Mermade Market April 2014

I just applied for the upcoming December 2014 Mermade Market, and it reminded me I never posted about the April 2014 market. 

Mermade Market is a new small business started by a family friend, Elise Capener, from my hometown. It is a curated market of handmade goods in Dana Point, CA. I heard about the first

market in February right after I had Arlin. Feeling a bit "blah," I thought it would give me the creative boost I needed to get out of winter hibernation/pregnant mode. Plus, how could I miss a handmade market in my hometown and the opportunity to craft with my own mother? I also schemed that this could be the boost my mom needed to work on her "someday dream" of selling her culinary treats. We applied, were accepted, and then scrambled to figure out what exactly we should make. I felt rusty since my last Punk Rock Flea Market and Provo Farmer's Market days were gone. I hadn't made any new patterns for a while plus all my craft supplies were in boxes in a freezing garage. 

Since the sale was the 3 days leading up to Easter, it would be a good idea to have Easter themed goods (not to make a sacred holiday commercial....), so we went from there thinking of little gifts for Easter baskets. In the end, we had a good time emailing, talking on the phone, scheming what we could do and what the other person could make; it's always easier to tell someone else what they are good at and what others may want to buy. 

My mom made her famous marshmallows (vanilla and passion fruit!) and infamous caramels (vanilla and salted). I made linen rabbits; papier mache hollowed eggs from my own ducks and chickens; and small bags (zippered and drawstring) from vintage linens. I also had a random sale section from old stock. True to form, my mom took the extra step to have a polished storefront and created a business name and logo: BLACKWELDER BAKING CO. Brook Reynolds, of Inchmark, was the graphic designer, I love her work - she did our wedding announcements. To display our goods, I remembered my mom had a beautiful pine armoir to contain and display our items in many layers. I love how our booth turned out and we were 3rd highest grossing seller :)

Our Country's Birthday

For Cur Country's Birthday, I made and ate the most delicious blueberry slab pie with rye crust I have ever tasted.

We also hung out the flags

ate a pancake breakfast at church with kids bike parade, worked my shift at the food bank, BBQ picnic with friends (they made a delicious cherry pie), and then back home for fireworks.

 

This was our first 4th of July in our new house which is in unincorporated King County, where all kinds of fireworks are legal). I shouldn't have been surprised but was at the thousands of fireworks going off all night. Our wealthy neighbors had a beautiful display which we could see through the trees. Elliott enjoyed his first year of lighting fireworks.

rainbow chili

Yesterday, we drove to Covington in rush hour traffic plus holiday traffic (4th of July travelling) to pick up our argosy from having the roof repainted and bring it back to the Airstream Dealership so they could finish installing the new water tank. We also got rear-ended (no injuries!) and thus delayed an additional 40 min :) I haven't written much about these plans (yet) but along with our home remodel, we are also remodeling our 1977 Argosy. In our dreams, when everything is finished, we will have a sweet home and sweet home on wheels.

Shrub Warning

About a week ago I heard of shrubs, or drinking vinegars, for the first time and immediately started planning how I would make dozens of interesting drink syrups and have a shrub party in the winter...

Shrubs, popular in Colonial times, are fruit and/or herb flavored vinegars used to flavor drinks (click here for more info)

Some tasty sounding flavor combinations are: blueberry-thyme, ginger, cherry vanilla, basil, anise hyssop, lavender, pineapple-rosemary...

Unfortunately, after making a blueberry shrub, I discovered I don't like shrubs (too vinegary) and I can't imagine how anyone could!

If you want to try making a shrub, it's easy: simmer 2 cups fruit with 2 cups vinegar, let sit 3 days, strain (if necessary) and add 3/4 to 1 cup sugar, simmer until dissolved and slightly reduced. To mix your drink, put a spoonful of shrub in a glass and pour club soda over it.

