Adele's Big Sleepover

My sister and her family are in town this weekend. Adele had her first sleepover at her cousin's house on Saturday night. I hoped to be able to have her sleep over at my house too.

Prior to her visit, she asked her mom questions like, "Does aunt Dee-Dee have a swimmin' pool in her backyard?" Nope, but Dee-Dee had a river.

Adele has several food allergies, so I worked hard to prepare a menu that would be suitable to her taste, my preference for local, non-processed foods, and her allergies. I came up with organic yogurt with home-made jam/honey/maple syrup stirred in, homemade bread (without egg, oatmeal, or peanut. The peanuts were easy. I had to try harder to find a recipe without the eggs - and then forgot to add yeast, as I previously posted) with jam, cheese and sausage, and popcorn. Oh, right, and, whatever vegetables her little heart might desire.

Michael and I worked hard to remove breakable/hazardous items from Adele-level. I've never had a two year old sleep over at my house before! I washed all of Oliver's blankets (and gave Oliver a bath) because I know Adele loves to lay in Gizzy's dog bed at MeMaw and Bapa's house.

They arrived to Madison late, had a dip in the pool, and Adele declared she still wanted to have a sleepover at Dee-Dee and Mital's house. (She didn't yet know that we don't have an art desk.)

We got to Portage around 10:15 or 10:30. I had to try three times, but Adele was in bed and nearly asleep by about 11:15 - that's 12:15 her time! In the process of going to bed, she learned where Untal Mital's desk is, and discovered that while Dee Dee has markers (not monsters), she does not have an art desk. Also, Adele noticed that Aunt Dee Dee did not have a little table for Adele, and only had one table in the kitchen (none in the dining room).

Undeterred by a short night's sleep, she woke up ready to go at 6:50 Sunday morning.

Here's a taste of what we did before leaving for Madison around 11:15:

We ate breakfast. Adele really likes MeMaw's raspberry freezer jam!

After breakfast we took Ol'ver for a walk down to the river. We put our feet right in the river by the "fishes"! And we got to pet Milton (our neighbor's dog) on the way. (No pictures.)

After our walk, she put her pajamas back on. Then she wanted to help make dinner. So we shelled a few peas.

Adele found Oliver's bed. Oliver wasn't quite sure what to think about a little girl in his bed.
He tried to snuggle with her.
Then Adele made a princess dress out of Oliver's blanket.

While she had her own toys at Dee Dee and Mital's house, she thought it was a lot of fun to play with grown-up toys, like Great-Aunt Mary Jo's elephants.
Adele could line the elephants up by size.
She also really liked Untal Mital's seashell. Who lives in there?
Can you hear the sea?
It's not workin'.
She gave Oliver a lot of hugs
and kisses
and snuggles.

We took a ride on a ferry to get to MeMaw and Bapa's house, but Aunt Dee Dee doesn't know how to get the pictures from her cell phone to Blogger.

Tomorrow we're going to the Circus!

Note to Self:

Bread machines take almost all the work out of making bread.
You do have to add the yeast, though.

New Liver for Uncle Fred

My husband's uncle has been sick for about 10 months. The first time I became aware of the problem was in November, when he went to the hospital instead of coming to our wedding. He stayed in the hospital a few times, and eventually they figured out that his liver was not working. The doctors gave him something like 6 months to live without a new liver.

After many tests, Uncle Fred was put on the liver transplant list at Northwestern in Chicago. Coincidentally, my dad's cousin-once-removed also got a liver (and kidney) transplant at Northwestern. My dad was in the hospital when he heard about his cousin's transplant. His nurse made a random mention of the situation - that one of her patients had successfully had a liver transplant -and my dad quickly figured out that she was talking about his cousin. He probably won't mind my saying that he cried when he heard the news.

So we began the waiting process for Uncle Fred. Eventually, after another battery of (the same) tests, he was also put on the liver transplant list in Indiana.

Michael and I spent the fourth of July weekend in Minneapolis with two of his cousins, his mom, and step-dad. Michael and I had decided to hang around an extra day. Michael's mom dropped his cousins off at the airport on their way back to Colombus, OH. Carol got home, and she and I were enjoying coffee and a nice chat. Michael was fast asleep. Carol's phone rang. It was his aunt. Suddenly it became very clear that Rocio was calling about Fred's liver. Carol hurriedly told Rocio that yes, they had time to make it to Indianapolis (from a northern Chicago suburb) within the crucial time period. Carol encouraged Rocio to get on the road. I practically ran down the stairs to wake Michael up, hugged him, and, shaking, told him Fred might be getting a new liver. Carol flew around the house. Vern helped her book a flight to Indianapolis while she packed. A wonderful airline employee got Carol a great rate on a flight that left in about an hour. So Michael and I took her back to the airport.

Rather than stay in Minneapolis, we nervously drove back to Wisconsin. We knew there was a chance that the liver Fred was waiting for might not be usable. But we were brimming with excitement. Portage is not quite half-way between Minneapolis and Indianapolis. We wanted to get home so we could re-pack and head down to Indiana as soon as possible to be of whatever assistance we could be during the first crucial 2-week recovery period. I chanted to myself during the drive, "Let the liver be good. Let Fred come out of surgery safely. Let the liver be good. Let Fred come out of surgery safely." When I wasn't chanting, I was frantically making plans for when we would leave for Indianapolis, how we should get there, where we would stay, how we could be useful, etc. I have too great a capacity for worry even under less significant circumstances.

Carol called to let us know she had gotten on her flight. I'm sure that from there it was a whirlwind for her. I don't know how she got from the airport to the hospital. It was a long day in Indianapolis. We had gotten the call sometime before 10 in the morning, and we did not hear from Carol again until close to 10 at night. The liver was not good. I didn't talk to her but Michael said Carol sounded wiped out and, understandably, disappointed.

Fred had actually been prepped and ready for surgery, his family had said their last goodbyes, but the surgeon realized at the last minute that there was plaque on the liver that made it unusable.

We tried not to be crushed. I was sad for Fred and his whole family. I was sad for the donor's family, who might have received comfort from the fact that their loved one's death would at least be able to help keep someone else alive. (Michael wasn't sure whether the donor's family would be notified about the liver's inability to be used.)

We went back to waiting. Life went on as usual. We sometimes talked about what would happen when the next call came. Would Carol take another flight to Indianapolis as soon as the call came in, or would she wait until the surgery was underway?

