Clandestine Self Indulgence

When Alex isn't home and I'm craving that sinful self indulgent personal time alone at home, I sneak into the kitchen and open the fridge. In the back of the vegetable drawer is my own personal stash of the most adorable little brussel sprouts I've ever seen. I buy them from Stony Plains farm at the farmers market and when I'm home alone, I'll grab a handful, and cut them each in half as a pan of bacon grease is heating up. When the grease is good and hot, I throw in the brussel sprouts so they sizzle wildly, frying them until they're gorgeous golden brown and just perfectly cooked. Sometimes I sprinkle a little salt and pepper on them, and sometimes I eat them as they are, straight out of the pan, with my fingers.

Mushrooms!Mushrooms!Mushrooms!

It's that time of year again when there are mushrooms EVERYWHERE! The Burke Gilman Trail has a veritable plethora of mushrooms popping up along its edges. I even found some edible ones! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera to catch these guys in the ground, but here they are on my kitchen counter getting ready to be eaten:

Coprinus comatus, a.k.a. the Shaggy Mane

One characteristic of Coprinuses is that they deliquesce, that is, they decay by melting into ink rather quickly. And by quickly I mean a few hours sometimes, so the window of opportunity to find these guys, cook, and eat them is fairly short. Once a mushroom begins to decay, it's inedible, just like other foods; rotten is no good! Anyway, as soon as I picked these Coprinuses, I brought them home, cut them in half, made some tempura batter, and set about frying them in bacon grease.

They were interesting. They didn't really have any flavor, or perhaps a delicate one that got overpowered by the tempura/bacon grease. The texture was fasinating though. They were kinda slimy and stringy, but firm and tender at the same time. It had sort of a calamari-like quality to it. One cookbook describes them as "not slimy like okra, but delicious like octopus" - That's pretty much it. I want to try sauteing them next time.

Early Autumn Update

School has started and I've become a big fan on sandwiches with Tall Grass Bakery bread, farmers market apples, Stumptown Kenyan coffees, and TeaCup imperial afternoon tea. One particularly amazing thing I must note though is Washington ginger! Yes, apparently the climate out in Wapato, WA at Mair Farm-Taki is suitable to grow fresh ginger!! I've never had fresh ginger before, it's almost like a super spicy apple and good for anything and everything! It's much prettier than the that dried out brown stuff we all know. This ginger is almost translucent white, with highlights of rich pink and vibrant green. Incredible. I'll try to get some pictures of it up here later.

Mushrooms and the Fish

Since I've deemed this blog an "appreciation of all things edible", I must mention the fantastically edible mushroom growing on our plum tree outside! May I introduce, Laetiporus conifericola:

Unfortunately I was too greedy and waited too long, hoping it would get bigger and I would have more to eat. But alas, it died quick and mold conquered it.

I taught Alex to make bread using the sourdough starter that I started a while ago because he accidentally opened a packet of our friends beer-brewing yeast. I showed him how to kneed it and then said he could make whatever shape he wanted, perhaps a baguette or a round. He decided a fish-shape was best:


And here is an awesome stir fry with rice underneath that Alex whipped up. Notice the lobster mushroom slices sauteed with brioche crumbs! Also, he stir fried slices of cucumber, I had no idea you could do that to cucumbers, but it was delicious!

Canning Part 2

Canning 20 pounds of peppers was a formidable task, but I did it! Here's the second part of the process, continued from my previous entry.

After roasting all the peppers and letting them cool in their plastic-wrapped bowls I peeled them and washed out all of there seeds. Here's about 10 pounds worth of cleaned peppers:

For the really spicy peppers, I quickly blanched them in boiling water and then put them in clean, hot cans and covered them with boiling water. For the roasted miscellaneous peppers, I just stuffed them in clean, hot jars and poured boiling water on top of them. Next, the filled cans went for a ride in my co-workers pressure caner! Here it is in action:

The cans stayed in the pressure caner for about an hour before taking them out and allowing them to cool on the counter top. At long last, here is the finished produduct; from left to right and top to bottom: habaneros, bulgarian carrot peppers, roasted medly, and chocolate cayennes. This winter will be flavorful for sure!

