Sarah’sTim Blog

Soup Making

It was super delicious, but I am curious about the food styling at Vegetarian Times.  My soup:

And from the magazine:

Mine seems a little murky in comparison. I think they left out the blended beans step for the photographs.  Hm.

Tim and I went and saw the Joe Strummer documentary yesterday, it was fantastic.  I’d link to the site, but hearing a raw version of White Riot without any music is a little disconcerting (and sticks in your brain…well my brain anyway).  And you know how to google, its called ‘The Future is Unwritten’.  Watching the movie makes me want to listen to The Clash and it made Tim want to get the band back together.

After the movie, I got a text from Marcus who was at Yogis before the IU game.  Glad I got a chance to see him!

App

Parmesan Sticks waiting to go into the oven. These are sort of a pain to make, but are so delicious and you can freeze them too. Just in case there are leftovers, which there won’t be. I think this is my mom’s recipe. YUM!

Parmesan Sticks
Makes 5-6 dozen

2 C freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Freshly ground black pepper
Cayenne pepper
2 C all-purpose flour
1 C butter
4 oz. cream cheese
1 egg
Paprika or poppy seeds

1. Stir Parmesan, a few grindings of pepper and a dash of cayenne into flour. Mix well.
2. Beat butter and cream cheese in mixer until smooth and creamy.
3. With fingers, work in flour mixture until you can round up dough in a ball. Wrap in saran wrap, flatten slightly and chill for a few hours or overnight.
4. Remove dough for 10-20 minutes before shaping.
5. Divide in ½ (keeping other ½ in fridge) and roll into oblong on a lightly floured counter until ¼ inch thick.
6. Cut into strips 1 inch wide and 3 inches long, using pastry wheel if you have one.
7. Place on ungreased cookie sheets and brush with slightly beaten egg. Sprinkle with paprika or poppy seeds (or ½ and ½ )
8. Refrigerate cut strips that have been brushed and sprinkled for 30 minutes. Remove.
9. Bake at 375 degrees until golden and slightly puffed, about 12 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

Veggie Scraps

We’ve had two days of (badly needed) rain, and now it has cleared and is much cooler and more fall like. You know what that means? Time to make the soup. The problem is that the grocery store that I like to go to doesn’t carry vegetable stock. Well, it doesn’t carry the vegetable stock that I like. They have the cheapo kind with sketchy ingredients, and the organic pricey kind. But for the amount of soup I make, I need some sort of middle ground.

So a few weeks ago, I started collecting my veggie scraps in a ziploc in the freezer. And today I dumped a bunch of water over them, added some peppercorns, a bay leaf and salt and boiled the whole mess up for about an hour.

I may cut it as I add it to recipes, but it made 10 cups of pretty strong, but nice tasting stock.

Veggies

I’ve gotten out of the habit, but I would like to continue to make a new recipe at least once a week. Its also hard to not just fall back on picking recipes that are heavily pasta based, so this week I am going to try some baked Eggplant Parmesan. I biked over to the Farmer’s Market this morning to pick up some eggplants.

And while I always take my little camera everywhere with me, it does have its limitations. Today I remembered to grab the big camera and spent some time walking around taking photos. The best are on my flickr site.

Fruity

Is is ok to buy fruit solely on the basis that it is cute? I mean look at this little baby melon!

I stopped by the farmer’s market on my walk home from work to buy some tomatoes and couldn’t pass this up. It will be dessert after we grill a bunch of veggies that we bought last weekend at the market, including some Indiana corn.

Students are arriving en masse this week and creating “traffic”. How annoying.

Cranberry Bliss

Friday, early afternoon with a cup of Chai tea, a cranberry bliss bar I made yesterday and some knitting.

The green yarn is sort of a tester. I am interested in doing some charity knitting, I’m thinking hats since even a very small sweater or similar would be out of the question based on my actual knitting ability. I have run across some options online and in the blog world, but am interested to see if anyone I know has had any experiences with donating knitted goods.

They’re back!

