Happy New Year!

Hello friends.  Happy New Year to everyone.  I don't know about you but 2012 was a bit of a bitch to yours truly.  The company I had worked for the past 15 years, a family business that was over 90 years old, shuttered their doors this past year.  I got to experience the joys of filing for unemployment for the first time in my life.  It is not something I want to experience again....but that being said at least it was something to help me survive until I found a new job.  Which I did but three months was enough of uncertainty and fear for my personal health and the health of my monetary savings to keep me ever so grateful for my new job.  It's a good company with many challenges to keep me busy.

While I was experiencing my own work drought, the Midwest was and still is experiencing a brutal drought whose roots can be found in the spring-like winter of 2011/2012.  This does not bode well for food prices in the coming year of 2013.  Not only has there been a serious lack of rain, we had an oppressively hot summer.  Lots of dead grass, withered evergreens and cracking foundations.  Not to mention thirsty birds.

It was not an easy summer for anyone.  While I had no paying work, I did try and keep myself busy.  I used some leftover masonry materials that my old company was unloading and built myself a new pad for my grill.

Anyone who has ever laid a brick pathway or tried to install a brick driveway knows it's not as easy as it looks.  Especially when you have to deal with roots.

Lots and lots of roots.  Did I also mention that my three months of unemployment coincided exactly with the three hottest months of a record breaking hot summer?  However once you get started, you've got to keep going to finish.  Looks pretty awesome and can't wait for spring and firing up the grill.

In addition to the masonry projects I gave myself, I had a yardsale.  I've had yardsales before but usually there's enough time in between to forget the vows that I'll never have another again.  I love getting rid of crap I don't use or need anymore but the ratio of time spent vs. value gained by selling is frustrating to say the least.  All in all, it's easier just to haul it to Goodwill or the Salvation Army and take a tax deduction.  It also confirms that a salesman I will never be.

Unless it was kisses from Jackson.   Jackson is very popular with....everyone.  Probably the one who enjoyed my unemployment the most.  Lots of walks, lots of attention and only occasionally home alone.

I wish I could say I did a lot of cooking.  Not so much.  Cooking (and blogging about cooking) was a luxury I cut way back on for fear of a much longer period of unemployment.  But once I started working again and getting into the rhythm of life with work, cooking followed.  My company had a chili cookoff amongst the employees.  Despite using Cook's Illustrated best chili recipe, I got not one vote.  Does this bother me?  Not really, chili is not my strong suit and we all know that food so spicy that you can't eat it (one of the competitors) is REALLY not my thing, I'm good with the results.  I'd make that chili again.  I'd also make the cheesecake brownies and pumpkin black bean stew that I also made for my new co-workers because you know I do love an audience for some of the things I make.

Which brings us to the new year.  Here in KC we had snow on the last day of the year and the first of the new year.  I've had a lovely four days off to putter around my tiny house, cleaning, cooking and reading the huge amounts of cookbooks I get from our wonderful library system.  I'm making sure the winter birds have plenty to eat to keep them strong through the bitter cold.

I'm also trying to come up with a new New Year's tradition to bring me some better luck than the typical black eyed peas.  Don't get me wrong, I love black eyed peas but in the luck department, they just seem a little...whimpy.  I decided to go in another direction completely.  I decided to go Indian.

Gulab Jamun.  I saw this recipe on Foodgawker for gulab jamun and remembered how much I enjoyed this dessert at an Indian restaurant here in Kansas City.  Could I pull these off at home?  The trickiest part of making this dish is getting the fry temperature of the oil right.  Too hot and you'll burn them, too cool and they won't cook all the way through.  Test your oil with little bits of dough, making sure the test dough stays at the bottom of the cooking oil and then floats to the top to continue cooking.

You're looking for golden brown but not too dark.  Then you soak them in a wonderful syrup which the balls act like sponges.  They are best when served immediately.

Hopefully my big balls of luck will counteract any possible bad luck in the year of 2013!

So tell me, what are your traditions for the new year and how was your 2012?  Good or happy to say goodbye to?

Urban Adventures in Foraging

I have been enjoying the company of Action Jackson, Dog of Adventure at work for the past couple of weeks.  He's made himself quite at home.



This is a good thing.  It means we get to walk around our work neighborhood on our mid-morning and afternoon constitutionals.  We are always on the lookout for urban wildlife and luckily we've found the normal squirrels and birds and not the dreaded giant city rats.  But it was after just such an encounter with some raucous birds that led us to a more wonderful discovery - FREE FOOD!

As Jackson and I walked along this row of trees behind our building,  we were besieged by a variety of angry birds bursting from the trees.  Mouthy starlings,  chubby doves, hopping robins all chattering that we were messing with important bird business.  It wasn't until that we got up closer to this big tree that I understood what we had interrupted.

