Recipe: Clam Chowder October 16, 2009

Made some clam chowder tonight, wanted to put down the recipe so I could remember it for later:

Ingredients:

• 3-4 strips of bacon
• 1/4 stick of butter
• 3/4 c flour
• 1 medium onion
• 1 medium/large potato
• 2-3 stalks of celery
• 2-3 carrots
• 16 oz cream
• 16 oz milk
• 2 cans of clams
• pepper
• salt

Directions:

1. dice onion, carrots, potato, and celery, place into saucepan
2. open clams, drain juice into saucepan, add water to cover vegetables, simmer over low/medium heat
3. using a heavy bottom pot or dutch oven, brown bacon to render fat.  Remove bacon and put aside
4. melt butter in with bacon fat
5. mix in flour, cream and milk.  Stir until it thickens slightly
6. add vegetables and clam stock
7. add clams
8. season to taste
9. When serving, cut bacon into small bits and sprinkle on top

Garden update September 16, 2009

The Meyer Lemon is making a comeback!

Our greenbeans are bearing fruit, as well

Pumpkin flowers!

And a second round of figs!

The basil is growing nicely, as are the snow peas (growing up the trellis)

And our chinese balloon plant has a lot of seed pods growing

Since it’s cooling off… September 16, 2009

… it’s easier to bake!

Apple and Walnut Scones ala Cheeseboard

These are really tasty.  They have a lot of butter (2 sticks!) and include diced apples, raisins, and walnuts.  They’re very rich and moist, even two days later!

Cheese Rolls

These cheese rolls (also from Cheeseboard) are basically the Suburban Bread dough with 2 cups of Asiago and 2 cups of Gruyere rolled in, Jelly Roll style.  I baked these last night, and Christina couldn’t go to sleep because they smelled so good.  Super tasty.

Glamour shot

Our Sourdough Starter (dubbed “Keith”) is alive and kicking, so we’ll be baking a lot this fall!

Next project!  Turning this:

Into a bread oven!

Increased Readership? + New garden! September 2, 2009

It’s been quite a while since I posted here, and because this blog was listed in the Online Newsletter for Evergreen SGV (evergreensgv.org), I figure I’d better have something more recent than four months ago.

We’ve moved across town, and one of the numerous benefits of this new house is that we have a garden again!!!

By far the best looking plant of the bunch thus far is our pumpkin. This plant came from seeds that fell out of a decomposing pumpkin in our compost pile from last halloween. Maybe we'll have homegrown jack-o-lanterns this year!

One of those Basil plants from Trader Joe's that had all but whithered away and died as I put it into the ground; it has made an amazing comeback!

One of the beans that was transplanted from the other house. It's one of the few holdovers.

Snow Peas!

We reassembled our compost bin, and our landlords left their old one! Two bins, twice the compost! Wahoo!

Our little garden helper. Is he wearing pants? Maybe. Maybe not.

Attempt #4 by our Meyer Lemon tree to create fruit. We'll see what happens.

That’s it for now.  We’ll keep you posted on how the garden is coming along.  If you’re local, and you want a pumpkin, we’ll be happy to distribute if we get any!

Sourdough in San Francisco May 14, 2009

We’re on vacation!  While up here, we’ve been utilizing some of the sourdough starter that we have given away to our family members over the course of the past few months to make some sourdough breads and pancakes.

From the Poppyside Sourdough:

Sourdough Cinnamon Buns:

City Bread:

No-Knead Sourdough (I used my mom’s CorningWare casserole and convection oven to make this one, that’s why it looks so crazy):

Mom’s sourdough is alive and kicking.  We reduced it down to a scant 1/4 cup (or less) and it was still able to reproduce and expand to fill a mason jar in one day!

This week, we’re up in the City, and we’re using Hannah’s starter, which she had split into a whole wheat starter and an AP flour starter. We made some pizza dough which turned out amazing (no pictures), and we’ve just completed a Sourdough Sweet Potato Bread with Pumpkin Seeds ala the Wild Yeast Blog.  I had to convert all of the weights into rough volume measurements, so the values may not be exact, and I used AP flour instead of the high-extraction flour that is called for:

4 cups flour
1.3 cups water
2.3 cups starter
1 Tbsp salt
1 cup cooked, peeled, mashed, and cooled sweet potato
1 cup toasted pumpkin seeds

combine flour, water, starter and salt.  Mix until combined.  Add sweet potato, knead until dough passes windowpane test.  Knead pumpkin seeds into the dough.  Let rise 12-18 hours.  Split loaf into halves and put each into it’s own proofing container.  Rise for another 6-8 hours.