Earlier this week, Michael's step-father Vern drove Fred down to Indianapolis to stay at Fred's sister's house. (Fred's sister is currently in Arizona or somewhere with her grandson.) Rocio sent an email saying she had a feeling that the liver would come from Indiana sometime in the next 3 weeks. When Vern left on Tuesday, Fred's brother Hans went to Indianapolis to be with Fred. Vern stopped by our house in Portage on his way home to Minneapolis, with nothing new to report. Fred was in decent spirits. Healthwise, he was not doing great, but that was to be expected. I let Vern know that I was planning a trip to Indianapolis the first weekend of August, and if Carol wanted to visit Fred, as we suspected she might, we could carpool. I planned to go down on Thursday night and was willing to come home whenever it was convenient for Carol. Vern indicated that Carol doesn't have a lot of vacation time left at work, but was willing to take a few weeks without pay to take care of Fred. I assumed this would be a pre-transplant visit.

I talked briefly about Uncle Fred to a friend on Wednesday night, but didn't give much thought to when the next call with a new liver would come.

Yesterday afternoon, while I was out visiting with our neighbor, Carol called to tell Michael that there had been another call for a liver. Michael completely forgot to tell me when I got home. Around 9:00 p.m. Carol called again. Michael briefed me on the situation ("Oh - I forgot to tell you - my mom called - Fred got another call for a liver. My mom was at the airport but wasn't sure if she would fly down or not.") Carol was calling to let us know that, as of 9 p.m., they still had not heard whether the liver would be usable or not. There had been a flight at 7:30ish that she had decided not to take. She planned to fly down this morning at 6:30 if the liver was good.

Michael and I finished watching the movie that had been sitting in our living room since early June. We made plans for today. We went to bed. Life went on as usual. There was no chanting in my head. In other parts of the country, Rocio had dropped their daughter Kara off at the airport to go to Texas -a trip Kara has been planning for months. She had been waiting at O'Hare to hear about the liver so she could jump on a plane. I don't know if she took the flight or not.

I woke up to my alarm clock, and also to the dog barking. I got out of bed, let the dog out, made coffee like any other morning. I had completely forgotten about Uncle Fred. But around 7:45, Michael's phone rang. I wasn't sure where he had left it. I searched the house, knowing it was Carol calling. I did some "Healthy Liver, Healthy Fred" chanting. I found the phone (where Michael had set it down after getting off the phone with Carol last night). I figured out how to answer it, and Carol announced that Fred got his new liver last night. He was out of surgery and apparently doing well. She had made the 6:30 flight, and was at the airport in Chicago waiting to get on the plane to Indianapolis.

Eventually I will find out how Kara, Rocio, and Carol spent the night last night. Maybe they slept soundly like me. Probably, they were up tossing and turning, waiting to whether this liver would be good.

Maybe if I had heard about the possibility of a new liver earlier in the day, I would have reacted differently. I might have spent the entire evening trying to make plans for when and how we could get to Indianapolis to lend a hand in these next crucial weeks. Maybe not, because of the first false alarm. At any rate, it happened the way it did, and I think I'm grateful that I did not spend all of last night worrying about whether the liver would be good, whether the surgery would go well, whether Fred would make it through. Great things can happen just fine on their own without my contributing several hours of worry.

Michael is taking a grad school class right now, so we can't just run off to Indianapolis at the drop of a hat (or the call for a liver), but I suspect we may head down to Indianapolis next weekend to pitch in wherever we can.

Life Calling

I've been working on a post about what I want to be when I grow up. It's not ready yet, and may never be, but here's a taste of what I was getting at. When I was a little girl, one of my favorite places to be was at my grandma's house, a small "hobby farm" out in the country. I loved to stand on the fence on the right side of the barn, where my uncle often kept a couple of cows. I would daydream about being a cowgirl, wearing blue jean skirts and plaid shirts with my hair in braids. I would live out in the west, and ride a beautiful bay horse. (Somehow I would overcome either my horse allergy or my fear of allergy shots in the intervening years between finishing grade school and becoming a cowgirl.) I think "farmer" and "cowgirl" were synonymous in my mind, and that was what I wanted to be.

Of course, when we were inside at my grandma's house, my sisters and I spent countless hours playing "school" where we would take turns being the teacher. (Everyone should have at least two siblings who are just about their same age. It makes this kind of game much more fun. There is no bossy know-it-all who can do long division while her sisters are trying to learn how to add.)

Clearly, it is obvious why I became a lawyer from those childhood dreams, right?

Or not. Which is probably why I went back to school to become a teacher. I like teaching. I want to find a job teaching. I liked working in the law firms less than I like looking for jobs, but I'm really not a big fan of this whole job search thing.

Maybe it's because I can't find a full-time job, or because, while I like subbing okay, I would rather be able to make long-term plans for next Thursday without the caveat of, "if a subbing job comes up I'll probably want to reschedule, just so you know." I'm not sure. But what I do know is that I can't stop daydreaming about becoming a farmer.

I've been working on a blog about it for a long time. But while I've been writing my blog, I keep getting distracted by other blogs. Some, I've been reading for longer than I've been composing my "farm envy" blog. I started following Mrs. Q sometime during tax season. She wants to be a farmer too!

Last weekend I discovered Cold Antler Farm. Tonight I clicked on one of her sidebars and found this post. I'm really not alone!

I bought what I thought was a book about dog-love, Izzy and Lenore by Jon Katz. Nope, it's a writer-turned farmer book. (I've been wanting to read his The Dogs of Bedlam Farm, but now I know that would just be asking for trouble.)

I enjoyed Michael Perry's Coop, but it also had the side-effect of making me want a farm.

And then there's Jayber Crow, the Wendell Berry novel I'm reading for one of my book clubs.

Two summers ago, my friend Joyce loaned me Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. I think you can preview it here. The book didn't exactly make me want to run off and join the farming community, but it did make me more aware of what life was like for a farm family during the Depression. I remember turning to Michael while reading the book on the train on our way to his step-sister's wedding, and commenting that, in the 1930s, people knew how to take care of themselves. We have become too reliant on mega corporations to take care of us. It is time to take back control of our lives. To live smaller, slower, and more mindfully.

I don't even want to get into Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which is what caused this whole farm-girl thing to resurface!

Maybe it's not that I'm being followed by pastoral images, it's just that I read too much. If I stopped reading, I wouldn't encounter so many farmer stories. But me not reading is about as likely as . . . well, getting Michael to want to live on a farm.

Fortunately, there are days like Saturday, where taking care of my little garden at my parents' house is enough to set me straight about how much I'd actually like being a farmer.