Yarr. They don’t usually appear until later in December, but a north wind yesterday brought some cedar down from the Hill Country. I am not looking forward to the next three months of allergies. IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER. Really.
But I do love the cold weather and wearing scarves and sweaters and thick socks. It means that it is really soup season. In south Texas, soup season is precarious two month affair, so I have to take advantage. Not that I am above making hot soup in 90 degree weather. I love to cook, and there is nothing I love to make more than soups. One of my favorite wedding gifts (which ironically is one of Tim’s least favorite because it is really heavy when you are cleaning it) is a huge bright yellow Le Creuset pot from my aunt Jean Marie. Other than the pot love/hate conflict, I would have married Tim for no other reason than he loves eating soup, and will happily eat it almost every night. This week I am trying a new Cream of Broccoli recipe.
There are also lots of quilts to make, books to be read and cards to mail. I did get all my packages out in the mail today, so that was exciting. Events this week, and mailing the packages all over the country made me wish once again that everyone I loved lived in one place. We are all so spread out, and it would be nice to be close to everyone that you love for the holidays, for hard times and for laughs. But a far away relationship takes work, and maybe that can sometimes add to the quality, strength and depth to that relationship.
Anyway, I am trying to get Tim to add a photo element to my posts which would be very exciting. That way I can show you all the little photos that I take that don’t really always add up to a whole set.

Unlikely Hero

Despite the traffic, despite the day, despite the week, I smiled and laughed almost the whole way home yesterday in the car listening to Tom Waits on NPR. I usually listen to books on CD, but am waiting for one to come in on hold, and I would have missed it. I also heard Kiran Desai on Monday and now must go and read The Inheritance of Loss. She sounds lovely.

Looking at a four day weekend, potential unfurling, but not many plans. Tim and I are going to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner of side dishes for ourselves. Including persimmon pudding, one of our favorites.

This year I am thankful for many things, but always topping the list is family and friends. Some are close, some are far, but without all of you I couldn’t do any of it. Emails, phone calls, hugs, random text messages…they all keep me going and make every day sparkle a little bit. Thank you.

30 Cookbooks

I did it! I actually cooked my way through all 30 of my cookbooks for my 101 list. It was a struggle sometimes, but did really help me branch out in my cooking and try new things. This was overall a fun project and I would recommend it to anyone who has a stack of cookbooks sitting on their shelves. Some recipes were a disaster, some were a total success…but that is the fun of it!

I am busy making a few quick quilts, trying new designs and making mistakes along the way. Some mistakes were stupid mistakes, others because I am always still learning. It can also be hard to make some serious progress when you run out of thread. Talk about a stupid mistake. I am also continuing to work on my 2006 Block of the Month quilt for Ashley. The pinks, greens, oranges are so bright and fun…a total departure from the navy and tan quilt I made for Andrew last year. If I can afford it (do you even know what fabric costs?), I might try to make two next year at the same time. I have a month in between each class, so I could easily duplicate the pattern in a second set of fabrics.

Must go and re-cut two pieces that are 1/2 inch too short and get back to sewing.

The Plague

Yesterday it was dragonflies. Not pretty petite blue dragonflies, but big fat ugly dragonflies…swarming our yard. I’ve never seen so many! They fly around really quickly, never seeming to pause. Today? Little bitty butterflies. Everywhere. On the last stretch of my drive, I hit 10 of them. Smack. Right into the windshield. I wonder a little bit what tomorrow will bring.

Regina and I have been talking about starting our holiday knitting…and I finally figured out what I am going to do this year. I hope this isn’t eliciting groans from my friends. But I came up with a great (well, great to me) idea and actually started last night. Actually I started four times last night, once my tail wasn’t long enough for the cast on, then again when I cast on the wrong number of stitches for the pattern, then again when I realized I was using the wrong sized needles. This pattern calls for almost 100 stitches, these weren’t quick mistakes. But I finally got it right, and now just have to get busy on it this weekend and next.

Tim and I have now done the vegetarian thing for over a month (which was the original trial period), and I am thinking of not turning back. I feel great, am happy about my choice and have rediscovered my love for making food. Maybe I was in a dinner rut…but since we’ve done this, I have been pretty ambitious in my meal planning, while having fun with it. A noodle casserole that takes two hours to prepare? No problem! Making two new recipes in one night (something I never did before), piece of cake (well, an hour and a half later). I have been wanting to make sp