Jump to content

dividend

participating member
  • Posts

    352
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by dividend

  1. Response sent. Isn't it wonderful how connected we can feel through through the process of growing things? That's the sort of thing I mean when I talk about the spiritual aspects of gardening. I bet alot of people have similar stories to yours and mine, stories where continuing a tradition connects us richly to our pasts, and to each other. (That's an invitation to share those stories here if you want. ) I went out to work at the farm this morning. I have a whole slew of pics that I'll post later this afternoon. In the meantime, Here's the newsletter for this week. I'm taking suggestions for things to do with my share (and the giant bunch of basil I took home this morning). I'll be working the distribution point tonight at the 39th Street market, so you guys will get to see some of this produce literally farm to table. More soon!
  2. The reasoning is that the perfect oven fries have a crisp crust and soft, creamy exterior. Covering them with foil initially traps the natural moisture so they steam themselves in the oven. Then you take the foil off to crisp the outside. OK, I dug out the issue of Cook's Illustrated. Cook covered at 475 degrees for 5 minutes, uncover and cook 15-20, turning once or twice until evenly browned. It also calls for soaking the wedges in hot tap water for 10 minutes and then patting them dry first. I think the result is a marginal improvement at best, so I normally skip it. But then again, CI recipes are by nature very fiddly, and I am not at all a fiddly cook, so YMMV.
  3. So here's the first BBQ of the week. Oklahoma Joe's looks like a gas station / convenience store from the outside, tucked into the corner of a dive strip mall, across the street from a tiny used car dealership: And a convenience store on the inside: This place has ambiance in spades. As you get to the order counter, you start to see signs that this is a place that takes BBQ seriously (besides the wonderful smells): Banners from the aforemention American Royal, which is the biggest annual BBQ event in Kansas City. Here's a somewhat blured picture of the menu: I've tried just about everything on the menu, and have yet to eat anything I didn't like. I ordered my favorite, the Hog Heaven - pulled pork and sausage together on a bun. Plain beef sandwich for my grandmother, and one of their massive orders of fries. Like I said, I think they make the best fries in town: Not too thick, crispy, piping hot, coated liberally with seasoned salt. In the three minutes it takes me to drive from there to my grandmother's house, I burn my fingers and mouth sneaking them out of the bag. Our feast: About the sauce, which in my mind is probably the most important criteria on which to judge BBQ. OK Joe's includes it in containers on the side with the sandwiches. I find their sauce to be almost too sweet for my taste, but with enough background spicyness that I enjoy it. The sauces that I really love are assertive and peppery, with an afterthought of sweetness, and this is really the opposite - sweetness with an afterthought kick of spice. So, good sauce, great pulled pork, stellar fries, and the unique ambience make this one of my top two. So after I stuffed myself on pork and sausage and fries, I turned my attention to the tomatoes. My grandparents bought their house right around sixty years ago, when my grandfather got back from WW2. It doesn't have a backyard, so much as the driveway runs back to a double garage, leaving a strip of grass and dirt about eight feet wide running along the side. For as long as I can remember, my grandfather planted tomato plants in this patch of earth. Some of my earliest memories are of summer Sunday steak dinners that always included plates of fresh tomato slices, and running around with a cherry tomato in each hand. As I got older I remember my grandfather sitting in a lawn chair with his slingshot, vigilantly defending his plants against invading squirrels. My grandfather passed away thirteen years ago, and that piece of ground has been lying idle ever since. Since I moved to Westport a few years ago, I live only a mile or so from the house. And since my apartment is a converted attic, I have no place to plant anything substantive of my own. So this year I decided to plant tomatoes behind my grandmother's house. I tilled the soil and fertilized it with Epsom salts and Miracle Grow, just like he used to, and in May put twelve plants in the ground. I wasn't sure how they were going to fair, since I am something of an absentee landlord to them. I check on them and water them every day, but I can't sit with a slingshot and defend them against pests. My grandmother does bang on the window to scare squirrels away throughout the day, but she doesn't really go outside since she's on an oxygen machine. So far, we've lost three plants, but most of the rest of them are looking good (if a little leggy): Several of the plants have strong clusters of green tomatoes. I'm impatiently waiting for them to turn red. I don't know what to expect. I think that even if these plants fare poorly, it's a worthwhile thing to do. I have a reason to see my grandmother every day, and I feel connected to the memory of my grandfather. She talks about him some, and not just the sadness of him being gone. She tells stories I've never heard about their life together, and we've been planning eagerly to share the first perfect tomato in a BLT. The shared project of these plants has brought us closer.