Bread

I love banana bread. I found a recipe for banana bread in the newspaper approximately 15 years ago, and it became my signature baked good. (Along with berry pies that I used to show off for my uncles.) But after I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, I couldn't buy bananas anymore. I miss them. I miss baking banana bread. I was sort of intrigued by the sneaky zucchini-chocolate chip cookie recipe in Miracle, and my dad had made zucchini bread a few times when I was a kid (although I might be the only person to remember that), so I tried a zucchini muffin recipe last summer. It was good. I experimented with it. I recently posted it on my blog. But I wasn't attached to it, you know? The copyrighted zucchini bread I made last week was good, but it was too sweet. It wasn't my recipe. There was no batter-spattered recipe card in my stack called "Katie's Zucchini Bread" in alphabetical order behind "Jenny's Pumpkin Bread" and "Katie's Banana Bread." My sister had never called asking for the recipe. Twice.

Tonight, I played around and tweaked a little bit, and I think I may have hit upon Katie's Zucchini Bread. It's a good thing I'm not finished typing up all of my recipes yet, because I have another one for my collection. I think I can be attached to this one. In fact, I think I'll shred some zucchini on Thursday afternoon to put in my new freezer, so it can be all ready to pull out in January when I need a little taste of summer. (Also, it will be nice to clear up some space in my fridge for the rest of July.)

Katie's Zucchini Bread

1 3-lb zucchini
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons allspice
1 cup sugar
1 cup honey
1 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter, melted and cooled
4 eggs
1/4 cup yogurt

Makes 2 8-1/2 by 4-1/2-inch loaf pans.

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 325 degrees.

Cut zucchini in half lengthwise and remove seeds with spoon. Shred zucchini. Place shredded zucchini in a towel, and squeeze out the water. (This will remove approximately half a pound of water.)

Whisk together the dry ingredients and set aside.

Combine the sugar, melted butter, honey, eggs, and yogurt together in a large bowl. Slowly add the dry ingredients. (I do this by hand.)

Pour the batter into a greased pan (you could also flour the pan, but it is probably not necessary) and bake for about one hour and ten minutes.
Yeah, I know, my oven's not clean. I spilled zucchini bread in it last week, remember?

The honey (which I included because it is local) makes the bread turn brown early in the baking process. Don't be fooled. Insert a toothpick or a knife into the center of the bread to test doneness. If it comes out soggy, put the bread back in the oven. If just a few crumbs are attached, take the bread out of the oven, let it cool for a while (10 minutes?) and turn it out onto a wire rack. I'd eat it as soon as it's cool enough to handle.


My husband approves this recipe :)

Food I've Been Eating

I am definitely enjoying summer! Here are a few things we have been munching on.
Raspberries from the farmer's market, tomatoes, sweet corn, and blueberries from the farm stand, basil from our CSA.I think sweet corn is my all-time favorite food. Ever. Michael and my dad have volunteered to help me freeze some this summer. Maybe I'll even share some with them when the time comes ;)

Last Thursday I stopped by the farmer's market and the farm stand that sets up in late spring in the Culver's parking lot, and sticks around through early fall. (Then I went to the grocery store where I actually had to walk down aisles. I felt completely overwhelmed. I'm not kidding. I'm not used to buying things at the grocery store anymore - I didn't know where to look for things like peanuts and candy.) Michael and I thought we were going up north to visit my uncle (the farmer) in his new cabin. Our plans didn't work out, but we didn't know that they wouldn't until I'd purchased all kinds of packaged, well-traveled food for our trip. (Sausage, gatorade, M & Ms, and peanuts - did you know there are a LOT of ingredients in Planters Dry Roasted peanuts? I opted for the Emerald brand instead. They were more expensive, but only have three ingredients. Plus, my cashier found a $1.00 coupon on the top of the jar, so they were actually a better price!)

I also bought local raspberries and blueberries, along with guilty, oily cherries from the grocery store (I wish I got cherries in my CSA box!). My uncle once said I'd "make someone a good wife some day" based on the fact that I make a mean pie. (And that was before I could roll out my own crusts.)(How did he know I was going to marry a pie lover?) I thought I'd make a pie to show off the fact that I still have the knack.

We dined on sweet corn and caprese salad. Summertime, and the eatin' is easy.

Eventually it became obvious that we would not be able to go up north for the weekend. My dad was in the hospital, someone had to dog-sit for my sister, and Michael was kind of overloaded with homework. I nixed the plans to make pie. Michael and I certainly did not need huge quantities of dessert sitting around. We still had zucchini bread and muffins! So I froze three-quarters of the blueberries (I read somewhere online that blueberries do not have to be washed before they are frozen - in fact, they are better if you don't wash them. To remind myself, in December, that they are not washed, I wrote "WASH" on the bag along with the date.) I had blueberries and milk for dessert. My friend's mom taught me to eat this a long time ago. (My grandma used to eat peaches and cream, but Joyce introduced me to blueberries and cream.) Yum.

On Sunday, I baked a chicken with zucchini (from the garden and the CSA), onions (garden), and garlic (Farmers market) and served it with beets (garden and CSA), turnips (garden) and cucumber salad (with cucumbers and onions from the garden). I did not take any pictures :( But, on the positive side, we have been enjoying the leftovers!

My intention had been to buy a whole chicken, and save the carcass for soup. Unfortunately, when I went to the grocery store on Sunday afternoon (because I didn't think of it on Saturday, when I opted to skip the farmer's market, since we had plenty of produce in the fridge from our CSA, and I took home a flat of produce from my garden), they did not have the kind of chicken I was looking for. Their only whole birds were Tyson, and I would rather go vegetarian than buy a Tyson chicken, after watching Food, Inc. and reading Fast Food Nation. The grocery store sells a brand of chicken called Smart Chicken, which may or may not be a good brand. Here is a blurb from their website:

Smart Chicken® was the first poultry produced in the United States utilizing the pure air chill technology in place of water immersion. We then pioneered the utilization of Controlled Atmosphere Stunning in the U.S., ensuring that all birds are handled with care in every aspect of production. In addition, all of our birds are raised without the use of antibiotics, animal by-products or hormones. We are also Certified Organic & Certified Humane to provide you with the most premium product, produced with the highest standards, from egg to shelf.

The part that bothers me about this blurb (and I admit, the entirety of the research I did on this topic was to google "Smart chicken" and browse their website a little bit) is that it starts out with the "pure air chill technology" instead of the "Certified Organic & Certified Humane." I don't understand that, and a little more research on the website shows that Smart Chickens are fed corn and soybeans, rather than being pastured, but the company does meet the Certified Humane standard, which can be viewed in this pdf file. They are supposed to be "Free range" which means that they must "have access to the range by 4 weeks of age and for a minimum of 8 hours each day except when the natural daylight period is less." page 10. http://www.certifiedhumane.org/uploads/pdf/Standards/English/Std09.Chickens.1AD.pdf
Of course, that doesn't mean the chickens actually go outside, it just means that there are doors and a yard available . . .