Saving Summer

Last year was the first year that I fully committed to doing all my grocery shopping at the farmer's market. I'll never go to a grocery store again if I can help it. However winter is pretty bleak here; only so much can be done with root vegetables and kale. So this year I have the foresight to preserve what I can while I can. This is a lot of firsts for me, growing up in California I though there was something incredibly wrong with any food that wasn't fresh from the ground. A few weeks ago I started out pickling the seeds from my nasturtiums, a.k.a. capers! These ones are still in the process of being pickled:


Next I began freezing raspberries and huckleberries by laying them out on a cookie sheet in the freezer and then bagging the frozen berries in gallon ziplock freezer bags. I also boiled about 15 ears of corn, cut off the corn kernels and froze them in the same method as the berries. The Silpat is an important piece of equipment for this. The corn especially wanted to stick to the pan when frozen, but the silicone sheet made it very easy to get the frozen corn off the pan and into the bag! Parchment paper would also work if a Silpat is not available.


I'm about to venture into the world of canning. I borrowed a pressure caner from a co-worker, and I'm camped out on my kitchen floor typing this while roasting 20 pounds of peppers in the broiler. Tonnemakers has an incredible display of peppers at the University farmers market. They grow about 150 different varieties and each week they have at least 40 different varieties for sale. I just grabbed a box and grabbed handfuls of as many different peppers as I could. Some are sweet, some are hot, some are somewhere in between and I have almost no idea which ones are which. The ones I do know are Anaheim, Scotch Bonnet, and Chocolate Cayenne (yum!!!). Some other names I remember but cant match to the pepper are Banana, Gypsy, Beaver Dam, Lipstick, Aji, Bulgarian Carrot... Anyway, this is what's goin' on:

The set up: peppers, tongs (for going in and out of the broiler), bowl with plastic wrap (to keep roasted peppers moist - easier for peeling), and Golden Glen chocolate milk (a key ingredient).

Meet Your Meat

Nearly all the meat I eat at home comes from Skagit River Ranch, so I went to their Meet Your Meat event today at their farm out in Sedro Woolley, about 2 hours north of Seattle on the Skagit River. Driving down their dirt driveway, I had to be carefull not to run over any of their beautiful free-running chickens and I parked next to some young heritage turkeys. Farmer George gave a tour explaining their intense commitment to sustainability and health (his definition of sustainability is that when he writes a check, there's money in the bank to cover it). They do liver biopsies on their chickens frequently to determine what nutrients they are lacking because our environment alone does not provide everything to make a healthy robust chicken. He usually has to end up supplementing minerals such as iodine, selenium, and copper; all of which are important for an immune system. They get these supplements into their chickens by adding it to the soil that grows their feed grain (usually wheat) - the grains need these minerals to grow strong, then when they are fed to the chickens they get the minerals, and when we eat their eggs or chicken meat the beneficial minerals are passed along to us. This is the methodology used for all their animals (cattle, goats, pigs, mules, horses) and even in their own family garden. Healthy dynamic soil produces nutrient rich vegetables that greatly benefit the animals that eat them and ultimately eliminate, or at least drastically reduce the need for medicine. George said they use absolutely no pharmaceuticals or chemicals on any of their animals or vegetables. And I must say, their animals and their family are absolutely gorgeous and vibrant.

A quick panel discussion between George, Maria Hines of Tilth, Craig Hetherington of TASTE, and author Greg Atkinson addressed some of the issues of sustainability in our industry and the world. In a world where food is empty calories and chemicals, we are warriors in a revolution to create a world of nutrient rich food that is created through sustainable practices that can be maintained indefinately. Our bodies are our greatest asset and we are what we eat. But we've heard this all before, so what's it gonna take to bring down the seven corporations that control 75% of food in this country? Studies in Europe and China showed that rats are not viable after 5 generations of eating genetically modified foods (why Europe has banned US GMO's). George's theory on the bee crisis is that we've been feeding our nations bees genetically modied pollen for decades and it's no wonder they've finally started dying off - may be a forshadowing of the future for the human race. The slow food movement is slowly growing, and as George put it, "any crowd that gets large enough, a politican will jump in front and say 'Follow Me!'"

George also gave us a tour of his new Biodiesel operation that he uses to fuel the tractors and what not on the farm. I love these people.

At the Skagit River Ranch store, I picked up some Camelina oil and seeds to play with. They're from Lentz Spelt Farms in Marlin, WA. Camelina is an ancient grain that was first cultivated by the Celtics and its still used throughout Europe. The Camelina oil is very flavorful, rich in Vitamin E, and probably contains the highest concentration of Omega-3's out of any other food (cold pressed Camelina oil tests at 30.5% Omega-3). So why have I never heard of it before? -it can't be hydrogenated, so mainstream oil producers have little incentive to grow it. Yet another example of how our current food infrastructure does not produce the food we need to be healthy.

George fondling some fine compost made largely from the unusable parts of their cattle (there's some live cows grazing near the trees in the background). You wouldn't believe how good that dirt smelled.