(recipes and ideas here, here and here)

My new plan is to make a bunch of fruit and herb flavored syrups (skip the vinegar) and have a drink party.

breakfast!

smoothie breakfast!

pink - banana, mango juice, apple, kiwi, raspberries

light green - banana, mango juice, apple, kiwi

yellow - banana, mango juice, apple

dark green - 2 leaves kale, 1/2 apple, 1 kiwi (so good!)

I didn't make them all separately...I made the kale one then made the "yellow" one, added kiwi to make "light green" and then added raspberries to make "pink."

I received these vintage juice glasses at my bridal shower from a friend in California. I love them - they are one of my favorite gifts (and they are one of the only gifts we have in our apartment, everything else went into storage until we have a house better suited for displaying cute things).

Spring?

I feel like it's spring.
I know it's not, but I feel like it is.
We're on our third day in a row of sunlight, the days are lighter and brighter, I can see mountains in every direction because there are no clouds, AND I've been eating fruit and tomatoes! Plus, I've been walking more because it's not raining and I've been stretching (just weak, 5 minute pregnant yoga stretching - but it's making a difference).

I love the fruits! We haven't been buying fruit very often because nearly every fruit is out of season and expensive, but I decided we should pay the $ and be happy!
My "spring" foods have included:
mango juice and yogurt to make "mango lassi"
kale smoothies (kale, banana, 3 kiwis, 1 orange)
honeydew melon!!!!
fresh apples and bananas all day
oranges and tangerines
tomato-lime salsa (roma tomatoes, onion, cilantro, lots of lime and lemon juice) in corn tacos :)
cracked oats for breakfast
homemade Swiss Muselix (rolled oats soaked in yogurt , orange juice, canned peaches, and frozen raspberries)
Oh, it's all so delicious I can barely stand it. I'm so happy it's "spring"!

Eritrean Food

Today at work I got a nice surprise: Elsa, the custodian from Eritrea, made me some spicy lamb stew and injera!
While talking last week, I mentioned I like to make Eritrean/Ethiopian food, so she not only made me some to eat, but gave me a tub of homemade spice paste to use next time I cook.
I'm so excited to try it and I'm excited to actually know someone from that area of Africa.

Fig cookies!

These fig cookies are a new recipe for this year, but quickly proved to be a favorite and future stand by.

A tasty butter dough is folded over a filling of dried figs, oranges, and walnuts to create a log, then sliced diagonally and baked.

I got the recipe from A Taste of Home, a recipe magazine from my mother-in-law.

The dough originally called for Crisco instead of butter, but here is the recipe with butter. I try to find recipes without Crisco because substituting with butter often changes the way the cookies result. This recipe, however, claimed to be an old Italian recipe, so i was hopeful that butter would work because the original most likely used butter. After a side by side test of butter and Crisco in the dough, I concluded that butter was better. The cookie part tasted better with butter (it was bland with Crisco) and the finished cookie held it's shape well.

So, here's the recipe:

filling:

2 cups raisins

3/4 lb. pitted dates

3/4 cup sugar

2 small navel oranges, peeled and quartered

1/3 lb. dried figs

1/3 cup chopped walnuts

(if too thick, add up to 1/4 cup water)

Process in food processor until finely chopped. Set aside.

dough:

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/4 cup milk

2 tsp. vanilla

3 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs, milk, vanilla. Add flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda gradually. The dough will be very thin and you'll have to use a fork to handle it. Divide into four pieces, cover and refrigerate an hour or more.

When ready to assemble and bake cookies, take dough out to soften slightly. Roll between two pieces of parchment paper into a thin rectangle 16" X 6". Remove top parchment to spread 1/4 of filling mixture down center of dough. Using lower parchment, fold one side of dough over the mixture. then fold the other side to overlap. use fingers to pinch and seal all edges. Cut diagonally into 3/4" slices. Place seam side down on parchment paper.

Bake at 400 F for 10-14 min until edges are golden. Cool for 10 min before removing from pans to cool completely.