Anyway . . . other than buying a fryer from an Amish farm near my home, or buying a pastured chicken at the farmer's market (which might not be possible right now, due to the fact that the spring chicks have to grow up before they will be slaughtered), right now my best option is the Smart Chicken at my grocery store. But they didn't have any. They had one packet of thighs, and possibly some boneless-skinless pieces, but no whole birds.

Row upon row of plastic-wrapped chicken with brightly colored labels showing smiling, winking chickens looked up at me from the grocery store. But all I could see was the scene in Food, Inc. where the poultry farmer throws a bunch of dead birds onto her tractor.

I wanted more chicken than four thighs, and I didn't want to buy boneless-skinless, so I picked up the "Manager's Special" quartered chicken from unknown origins. I considered asking a manager where this particular chicken had come from, but the kid working behind the counter in the meat department looked like he was 17 and there was a fair chance that I'd subbed in his classroom during the school year. I've learned that very few people in the "food" industry (grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries) know where their food comes from, or what it contains. I'm not just talking about national chains, either, I've encountered this kind of ignorance in independent businesses. Granted, usually the person I'm speaking to is "just an employee" not a manager or owner, but it can be painful when the person goes to get a manager, who acts like I'm interrupting him or her from ridding the world of cancer, and who can't answer my question anyway. (That, or they give me an answer I'm hoping isn't the case. No, the butcher shop between my house and my garden which advertises local meats does not stock any grass-fed beef - although they do have eggs from grass-fed hens, which they sell for $3.50 a dozen. The saleslady laughed and said, "Well, if you say so" when I said that was a decent price. No, the cran-apple pies at the small chain we like to stop at in Cranberry Country on our way to Minneapolis are not made from local cranberries. No, the "chop shop" in town does not sell organic meat, just regular old commercial grade beef, thankyouverymuch.)

So I was disappointed, but not shocked, that my grocery store didn't have the chicken I was looking for. But I politely let my cashier know that I was disappointed in their selection. (I had previously let this same cashier know that I really liked buying their grass-fed milk, and that I was sorry to see that they only had nearly-expired milk on the shelf that day. I haven't had a problem with finding good milk there since that day.) My cashier seemed slightly annoyed (maybe he remembered me?) when I named the brands of chicken I didn't want to buy. He asked me which brand I'd rather see. I said "Smart Chicken." He said something like, "Yeah, those really fly off the shelves. But the truck comes in tomorrow and we'll probably have more then."

I am so glad that my grocery store stocks these items, along with cage-free eggs (although I still prefer other sources for eggs and meat).

Finally - Michael and I bought a chest freezer today. I think it has a 7 cubic foot capacity. We bought it at an independently owned business here in town. (Then we went to the grocery store for milk, and saw the appliance delivery guy, who knows our landlord, because he delivered their new washer and dryer several months ago. I love living in a small town.) It will be delivered on Thursday morning. I can't wait. In fact, I made two loaves of zucchini bread tonight because 1. I still have a LOT of zucchini in my fridge and 2. I knew I would have a place to put the extra loaf soon. (My mom also made two loaves of zucchini bread today. Would you like some zucchini? How about zucchini bread? What's that? You're overloaded too? Okay. Just checking.)

Recipes

I wanted to do a post with recipes in it, because so many of the blogs I read include fabulous recipes that I love to try. But most of my recipes come from cookbooks, and all of my cookbooks expressly state that I may not copy any part of the book without express written consent of the publisher. I see their point. Why would they let me give you their recipe for free, when I can just tempt you with pictures and make you go out and buy the whole book? (Maybe the authors are making money somewhere in this scheme? I'll keep telling myself that . . .)

A few of my recipes come from the internet, like this one for the whole wheat zucchini muffins I made yesterday:

Cooks.com Zucchini Muffins with Blueberries or Cranberries
Beat 1 eg and add:
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Beat until light and foamy. Stir in:
1 c. shredded zucchini

Add:
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1 tsp. soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp allspice

Stir in:
1 c. frozen blueberries or cranberries.

Pour into muffin pans. Bake 25 minutes at 400 degrees. Makes 8-12 depending on size.

Notes: I have substituted chocolate chips for the berries, fresh for frozen berries, and flax seed meal for oil (at a 3:1 flax seed to oil ratio). When using chocolate, the muffins are less moist, and more crispy, but my notes say they were good. Yesterday's batch with frozen berries are also excellent.

A few of the recipes I make frequently are family recipes which I will share with you when it makes sense. (Stay tuned for my souped-up version of my mom's classic shepherd's pie this fall.) A lot of the cooking I do (especially with fresh produce) is just thrown into a pot and simmered for as long as it takes to reach the right texture. I don't have a recipe to give you for those.

Cooking without a recipe doesn't scare me. But I have never baked anything without a recipe. Sure, I alter recipes here and there, make substitutions, throw in extras, leave out the nuts. But I don't know how people make up their own recipes for cookies and breads. (I'm talking about people like these fabulous bloggers who don't know I exist.) I'm worried that I'll mess up and get the ratios of flour and baking soda wrong and end up with an inedible mess on my counter. Or baked to the bottom of my oven. Wait a minute, I do that even when I'm using a recipe.

I can improvise on the innards of a pie (substituting rhubarb and strawberry for cranberries and apples, or a blend of berries for just blueberries) but I would not begin to know how to make a pancake from scratch. Which is why it is great that my husband lets me buy (cook)books, that we have internet access in our house, and that my mom is always willing to tell me how to make her old standby dishes.

Yesterday as I was digging for the zucchini muffin recipe above, I decided it was high time for me to organize my recipes, which are currently piled in no order at all in one of my kitchen cupboards. I've tried writing recipes out by hand on note cards in the past (and part of me loves that idea - especially because thoughtful friends and relatives gave me beautiful recipe boxes for my wedding) but I think the best way for me to do it will be to type the darn things. Even my best handwriting is frequently illegible. Initially I thought since I'd be typing up all the recipes anyway, I might as well share them with you, but I'm still paying off the loans for the copyright class I took in law school (along with the other 87 credits) and can't really afford to defend myself in an infringement lawsuit at the present time.

Sorry I don't have any pictures today. I'll probably visit the garden later this week, and might take some pictures then, you never know.

Until next time, I'll be slaving away over a hot laptop, typing furiously, and wishing I were in the kitchen cooking. Making messes is always so much more fun than getting organized!

What was I thinking?

Two posts in one day about how idiotic I can be at times seems like a little much, but I'm trying to be honest here.

So there I was in the kitchen with my gorgeous humongous and miniature zucchinis, surrounded by mixing bowls, spices, and flour, ready for some action.

