Daddy's Girl

I was always a daddy's girl.

That man shone like the sun for me.

The patience he showed as we tried to play backyard baseball when I clearly have no natural athletic ability at all.

The one time I managed to accidently hit the baseball with the bat and it went over our neighbour's fence a few feet away was cause for celebration. He took me to Baskin Robbins for ice cream and told me that I could say "I hit it over the fence" and that I never had to actually say which fence.

The infinite patience he showed trying to teach me (and later Spiderman) how to drive. It is a wonder we actually got out of there alive. We almost didn't. The first time I ever went driving after I got my learner's permit, I crashed our family car into a fire hydrant.

He kept me company all through the lonely Friday nights of my teenage years when I had no date or place to go. We had pizza and watched crap horror film or old westerns and laughed.

The way he was willing to do any project with me. If I had an idea we would toddle over to Lowes in his pick-up truck and buy lumber and then we would build it in the back garden.

He loved all my school children vicariously and bought them things like little plastic spider rings or their own individual miniature pumpkin at Halloween.

He used to say to me every day --and make me recite it back to him--these three important things:

1. Know that I love you

2. Check your facts

3. Stand up for what you believe in

So I guess I am still a daddy's girl.

I know, without a doubt that i am loved and I still feel that love despite our parting.

I am so careful to think before I speak and be armed with truth and not assumptions.

I am out there fighting the good fight, speaking up for the animals and people who have no voice. I'm getting ready for an anti-nuclear protest in the summer. I am foolish enough to believe that I can make a difference in the world.

Just like my dear old dad.

GLT--it has been 14 years since you died, but you are always in my heart.

I am still your girl.

Pea and Mint Risotto with Mushroom Bacon

 

There is an episode of the Young Ones where Neil the hippy serves dinner and tries to pass it off as risotto, but it is actually snow. This is definitely not snow--but a really delicious and cheap risotto from the cookbook A Girl called Jack. 

 

She uses regular rice instead of more expensive Arborio rice but I still have some Arborio rice in my cupboard so I used that.

 

It was a really delicious risotto made with white wine, frozen peas. and some fresh mint and parsley from my windowsill.  The juice of half a lemon at the end really brightened the flavours but the real star was the mushroom bacon.

 

I know…vegans will make bacon out of anything. Some people would argue why make a fake version of something that you don’t want to eat, but my answer is that I want that

 

Smoky                         

                                          Salty                           

                                                                          Umami  

 

Flavour that bacon used to provide.  I don’t want to eat the dead body parts of a pig. I just want flavour. 

 

Jack says, “To make this dish of ricy goodness even more delicious, stir in some scraps of bacon along with the sliced onion.”

 

Normally I would buy a packet of smoked tofu for this. The brand we like costs about £3.00 and I can stretch it over two meals making each meal cost £1.50 as far as the smoked tofu part goes. That doesn’t count the cost of all the other ingredients.

 

I had some mushrooms in the fridge and so I decided to try a recipe for mushroom bacon because it would be cheap. I had the mushrooms and all the other ingredients. Would it taste good? Would it be sufficient to replace smoked tofu which was replacing bacon?

 

I thinly sliced half a pounds worth of  button mushrooms (this was about 6 mushrooms for me)  and drizzled them with 1 TB tamari soy sauce, 1 tsp liquid smoke and 1 tsp toasted sesame oil.

 

Then I baked them in a hot oven--425F/220C for 12 - 15 minutes.

 

They shrank up really small and dried out which intensified their flavour. The taste was rich and savoury and  *amazing*  and they really added an intense pop of flavour into the risotto. The smell also lingered in the kitchen in a lovely way as well.

 

I cannot believe how good this was. I always have tamari, toasted sesame oil and liquid smoke in my kitchen and it needed very little of the ingredients to make this work. It also only needed about 50p’s worth of mushrooms to achieve this which is a HUGE savings.

 

I am not anti-soy but I know that tofu is still a processed product which is why we only eat it about once a week--if that. I prefer to use whole foods in our diet and mushrooms fit the bill.

 

Plus it’s cheap. We may still splurge on smoked tofu every now and then, but now I know that for 50p worth of mushrooms I can make smoky “bacon” why would I?

