Holiday gift shopping…2016

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That time of year again! I’ve sworn off malls, and almost any shopping until after the holidays. I find I have zero tolerance for the chaos of parking lots and stores. Somehow those places really dampen any holiday excitement that I do manage to have: folks that can’t manage to allow two-lane traffic in a wide lane, bumps in the butt with shopping carts, and the like. Not to mention the choice of music in so many stores. But if you still need to do some holiday shopping….

  • For the cookbook lover who has an incredible library but is constantly cursing about not being able to find a recipe, a membership to Eat Your Books will let them search those books, as well as magazines, and blogs for recipes. (Membership information here.) It is definitely worth the bit of effort it takes to get you books on you searchable bookshelf.
  • Bull City Olive Oil specializes in fine olive oils, vinegars, and other provisions (shipping is available). If you are local (Durham NC) you can taste before buying. I’d not been a particular fan of infused oils until I tasted some there. The combination of herbes de Provence infused oil and lavender infused balsamic vinegar makes an awesome vinaigrette!
  • Cooks always love herbs and spices–if you don’t want to make the decision on what to give Penzeys will provide a great selection from which to choose. Personally  I love the small jars, especially for things you want to try, but may not use in huge quantities. Although I don’t keep many mixes on hand I wouldn’t  want to be without the herbes de Provence–it’s the jar that I reach for when I am rushed or just can’t decide what to use.
  • Spirits are always welcome gifts. My latest “booze” discovery is from The Brothers Vilgalys Spirits. They produce Krupnikas, Jabberwock, Zapod, Beatnik, and Beebop. I know I’ve mentioned these before, but I think they still make an excellent gift.
  • For someone who wants to learn more about cooking, The Science of Good Cooking presents techniques used in the kitchen with some good recipes; eat well while you learn to understand what goes on in the kitchen. In the same understand-what-you’re-doing vein there’s  Cook’s Science,  Cook’s Illustrated .com, Cook’s Country.com or a subscription to  America’s Test Kitchen membership that can give access to these last three sites.
  • For someone who wants to butter their toast without using cold, hard to spread butter, the Butter Bell crock, or the Emile Henry butter pot, or a plethora of others which work on the principle of using a water seal to keep the butter from air exposure. Caveat: you do have to remember to change the water every couple of days, but it’s a pretty small effort for soft butter. (Unfortunately, I’ll have to mention a solution that doesn’t work although it seems like a nice idea: the Cook’s Innovations Butter Mill. According to reviews some do work–mine didn’t–the fine threads just didn’t catch so the butter moved down to the “grating” surface.)
  • Your toast eater might also appreciate some topping for that buttered toast: varietal honeys from Old Blue Raw Honey–an impressive selection–including poison ivy honey.
  • For the cook who wants to explore using fresh herbs there are seed collections of basic culinary herbs: seed disc collections (complete with pots) from Johnny’s Select Seeds,  or just collections of herb seeds.
  • The potato of the month club from Wood Prairie Family Farm might suit for a “meat and potatoes” person. The variety of potatoes is absolutely amazing–and yes, they do taste different from what we’re used to in the supermarket.
  • For excellent citrus fruits Mixon Fruit Farms can provide luscious fruit shipped right to the door–grapefruit, oranges, lemons, or other. Even the white grapefruit will surprise you.
  • There is always a gift certificate for Kindle books  (or other e-readers) and a Lékué popcorn popper to provide a cozy, relaxing evening. Of all the microwave popcorn poppers I’ve tried this is a hands-down winner.
  • For some exotics like truffle butter, game, kits for making cassoulet, or charcuterie (which you might be invited to share) D’Artagnan can likely provide what you want.
  • Finally, another option for relaxation to go with the book or the Kindle gift certificate, a good cup of tea would add a final touch. Check out what’s available from Harney & Sons provides an incredible variety. One of the things I like so much about getting my tea from them is that for a small charge you can get samples of the teas–enough to brew a pot to really taste the tea. Frankly, I love trying different ones, so I’d be happy with a selection of samples as a gift!