I shredded the zucchini - starting with the large one, and half of one that was getting rotten on Saturday so I picked it, cut off the bad end, and hoped for the best. I pulled out my trusty old zucchini and blueberry whole wheat muffin recipe from cooks.com for my first baking endeavor of the day. This recipe called for one cup of shredded zucchini.
One eighth of the giant zucchini

No problem. I have pounds and pounds of the stuff here. I don't know where to find fresh blueberries yet, but I had some frozen ones left over from when I discovered this scone recipe.
Mmm . . . scones!

In the meantime, since I was already going to spend half the day shredding zucchini, I figured I'd find a recipe for zucchini bread too. I found one in my America's Test Kitchen book, which looked like it would work. It called for one pound of zucchini. Again, not a problem.
I shredded and shredded, trying to spare my fingernails when I got down to a little nub of zucchini. The skin of the big one was a little tough and hard to cut, but it tasted good. (As per the America's Test Kitchen book, I scooped the seeds out before I started shredding.)

Zucchini shredded, other ingredients laid out in order, I got to work measuring and mixing.

I pulled out one pound of zucchini to be sure I would have enough for the bread. This recipe said I should squeeze all of the extra water out of the zucchini before baking. What it didn't say was whether this squeezing of water should occur before or after I had weighed the one pound of shredded flesh. Water is not light!
The extra six ounces is the weight of the bowl.

Since the zucchini was plentiful, I squeezed and then measured. (Actually, I measured, then squeezed, then added, then measured again, just to get an idea.) I wasn't sure if I should also squeeze out the water for the other recipe - it didn't warn me about soggy muffins if I failed to get every last drop of moisture out. I couldn't remember what I did last year. Eventually I just decided to go ahead and squeeze all of the water out of all of the zucchini. It couldn't hurt, right?

I also remembered using flax seed meal as a substitute for oil in several recipes last summer, so I thought I'd give that a try . . . but I only had enough of the stuff to substitute for half of the oil.

I got my cup of zucchini for the muffins, and started mixing. I was doing well until I got to the part about adding the oil into the eggs and sugar. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of oil. To substitute flax seed meal for oil, you triple the amount - so I would have needed 1 1/2 cups of flax. I didn't have that much, so I went for 1/4 cup oil and 3/4 cup of flax seed meal. No problem. Then I added the flour and other dry ingredients. Suddenly, my spoon was stuck in the mixture. It was way too dry. (Duh. A five year old could have told me that.) I whipped out a spatula and scraped the oil from the 1/4 cup measure. I scraped out the liquid that had settled into the cup where I had measured the zucchini. I added about a tablespoon of tap water. I folded in the blueberries. The concoction still wasn't anything close to "pourable" although my recipe indicated I should pour the mixture into a muffin pan.
dry muffin batter . . . notice how I left extra space in the pan.

Messy Kitchen!

I kind of remembered that the flax would loosen up during the baking process, so the muffins would not be too dry.


In fact, they're really good. I had to eat the one that fell on the floor while I was taking them out of the pan. And, since I like for things to look pretty, later on I also had to eat the one that had fallen apart while being taken out of the pan. They were delicious.

While my muffins were baking and cooling, I got to work on the bread. I substituted a cup of whole wheat flour for the all purpose flour. I completely ignored what size of loaf pan to use. I pulled out my handy, favorite loaf pan from my aunt and poured the batter into the pan.

Here's your sign . . .

It's not like I don't know that bread rises. It's not like I haven't made a hundred sweet breads in my life. And even if I hadn't, wasn't I there when I added the baking powder and baking soda to the mix?

Why on earth didn't I pour this into a bigger pan? Instead, I had a fleeting thought of "this pan is too small. Oh well." Then I took a picture and closed the oven door.

About five or seven minutes later, I caught a whiff of the distinct smell of "the oven is on fire" and sure enough (and unsurprisingly) my bread batter was spilling all over the oven as it desperately tried to rise but couldn't find anything to support its weight.

I put a cookie sheet and some parchment paper under the mess, and continued baking it (turning off the air conditioner and opening all of the windows in the process, so the smoke alarm would not go off) but forgot to set a timer, so I had to guess when to take it out of the oven.

I got the bread out of the pan, and it is currently cooling upside down on a rack in my kitchen, next to the muffins, which rose perfectly, by the way. I tasted some of the bread that was crusted on to the pan and it is actually very good. A little too sweet, but definitely worth making again. In a bigger pan.

Holy Zucchini!

Since this spring was my first attempt at gardening, I have a lot to learn about the topic. I especially have a lot to learn about buying seeds. While my dad was making plans for, and getting help with building, four piles of dirt for his raised bed garden, my mind raced ahead to the fall - what vegetables and fruits would I want to have in my freezer to get me through the winter? I made a long list of the foods I wanted to grow, including (in no particular order):
corn, peas, green beans, onions, zucchini, butternut squash, pumpkin, tomatoes, carrots, celery (that idea bit the dust), basil, potatoes, beets, cucumbers, and spinach.

We went to a garden expo when there was still quite a chill in the air. (I have no idea what month that might have been.) My dad bought several Seed Savers seed packets, including a variety of watermelon that grows well in our short Wisconsin summers. Later, when the rows of dirt had been mixed with composted manure and topsoil and a little bit of sand, and I had been freezing, canning, and otherwise preserving in my head for weeks, I started throwing seed packets in the cart when we found ourselves in garden supply stores.

I was looking for two main qualities in my seeds - organic, or heirloom. Something about Barbara Kingsolver's mission to raise heritage turkeys who reproduce in the natural way inspired me to keep my foods to varieties that have been around for a long time, and haven't been meddled with. (Maybe Michael Pollan's discussion of the New Leaf potato in The Botany of Desire also had something to do with my two criteria.)

The incredibly warm spring made it hard to tell when a reasonable planing time would be (the last frost was a distant memory but the normal last frost date was still weeks in the future), but eventually dad and I gathered all of our seed packets and carefully read exactly how the seeds were supposed to be started, when they would germinate, what soil temperature they liked. We drew potential layouts for the garden, we researched companion planting, we made charts detailing the growing conditions for each seed, and eventually we actually started digging.

I had been reading the backs of these seed packets for days, learning the ins and outs of how to grow vegetables from seeds. Seed packets in hand, I walked out to the fourth bed of the garden, ready to plant peas. Only when I started to look at the peas that were about to be planted (we had three different packets) did it occur to me that I had overlooked a crucial element of seed selection. I did not pay enough attention to the variety of seeds I had purchased. I could almost quote the correct soil temperature, the days to germination, the height of the plant at maturity. But I didn't know a thing about the quality of the peas that would grow from these seeds. Last year my dad grew the most delicious peas I'd ever eaten. Did I shop for the same variety? Of course not. I'm not sure what I based my decision on, but I ended up three very different varieties of peas. All of them were good, but harvesting them was a little bit haphazard. One variety was for shelling, one was a snow pea variety, to be harvested before the peas inside matured, and one was a hybrid, with gorgeous peas inside, but also a very sweet edible pod. I'm not complaining about my choices - they were all very good - I'm just embarrassed that I overlooked some thing so crucial - food quality!