 

edited to add:

I wanted to check to be sure the magic would work in a soup so we have eaten Caldo Verde (Portuguese potato and kale soup) for the last two nights. Again, the smoky mushroom bacon worked its magic and the second day over cornbread (ain’t nothin’ wrong with that) it was absolutely *gorgeous*. The marinated mushrooms added richness to the vegetable broth in an Mmm, mmm, mmm way.

 

I’m sold.

 

Keeping the vampires at bay

from bbcgoodfood.com

We love garlic. I love the taste of fresh garlic. I have been known to consume an entire bulb of roasted garlic by squeezing the cloves directly into my mouth. FACT.

 

But I do hate chopping garlic. I like it finely minced and it is a faff to do. I used to have a mini chopper that would do it for you, but it has ceased to work and so I could never chop it as fine or as quickly as I would like. I ended up leaving it out of recipes as the onions, carrot and pepper would be sautéing in the pan and I would be trying to peel a clove and dice it small and then would give up and start to swear as the kettle had just boiled or the oven timer had gone off and the next stage of the meal was ready to happen and I hadn’t finished the fecking garlic yet.

 

Has that ever happened to you? I tried buying a jar of pre-chopped garlic in white vinegar  but it always had a vinegar-y taste. Then I came across an idea form my old friend A Girl called Jack. Her cookbook suggested doing several bulbs all at once and chopping them in the food processor with a splash of oil and then freezing ice cube trays.

 

I bought 4 medium sized bulbs of  garlic for £1 and set about peeling them. I tried the technique of shaking them like a cocktail to get the papery skins off. This didn’t remove the skins altogether but it did make them much easier to remove. Especially since I had about 40 cloves to deal with.

 

I put half the cloves (2 bulbs worth) in the food processor with a splash of yellow rapeseed oil (canola oil for my American peeps) and then blended it up.

 

Then I blended it up and added the rest of the cloves (the other two bulbs) in and blended them up to soak up the rest of the oil.

 

I was left with a finely minced garlic in oil that I could freeze. I just love the bright yellow colour from the oil.

 

I managed to fill in 25 ice cube compartments and then froze them for later.

 

The resulting cubes popped out with ease the next day and were stored away in an airtight container in the freezer--just like my cubes of smoky chipotle peppers in adobe sauce.

 

The result: Perfect. Cooking is a breeze. I just pull out a cube or two and sauté in the pan. The garlic tastes good--there is no prep time which suits me. The oil melts into the pan and adds flavour to the food.

 

It took me about 45 minutes but should last for about a months worth of meals so I think it was entirely worth it. 

 

So thanks Jack for another tip!

Spidergrrl, or the Pot of Basil

I love my husband. He knows me well and he knows what tickles my funny bone. He said that one reason our marriage runs so smoothly is that I am so easily delighted.

 

As blog followers know I’ve been trying to grow a herb garden on the kitchen window. I have bought plants and replanted them into terracotta pots and have managed to keep them alive for nearly a month (which has to be a record for me).

 

After payday I purchased a pot of aromatic basil for the windowsill garden. I dutifully replanted it in a larger terracotta pot and placed it beside its brethren on the window. When Spiderman came home from work he commented about it. I replied with stars in my eyes and discussed the possibility of vegan pesto….mmmm pesto. I thought he had taken no notice.

 

The next day he was in the kitchen cooking rice and I was on the sofa reading. I walked into the kitchen and let out a SHRIEK!

 

There was a skull on my basil plant!

What did this mean? Was it now the Herb of Death? And then I twigged it.

 

I laughed and laughed.

 

And laughed and laughed.

 

I squealed with mirth and did a little hoppy dance around the kitchen (which if you know the size of our kitchen you know this was no mean feat).

 

It was a reference to a poem by Keats called Isabella, or the pot of basil which was featured in some of my favourite Pre-Raphaelite paintings. You can read the poem here http://www.bartleby.com/126/38.html   If you can’t be bothered to read all LXIII stanzas of that poetry nonsense then read on for a summary.

 

In the poem, Isabella falls in love with the poor clerk named Lorenzo who works for her brothers.