Some other gift suggestions here, here, and here–there may be some redundancy, but some thing appreciated by cooks never change. My redundancy will probably give you an idea of what I’ve had to replace during the year–e.g. Krupnikas!

Disclaimer:  I have neither affiliate connection nor do I receive any consideration from any of the sources suggested above–they’re simply my personal preferences, so you decide. I’m sure that some of the things are available from other sources as well, perhaps less expensively.

Turkey–with truffle butter

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Thanksgiving does have its good points–getting together with friends! There’s another positive thing, especially if you are like me, someone whose favorite part of the turkey is the dark meat: you can find turkey thighs in the grocery store. That means dark meat in quantities suitable for cooking for one.

Perusing my food-related emails a few days ago I found one from D’Artganan–my favorite source of foodstuff that can be hard to find (e.g. the cassoulet  ingredients–no, I didn’t say it was inexpensive). There was a link to a delightful video on preparing your Thanksgiving turkey using truffle butter. (Attempting not to drool on my keyboard.)

You’ve seen from some of my previous posts that I really like truffles (not the candy–well, those, too, but…), even in my comfort food. In my attempts to be frugal and still indulge my tastes for the expensive stuff I do skulk through the “manager’s specials” and those carts full of end-of-season bargains. Sometimes I’m lucky and find an indulgence elsewhere. Not long ago I found a small tub of truffle butter at my local supermarket–marked down as it was lingering with the cheese and spreads, but not past it’s sell-by date. Needless to say, it came home with me–some of just have no willpower when it comes to food!

20161119_165833After seeing the turkey with truffle butter video, realizing that I had truffle butter, and turkey thighs to hand, I decided to try  turkey this way. I decided (since I was roasting all dark meat) to use my Schlemmertopf  for this. I carefully loosened the skin over my turkey thighs, and as directed in the video, put bits of truffle butter under the skin. After soaking the clay cooker properly, I patted my turkey thighs in, sprinkled some kosher salt over them, and put the pot into a cold, 300ºF oven for about 2-1/2 hours–until they were nice and brown, and very tender. (Many recipes will suggest oven temperatures of about 450ºF, but I chose to use a lower temperature because dark meat can tolerate longer cooking, and it often tends to be tough. I wanted slower cooking to break down collagen and make my turkey really tender.

The skin did shrink away from the edges of one of the thighs–I would rather have had one big thigh instead of two small ones, but it seems those haven’t hit the stores yet. Size and skin shrinkage aside, I had some lovely dark-meat turkey nicely flavored with black truffle. Turkey my way!

A son gôut!

On cooking for one

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Cover of Serve YourselfI have a number of favorite food writers–but some special favorites are those who cook for one (or maybe two), e.g. Nigel Slater,. Judith Jones, and Joe Yonan, who have a kind of get-in-there-and-do-it attitude.

I came across an post in The Kitchn with tips from Joe Yonan on “Five Essentials for Solo Cooking” that I thought I’d share.I think there are some good suggestions for those of use who don’t have a loving relationship with “leftovers” for three or four days in the week.

I particularly like his “building block” suggestion, especially since many of us shop where things are packaged for family, not for one. The freezer is a great adjunct to cooking for one, but it’s sometimes easy to plop something into the freezer and it gets forgotten until much, much later when you’re wondering what is this frozen lump of mystery stuff. With the caveat that you remember to date and label it a huge help in dealing with things like chili and soups, especially when the work schedule gets hectic.

Even though I work from home, like to cook (and eat well) sometimes deadlines get in the way of cooking, even something quick like a chop or steak which takes only minutes to cook.Then it’s time to delve into the freezer either for a full meal or some building blocks to put together something suitable for the weather and your mood.

A son gôut!

 

Dicing onions

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Ok, I’m lazy–even about some things in the kitchen–like dicing onions; however, I’m not at all sure that it’s possible to cook without onions.Being out of onions is like–well, my mind simply boggles at the thought.