When I bought my zucchini seeds, I was looking for a variety that would produce a reasonable amount of produce. Plenty of authors have warned me about overzealous zucchini vines. The variety I bought (sorry I can't be specific - the seed packets are in my dad's garage, an hour away) said that the zucchini should be harvested when it is about one to six inches big. That sounded reasonable. If the zucchini is small when it is harvested, it can't overtake all of my kitchen counters, can it? But then, when I saw those ripe fruits hanging on the vine, I started asking questions. Six inches in length or diameter? It doesn't say. The first zucchini I picked, last Wednesday, were all at least an inch in diameter, and all were at least six inches long. I was eager to eat them. The tomatoes hang tantalizingly on the vine, green and hard, laughing at me because I can see how beautiful they are going to be, but they know I can't eat them yet. Wednesday's zucchini proved too tempting. They were the size of zucchini I have purchased at farmers markets and at the grocery store, so they must have been ready.

On Saturday I took another look at the zucchini. I knew I had more green beans to pick, so I put on my gloves (and bug spray because it was evening by this point and the mosquitoes were vicious) and waded in among the huge squash leaves. At first, I only saw small zucchinis. I picked some anyway, because I wasn't sure when I'd be back in Madison, and, at least this early in the season, they are SO GOOD! Also, many of the very small little squash on the vines were starting to get rotten, and I didn't want to wait for the ones I picked to grow, only to find out that they'd become brown slimy messes.

After I had a few mini zucchini in my basket, I saw a monster, hidden in the back of the row. I must have missed this guy on Wednesday. He fits in well with the giant kohlrabi that just kept growing . . .

That is a 3 lb zucchini and a 4 lb 6 oz kohlrabi! Also pictured: basil, green beans, turnips. (Why didn't I bring home a few more onions?)

I intended to do something with these vegetables on Saturday night, or Sunday at the latest, but it is Monday morning now and they're still sitting in my kitchen. I was too wrapped up reading blogs yesterday to worry about kitchen doings.

They're not getting any fresher. Zucchini bread, here you come.

The Hidden Danger of Reading Other Peoples' Blogs

Yesterday as I was driving home from Madison, where I did some gardening and went to the Art Fair on the Square, I mentally composed a few paragraphs for a new blog post. I often compose in my head while driving. And practice oral arguments. And teach lessons. And they always go so well in my head in my car . . . but when I sit down to write them down, or say them out loud, I forget the perfectly crafted sentences, the mild sarcasm, they witty punch lines. Great writing that I compose mentally never makes it to the page.

Nevertheless, I thought I'd try to get those thoughts down on paper . . . er . . . my computer screen. The moving sentences about the double rainbow, the steam rising up from the county roads, the wriggling black mass in the road that looked like a dead animal but was, on closer inspection, a mother and six baby skunks. I dumped my produce on the kitchen island, took a few pictures of it, and practically ran to my computer.

As I sat down to blog, I realized that my creative juices had entirely stopped flowing. Fortunately I saved myself from utter despair (and boredom) by checking for updates on the (growing list of) blogs I like to read. From there, I started looking at the blogs that the people whose blogs I read read. No, I don't know these people. Well, maybe I do. Maybe I've met them and just didn't know it. Apparently I spent last weekend at the same event (attended by thousands of other people) that a woman whose blog I used to read obsessively (and now occasionally) attended.

As I delved further and further into blogs by people I don't know, I discovered this little gem. If you're going to read it, I highly recommend giving yourself plenty of time. Like two days if you have nothing better to do, and a week if you actually have a life. And start at the bottom. I haven't read the rest of her blog yet, but if it is anything like the story she tells about how she fell in love with her husband, I'm probably going to be hooked for life.

That's all for now, folks. I have more blogs to read.

Oliver's Favorite Meal

What's Cooking? Oliver's favorite meal.

Okay, so Oliver doesn't actually get to eat the vegetable beef soup. But I can't resist giving him the soup bone after I'm done with it. He is contentedly chewing away while I blog. (And in case you were wondering, no, I don't give him chicken bones when chicken soup is on the menu!)

I made this soup primarily to freeze for winter, but we sampled it for dinner tonight, along with some of the rye bread from yesterday.

My much-beloved and often-used soup pot:
Barbara Kingsolver and her family - and some of the bloggers I've started reading recently - like to do pizza on Friday nights, but soup is our Friday night staple - even in the middle of summer. For one thing, it is very easy to thaw out a container of soup - either in the fridge or the microwave. For another, while I have made a successful pizza (or two?) from scratch, my first attempt was a complete disaster and I'd hate to have that happen again!

Jordandal soup bones
I used to be a vegetarian, and still don't buy a lot of meat, so I'm not sure what grocery store, corn-fed soup bones look like, but I've been told that grass fed meat is different. Some sources say it is more fatty. Others (like a Time Magazine article from several months ago - sorry I don't have the cite, but here's a similar story) say that corn fed beef is fatter. I think it might actually be a difference in where the fat is, but I'm not even sure about that. (I read the Time article I linked here, and that one says that corn-fed is higher in saturated fats, and grass-fed is higher in Omega-3 fats.) Regardless of its fattiness or lack thereof, I'm very satisfied with my grass-finished beef from Jordandal.

Purple carrots from the farmers' market:
Making the beef stock:
I opted not to buy any celery at the grocery store, so my stock was missing an ingredient. Normally, I throw in a lot of carrots and celery to the stock, which makes it very flavorful, but I was conserving carrots for the actual soup today, and only used two small ones.

My favorite spot to shell peas:
This is a chair that belonged to my grandmother. She had it in the corner of her dining room, and from it you could look out on the cornfield. I loved to sit in this chair and visit. My cousin recently purchased her house from my uncle, and the kids and grand-kids divvied up all of grandma and grandpa's stuff. I got this chair, my grandma's stand mixer, and her rolling pin. (I blogged a while back about not having a rolling pin, and am pleased to report that I can actually make *excellent* pie crust - no more Pillsbury for me!)

Halfway through the peas:
I was sorry not to have Adele here to help me with the peas. Fortunately, Michael came to my rescue and shelled the last third of them while I started chopping turnips, carrots, onions, and green beans.