Click to enlarge and see the detail

Lorenzo and Isabella was the first painting by John Millais that he exhibited for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. You can see one of her angry aggressive brothers in the foreground cracking the nuts and kicking the dog.

 

Her brothers murder Lorenzo and leave his body in the woods and tell Isabella he has abandoned her. His ghost appears to her and she goes out to find the body. Being only a weak woman she cannot carry the whole body back so she cuts off his head and puts it in a pot of basil. Like you do.

click to enlarge and see the detail

This is my favourite painting by Holman Hunt, another member of the PRB. It shows the bit where she goes mad, watering the basil with her tears. The brothers take the pot and find the head of Lorenzo and having been exposed as murderers went with “blood upon their heads, to banishment.” Without the pot and the skull of her beloved, Isabella cries until she wastes away and dies.

 

I loved it so much I was afraid that watering the plant would dissolve the sticker so we put a layer of clear sticky backed plastic (that’s contact paper for my American peeps) over it to protect it. .I don’t know if that will work. How well does anything stick to damp terracotta anyway?

 

If you are a literary type and you actually read the poem by Keats and admired the paintings then you might be interested to know that Hans Christian Anderson also wrote a story with a similar theme entitled The Rose Elf in which the girl places the skull in a pot and covers it with a sprig of jasmine. The story says, As the girl became paler and paler, the twig stood there fresher and greener. Eventually the girl dies from grief and the evil brother takes the beautiful pot of flowering jasmine to his bed chamber. The Rose Elf speaks to the souls that inhabit every flower as well as to the bees and the evil brother is killed by them in revenge. Because Hans Christian Anderson was all about comeuppance.  You can read it for yourself here: http://hca.gilead.org.il/elf_rose.html

 

I love my pot of basil.

 

My husband knows me well.

 

He knows both a literary and art reference will make smile.

 

I love that he knows the reference and knows that I will know the reference.

 

I adore my Herb of Death.

 

Thank you for making me cackle with laughter.

 

 

Wasted

I read recently that the UK throws away around 7 million tonnes of food and drink every year--that’s 5kg per household, every week.

 

That’s a lot of food. As hard as I try we have occasionally had to compost something that went a bit fuzzy. Bagged salad/spinach  is an issue for us as I like the convenience but it *always* has a bit that goes all slimy and limp in the bottom on the bag  before we can get to it. I know I should be buying a head of lettuce, tearing off leaves, washing them and then laying them out to dry (I don’t own/have the cabinet space for  a salad spinner) and then after all I’m too tired from all that effort so I just go……waaaahhhhh…I’m too exhausted to eat a salad….waaaahhhh.

 

I am the pity whore.

 

But A Girl Called Jack has really made me step up my game. I want  to have as little food waste as possible.

 

We recently ate this *amazing* appetiser from Angela Liddon’s Oh She Glows cookbook. I got this about the same time as A Girl called Jack cookbook. It has gorgeous pictures and the food (like the food on her blog) is divine. But I was shocked at how much more expensive this dish was as it involved cashew nuts and walnuts. Nuts are expensive, but currently Poundland has the best deal on nuts as I’m all about the bargain. But it was totally worth it and I was able to use the leftovers in a A Girl Called Jack chilli recipe the next day.

 

Taco Fiesta Potato Crisps from Oh She Glows 

 You thinly slice potatoes and bake them for 30 minutes (flipping half way) in a hot oven --425F/220C. 2 potatoes fit into my pan making about 18 slices.

 

After they are baked and brown and all yummy you add a blop of cashew sour cream, and a spoonful of Sainsbury’s smoky lime salsa.

 

Then add some walnut taco meat (this was the best walnut taco meat I’ve ever had) and a ring of red pepper (because I had some that needed to be used up in the fridge--this was not in the original recipe) and  some chopped spring onions.

 

Here one is up close:

 

These were amazingly good. It was *technically* an appetiser and we both could have eaten more, but I wouldn’t have wanted to eat them in front of company as they were a bit messy.

We were a bit peckish a few hours later so we made up some “cheesy rice” with nutritional yeast and sprinkled on some sour cream and walnut taco meat.