800px-mixed_onionsI use lots of onions, meaning that I cut up a lot of onions, but I’ve never understood the “usual” way that we’re told is “proper” to dice onions. I can understand it if your onions are HUGE, I suppose, or if you have a touch of OCD (I may have, but not about diced or chopped onions). I’ve always thought that onions were essentially self-dicing with little effort on my part–after all they come with layers already there. Another aspect of dicing or chopping onions–I’ve never been one to expose myself to unnecessary risk so why the cuts parallel to the cutting board? (Yes, I know that you’re supposed to have your hand on top so it’s impossible to cut yourself. Be sure to check on that the next time you’re dicing an onion properly. Where’s you hand?)

My lazy approach has always been kind of a two-part thing: First don’t buy huge onions. Secondly, I bypass those horizontal cuts, doing only the vertical cuts. For diced, do the vertical cuts close together; for chopped, farther apart. Easy!

Recently, I stumbled over a video from The New York Times Cooking Techniques on how to dice an onion that omitted those cuts. How refreshing!

Since I’m doing single-serving cooking most of the time, I often use shallots. Then there’s the truly, completely lazy way to deal with the onions. For cooking purposes when I want chopped onions I often reach into the freezer for that bag of frozen chopped onions. If I want lots of onions for something like caramelized onions, then I’ll get out the knife and go to work.

For meat eaters…

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I found an interesting series of posts on Stefan’s Gourmet Blog about  Understanding What Happens To Meat When You Cook It.  I really like the experimental approach.

  1. Juciness
  2. Tenderness
  3. Succulence, Flavor, and Appearance

Even if you’re not doing sous vide cooking, I think there is some good information here.

Hive report: Sadness

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My beekeeping “career” began 24  July 2015–and it looks as if it’s ending for this year slowly but surely. I’ll not be overwintering bees this year–short of something like a miracle which is almost certainly not going to happen. For a while I had two booming colonies–then found both (apparently) queenless. Even though it was late, I attempted to requeen both colonies.  One didn’t take but on the last inspection of Salvia hive the queen 20161017_124359cage was empty, and we did see some larvae on 16 October and LOTS of bees.

Over the last few days I had noticed that there was not much traffic in and out of the hive, which was rather ominous as the weather was warm enough that I expected to see more.

I opened that hive today and found very few bees, no larvae, eggs, or newly capped brood. That “new” queen was not in the hive. Much to my chagrin, there the “old” queen (blue dot) was trucking around the hive with the few remaining bees–but no eggs, no larvae, and population at a critical level–I’ll be dismantling that hive before long.

I am now a very frustrated beekeeper–I thought I had done a careful, thorough inspection before I introduced the new queen; however, obviously not careful enough. I’m not sure what  should have done to be sure that the “old” queen was really absent from the hive. Had I seen her there with no eggs or brood, I’d (obviously even for my novice state) removed her. Now I can only assume that the new queen that I tried to introduce was killed, though the cage was completely empty of attendants as well as the queen.

It’s definitely been one of those things we call a “learning experience”–but although  I’ll be looking forward to giving it another try in the spring, I’m totally bummed right now! Meanwhile, there is an almost full super of honey on that hive for me to deal with. while I spend the winter considering all the things I’ve learned so far!

 

Another lamb and garbanzo bean stew

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Yesterday was the day for a trip to the supermarket–as usual dictated not by coupons but by me being low enough on milk that I was not going to be able to make enough caffè latte to get me awake and doing what I needed to do today. As usual, I didn’t go with preconceived notions of what I might bring home to cook.

I got my milk and eggs–just not possible to be out of eggs, but I was–and did my usual troll past the butcher counter. I found a manager’s special that was simply too good to pass up: lamb stew meat at a great price. Since my agenda today was mostly minor chores I thought I’d have time to cook, so I came home with lamb stew meat and actually remembered to soak (in brine) the garbanzo beans last night. You’re probably thinking so what?