After letting the pot simmer for 3 hours, I had some nice beef stock:
Back in went the beef followed by the vegetables:
Dinner is served:
I'd love to say this meal was 100% local, but I used spices and herbs from my cupboard that came from factories and warehouses in trucks and trains.

On Babies and Baby Food

I was just reading through some old comments on my blog . . . which I am very bad about doing, by the way, and discovered that I offended my sister a few weeks ago by not mentioning my new niece who, according to my sister, wears cloth diapers and drinks organic milk. At first I was unsure about the organic milk part. My sister doesn't buy organic milk. She buys Kroger 2%, usually two gallons at a time, and sometimes throws a half gallon of chocolate milk into the cart too.

Right. But she makes plenty of organic milk at home. http://ellie-belly-days.blogspot.com/2010/06/i-was-right.html
Okay, maybe it isn't certifiably organic, since she might use antibiotics or take tylenol or other medications, but it's the real deal. No processing for Anna. Plus, it is 100% local. Who knew my sister (who recently read Michael Pollan's Food Rules - but just the bolded rules, not the descriptions - and commented "this is nice, but I'm not sure it works for for a family with toddlers.") was a locovore at heart?

Seeing this comment reminded me of a potential post I've been mulling over and trying to wrap my brain around. When I started this blog, I called myself a "locavore-in-training." I think it is official now. I am doing the best I can to eat locally whenever possible. Much to my husband's delight, I regularly go to the grocery store and come home with just four or five items - usually dairy - rather than a whole cartload of food. I just can't buy processed food anymore. I usually don't even buy produce at the grocery store, because it is summer and I can get all of the veggies I need (and then some) from local sources.

But some day my locovore shopping habits will probably have to change. Not in the very near future, but in a few years down the road, we plan to adopt a child. And she'll probably have to eat. The question is: what will our imaginary future adopted baby eat?

I don't think anyone in 2010 is unaware of the fact that there is a huge "breast is best" campaign out there. In fact, this campaign has grown so loud, powerful, strong, and pushy that some "bottle moms" are beginning to retaliate. I wasn't planning to blog this when I read the articles I'm about to mention, so I don't have any sources for you. Will you take my word for it this time, if I use plenty of qualifications such as: these words are mine, they are very rough paraphrases of stuff I read in a number of possibly credible and probably less-credible places, including some ticked-off mommy blogs?

There seems to be a new movement out there against nursing. I was at the doctor's office a few months ago and picked up a Parenting magazine (All of the patients at the Portage Clinic must be parents. I base this assessment on the fact that Parenting is the only magazine they offer in their waiting rooms, not on the fact that the day I was there the waiting room was full of several geriatric patients and myself). I think the title of the article included the phrase 'breast bully' and I thought it was going to be about nursing babies who are too pushy/demanding. The article was actually geared towards mothers who choose not to nurse their babies, for whatever reason, and mainly talked about how to deal with pushy nursing mothers who refuse to accept this choice. Until I read this article, I though the big debate over breastfeeding was still whether it was okay to do it in public. Apparently, the debate has shifted to a question of whether la leche league and its ilk ought to be making non-nursing mothers feel so badly about their lifestyle.

If I were to have a child in the usual way, I would plan to nurse that child, no question. But some mothers (like my own, for example) can't nurse - in our case, we were allergic to her milk. (A few days ago I read a blog by a woman whose son had been allergic to her milk. She said people asked her if she was an alien. How terrible.) I read a harrowing comment on a blog from a woman who desperately needed anti-psychotic medication that was not for use by breastfeeding mothers - and she had to make a choice between her own health and her child's. She was made to feel like a terrible mom by breast bullies. Some women have babies who don't take to nursing. Others - whose children will grow up to be my students one day - may nurse their infants for a few weeks but have to go back to work and find it difficult or impossible to pump during the work day. Is it fair for nursing moms to make these women feel so badly about something that is out of their control?

Here's where I wish I'd paid more attention to my sources. I read a long article from a magazine (online) that said that there is actually very little research to indicate that breastfeeding is better for a child's development. Apparently, even the studies that do show a difference between breast-fed and bottle-fed babies may not be based on sound research practices. Some of the studies do not adequately control significant variables such as the home environment -- which could have a lot more to do with brain development than the food a child eats. (Boy, did the breast bullies have comments to make about this article!)

On the surface, the breastfeeding debate does not seem to affect me at all. First and foremost, I don't have any children! Also, my girlfriends who are moms all seem to have taken to nursing easily and naturally. I get the sense that the hardest part for all of them was the eventual weaning. Other than my own mother, I don't know any moms who struggled so much with the choice of food for their babies. (And, by the way, my sister and I were also allergic to formula, so no one can blame my mom for not trying!) But as a locovore future adoptive mom, I have started to realize all the implications of this debate on my life in the years to come.

My reasons for thinking breastfeeding is (generally) better are more in line with what my sister had to say in her comment. Breast milk is 100% natural, you have complete control over what is in it, and it is the most local food in the world. Local, organic milk. For free. Delivered to you by nature. Mother nature doesn't even charge for shipping. (Okay, I'm minimizing the physical toll on the mother here, but I have no experience in that area and I've read descriptions of nursing that range from "pure hell" to "pure bliss" and "wonderfully convenient" to "completely inconvenient" and I'm afraid if I try to summarize what other people have gone through to nurse a baby I'll just end up offending everyone, which is not my intention at all!)

There are ways for adoptive mothers to stimulate their own milk production. Some involve taking hormones, which I can't see myself doing. (Where do they come from? What will they do to me? Would they be passed along to the baby?) Almost all involve supplementing with formula (unless you can actually trick your body into thinking it has gone through a pregnancy - which seems far-fetched). Most organizations who advocate for adoptive mothers to try to nurse their infants suggest that this be done not for the nutritional benefit to the child, but for the bonding experience. (See above where I mentioned variables not being considered during the breast v. bottle studies. This is one of them.) They also sell special packets of formula that fit in a holster around the mom so that the formula stays at body temperature. A small tube is used to deliver food to the infant while he or she is at the breast - no bottles are used. Are they in the stimulating milk production (which does not net them any profit) business, or the hormone, plastic tubing and formula (presumably highly profitable) business?

There are also ways for adoptive mothers to access breast milk from milk banks. I suppose this is the solution to my real food lifestyle. Except that I've read it can cost something like $32,000 a year for the milk. That is my entire non-existent salary! I don't think I'm going to add La Leche League to my grocery list any time soon.

So I'm stuck with formula for my not-currently-existent future child.

Why on earth would I want to feed my baby processed food that I won't eat myself? On the other hand, as one bottle mom pointed out in her blog, baby formula keeps babies alive! If the alternative to formula is nothing - and starvation, I'll go with formula every time.