  4. Breakfast today was pretty much identical to yesterday, and I ate another lunch at my desk: This is roasted red pepper and tomato soup, mac and cheese, and more marinated cucumbers and onions. The soup is a very bastardized version of a recipe from The Naked Chef (which I think is a generally underrated cookbook). I make big batches for the freezer, ditto with the mac and cheese, which is Mom's old recipe and about as comfort food as you can get. What's that that smells so good as I'm nearing the end of my drive home? Mmmmm... I'm not eating there tonight, but I am having BBQ for dinner with my grandmother!
  5. Oh man, that's like the ideal summertime grilled-at-home burger. :drool: As far as restaurant burgers go, I love a good steakburger with amercian cheese, lettuce and tomato, and oozing with mayo and meltingly soft grilled onions. If it's going to be a regular patty, I like medium rare, lots of coarse black pepper, and blue cheese dressing. Sometimes fried onions and bacon to gild the lily. Mmmmmmm...
  6. So all I have to do is mention that I'm showing off my favorite Kansas City BBQ, and whoever I'm talking to assumes it'll be their favorite. My coworkers: "So you're going to Jack Stack's?" My best friend: "Which day are you taking me to Wyandotte BBQ?" The boy I'm dating: "You have to go eat at BB's!" <Sigh> This is obviously an issue where I can't make everyone happy. And then, driving to work today, I saw an appropriate billboard. It's for Sprint, so it's got the yellow logo, overlayed with a kettle grill made of neon lights. The text says "Coverage like sauce on ribs." I almost took a picture, but at highway speeds could've ended with me being the first person to die during an eGfoodblog. But it is nice to see a food-related billboard that isn't advertising "FOURTH MEAL!" On a completely different note - yesterday I went and met with the pastor of my church, who I haven't had a chance to sit down with for a while. I adore this woman - she's a two time cancer survivor with enough enthusiasm and vigor for about six normal people, and one of the only people with whom I can discuss at length the spiritual aspects of gardening, local eating, and bread baking. This spring, during a six-part sermon series on the non-human aspects of creation, one her sermons included discussion of community supported agriculture and The Omnivore's Dilemma. My church is located in a poorer area, and every summer we do a Healthy Kid's Camp for children in the neighborhood. They spend a week learning about things like excercise, nutrition, and safety, and meeting people like firemen and dentists. For the last two years I've taken a day and taught the kids about bread baking. I have three or four groups of kids for about an hour and a half each. So I start a few loaves of yeast bread in the morning and show each group a different stage of the process. Each group also makes a batch of corn muffins so they've accomplished something tangible, and the recipe to be able to recreate it at home. At the end of the day they come back to the kitchen and taste the bread that's been working all day. So I get a chance to teach them about the breadmaking process, show them pictures, exlpain some very simplified science, get them thinking about alternatives to Wonder bread, teach them what to look for on labels when they're with their parents in the supermarket, and they get the experience of participating in the creative process of baking. I love the pride they feel when they take a chunk of homemade bread and show it to their parents with a proud "I made this!" I feel like I'm able to make a small difference just by sharing something I love with them, and get them thinking about baking/cooking as something they can embrace. Wow, I sound really cheesy talking about this. The camp is in two weeks and I can't wait.
  7. So my dinner tonight comes almost entirely from my CSA share. Earlier in the summer when I had an overabundance of leeks, I made a bunch of individual chicken and leek pot pies and froze them. I defrosted one of them this morning, and cooked it up, along with some oven fries, since I have an abundance of new potatoes. I use a loosely modified version of the Cook's Illustrated for oven fries. You toss the potato wedges with olive oil, and cook them tightly covered with foil, then uncover them and cook them until they're crispy and browned. Very good, and easy. Also on the plate is some cumumber and white onions lightly marinated in rice wine vinegar and sugar. I love having a stockpile of homecooked food in the freezer. It's perfect for CSA season because I can just supplement with fresh stuff and dinner is a ready in a snap. My best friend called as I had the pot pie and potatoes in the oven and invited himself over for dinner. Since I was already cooking for one, he brought some Chipotle and we sat on the roof at my fabulous white iron bistro table. I'd been looking for a little table and chair set for some time, and happened across the perfect set at a giant antique store downtown. It's been nice to able to sit outside for dinner or a drink, and the line of trees at the edge of the property really hide the fact that I live in a semi shady neighborhood (at least to my suburb-dwelling parents' way of thinking).