Well, it’s fall and that makes me want to cook hearty stuff and lamb stew just seemed to be a really good idea: economical, tasty, some to go in the freezer for quick meals, and some to eat now. Unfortunately, the weather is not really cooperating–my thermometer is showing 82ºF right now–but at least it’s cooler in the evenings now so stew is not completely amiss. Still, so what?  Right?

Well, as I started my morning caffeination by browsing Facebook I was informed that I had memories from two years ago. Now I’m still not convinced the FB really cares about my memories, but the top item on the list was my post about making–yep!–lamb and garbanzo bean stew in the oven. Well, same today: it’s unseasonably warm again, but not too humid, and it’s sunny and breezy today so it’s oven rather than slow-cooker version this time. Since I did forget to soak the Romertopf  ahead of time, I just pulled out the Dutch oven instead.

I did look for recipes last night but didn’t really find anything inspiring, so today’s lamb stew was a “kitchen happening”–let’s just see what turns out. That two-year-ago lamb stew was an oven version of a slow cooker recipe. This year, given the weather I decided that I’d (again) do oven braising. (The slow-cooker version was good, but no way as good as the one done in the oven.)  I haven’t looked back to see what went with that version–all I really remember is that I used canned beans that time.

Oven-braised lamb and garbanzo stew (2016)

Ingredients

(I’m not giving much in the way of measurements here since this was a “kitchen happening”)

  • Lamb stew meat (about 3 pounds with some bones included)
  • Garbanzo beans (brined over-night)
  • Lots of onions (cheated and used frozen chopped ones)
  • Bay leaves–2 large
  • Salt about 1-1/2 teaspoons, give or take–will taste later
  • French thyme (dried)
  • Marjoram (dried)
  • Garlic powder (Oops–not a single head of garlic in the house!)
  • One 14-ounce can of diced tomatoes–drat, out of fire-roasted ones.
  • Smoked Spanish paprika
  • Olive oil as needed for browning lamb

Preparation

  • Brown stew meat (bones included; they will make good stock as the beans and lamb cook ).The bones are big enough to get out easily when the stew is done. Add to Dutch oven.
  • Saute onions until just golden, and add to Dutch oven with meat, beans, and tomatoes
  • Deglaze skillet with water and add to braising pot
  • Add  salt, herbs, and spices.
  • Bring to a simmer on the stove-top
  • Place in a 185ºF oven  and cook until beans and meat are tender–about 3 hours.

Ò¿Ó

Here I was, again, making this lovely stew in unseasonably warm weather but still cool enough to use the oven rather than the slow-cooker. Cooking my own garbanzo beans was well worth the thought and bit of effort that it took to soak them. Brining them seems to make them cook much more quickly. Leaving the bones in with the meat really gave a lot of lamb flavor–worth the effort of taking them out after the meat was done.

I love this combination of lamb and garbanzo beans–it seems that I’ve used different seasonings almost every time this “happens” in my kitchen, but it’s good every time! No recipe needed just season as you like…a son gôut!

 

Hive report: Taking down a hive

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20161017_124359Taking down a hive in the midst of robbing is not fun! I finally got everything except one hive body and two frames in and stored before I became a total wimp. The more I took away, the more the bees buzzed (definitely buzz, not hum) aggressively around what was left there–and the farther they followed me with my load of supers and frames. The followed me all the way back to the screened door of my deck even with the frames shaken and brushed before they were put into a closed plastic bin–The one you see in the photograph.

Despite vigorous shaking, thumping, and brushing I still got a few bees onto the back porch where I was bagging the supers and frames so the doors are closed (and Frankie can’t go out so he is having a bad hair day).

When I finally wussed out about those last frames, no amount of shaking, bumping, or brushing was getting them remotely clear of bees–being the wimp that I am I gave up on that and decided that those could simply stay outside until the bees had cleaned all the honey from them because when I got to the screen door to go inside I realized that I had a LOT of bees on me. Despite all the bees following me, I had to take off the bee suit outside. I did that quickly and dashed inside and closed the screen door on  them.