It all boils down to this: I am probably going to end up being one of those moms who would really rather nurse her baby, but cannot. And I may face some severe bullying by other moms about my choice. I think I'll follow Michael Pollan's advice (again, my Food Rules book is now in Minneapolis so I don't have the page number, sorry). He says a person should be the kind of person who takes multivitamins, then skip the multivitamin. I will be the kind of mother who breastfeeds. Then I'll feed my adopted kid formula, because it's the most practical solution. (Or I'll start looking for donations of "liquid gold.")

What's Cooking?

On Wednesday, as I mentioned, I went to Madison to do some gardening and stopped by the farmers' market. You've seen some of that haul. What I didn't mention earlier is that Wednesday is also our CSA pickup day. Michael was headed south for Scrabble Club, and offered to pick up our share (in DeForest) this week so I could get to book club on time. I didn't see the produce until late last night, but was excited to find:
4 more kohlrabi, including one that is purple (not pictured)
green onions
radishes
sage
four types of lettuce
peas!! (two bags!)

I love this picture. Yay Produce!
Earlier in the day I called Michael to see if he would please take a package of sausages out of the freezer for dinner. Not only did he take out the sausage, he also organized the freezer for me! Am I a lucky woman or what?

I invented a really cool dish late last summer that I blogged about here:
and I made it again tonight. The vegetable selection was different, of course, but the results were still good.

I used:
1 monster kohlrabi and one regular kohlrabi from my garden
All 4 zucchinis that I picked yesterday
2 onions from the garden (one yellow, one white)
2 cloves of early garlic from the farmers' market
2 tomatoes (1 lb) from the farmers' market
4 Jordanal sausages

Originally, I had planned to include the turnips, as a stand-in for potatoes, but decided to save them for the soup I plan to make tomorrow with my carrots and the rest of my onions. Instead of the turnips, I put all four zucchini in this pot. It made enough for at least four servings . . . and it is apparently good enough that Michael helped himself to a late-night snack of seasonal veggie stew a few minutes ago. (I just came up with that unoriginal but appropriate name - seasonal veggie stew - and I think it is a keeper.)
I'm pretty scared of under-cooked meat (even if it isn't from a CAFO) so I started cooking the sausages before I chopped any of the veggies.
kohlrabi (peeled) and zucchini
Just in case you're like one of those kids in Huntington, WV, as shown in Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, who can't identify vegetables, this is onion and garlic (on the left) and tomato (on the right).
I drizzled a little bit of olive oil in this pan, let it heat up, then tossed in the kohlrabi and zucchini. Note to self: the zucchini doesn't need nearly as much cooking time as the kohlrabi. I already knew this, but I was being a lazy chef and had put them all in one bowl during the chopping process.
I let the kohlrabi and zucchini cook down a little, then added the onions and garlic . . . after they had a nice chance to mellow, I added the tomatoes. I could have added them sooner, but didn't want them to lose their color, which I thought they might.
Finally, when I felt certain the sausages were cooked, I sliced them up tossed them in, and let the whole thing simmer for a few minutes while Michael took Oliver for a walk and I finished making the salad.

I would have added basil, but my little basil plant in a pot out back is not doing very well. I think I damaged it when I pulled leaves off last week for a capreese salad. More on basil in a minute.

I made a salad with 3 of our 4 types of lettuce, green onions, raw kohlrabi, and radishes. We are out of the really yummy raspberry pecan salad dressing that we had been using on our strawberry salads earlier this summer, so Michael used honey mustard dressing. I decided to go for a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic instead, and loved it, and felt good about my non-local but less-processed dressing. Unfortunately I then adulterated my local salad by adding a little bit of feta cheese (which I could get locally but did not on this occasion) and kalamata olives (which will never be local, and have certainly seen their share of processing). Oh well, the salad was still excellent!
Finally, I made a loaf of yogurt rye bread today. I had considered making croutons with it, but decided against it for a few reasons. First, the last time I made croutons I actually made too many and ended up throwing a cup and a half away - which made me very sad. I was disappointed with myself for the waste. Second, I was already using the good crouton pot for my veggie stew. Third, I've only made croutons with home made french bread before. Normally I would not care what kind of bread my croutons were made from, but I'm still trying to get the hang of making bread in Wisconsin - with our variable humidity - and while my last 3 loaves (or more?) of French bread exploded in the bread machine (I needed to use tools to get the last 2 loaves out), this loaf of rye bread was a very squat, dense thing, and I wasn't sure it would make very good croutons. (It tastes excellent, even if it is squatty - I had a slice with strawberry jam for dessert.) Rather than croutons, we just had a slice of buttered bread with dinner.

Now, back to that basil. I can't believe I forgot to take pictures yesterday or mention it earlier! The main reason I went to garden in Madison yesterday was to "minimally process" my basil. I bought two little basil plants (and one parsley plant which has since been overtaken by the vine patch) at the farmers' market, and planted it among the tomatoes, according to some "Companion Planting" literature I found. It is really doing well! I have a book called "Grocery Gardening" by Jean Ann Van Krevelen that has some ideas about how to preserve produce. I'm not a huge fan of drying herbs (although the sage from our CSA is hanging upside down in the kitchen as I type) so I was delighted to read that it is actually more tasty to preserve basil by freezing it. Van Krevelen says, "Just toss your clean and dry harvested leaves into a blender with just enough olive oil to loosen the mixture. Then throw it into a freezer bag and pop it in the freezer. When you need basil for a recipe, just break off a piece and add; it will taste like you just harvested it" (Grocery Gardening, 42). I picked a (child's) bucket full of basil and I'd say it turned out to be maybe 3/4 of a cup of finished product. I could have broken off a piece and added it to my dish, but that seemed silly - the reason I put that basil in the freezer is to have basil in the winter when I don't have a plant growing outside.

When my mom and I planned to harvest some basil yesterday, I had *no* idea that all of that other produce would be ready too. The zucchini and green beans were a total surprise. We knew the turnips were ready but I wasn't sure if I should pick them yet - I thought they were supposed to be ready in the fall. I also checked on my potatoes, and was pleased to see that they are, in fact, growing - I didn't think they were last week. I covered them with more straw to make sure that they are not exposed to the light. I picked four cherry tomatoes, and was pleased to see quite a few large green tomatoes on the tomato plants. There are flowers on the pumpkin, cucumber, watermelon, and winter squash vines, as well as on the green pepper plant. Things are going to be getting busy in the garden in a hurry!

I actually took a few pictures of our wild, overgrown haven of a garden (in the downpour) but I could not get them to attach to a message in gmail, and they are now saved on my dad's computer an hour away. Stay tuned, maybe I will post them later.