Okanagancook

It finally warmed up a bit with sun yesterday. Looking at my arugula and spinach, I think they more than doubled in size! Salad time. Everything else is about three weeks behind normal and six weeks behind last year. The vines in our wine producing area are starting to bud break which is a welcome sign. If we get some more heat and sun the process of grooming the vines will begin with bud thinning. It could be a challenging year with us being so far behind.

Did you leave a little grit on the greens for your Derby Day Dinner ha, ha.

I am really enjoying this book. Most of the info in the salt section I knew but there were a few new tip. She also offers some concrete suggestions on the amount of salt required. Her writing style is easy to read and I do like the hand drawn graphics.

Oh, you got Charmaine's Complete Asian!! you lucky duck

My Dad used to make us 'fried bread' in bacon fat, of course. Nothing better on earth.

@HungryChris I find soft shell crabs intriguing. We don't get them up here in the Great White North. Are they quite "meaty"? Sweet meat no doubt. They look delicious! Nice job and thanks for the cooking description. Are they pricey?

So, I do all the meals and organizing around here. I want to invole my DH more and I believe he is interested. I usually do not have a plan of meals for the week. I have a plethora of cookbooks, many I want cook from but have yet to cook from. I go to the store and buy what looks good and then spend the next few days scrambling as to what to cook with said wonderful ingredients. After a nice glass of Okanagan Chardonnay, I had an epiphany. We will choose recipes from one cookbook for the week AND my DH is charged with participating to come up with a week. We shall see how this goes but I am fed up with scrambling. Tonight it is Hockey playoffs and our team is playing so it is curry dinner from the freezer for DH and a salad for me, made in advance. After our enormous lunch we will see if any gets eaten. Note, no dinner. We were still full! Going shopping this morning with a limited shopping list.

Barley and lamb....a match made in heaven. And I want to eat those lamb chops!

Wow, the last few pages of meals really rock, guys!

@sartoricIf you want a nice brown finish like these Jamaican Patties, brush the samosa with egg yolk mixed sparingly with a little water.

Sausage seems to be a prominent lunch item. Today we had homemade Italian Hot Italian sausages; home made hoagie bun, crispy onions and Moosewood's coleslaw with pineapple, carrot, apple topped with a mixture of nuts and seeds. Around 800 calories I figure. Salad for dinner! But, it was delicious

@Doofa depends on how you like your eggs. Try two or three in a basket with one cup of water in the pot for 5 minutes on steam, high pressure using quick release. Put the eggs in ice water for ten minutes and then peel.

Hot and sour soup with chilies mixed with chilli flakes mixed together and drizzled over the top. My recipe for Mulligawtany with a slice of lemon in the bottom of the bowl. Proper French onion soup as per TFTC made with Gruyere cheese. Cream of asparagus. Tom Yum. Garden fresh gaspatcho. Don't laugh but any of the Knorr powdered soups....reminds me of my days hiking and making up a batch of soup over a camp fire while trying to keep warm. That's my list. We have soup everyday for lunch.

@sartoric your curry dinner looks delicious. We always have Dahl and either rice or flat breads. My favourite lentil to use is oiled toovar Dahl which are split and shelled pigeon peas. The oiled just seems better than the dry. It does take a lot of washing though.

This recipe is not slimy at all. We have been offered okra quite regularly at our large supermarket. I see a lot of people buying it and I always make a point of buying it if it is good. Speaking of which, yesterday at the okra bin a lady was carefully selecting okra. I said it is nice to see they are bringing okra in regularly. She said you need to evaluate each pod by bending the tip. If it snaps it is fresh, if it doesn't it is old. Nice!

@sartoric Good scrambling to feed your visitor By the way, while you are on an East Indian bent, try the baked okra from this site, absolutely my favourite curry okra dish and so easy. I make a 1/2 recipe for the two of us: http://www.rashmisrecipes.com/2011/10/okra.html

Taste and Technique lamb shank (it fell off the bone), mashed potatoes and microwaved carrots. The meat was very rich. A carrot-centric meal.

The inventory is 6 pages long!

There are two kinds of 'blue thing-ies'. The dividers for the body of the freezer creating different sized compartments if you like. Mine are six equi-sized compartments. Then there are the three baskets which hold a lot of food. All the blue thing-ies came with the freezer. I keep mostly finished meals/dishes in the baskets and meats/sausage and veggies in the compartments. The chest freezer only took an hour to clean and re-arrange. The upright took a little longer (most of the afternoon) because it was a really mess. Now neatly arranged and inventory updated plus a few unlabeled mystery items in the bin. I use "Numbers" spread sheet to keep track of my freezers so that got a major update and a copy of it made for safe keeping. Today I cooked 8 lamb shanks and two packages of lamb necks. Bourdain's Daube Provencale was made with the necks. Turned out very nice. Three packages for the freezer. Four of the shanks were cooked with figs from Taste and Technique and the last four were made into a stew from Lucy Waverman. Another three packages of each for the freezer and one portion for dinner tonight. This made quite a bit of room in the freezer.....already for our sausage making day in a couple of weeks.

Flat Iron Steak, mushrooms, honey glazed cipollini onions, IP mashed potatoes and green onions, fresh green peppercorn sauce and broccoli...last two not on the plate yet! The steak was cooked for one minute a side in my carbon steel pan then put in a 400F oven for about 7 minutes then rested for 7 minutes.....recipe from Taste and Technique. The steak almost looks like it was sous vide. Very tender. Grass fed beef.

Today was the day. Chest freezer needed defrosting and re-organizing. It wasn't too bad. Now I have all my chicken together, lamb together, etc. etc. Next up is the upright freezer in my upstairs pantry.

No pictures. Not much available yet with the slow spring. Nice pea shoots and chipolini onions. A nice dry cider. the bakers where there with all kinds of yummy looking breads and sweets. Lots of small veggie plants for planting in the garden. I was hoping the fellow who grows magnificent oyster mushrooms was there, but no.

Oh, no, no.

Here's the smoked Andouille. Very sweet and garlic smelling.

Things are very slow here due to cool weather. My seedlings are keeping warm in the greenhouse and the skies have been so overcast I have the grow light on most of the time too. The garlic is doing well. My lettuce/spinach bed is slowly coming around and the onion sets are poking up.