 

There was enough cashew sour cream and walnut meat left over so I used what was left on 4 Ryvita crackers the next day for lunch. I had half a jar of salsa left and some spring onions which I threw into the next evenings Mumma Jack’s Best Ever Chilli which was good (red wine really does wonders for food) , but I made a mistake of throwing in a diced potato that was also left over--I had bought three potatoes and only two fit in the pan. The potato was slightly undercooked in the chilli despite fishing all the potato bits out half way and dicing them smaller and letting it cook for 15 extra minutes longer than the brown rice.  Well, live and learn.

 

The chilli was alright, I have a chilli recipe I prefer better but I did try a money saving tip of Jack’s that I will definitely try again. The chilli called for a value range tin of kidney beans and a value range tin of baked beans.

 

The baked beans cost 25p and you were meant to rinse the horrible cheap and nasty tomato sauce off of them to get at the haricot beans inside. A tin of haricot beans costs £1 so this was a 75p savings.

 

When I opened the tin I must have make some sort of Yuk noise as Spiderman said, “Yeessss?” in the way that only he can. It smelled like spaghetti-o’s (or spaghetti hoops to by British peeps)  and I was desperate to get that sauce washed off. He reminded me that I ate nothing but spaghetti-os as a child for years (I was an extremely picky eater) but yeah, my palate has expanded a great deal since then. But once the sauce was off they looked  and more importantly smelled like normal haricot beans.

 

Jack says: If the thought of rinsing baked beans horrifies you, use a tin of any white bean--haricot, borlotti and cannelloni all work well here. But honestly, it’s just a bit of sauce.

 

She was totally right on this. She also boiled the beans for 10 minutes to soften them and get rid of any metallic taste. It worked and they melted into the chilli and really thickened it.

 

It was a shame about the potato. But that was my fault.

 

I forgot to take a photo of the chilli as it cooked for an extra 15 minutes and we had to be somewhere at 7:30 but here is a photo from Jack’s blog to show you what it looked like:

 

So how are you using leftovers so there is no waste? I want to get better because I hate to throw stuff out and lose money but also because I hate to lose nutrition. That was healthy food that could have been eaten, dammit! Real food rots, fake food just lives on and on and on.

 

It’s no wonder a twinkie had a shelf life of 100 years or whatever.

 

Give me real food any day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The truth about the library

Our friend Iain spent his gap year in Ghana and whilst he was there he met some Rastafarians on a beach. They told him that they refused to use the word library as it sounded like Lie-brary. Instead they used the word True-brary because books set you free--they are where you can find out the truth.

 I love this idea.

 I’m married to a librarian (or should that be true-brarian?) He was the geeky kid at school who volunteered to shelve your books for you, grew up and his work-study job on campus when we were at Uni was a librarian. He has worked in both the public  and private sector, has worked in schools and in reference. The man is a walking font of knowledge--and if he doesn’t know the answer, he knows where to find the answer.

 In a book (obviously).

 

I worked several summers as a library assistant for the Summer Reading Programme for the Rapides Parish Library system.

 

We are library people.

 I don’t think I utilised the Rapides Parish Library as much as I should have. Mostly because you had to drive there to get books which made it more difficult. My borrowing years were better when I was working there in the summers or when Spiderman worked reference as I could ask him to bring me a book home and save the trip.

 

But now we live about a five minute walk from our local library and so I can pop in anytime I like --except Wednesdays as they are closed. But you know what I mean.

our library with the cool mural that features the Quakers

 I was thinking of all they do for me. I was thinking of all  the wonderful things they have to offer.

 

Wednesday--when they were supposed to be closed--they had a Craft Dabble Day that you could go to for £2. I didn’t know what to expect, but I paid my £2 and went along (in the pouring rain I might add).

 

Well, it was me and about 14 white haired old ladies and we had a jolly old time together. There were craft books laid out on tables with materials to make some of the designs featured inside. There was a knitting table with wool (what my American peeps would call yarn. If you want wool not made of sheep you have to ask for acrylic wool), a craft table with fabric scraps, ribbon, embroidery thread, needles, sequins, buttons etc.

 

There were people making crochet flowers, felt and fabric brooches, button necklaces, starting a patchwork design etc. There were also cups of tea and cake (how would Britain survive without tea and cake?) for those who like that sort of thing--which was all the old ladies.