  8. Disclaimer - since I work for a credit card company, I am absolutely not allowed to have a camera at work. Hence any pictures I take at work are using my cell phone camera. I ate my breakfast (part 2) at my desk: Bob's Red Mill 7 Grain Hot Cereal, supplemented with cinnamon and raisins. I like this stuff for about the first half of the bowl, then I start to really feel like I am eating health food. But it does a good job staving off hunger for the five hours until lunch. I, like I imagine alot of you do, mentally break up my workday into chunks of time between meals. After that, I needed a cup of coffee. The sheepishly awesome coffee mug almost makes up for the horrible industrial sludge that passes for coffee at my office. Redeeming quality? It's free. Can't beat that, especially at 8 AM, right? So about noon I head down to the cafeteria, and, as expected when we have a guest chef, the line is out the door. Worth the wait though, to have Chef Chebaro put together a delicious gyro plate. Eaten, of course, back at my desk. In addition to the gyro, there was salad, pita with hummus and chili sauce, and saffron rice with garlic sauce. All for right around $7. Not bad for not having to leave the building. So after work every day I go to my grandmother's house to water the tomatoes I planted behind her house. I forgot to take pictures today, so more about that tomorrow. This year for my birthday, I asked my parents for a deep freeze. They're used to me asking for geeky/food-related items, so in April I lugged a 7.2 cubic foot freezer up the three flights of stairs to my attic apartment. This appliance has been absolutely wonderful for a single person, especially one who likes to cook as much as I do and owns a vacuum sealer. As you can see, it's about half full of homemade frozen food, and various different kinds of meat. Here's the inventory list that's pinned to the door, with bonus handwriting shot! I'll take the rest of the obligatory fridge and pantry shots tomorrow. Off to cook something from the freezer for dinner!
  9. Here's your answer to that. I love D'Bronx! That whole area along 39th street is crammed full of good restaurants. I've started to hear commercials on the radio advertising that "corridor" as a destination district. The Missouri alcohol laws are wonderful - liquor stores open until midnight, beer/wine/hard alcohol in the grocery store, bars open until 3AM (that gets me in trouble sometimes!) The laws in Kansas are actually alot more restrictive, which is just one of the many strange quirks about a city with a state line running through the middle of it. I'm going to the City Market farmer's market on Saturday morning - that's one of my favorite things to do on the weekend. I don't buy produce so much, since I get an insane amount (for just one person) every Wednesday from my CSA, but I love driving down through downtown in the stillness of the morning, browsing, talking to farmers, soaking in the atmosphere. Gotta get there early or it's a mob scene. I'm hoping it's not to late to find some blueberries for jam. I think I might take this new boy I've started dating - enjoying doing that sort of thing is kind of a litmus test for a possible relationship. Yeah, I live about 50 yards from that place. It's bad. When I get around to kitchen pics, you'll see where all my money goes. ... So 9/10 days, I pack my lunch for work. I spent all day yesterday at World's of Fun (a big amusement park), walking for miles, drinking beer, and eating funnel cake, so by the time I got home I just collapsed into bed without packing a lunch. Up north where I work is sort of a culinary wasteland. Very few non-chain or non-fast food restaurants. We have an Aramark cafeteria whose only redeeming feature most of the time is Arby-esque curly fries. This rather bleak dining situation is brightened by a Chipotle and a Winstead's, which I was planning on showing you guys anyway. Turns out that this is a guest chef week in our cafeteria. They brought in Marwan Chebaro, who used to be the chef at the now-closed Cafe Rumi on 39th street. He cooks fabulous middle eastern food, and if he's met you once, he'll greet you with a hug the next time. So gyros and hummus it is! I'm excited because they only get him to come about twice a year. Winstead's can wait until Friday.
  10. ^^^ I don't think alot of these posts qualify as ageism at all. If I saw an adult throwing a loud temper tantrum, running around the restaurant banging into people and knocking stuff over, or just generally being an annoyance, I'd say the same things here. Labeling complaints like that ageism is a little too politically correct, IMO. If a restaurant doesn't want to admit children to minimize disruption, what's wrong with that, really? I don't think that because I want to go out for a nice dinner in an adult environment that that necassarily means I live in a shiny happy bubble world. Is it ageism to not allow children into bars too? Or to not sell an R-rated movie ticket to a six year old?