Glaze:

2 cups powdered sugar

2-3 Tbsp. milk

Combine, adjusting ingredients to get a thin glaze. Drizzle over cookies.

Hazelnut cookies

Here is one of my favorite family Christmas recipes. I made them this week to eat and give to friends:

German Hazelnut Cookies

3 eggs

4 cups hazelnuts, finely chopped in a food processor

2 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/4 sticks butter

3 cups flour

cinnamon and nutmeg to please

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Mix ingredients together. Roll out and cut with cookie cutters or into squares. Place on parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake at 350 F for 8-10 minutes.

When cookies are cooling, mix lemon juice with powdered sugar to make a thin glaze. Glaze cookies when cool.

Death by Matsutake

I went matsutake (Tricholoma magnivelare) hunting this morning at 6:30 AM. I had to be back in Seattle before 12-noon, and I am happy to say I had a successful hunt and made it back in time, too.

The drive to Lake Kachess, about an hour East via I-90, was beautiful at that hour. It was dark when I started. The moon was a tiny sliver, low in the sky and I drove into the sunrise. Here is Lake Kachess with rising morning fog:

I found so many matsutake! The name is Japanese for Pine Mushroom because they grow in association with Pines and have a spicy pine/radish/cinnamon odor and taste. They are very distinct, I don't think you can confuse it with any other mushroom if you combine the distinct odor with a few characteristics such as:

manly white mushroom with brown fibrils on cap, a squat appearance, thick cottony veil:

that is often fully intact:

tapered/rooting stem with brown scales:

Matsutake often completely develop under "duff," leaf and needle litter on the forest floor. You see puffed up, bulging areas of dirt and if you excavate further, you find this:

a nearly missed matsutake.

Here is an older fruit body. The cap has alredy turned upward and the gills have turned pink with age:

The odor/taste is strange. I actually like it, but I'm the type that sniffs every mushroom I see (I'm trying to learn all the mushroom odors - there are thousands). It was really satisfying to collect matsutake and get a "stamp of correct i.d."

I found my first matsutake last year (here's the post) and ate it sliced thin in a broth soup. It was pretty good. This year, I found about 15 large matsutake. I gave 4 away so I still had way too many to eat. I decide to try every interesting sounding recipe I found so I could get them all out of my system and not have to worry about mushroom hunting or mushroom taste testing any more this year (the collecting season is over anyway).

Here are my ingredients (I'm really proud of myself for chopping everything before I stared cooking, for the first time in my life):

Here is what I made:

clockwise from top: Matsutake broth, grilled matsutake, Matsutake rice (gohan), and Matsutake sukiyaki (stir-fry noodle soup).

The best one was the sukiyaki, then the rice, then the broth soup. The grilled matsutake were not so good. I think it would have been better on a real BBQ grill, not our panini grill :)

Now, we are sick of matsutake (Death by Matsutake, as Adam said) and our freezer is full of matsutake leftovers. It's funny to think this is one of the most expensive mushrooms. It can be $100 / pound in Japan - though around $15-$25 / pound in U.S. As a reference, one average matsutake is 4-5 ounces. So, 4 mushrooms make one pound.

Here is the log bridge leading to the secret matsutake hunting grounds!

Here are the recipes I consulted:

Matsutake gohan (rice)

Matsutake sukiyaki (stir-fry noodles)

Matsutake broth soup

Grilled Matsutake

Fall Food

We've been eating several kinds of bean chili (one of them - see photo - has cocoa powder)

and other crock pot soups like Portuguese white bean soup (flavored with crushed fennel seeds! yum!)

roasted beets with goat cheese

spicy roasted squash with goat cheese (link)

and I made mustard! (here is the recipe link)

What have you been making? Any good (easy and cheap) recipes or ideas?

bacon bakin'

Bacon bakin', as in making bacon and baking with it.

