I’d been saving the potatoes recently harvested from our garden (yes, potatoes in February) for the arrival of some fresh eggs in our CSA box. Poaching works best with the freshest possible eggs, before the egg structure begins to deteriorate. This egg could not have been more than a couple of days old. It [...]
Entries from February 2008
Too Many Seeds
February 29th, 2008 · 5 Comments · Uncategorized
Some people thrill over a stack of seed catalogues. Not me. It’s much too much, more than my poor brain can handle.
That may be because I’m never satisfied with just one of anything. If one variety of tomato sounds goods, three or four sounds much better. Last year I had at least 16 varieties [...]
Tags: seeds
Kids Make Butter
February 28th, 2008 · 6 Comments · Uncategorized
Who makes their own butter anymore?Hardly anyone, and that may be because there was a time when the only way you could get butter was to sit in front of a churn and pound away at it until your arms were numb.
Yet making your own butter is extremely satisfying and connects us deeply with our [...]
Tags: butter·buttermilk
Beef Stock
February 27th, 2008 · No Comments · Uncategorized
I don’t know that I have ever designed a trip to the grocery with the idea of making a beef stock. This seems to be one of those things that happens serendipitously around the kitchen, as when you make beef Bourgignone for a crowd and end up with a couple of pounds of trimmings from [...]
Yes, We Have Potatoes
February 26th, 2008 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
All winter I’ve been digging periodically in our potato bed and coming away with spuds wonderfully preserved underground. There was still one small area untouched and I wondered if it could still yield edible potatoes. Was this possible?
Finally, the rains stopped long enough for a look-see. I plunged my forked spade into the soil and…out [...]
Tags: preserving
Sunday Farmers Market — It’s 36 Degrees
February 25th, 2008 · 4 Comments · Uncategorized
If it’s Sunday, it must be time for crab cakes at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market here in the District of Columbia.
Farmers markets aren’t just for produce anymore. You can walk around nibbling to your heart’s content. Cookie, anyone?
In years past, I would brave the cold to find a handful of vendors [...]
Tags: farmer's markets·winter
Weekend Update
February 24th, 2008 · No Comments · Uncategorized
By now everyone is aware that an undercover video of downer cows being dragged to slaughter in Southern California has led to the largest recall of beef in the nation’s history–143 million pounds.
Almost as shocking as the images of workers using forklifts, electric prods and pressurized water jets to motivate incapacitated cows was the [...]
Tags: food news
Dark Days: Choucroute
February 23rd, 2008 · 5 Comments · Uncategorized
“Choucroute” is simply French for sauerkraut. But it has also come to mean a dish marrying sauerkraut with some of our favorite pork products, such as garlic sausage, bacon, pig’s knuckle or hock.
I’ve been looking forward to having friends over to sample some of my homemade kraut and Kielbasa sausages. But this is a [...]
The Last Fish: Seafood Gumbo
February 22nd, 2008 · 7 Comments · Uncategorized
I have this radical idea that we should just stop eating fish out of the oceans. Bluefin tuna have become the modern equivalent of the American bison: we’ve fished them almost to extinction. Europeans have so decimated the fish stocks off West Africa that the locals are abandoning their homeland for lack of a [...]
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, one mile from the White House.