  11. That's an absolute requirement for a Kansas City blog, and I'm definately going to take you guys to two of my favorite places. Ask a dozen people around here where the best BBQ is and you'll get a dozen different emphatic answers, and I'm no less emphatic in my own preferences. On most topics I'm content to respect people's opinions, but I simply don't understand some people's preference for hyper-sweet BBQ sauce. I dislike the fact that sickeningly sweet sauces like KC Masterpeice are marketed nationwide because that's the opposite of the BBQ I love. Great BBQ sauce has got to have spice and tang at the forefront, with sweetness as a balancing background note. So given my preference for thick, spicy sauce, and great burnt ends, I'm going to the original Arthur Bryant's on Wednesday. That would probably be my pick if I had to name a single favorite, and Calvin Trillin did call it the best restaurant in the world. I'm also going to Oklahoma Joe's at some point, for pork and sausage and best fries in the known universe. I don't eat at Gates very much anymore, although I salivate every night as I drive by the Main Street location (I love the great food smells I get on my drive to and from work), and their sauce is a staple in my fridge. For further reading, Here's a discussion about Kansas City BBQ from the Heartland forum, and here's a thread specifically about sweet BBQ sauces. So that should sort of give you an idea of why I subtitled this blog "My corner of the midwest." Because I'm not going to claim to show you THE BEST ______, just my favorite things. Oh, and moosnsqrl, I might need someone to eat brunch at Bluestem on Sunday - know anyone who'd be interested?
  12. I'm settled at work, eating breakfast at my desk. The area I live in is a few miles south of downtown Kansas City, and I work up north of the Missouri river, so I have about a 26 mile commute, the first part of which swings me right around downtown. This is nice on a cool morning, because downtown smells like roasted coffee from the Folgers roasting plant, and that's one of my favorite smells. I also get to drive by two airports and trains hauling interesting things, so all in all it's a good commute. All right. About my teaser photos. This is my favorite kitchen store. I think I'm physically incable of going in and not buying something. I'll be taking you guys there this week, so you'll see. This is an early week of my CSA, when it was basically all leafy greens. I belong to Fair Share Farm. My farm has a work requirement in addition to what I pay for my share, and I'll be working out at the farm on Wednesday morning. This is my first experience with a CSA, and it's been wonderful. If you look at the newsletters on their website, you get a good sense of what I've been getting each week. I also took advantage of their partnership with Parker Farms to get meat and eggs once a month. More about my CSA experience later.
  13. Good morning! I'll be your food blogger for the week. I seem to be unknown enough that the only thing you guys guessed correctly from my teaser photos was the city, so I hope you're not too disappointed. My name is Jen, I do in fact live in the Kansas City, more specifically in Wesport. There's no where I'd rather live, and I'm really excited to show you guys my favorite food-related things. I just had my usual breakfast (part 1), juice and a cigarette on the rooftop that serves as a porch for my apartment: Classy, I know. I need nicotine and a little sugar to bridge the gap between sleep and functionality. I'll eat an actual breakfast once I get to work. Which is where I have to go now, so, more in a little bit!
  14. In college the grocery store I shopped at was a bag-your-own place. It was a little annoying the first couple times, but I got pretty good at lining up the groceries to be scanned in logical bagging order, and packing the bags with maximum efficiency. It's sort of the same skill set as playing Tetris. The first time I went to the grocery store in my new neighborhood, I realized just how inept the baggers really are. I laid my groceries on the belt in my usual careful order, and they just let it all pile up at the end and stuffed things into bags willy nilly, like has already been pointed out. I was expecting two paper sacks - I got six. Grrrrr. I don't want to carry six bags up three flights of stairs! Thankfully my grocery store now has self checkout. But that presents its own set of challenges. Since I can't scan and bag at the same time, I have to complete my transaction before I can start bagging. And every time, someone behind me starts scanning the second I move, sending their groceries banging into mine. Then I feel like I have to hurry and get out of their way. But at least I avoid having the identify to the cashier what every single peice of produce in my cart is. I'm glad someone else has noticed the inconsistencies in weight labeling. I notice it in packaged goods too, since for a while I was weighing portions of things.
  15. I confess that one of my college roommates and I have done that on occasion. A pair of smokers during finals week with no lighter between the two of them can get desperate pretty easily. Actually, he probably belongs in this thread. He once mopped the kitchen floor with Listerine, reasoning that the alchohol content would make it a good choice for this activity. He was wrong, as evidenced by our sticky feet for weeks afterwords. He also tried to boil water on the stove in a glass bowl, realized something was wrong when he could see the glowing red coil through the water, and tried to move it from the burner to the countertop. This resulted in an explosion of hot glass and water. It was probably good thing that I did most of the cooking.
