the oven and prepare the paella and the sauté on the stovetop.

I was too busy cooking to even think about capturing my creations with a camera (a first for me!). Most importantly, the dinner guests and the guest of honor loved the meal. I was quite proud of the results-- with pimentón by my side, the night went off without a hitch. Here is the one food photograph I managed to take at the dinner party, a delicious image but wholly lacking in pimentón:

AMH

a taste of summer.

2010-01-12T10:19:00.006-05:00

I've been enjoying this recipe for Roasted Sweet Potato Salad with Black Beans and Chile Dressing regularly since Bittman featured it in September. Every time I prepare the salad, I am impressed with the affordability and simplicity of the ingredients, the ease of prep, and the spectacular, summery heat of the roasted sweet potatoes and the diced chile peppers. Friends who have tried just a taste demanded the recipe and have since reported that they make the salad often themselves. Photos above and below of the very basic ingredients: roasted onions/sweet potatoes, red peppers, cilantro, a cilantro chile dressing, and black beans.

Forgive the blurry photos-- I'm posting them regardless, as they do capture the beautiful variety of colors of the peppers and potatoes. At bottom, a particularly cilantro-heavy batch of the salad I made last month. Imperfect, and still delicious!

AMH

spicy sweet popcorn.

2010-01-08T09:53:00.022-05:00

As a kid I remember two favorite seasonal popcorn snacks: popcorn balls (I loved them in an irrational way) and those three-part popcorn tins with puppies or winter scenes on them. I always loved the savory cheddar (orange) and butter (yellow) portions of the tin, but could take or leave the excessively sweet caramel (brown) popcorn. Despite my sweet tooth, I wasn't a fan of caramel popped corn. Of course, my popcorn consumption has been revolutionized since those youthful years. Part microwave aversion, part fear-of-popcorn-worker's-lung, part influence-of-a-flatmate, I now make all my popcorn from the kernel and on the stove top. Best popped in a neutral vegetable or peanut oil, popcorn kernels just want to be popped on the stove.

Do they also want to be popped on the stove and then mixed with peanuts and rolled in spiced caramel? You bet they do.

I tried a recent Smitten Kitchen Spicy Caramel Popcorn recipe (starting ingredients in photo above: bubbling sugar, baking soda/cayenne mix, popcorn with peanuts) at a friend's inspiration, and with the lucky chance of having the necessary ingredients on hand. I was happy with the ease of the process and the subtly of the spice in the finished product. I really enjoyed making and tasting this snack, despite my general preference for savory popped corn. The sweet, hot popcorn got rave reviews from my co-workers, friends and flatmates. Photos below of separating the cooling corn, and the finished popcorn with beautiful flecks of cayenne.

An important tip: be sure to use a large pot to melt the sugar concoction, as it will bubble up significantly when the baking soda and cayenne are added. Remember the volcano you made in second grade, filled with vinegar and then erupted in a furious flow of baking soda fizz? The addition in this recipe is a similar reaction, but hotter and sweeter and a little more dangerous.

Also, regarding heat: I used the maximum amount of cayenne suggested in the recipe (3/4 tsp.) and found the spice a touch too subtle-- I might up the cayenne to one teaspoon next time and also salt the popcorn as the caramel cools for another twist of flavor. You might want to try the recipe as-is first and sort out your own preferences. Enjoy!

AMH