Sunshine In

Praised be, the sun was brilliant all day today!  Not a rain cloud in the sky, which allowed us to get out into the garden this morning.  We have baby zucchini about ready to  burst and I can’t wait.  I also rode my bike to the market, picking up some of the best sugar snap peas I’ve ever tasted and some radishes.  I love the spicy crack of a good radish.

Next week at work is crazy, so maybe kicking back tonight with a movie.

Crumbly

Determined to use some of the rhubarb posted a few days ago, and after determining pie (one of my favorite food groups) was slightly too complicated, I googled rhubarb crumble and happily made the recipe in the first result.  Delicious.

Two birthday packages hopefully will go out in the mail tomorrow, which means a)I can post more pictures of a craft project and b)I am woefully behind in all spring birthdays.

Also?  Seriously with the rain?  Ok, so my house hasn’t been blown over by a tornado.  For which I am grateful.  But on Saturday, I am determined to go to the Farmer’s Market and maybe to some yard sales and I will NOT be happy if it rains on my parade.

Red Stalks

I’ve been reading food books again, and its got me thinking.  About food.  About nutrition.  About sustainability.  But not enough to motivate me to go out and cut some of this beautiful rhubarb to eat.  I don’t have a big rhubarb history, so not really sure what to do with this except for putting it in a pie.  Strawberries are coming in the same area, but a little slower. Can I just saute it in some butter?

I’m off tomorrow for Memorial day.  Have a few sewing things planned, also maybe reading.  But depends on the weather.  In the RARE chance it doesn’t rain, I will only be found OUTSIDE.

Thinking

Things I think about: food, coffee, being passionate about my work, quilts, fabric, Loki, Tim, classes, going back to school, work, work, work, am I eating enough fruit, going to the farmer’s market, Web 2.0, interns, photography, SPEA, The Commission for Sustainability, recycling, living green, whether I can see the New Pornographers in concert, being a good person, travel, friends, organic food, allergies, natural leave-in conditioner, exercise, switching to gmail, having a baby someday, paint colors, books, The Clash, religion, gardening, health care, family, whether I should get new highlights, crosswords, publicity, and politics.

In no particular order, and not meant to be inclusive or exclusive.

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.