  16. I totally empathize with this. I came back from Mexico with a couple of kilos of local sea salt to distribute as gifts for the few people I know who would appreciate it. The comments I got about walking around the office with a purse full of Mexican salt were priceless. And my parents were cute when they went to Hawaii. Instead of the usual oversized t-shirt and tacky earrings, they brought me 3 different kinds of salt, purple taro bread machine mix, macadamia nuts, and a couple of exotic spice blends. I was so excited!
  17. The phrase "American food" conjures for me the comfort food of my midwestern childhood. Meatloaf with macaroni and cheese, tuna noodle casserole, pot roast, roast chicken with mashed potatoes, big pots of chili, pork chops, chicken pot pie. It's all sort of meat and potatoes, stick to your ribs type fare. There's probably a spot of egocentrism in my opinion on this, firmly rooted as I am in the heartland. There's a huge distinction between "American food" and "foods of the US". There are many places I've visited in the US where I've eaten wonderful regional dishes that I wouldn't classify as the former.
  18. Well said. I would add that, for me there is a difference between other people's perceptions and my own. I am considered a pretty good cook by my freinds and family simply because whenever they come over for a meal, be it a complex planned thing, or an off the cuff casual breakfast, they enjoy the food. It's usually simple, from fresh ingredients, mostly from scratch. They're as satisfied as they would be at a casual restaurant. In my own opinion, I'm a pretty good cook for different reasons. Alot of it comes down to knowledge and being comfortable. I've got decent knife skills, a wide knowledge of techniques, and am comfortable with just about any recipe, (including bread but excluding pastry). I buy quality ingredients and treat them correctly. But the things I am the most proud of is that I'm not intimidated by trying new things. I've got wide swaths of cuisine that I feel comfortable with, and other segments where I know I've got alot to learn, but I'm not afraid to dig in and try. I'm not sure how to distill that down to a number on a scale. Perhaps we should create a test for this similar to the Meyer-Briggs test, that maps to a number. Questions like: Describe your knife skills: a) I can do a uniform dice in my sleep b) Quick but sometimes uneven c) Chopping is the hardest part of the recipe d) A knife is that sharp thing in my drawer, right?
  19. You know you're an eGulleter when: 1. You go to dinner at a Thai restaurant for an off menu feast with a dozen people you've never met IRL, and don't find that at all unusual until your friends make a comment 2. Your mom clips an article for your from the food section of the paper about a hot new culinary trend you've been talking about for months and says, "Look, you're cool now!" 3. You photograph your lunches. At your desk at work. Every day your boss walks by and asks you to explain what you've brought. Then when the potluck comes around she specifies that you HAVE to come. Not only that, but when your the smell of your coworker's BBQ chicken Lean Cuisine drives you from the room, you spend your break crafting what you'll say about it here in the appropriate thread.
  20. The logistics of this is boggling my mind. I have the same model foodsaver with the wet setting, but I can't fathom how you would get the bag set up so it doesn't gush liquid into the machine. Do you elevate the machine from the bag? I may just be having a blond moment, but can you explain how this works?
  21. I apologize if my post about thumbing our collective noses came off as exclusionary - that was not my intention. I guess I just get frustrated because so many of my friends simply don't notice if food we order is poor. I'm talking things like brown, wilted lettuce in a salad, oversalting to the point of overwhelming inedibility, a slice of pizza so old and cold that the grease has congealed, just objectively BAD food. These are things that I think the average eGulleter would reject, while alot of people I know eat food like that on a regular basis, and not only don't complain, it's like they don't know the difference. I tend to generalize my experience with my peer group more than I should, so forgive me.
  22. dividend

    Dinner! 2007

    Leek pasta recipe is from my CSA's online newsletter archive here. You won't be disappointed. I love the flavor imparted by caramelized leeks and garlic.
  23. dividend

    Dinner! 2007

    Yum! Mind sharing your recipe for the crust? I've got some cod filets that I think I'd like to try this on.
  24. dividend

    Dinner! 2007

    OK, I am in love with your bowls! A couple of meals worth talking about. Friday night I had the last part of my roast chicken over greens with goat cheese, radishes, green garlic, almonds, and a strawberry balsamic vinagraitte. Sides were oven fries and braised leeks. I had lots of leeks in my CSA share, so last night's dinner was a leek and tomato pasta sauce, side of broccoli raab and a heel of homemade sourdough. The pasta sauce came from a CSA newsletter, and it was amazing. I hope I get more leeks so I can duplicate it.
×
×
  • Create New...