As I started to write I heard least one honey bee that has been carried into the house buzzing frantically at the office window. (I actually found two.) The old cup-and-paper trick works pretty well. If you’re really persistent you can get more than one bee in the cup at a time. There are still a bunch on the back porch–too many for that trick.

All the supers and frames are now sealed up so that honey bees can’t get to them. so they are congregating in the sunshine on the screen, trying to get out. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to address this issue–except sweep up the dead bees tomorrow–or whenever–since these are not going to be house pets and there are too many to catch and put back outside. There are also honey bees outside the screened back porch trying to get in. I hope those ladies will depart and not come back tomorrow.

 Õ¿Õ

My big mistake on this whole process was sleeping through my alarm–this would have been much easier much earlier while it was cooler very early in the morning. Since I wussed out on those last frames and body, I guess I’ll make sure I don’t oversleep in the morning and finish the job.

There didn’t seem to be much robbing going on at Salvia yet. I have to wonder if those “foreign” bees will switch their attention to Salvia when there is less for them to attend to at what was Rosmarinus. There was no way to get a robbing screen on this morning after my sleep-in–that was another thing I had intended to do. I’ve got the entrance reduced and it is still a strong colony. Fingers crossed–and up much earlier tomorrow morning!

 

 

 

 

Hive report: Happiness is…

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20160116_134424I just finished inspecting hive Salvia with a fellow beekeeper; it looks as if the re-queening was successful. Though we didn’t actually lay eyes on the queen–and we both have trouble seeing eggs–we did see larvae this morning.

Depending on the weather, I may peek into the hive again in ten days or so to see how the ladies are doing, but for now I just happy to have seen little shiny white larvae in the hive. Right we both think that there are good honey and pollen stores for the winter in Salvia.

First on the agenda for tomorrow is to dismantle hive Rosmarinus to see if there is honey that can be salvaged. But for today, a very happy beekeeper!

 

Hive report: Requiem for a colony

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IMG_8426As I approached the hives today to check on the release of the queens, it was obvious even to a novice like me that all was not well with Rosmarinus–bees all around the hive at every crack or join between the supers and under the screened bottom board as well. It looked like robbing going on but without any defense at the hive entrance. Ominous!

When I opened the hive there were very few bees that appeared to be doing the normal bee things that you would expect of the ladies in residence and some webby stuff right under the inner cover. Very few bees doing normal things. As I looked deeper into the hive I saw that the queen had not been released–was dead with attendants in the shipping cage.

There was an obvious problem–slimy looking stuff on the surface of the comb, more of the web-like stuff between frames. Small hive beetles had taken over quickly as the colony weakened even as I attempted to re-queen it.

In retrospect, it’s obvious that I should have put beetle traps in this hive when I first saw that the population was down. Lesson learned–hindsight is so good!  It’s amazing how fast SHB can take over once the population is declining (a lesson I’d really rather have done without–but definitely a learning experience).  This hive was opened twice since queen installation on 06 October 2016–and today–disaster. I would guess that an experienced beekeeper would have seen signs that I missed.

My mission today was to see if the queens had been released so, although with some reservations about the (probable) robbing activity going on from Rosmarinus, I started to open the Salvia colony. No sooner had I removed the telescoping cover and popped the inner cover than I had bees moving from around Rosmarinus to Salvia with fighting taking place on the inner cover. Discretion took over–I smoked and brushed the bees from the inner cover and immediately replaced the outer cover. With foreign bees around the hive I IMG_20150329_133928244_HDRstarted seeing some fighting on the landing board as well, so I put in an entrance reducer. The population of Salvia is good so I think (hope) they can defend the hive now.

I don’t know if that queen has been released–I thought it best not to continue to open the hive with the robbing activity. I’ll try again tomorrow and hope I find better results in this hive.