urban earth mother

I haven't planted any squash this year (although some sort of marrow or melon is growing in the compost heap) but I saw some squash blossoms at the farmers' market on Tuesday and thought I'd give them a whirl. We have found that in the summer we consume less milk, but have not actually cut back on our milk order. This has been leaving us with a lot of extra milk at the end of the week and I've been trying to find ways to use it. Last week I made yogurt 1 and a few weeks ago I did a fresh cheese with herbs.The cheese was really yummy and easy so I opted to try that again and make stuffed squash blossoms. I do not have pictures of the cheese-making process, but it was quite easy. Gather random herbs from the garden (I used oregano, basil and sage) Chop said herbs Put milk and herbs into a pot and bring to a boil. Add 1 cup buttermilk (I make it from powder) Add 1/4 cup vinegar - the curds will separate almost instantly. Drain curds in cheesecloth. Ad...

The spread We hosted the breakfast for our neighbourhood for Boston Shines (a big clean-up) this morning. One neighbour brought two HUGE boxes of doughnuts, one made two coffee cakes and I provided the savouries. I was asked, after posting some pictures on Facebook, for the recipes, so here we go with them.     Ready to get hotted up Breakfast Toad-in-the-Hole Sauté sliced mushrooms in butter  with a little pepper until browned. Remove from pan. Cook sliced small tomatoes in same pan (add more fat as needed), browning both sides. Remove from pan. In same pan cook bacon (I did the facon in this pan but it could be back bacon). Remove and crumble. Cook link sausages (4) in the pan until browned. Cut into thirds, remove. In a blender, whiz up three large eggs. Add 2/3 cup of flour and some salt. Deglaze the cooking pan with milk. Add the milk to the egg/flour. Add enough milk to make the mixture the thickness of heavy cream. Heat oven to 400F Add fat ...

Last week I made some candied peel in preparation for plum pudding and mincemeat. After boiling the citrus peel in sugar water for over an hour, I spooned it out to dry and was left with a sweet-tart syrup. Just the right thing to go in the Christmas beer. Yes, Christmas beer! Last year I made dozens of mince pies - homemade mincemeat in shortbread crusts - some of which Spouse brought around to the neighbors. It was his way of introducing ourselves (well, himself. I shyly stayed home) and sharing a bit of British Culture. This year I suggested that in addition to mince pies we give a bottle of homebrew, hence the Christmas beer. I've only recently gotten back into home brewing, thanks to Northern Brewer's one gallon kits . They make just enough for a one-beer-drinker household. For a holiday brew though, I needed to not only make more, but to work without a net kit. I had previously bought some crushed grains at Homebrew Emporium with the plan of making custom one gallon...

Over the past few weeks I've used my crockpot more than I had in the previous year or so of owning it. It's a tiny one with only one setting ("On") but it got us a good batch of Hoppin' John on New Year's day, some okay "baked" beans, and most recently I've used it for easy seitan! I haven't eaten land animals in decades but I do like a chewy, "meaty" mouthfeel in food. So far, the best homemade seitan recipe I have found is from the now defunct blog A Veg*n for Dinner. It's the Seitan Fillet Mignon and I probably should have taken a peek at it before making seitan last night. Still, my batch, based on a ratio of 1 part vital wheat gluten to 3/4 part liquid, was pretty tasty. The biggest boon, however, was simmering it overnight in the crockpot. TONS of flavour and no hassle! I flipped it over in the broth once a few hours after putting it in but other than that I didn't touch it until this morning when I remo...

So I made this today. It's a no kneed recipe I found online that I made with sourdough instead of dry yeast.  t came out very nice but the flavour is a bit too sour for Spouse (who said it tastes like snot.) the Sprog and I like it though. I'm not giving up on the recipe though and will do the next batch with honey in the dough. I think the child is old enough now for honey, plus it will be baked so it's not like she'll be eating it straight.

Cutting the donuts Last weekend the folks were in town to help stepsis and brother-in-law move. I had the urge to make some donuts as a nice Sunday treat and to use the donut cutter I bought a few weeks ago at Streamline Antiques in Lower Mills. The results were wonderful so I decided this Sunday should be a repeat for just our little household. I recently decided to cultivate a nice sourdough starter and use that in lieu of any dry yeast in recipes. Rather than trying to catch wild yeast or let yeast go wild, I opted for the easy route and just bought some from King Arthur Flour . The starter has been living nicely in the fridge and made a great start to these donuts. Mr. Donut rising The base recipe, and the one I used for the family was this one I found online. The base recipe is lovely but I decided to mix it up this week and do banana donuts. I pureed a banana in the blender then added the rest of the wet ingredients. To make up for the extra moisture I rounded the m...

Photo by Spouse One of our tomato plants in the upsidedown planter has fruit! There was another one that did but I accidentally pulled that one off. But this baby has two, count 'em, TWO tomatoes on this Defiant vine. There are also two green ones on the Pol Big, one sweet green pepper and one Anaheim hot pepper! My herbs are struggling but four have managed to cling on. I should be getting some mature chive plants before the month is out as well.  Don't ask about the onions (we shall mourn them.) All in all, it's pretty good for a couple who haven't done this sort of thing in ages. I had decided to not get my hopes up this year so having anything makes me happy. We still haven't cleared out the raised beds yet, but I think that will happen as we prepare for autumn.

