Hello, and happy Wednesday! Greg and I have slowed down on the sweets, thankfully, with these from over the past few weeks rather than days. Our thighs are grateful!! A hazelnut brownie, pineapple upside down cake, and panna cotta with a ground cherry and grapefruit sauce. Eeek, so good!
I made a jalapeno and onion jam and topped pork chops with it, pineapple curry, lasagna (homemade noodles using the machine I inherited from my Grandma!), and Greg made the mac and green chile cheese and beautiful salad. All spectacularly good.
It’s iris season, and these are our first two blossoms. Woot!
Sunday’s homemade ice cream, walnut and chocolate. I made the walnut with the green walnut liqueur, like the delicious variety I made ages and ages ago, but since there are no green walnuts to glean in my neighborhood, I resorted to purchasing a bottle. I suppose it ought to go without saying, but the ice creams were both fantastic!
locavore
Juniper does her sweet beggar best to convince the hubster to share his smoked BBQ chicken, corn, and ranch dressing topped salad.
Another stellar batch of green chile and a new recipe for homemade tortillas from Ford Fry. So. VERY. good.
Farmer Greg tends the carrot and onion patch. No sprouts, yet, but we do have two teeny tiny lettuces leaves going. Baby steps!
Though we are healthy and lucky in so many ways, yesterday was a hard one. I felt as though I was hearing all the bad news of the past months in a single violent wallop, sending every last marble skittering every which way and rendering me helpless to capture them. I am not normally someone who needs a drink, but boy howdy, a prickly pear margarita has never tasted so good nor made such quick work of smoothing all the jagged edges. Gratitude is the word.
Greg and I continue to make our mostly solitary way, going out for provisions every ten days or so and avoiding people, restaurants, and coffee shops. So when we got a craving for burgers, I tried my hand at brioche buns and perhaps ruined us for eating a burger anywhere else. They were simply amazing.
I’ve also come to realize how much my eating reflects this place that is home: the Southwest. Like grits in the South, salmon and berries in the Pacific Northwest, my diet is so utterely centered around green chile, eating it nearly every day, including on the burger.
Greg looking positively adorable AND excited for peach pie and cinnamon-sugar twists with pie dough remnants. Darn tasty!
Green chile again! We topped an open faced breakfast sandwich with brioche (the same batch as the buns), bacon, and cheddar. The breakfast of champions.
Stumbled upon this “lady” on one of our walkabouts. Speechless.
Everyone in our neighborhood taking COVID-19 seriously….
Hello gentle reader. As I write, a bluster of wind sails snow beyond the window, the outlook for our afternoon dog walk very grim. My belly is brimful with curried cauliflower soup, a rainbow sprinkle sugar cookie, and Irish breakfast tea. Satisfied.
I enjoyed a long stretch of time when I thought not one bit about COVID-19. Thirty minutes of bliss.
We’ve spent much of the last weeks sunny weather clipping away last year’s growth, with monster piles of beyond parched plants in tidy compostable heaps, ripe seeds sprinkled delicately, eager for birds and dewy soil. The best moments, however, coming afterward, in the bath, when my skin, heady with dust and sweat, disperses sweetly into the air. What is the word for it? Not quite petrichor but just as intoxicating.
We made fine use of mushrooms with protein noodles and an omelette. I also tried my hand at no-knead donuts which were baked not fried because I don’t care for the hassle. I am known to cut sugar from just about every recipe I make, but these I followed exactly and found them seriously wanting. Darn cute, though! The hummus and pita continue to be a hit, but nothing in comparison to the Dutch baby. I used half blue corn flour for the usual all purpose and was positively delighted. The hubster, too.
Basically chugging along, with every hope for better days. How about you?
Hello from nanuck and his cowboy hat girlfriend! Greg’s words, not mine, but chuckle worthy and true, especially when you look at his shadow on the street. Very eskimo and cowboy.
Thankfully, we are still enjoying all of our dining in (Greg says it’s the best restaurant in town), the top photo the best pork chop of my life and the steak at the bottom topped with a Korean BBQ style sauce of wonder. I’ve been brining, smoking, then pan finishing just about all our meats lately, and what delicious magic it has been. Everything cooked to absolute perfection.
I found a no-knead bread recipe from King Arthur flour, which was crusty good and enjoyed over two days, and this week’s Sunday dessert was cake made with freeze dried strawberries, the frosting, too, utterly cheery and delicious! My ever-sensitive system found it all a bit much, sadly, so I am going to dial back the grains to one day a week. Too much information, I know.
We braved the world in the car on Saturday, the first time in 16 days, off to Target and Safeway (we have vegetables and greens again!), and felt positively weird to be shopping with such heightened awareness. I made a bottle of hand sanitizer with alcohol, water, a little avocado oil, and essential oils, and sprayed every cart surface liberally, and our hands, too. One small measure of control in our very unsettling times. So far, so good.
It was also nice enough to get work done in the garden and chat with neighbors as they walked or bicycled by. Everything is greening up, and the tulips should be beginning their show soon. How I am looking forward to that!