A bountiful bird buffet.  Berries.  But what kind?  I can usually identify bush or shrub fruit but tree berries are a bit out of my league.  We took a leaf as a example to help in our identification and toddled back to google image search tree berries.  Soon the answer presented itself - Mulberries.  And while it might look like a berry it's actually defined as a collective fruit but better yet, it's edible to humans.  I love finding free fruit.  Now all I have to do is pick them.

This seems like a straightforward procedure but what I discovered is that  picking mulberries is not as easy as it looks.  First there's their size.  Roughly the same shape and makeup as a blackberry but smaller with a sturdy stem to the tree.  That stem is a bit of an issue.  You see while some of the outer lobes of the fruit might be bursting with juicy ripeness, the stem might have other ideas.  So if you overly exert pressure on the fruit to dislodge the stem from the branch, you will either bruise the fruit by holding on too tightly or drop the fruit by not holding on tight enough.  Hence the white sheet and branch shaking method that brought a rain of mulberries down to earth.  All to a chorus of still angry birds, denied their spectacular mulberry dropping paint used with great efficiency to decorate nearby vehicular canvases.  Finally I felt I had gathered enough to make something.

Not to mention tattooing my hands with a deep purple stain in the process.  But what to make?  I was clueless.  I don't think I had enough for a pie, maybe just enough for a crumble or crisp.  I decided instead to give them away.  To offer them up to a local chef.  Not just any local chef but the man that put duck tongue tacos on his menu, Michael Smith.  

He and his wife Nancy have two restaurants in the Crossroads area of downtown Kansas City, his namesake, Michael Smith and Extra Virgin.  I love Extra Virgin for it's generous half prices tapas hours and it's outdoor seating area.  Hot, sweaty and fruit stained I offered up my fresh and incredibly local fruit to Chef Smith.  He didn't hesitate, suggesting that mulberry jam could be in the works.  He asked what price for the fruit and I said I didn't really want money, I wanted to see what he would do with the fruit.  He invited me to lunch but I was a mess and still had Jackson and at the moment wanted nothing more than to go home to shower.  I took a rain check on lunch.

What a lunch it was.  How about tuna cerviche tacos with taro root shells?  Yes please.

Poblano mac and cheese?  Heaven.  A tower of Chickpea fries. Smoky grilled broccollini and burrata?  My still stained hands happily sampled it all.

But the best (thank you waiter for suggesting it) was the braised pork cheeks with fava beans and lentils.  Crispy, savory pork goodness.  Well worth the couple of hours of angry birds and sticky digits.  What did Chef Smith end up making with the mulberries?  The lucky folks at an event at the Nelson Atkins Museum enjoyed the freshest possible mulberry sauce on duck and helped raise money for a good cause courtesy of Michael Smith and an urban fruit tree.

Rhubarb in the Bag

I am a lucky girrrl.  Some friends of mine are currently enjoying spring in Ireland and France. While they are gone they asked me to sit on their house.  This I do not mind for many reasons.  I get to watch Mad Men, not just for the vintage 60s suburban kitchens (can't wait for the 70s) but also for Joan's pencil necklace.  Jackson and I get to stalk the herd of wild rabbits that have wiped out the young eggplant seedlings in the backyard.  Sadly due to Jackson's incredible agility and prey drive, there is no off leash pursuit since the fences surrounding the yard barely slow down his fierce devotion to Kill the Wabbit.  But the best thing about house sitting (until the pool opens) is the weekly CSA.  So far I've enjoyed baby spinach, eggs, broccoli, lettuce, chard, asparagus, and basil.  This week included something I'd never cooked with before - rhubarb.

Rhubarb is not exotic or new but it's just one of those ingredients that never made an appearance in the cooking adventures of my youth.  So it was a bit of a surprise to see it in the bag of spring offerings.  Rhubarb seems to me to be one of those old fashioned vegetables.  I'm sure my grandmother would know what to do with these stalks.  I do remember seeing numerous recipes in old church spiral bound cookbooks, usually involving pies, crumbles and cobblers.  The most common use was to pair it up with the first spring fruit, strawberries.  The strawberry's sweetness balanced out the rhubarb's wincing tartness.  I just didn't have enough to make a pie.  Luckily for me my recent batch of library cookbooks included Wild Flavors by Didi Emmons and the recipe for Coconut Rice Pudding with Rhubarb.

Coconut Rice Pudding with Rhubarb

Makes 6 servings

Rice Pudding:

1/2 cup brown rice

1/2 cup white rice 

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon cardamom

Pinch salt

3 cups coconut milk (two 13-ounce cans will do)

2 - 3 cups soy milk, almond milk or half-and-half

Topping:

3 large stalks rhubarb (about 3/4 pound), thinly sliced

3 tablespoons sugar

1.  To make the pudding, combine the rice, sugar, cardamom, salt, 2 cups soy milk, almond milk, or half-and-half, and coconut milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Let the mixture come to a boil, then reduce the heat to very low, cover, and let cook until thick and the rice is tender, about 1 1/2 - 2 hours, stirring from time to time to keep the pudding from sticking to the bottom of the saucepan.  If it does stick to the saucepan, add more soy milk, almond milk, or half-and-half as needed.