Preheat to 475º.  Flip and slash. Bake for 45 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 195-205º.

I was able to follow this recipe for the most part.  Our first loaf ended up a little flat, because we didn’t have a proper proofing basket.  For the second loaf, we left the dough in the bowl that it rose in.  Pictures:

First loaf out of the oven:

Second loaf (out of the bowl):

The loaves look a little crazy, but they taste and smell amazing.  We’re a little concerned that the second loaf has no crust and is all crumb.  We’ll have to either (a) eat it quickly, (b) pack it up, or (c) all of the above.

Happy baking everyone!

Baking update April 2, 2009

I’ve been remiss in my bread blogging, but here’s what I’ve been working on:

Jeffrey Hamelman's Seeded Sourdough Loaf. It's got sesame seeds, flaxseed, and pumpkin seeds. Soooo good.

Reinhart's Rye Sandwich Siegle. Very tasty. There's actually a whole diced onion in there.

Reinhart's Whole Wheat Raisin Bread. I added walnuts and cranberries. Mmmmm.

These loaves, mixed in with a few no-knead breads (those are quick and easy, so it gives me time between difficult recipes).

All this wouldn’t be possible without the help of my little baker friend:

More pictures here.

Gardening is easier in the sunlight… April 2, 2009

It’s been awhile since we updated about the garden, but everything is flourishing nicely.

We took an old chicken bag (from trader joe's, we washed it thoroughly) and put a bean plant in there. Once it got strong enough, we hung it upside down. It's still growing, but it's now bending towards the sun.

Our hanging tomatoes are starting to flower. We should see fruit soon!

Our pea plants are almost up to the top of the fence! We're eagerly awaiting the firstfruits of this plant.

As to our aforementioned aphid problem, we went down to our local nursery and bought some ladybugs and I released them last night.  This is how I found them this morning:

I’ve also read online that ladybugs can eat fruit flies, so we may have found a solution to our compost/fruitfly situation.  Eat up, ladybugs.

Reinhart’s Recipes, one at a time. March 18, 2009

We just got this book:

I’ve just had a chance to glance through it, and man… it’s packed with recipes and techniques.  This Reinhart guy really knows how to teach.

I didn’t really know where to start because there are so many options.  Christina suggested that I start at the beginning and work my way through, one recipe at a time.  First up is the Master Recipe.  He gives a basic Whole Wheat Sandwich bread recipe and talks us through it down to the finest detail.  That way, he can be a little more vague in later recipes and refer back to the Master Recipe when he needs to.

Here’s what I came up with:

It’s tasty, but the addition of a sweetener (honey, in this case) masks the sourness of the starter.  It’s very light and tasty, though.  Stay tuned for #2.

IPhid, YouPhid, we all Phid for Aphids! March 18, 2009

Christina brought to my attention the new residents on our tomato plants:

APHIDS!  We’re looking into biological, sustainable ways to deal with these guys.  Word around the ‘net is that ladybugs feast on these things.  One ladybug can eat 1000 aphids.  Home Depot sells ladybugs.  We will go to Home Depot.  And keep you updated.

Birdfeeder Redux March 14, 2009

Unfortunately, our last birdfeeder met an unfortunate demise:

I checked it one day and the hole for the seed had grown by about 1/2 an inch down from where I had cut it.  How did this happen?

Blasted squirrel.  I actually caught him one day hanging upside down from the crossbeam and nibbling on the seeds within.  Having just finished another tub of kim-chee, we decided it was time to come up with a new design.

I cut four slots 3 inches wide and 1 inch tall along the base of the jar and screwed an old ice cream container lid to the bottom.  This will allow the seed to constantly feed into the tray below by virtue of gravity.  I also hung it a bit lower to prevent mr. squirrel from damaging version 2.

Any ideas on how to deter the squirrel?