I've not been sewing at all. All my grand schemes of homemade maternity and baby clothes are as dust. But I did find something easy to make that might get me inspired! A Baby Sling! Spouse and I are pretty much on the same page in terms of how we're going to care for this upcoming child and baby wearing is part of that. However, there are several different types of slings and other carriers out there, none of them cheap, and how do we know which kind we'll like? I had been gravitating toward ring-adjusted slinks like the Maya and lo and behold they have a pattern to make your own on their site! I've gone ahead and ordered two sets of rings and now need to hit the fabric shop ! In other pregnancy-related news, I keep waiting for that nesting instinct to kick in where all I want to do is clean. I've done some random cleaning, like scrubbing the cupboard doors in the middle of the night, but that's mainly because I can't sleep because of RSL and start t...

Greetings! As you can see, I'm not the only thing growing here. I planted some basil seeds in our seed sprouter and they seem to be coming up nicely. With luck we'll actually be able to have some homegrown herbs this year, in spite of our city status. I am going to try to set them outside later so that they can get, hopefully, more light than our living room provides. And speaking of things what grow, my darling Spouse came home with a huge bag of produce yesterday. There's a group that sells low-cost organic produce at the housing authority where he's working. He didn't want to take any last time they came even though they offered, but this time he gave in. The haul included a very large amount of rhubarb which he took because no one else wanted it. His first thought was a nice crumble . He ended up making three, one of which he gave away. It might not look pretty, but it sure is tasty. This morning I took a few more spears of rhubarb, because even after thre...

Spouse came home from his house-call yesterday with a big black trashbag which he set on the kitchen floor and said, "This is for you." Inside the bag was a 17 pound turkey. Raw. Thawed. Apparently the person he's gone to see had two and they hadn't been kept frozen. One was cooked for Thanksgiving but the other needed to be cooked soon. Guess what I did today? If you said, "Roasted a Turkey," you would be correct! A couple years ago I found a 1924 Boston Cooking-School cook book at a flea market in excellent shape and only $12. It's a great reference book if you can get over some of the rather vague instructions. Here is how to roast a turkey (emphasis mine): Dress, clean, stuff and truss a ten-pound turkey. Place on its side on a rack in a dripping pan, rub entire surface with salt, spread breast, legs and wings with one-third cup butter, rubbed until creamy and mixed with one-fourth cup flour. Dredge bottom of pan with flour. Place in a hot ove...

We were invited over to a friend's home for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. While bringing a dish wasn't required, I offered and brought a large salad, complete with home made dressing, plus a bottle of wine. Many hours of h'ordeuvres, wine, a HUGE meal and dessert later, we were driven home, sated and ready for bed (at least I was ready for bed!) For a wonderful day, I most heartily thank Tim and Susan for hosting, Katherine for bringing us there and Bari and Terry for taking us home. Like in the US, turkey tends to be a once per year food in the UK, in their case at Christmas. And like here, one of the joys of cooking something so massive is leftovers. Spouse apologized for his presumption, but asked if he could take a little turkey home with him. Given that there was HALF a turkey left in a home with one meat eater, they happily obliged. He was looking forward to turkey sandwiches. "In England," he said, "we have them with sage and onion stuffing. Do we h...

I didn't get pictures of all of it as by the time everything was cooked I just wanted to sit down and eat. The menu was: Salad of cabbage, spinach and carrot Roast Quorn with Roasted potatoes Mushy peas Yorkshire pudding Bread with homemade butter Steamed pudding with custard Peas soaking Potatoes await their fate Another gorgeous loaf of bread Fruit was leftover booze-soaked fruit (kept in the freezer) from the Christmas pudding With Custard

Just out of the oven Out of the pan First steaming slice with homemade butter

I decided to start the Christmas Pudding early this year. Traditionally it's supposed to be made the Sunday before Advent (Stirring Up Sunday), but since they are meant to be aged, and Advent means nothing to me, I opted to do it earlier to let it mellow. The first step was chopping 2 cups of mixed fruit and letting it soak overnight in alcohol. Sherry, port, rum or brandy are typically used, but I had none of those! I used a combination of whiskey, Grand Mariner, sweet vermouth and a splash of absinthe. Greased pudding basin and fruit soaked in booze Another old tradition is to place a silver coin in the pudding before steaming. Good luck comes to the person who finds it on their plate. A thuppence (three-penny coin) or sixpence was traditionally used, but these coins disappeared with the switch to decimal currency in 1973.  As luck would have it for us, downtown Boston is chock-a-block with various collectibles shops and we bought about a half dozen assorted coins from WWI...

Here are some photos of what I've been up to. First up is a stack of sub-par crumpets (they ended up more like pancakes, but are okay toasted) next to the tub of homemade butter Of course they were much nicer combined Next up on the breakfast menu is homemade yogurt with the last of the blueberries from Tuesday's market And finally, the results of my trip to the Friday farmer's market in Copley Square You can't even see everything! From left to right we have: two balls of mozzarella (and notice my mozzarella kit lurking in the back) Bag of tomatoes The carrots and French radishes seem to be completely covering the pickling cucumbers and green beans Small bag of plums in front of the carrots Bag of English peas Sourdough baguette Basil and dill Two small tubs of goat cheese with olive oil and herbs de Provence and a log of plain goat cheese Jar of strawberry jam I spent a ton of money, but looking at all of this wonderful food, I think it's worth it. You really can...