 

Everyone was helping everybody else. I was able to be useful and helpful by threading needles as I had the youngest eyes. I got some invaluable advice on my failed knitting project (more of that to come later) and was able to help someone do a running stitch.

 

I made this felt owl brooch and it’s come out a treat. I added the blue beads from my craft stash when I got home and sewed the back piece on to hide my stitching, but the whole front I sewed there.  

 

 It was a lot of work to put on--two librarians had to swap working hours with other librarians as they were meant to be at another branch that day, one librarian came in on her day off. I know that hard work that goes into something like this--and I am grateful my branch always has something good going on.

 

I went back today to pick up a book to read and came away with eight items. I’ve got some fiction, some biography, some religious books, a craft book and a cooking magazine. I had to physically drag myself out as it would shortly be too heavy to carry on the walk home.

 

Because that is what to library does to me. I want to move in and live there. 

 

Be true to your library and your library will be true to you.

 

Visit your public library today and thank them for all the free stuff they offer.

 

Then check out some books.

 

 

Going to pot

As I wrote last week, I have been very inspired by Jack Monroe keeping fresh herbs on her windowsill--even in her most extreme poverty. I figured, if she could do it then so could I.

 

The problem lies in the fact that I have never successfully kept anything alive and that was when my Mum lived close by and was giving me enormous amounts of help. Now she lives half a world away (we are separated by an ocean) and I’m sorta on my own except for a few emails and frantic phone calls for advice.

 

Even if I have no talent for growing, I have absorbed enough lectures about horticulture to know a thing or two. I could tell that the cheap herbs in pots that I had on my windowsill were root-bound and therefore would not fare well unless something happened. But what needed to happen I had no idea as I’d never gotten that far. Mum said they needed to be re-potted, in a slightly bigger pot. 

Ah. That meant buying a bag of compost and some pots. That meant looking at whatever local shops I could to find what I need. There was no convenient Lowes to go to for all your home and garden needs. After bringing a ruler into Wilkinsons and measuring the diameter of all the terra cotta pots (they were all listed in centimetres and I’m still an inches and feet kind of gal) and then emailing Mum for advice we settled on the 6 inch pots. She said terra cotta was best from a gardening standpoint, I thought they looked nicer from an aesthetic standpoint. I bought three at 75p each.

Finding an affordable bag of compost that didn’t weigh as much as me was a bit of a problem. I finally found a bargain bag of soil with some peat for £1 for 15 litres of compost.  I genuinely have no idea how heavy it was as it was measured in litres, but I was able to carry the bag home on my own, so not that heavy.

 

The next problem was the fact that we don’t actually have a garden or any outside space as we live above the church offices in the centre of town. Sure there is green space right outside our flat, but it is community green space. I figured I needed to do my planting indoors.

Mum had also recommended that I get another parsley plant as the one I had was a bit scalped from over use. She was afraid it would not grow back so I invested £1 in some parsley from ASDA. This kind was the curly leaf kind, the last kind was the flat leaf kind which I couldn’t tell the difference between that and the coriander so I had to put sticky labels on the pots. Now I can tell the difference. Plus Mum tells me that curly leaf is stronger than flat leaf so I can use less and stop risking giving it a crew-cut.

 

 So I did what my Mum suggested and put some broken shards of a plate in the bottom of each pot to help with drainage. I did this by putting a saucer in a ziplock bag and beating the crap out of it with a hammer. It was very satisfying.

 

Then after replanting and major kitchen cleaning (the compost got  *everywhere*) it looks like this:

 

Isn’t that gorgeous? I am really pleased with my work and got phone confirmation a few hours later that I had managed to do it right. She thinks that the coriander may have had a bit of a root shock after I loosened the rootball, but as of typing this it has perked up enormously.

 I have enough space on the windowsill and plenty of compost left (despite how much I managed to spill everywhere as I was planting) for another pot so I may pick up a basil in a week or so after payday.

 

But I am hoping that some of her green fingers have worn off on me and I can keep these herbs alive. Which, by the way, are pronounced HERBS not ERBS because there’s a fecking H. (thanks to Eddie Izzard for that joke)

 

So there. 

Please grow.

Thanks Mum.