We are getting into baby mode over here and to prepare, one of the things we are trying to do is eat healthier by eliminating bad chemicals from our diet. This seems easy, but what are bad chemicals? which ones are they? what do they do to you? etc.

To start, we thought we would cut out bad plastics (no disposable water bottles, no microwaving in plastic containers, etc.), artificial dye chemicals like yellow 40, and "nitrates" from processed meats...until we found a small bag of bacon in the freezer, which I decided we should cook and eat it now (before I get pregnant), as opposed to after I get pregnant. I have no idea if nitrates from cured bacon would have any affect on my pregnancy, but oh, well.

Since this could be the last bacon I have for a while, I wanted to make it count and try out some bacon recipes I've had my eye on.

First, chocolate covered bacon:

3 years ago I fell in LOVE with the $8 bacon chocolate bar from Vosges chocolates. Adam had the idea to make our own, here is the first prototype:

Does NOT photograph well....but it tastes really good. We dipped these in two layers of chocolate (mild and dark mixed). I think a third or fourth layer would have been great, too.

Second, bacon in two otherwise vegan soups:

French Lentil Rice soup (known around here as "ration" soup. I pack it in jars for lunches and when we pass them out in the morning to take to work, it really does feel like you are getting your daily ration!)

and Potato Leek soup never tasted so good! (I cooked the leeks in the bacon fat and then used pieces of bacon as a topping. Also perfect for taking to work.)

Third, bacon shortbread!

I saw this recipe online and really want to try it, but haven't yet. I saved the bacon fat, so I'll keep you posted.

vegan breakfast sausage

(The picture is blurry because the lens got steamed up)
Yes, vegan breakfast sausage. It's delicious and made of cracked oats and lentils...

It's a recipe from my Aunt Janet and it's actually called goetta (though my sisters and I like to call it "getto"). I LOVE it. My aunt made it at a family reunion many years ago and I have gone in and out of phases where I eat it every day.

I recently was craving it and made a big batch which made me want to share the recipe because I think it's so tasty.

Vegan Goetta (aka vegan breakfast sausage)

1 cup pearled barley

2 cups cracked oats

1 1/2 cups green lentils

1/2 cup diced onion

1/2 cup soy sauce or Bragg's amino acids

2 Tsp salt

1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce (optional)

2-3 Tbsp crushed fennel seeds (important!)

8 whole bay leaves (important!)

2 cloves crushed garlic

cayenne, red pepper flakes, etc to taste

other herbs like thyme, sage, rosemary, etc.

The directions are simple: boil everything in a large pot with enough water to make a thick "porridge." Taste to make sure grains are tender and cooked through and to adjust the seasonings. I like my goetta with extra fennel seeds. Make sure the mixture is really thick, and then pour into bread pans or a casserole dish of some kind. Cover with plastic and refrigerate to harden.

Cooking directions: cut slices of goetta 1/2" - 3/4" thick and pan fry in butter or oil (or bacon fat) until crispy on both sides. Sometimes it falls apart, which is fine. You can eat it plain or with some kind of sauce. I like to serve it with sauted kale/chard and a poached egg - it's so good!

For some reason, I had never googled what goetta actually is. I now have googled it and: it is a German food made from ground meat and oats that you put into sausages or let harden in a container before slicing and pan frying it. Which is exactly how you make the vegan goetta. I was surprised to learn there was an actual meat based food that this vegan goetta was copying, because the vegan recipe had such strange preparation.

Try it out, it's so satisfying. Cracked oats and lentils flavored like breakfast sausage Mmm, mmm, mmm.

*Goetta is really popular in Cincinnati (which makes sense that my Aunt and Uncle love it because they lived there for a while) - maybe even more popular than it ever was in Germany - and they have an annual goettafest.

*Another goetta fact: the largest commercial goetta producer sells 99% of it's product in Cincinnati.