2.  Transfer the pudding to a container with a lid and let it come to room temperature uncovered, then chill in the refrigerator, covered.

3.  Meanwhile, to make the topping, combine the rhubarb, sugar, and 1/4 cup water in a small saucepan over low heat.  Let the mixture come to a simmer, and let simmer until the rhubarb softens while still holding its shape, about 5 minutes.  Transfer the rhubarb to a container with a lid and let it come to room temperature uncovered, then chill in the refrigerator, covered.

4.  To serve, spoon the rice pudding into clear glasses, then spoon the rhubarb mixture over the rice pudding.  

A couple of notes to the recipe above.  I used everything I had on hand so, 1 cup of brown rice instead of mixing the two, two 14 ounce cans of lite coconut milk, and 2 cups of 2% milk instead of the soy milk.

Additionally I wandered far afield of the topping recipe.  I wanted more of a rhubarb sauce instead of a slightly cooked rhubarb topping.  So 2/3 cup of sugar instead of 3 tablespoons and cooked it until it broke down into a chunky sauce.

Wow!  The coconut rice pudding is luscious on it's own but adding the distinctive sweet and sour rhubarb sauce turns it into an exquisite dessert.  Not only that but this sauce would be great on oatmeal, yogurt, and ice cream.  So thank you CSA farmers, rhubarb rocks.

Foodies come in all shapes and sizes

Jackson and I have a routine. We walk. A lot. We walk because he can jump my backyard fence as easily as he breathes. So at least three daily walks happen. He enjoys it because it allows him to patrol his neighborhood for squirrels, rabbits and crows and I enjoy it because my leaf lard ass sits in this chair entirely too much blog surfing. So we walk. As you can imagine, we see a lot of squirrels. Squirrels in trees, squirrels on the ground, squirrels just being squirrels.

What sometimes scares me is when we don't see any squirrels at all on our walk, as if the world had gone all zombie and the zombies started by eating the squirrels first. (not really a bad thing)

MUST EAT SQUIRREL BRAINS!!!!!

Anyhoo, we were out on one of our mid-afternoon walks when we spied a pair of squirrels in the street. This is not unusual. The fat one in the middle of the street had something that appeared white in it's mouth. I say white because I couldn't really see it and my brain just assumed it was an apple. Of course Jackson saw it and went into his patented super slow silent stalking mode, convinced of his own invisibility. I know this because I get nastiest dirty looks whenever I step on a dry leaf when he's in his stalk. Normally the squirrels feel the deathrays shooting out of his eyes and scamper back up the nearest tree post haste. But this squirrel, he kept coming towards us, heading for a tree on the other side of road, very slowly. Drool puddles started to form beneath Jackson's feet in anticipation of Slow Stupid Squirrel. Me? I'm suddenly worried that the white thing in the squirrel's mouth is foam and that we've found ourselves a rabid squirrel. The situation almost reached the point of leaping dog death teeth when the squirrel, not rabid, not slow nor stupid suddenly dropped what was in it's mouth and turned furry tail and ran back across the street. For all you folks who don't believe animals experience emotions like disappointment, anger or frustration, you needed to see Jackson after the Almost Squirrel Snack.

It wasn't until I comforted the hound at his near miss of having a squirrel actually walk into his mouth that I finally saw what the squirrel was hauling back to his nest.

A full freaking loaf of french bread??? This loaf was longer than the squirrel. No wonder the dumb ass was moving so slow. I'm so sad I didn't get to see him attempt to get it up his tree. Of course my first thought was "Who throws out a whole loaf of french bread?". My second thought was, damn, squirrel's got foodie game! You go Squirrel! Don't forget the brie.

Kitchen Space

So I was in the mood for some Rosemary Pork ribs. Cut up a mess of ribs.

However I'm having a bit of an issue with the newest member of the Karmic Kitchen.

Seems that somebody doesn't understand exactly where he belongs in the kitchen. Prior canine members understood that loud, scary, clangy things would fall from sky if one got too close to She Who Must Be Obeyed when she was in the kitchen. Unfortunately Action Jackson is not at all flustered by banging pots and pans.

He does pout like no other dog I've known when I relocate him to a safe zone, little bastid. Actually that's his indoor face, he's so laid back. However when we're outside....

...he's all about getting one of these into his jaws. We are the squirrel stalking fools. I think he's part cat because any moment he's going to try climbing a tree.

Coming soon....squirrel jerky!

No Food Weekend

I'm sorry to report that this was a No Food weekend. No cooking, barely any eating unless you count a Five Hour Energy drink. I pulled a Dog Adoption Mission road trip. Ten hours one way to a little town in Kentucky to pick up this guy.

Smokey...then

...Jackson now.

Action Jackson as it turns out. Ridding the world of evil squirrels and no fence or gate will stop him. He's a good boy but we will be in serious training mode for the next few months because counter surfing in the kitchen is a NO GO!