Burnt Asian Pear with Cayenne

"Burnt Asian Pear with Cayenne." Yes, that's what the label says but is it something to eat with expensive cheese or a sad canning disaster from 2009?

Both, I would argue.

Last summer, after a particularly fruitful urban forage bike trip, I made Asian Pear "applesauce." After washing and chopping the fruit, Adam and I started watching a movie while the fruit simmered in water. During the movie, I added brown sugar and cinnamon to make a tasty spiced applesauce. After tasting it, I added more sugar and cinnamon because it still wasn't sweet. In fact, it tasted weird and...spicy? I added more cinnamon in an attempt to mask the strange flavor.

After the movie, I realized that in the poor lighting I had mixed up the ground cinnamon and ground cayenne!

My pear sauce was spicy because I had accidentally added cayenne pepper :(

Plus it burned a little. Hahahaha!

Adam thought it was funny and we decided to can it and save it for a Holiday party where we could somehow serve it with cheese or something.

The jar sat on the shelf for a year until one day last week when I suddenly wanted to try my hand at samosa making. I needed an appetizer to bring to the ward party and I decided to spend my day off teaching myself to make Samosas.

In Indian cuisine, samosas are delicious potato and curry filled, fried dough triangles served with chutney.

After making fabulous baked samosas (see below), I was worried because we had to leave for the church party but I didn't have enough tamarind chutney. Then, I remembered about the burnt asian pear sauce and used it as a base for a surprisingly wonderful chutney. So, I actually did get to use my strange sauce by feeding it to acquaintances at a holiday party

Recycled Chutney

1 cup burnt asian pear sauce (or other fruit sauce like apple, peach, pear, etc)

1/2 cup apple butter (optional)

1 Tbsp (or more) apple cider vinegar

1 tsp (or more) ground cumin

salt

(I've made this chutney a few times and one time I added many additional spices like turmeric and celery seeds, etc.)

The samosa dough was similar to pie crust dough (2 cups flour, 2 Tbsp butter, just enough water to combine and knead into a stable dough.

The samosa filling was a made-up potato, carrot, spice mixture mixed with leftover curry that had originally been made WAY too spicy to eat. I also made a spinach and ricotta cheese filling, to use up leftovers.

To wrap samosas, roll small pieces of dough (about 1/12 of the dough) into a 1/4" thick circle. I couldn't find my rolling pin, so I used a tall drinking glass, which worked fine. Cut the circle in half and use a semi-circle for each samosa. Put a spoonful of filling on the dough and fold it up like a triangle while crimping and sealing the edges with your fingers. (The way it's folded, one side will have two layers of dough, FYI, unless you figure out another way....)

Bake at 350 F for 30-ish minutes.

Serve with recycled chutney :)

Skaha Bluffs, Canada

For Labor Day, we drove to Skaha Bluffs near Penticton, Canada for a weekend of climbing, camping, and cooking with friends.
Skaha Bluffs is mainly a sport climbing area with hundreds of bolted routes of varying levels of difficulty...but there is also plenty of "trad" (traditional) climbing.

Adam and Tosia, our friends' wonderful dog!

It was really nice to be on a climbing trip with friends since it is usually just me and Adam.

Cydney and me (...Go Nader!)
Photos of the climbing:

Adam warming up on a .10b :)

Me and Tosia safe on the ground belaying Adam

Adam leading his last climb of the trip.

Me, lead climbing! It was a 5.6, but I'm proud of myself!

Bartek leading a "trad" route

Adam in his gear
Now for the Photos of the food:
(I didn't climb a lot this trip, so it seemed more like a food trip!)

Grilled cheese and turkey!

Maple glazed salmon!

Mountain Man breakfast, Adam's specialty.

Jola and Bartek trying out a dutch oven breakfast!
And last but not least, some pretty pictures of bark:

I love the colors!

The trees were right on the trail, and had been polished by so many hands rubbing them as hikers past by.