a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: Recipes

  • Worth Waking Up

    20151027MorningFog

    Any day that starts like this is a day worth waking up for. It’s late October and there are almost no clouds in the sky. A cool mist blankets the neighbor’s horse pasture, and as soon as the sun rises, it will float away (the mist not the pasture). Now you see it, now you don’t.

    You often read about tourists flocking to see the fall colors in New England. Hordes of tourists from all over Asia sojourn to Japan to see the maples turn red and yellow. So how come there aren’t crowds thronging the vineyards in late fall to see the grape leaves turn? Grape leaves know how to party at the end of fall. They put on brilliant colors before they fall. Picnicking among the turning grape vines, bottles of wine in tow, that would be a lot of fun. Can’t you see vintners recommending certain wines over others when viewing red versus yellow grape vines?

    Or should you drink the wine from that particular grape to truly appreciate the fall colors of that vine? Smell the wine, smell the leaves, can you detect the flavors of the wine in the leaf? You can’t? You need to drink more wine until you can.

    Or you could have a taste test where you try and match the wine to the colorful leaves. Take a sip and guess which dried leaf made that wine.

    20151027GrapeLeafA
    20151027GrapeLeafB
    20151027WoodOnTrailer

    It was a perfect day for splitting more wood. Most likely, this will end up in next year’s wood stack. There’s enough stacked for this winter. It’s time to start working on next winter’s stacks.

    20151027 Stewartia

    And what is this that is trying to bloom? A stewartia pseudocamellia. Nearly all the leaves are off the tree. Just a few dry, red leaves are left, and yet it’s trying to bloom? Maybe it’s roots have tapped into the grape vine’s roots and it is feeling tipsy. Oh please, oh please, just one more bloom. Plants can be like children. I don’t want to go to sleep yet. I don’t want to wait until spring.

  • Softening the Edges

    PotatoEdgingA

    Ever notice when you cut raw potatoes how sharp the edges are? If you’re cooking for someone you love, take a minute or two to do something about those edges. Do you really want to serve them sharp-edged potatoes? Before cooking them, it’s easy to soften the edges with a peeler. Just run the peeler over the cut edges. With the edges softened, the potatoes will be easier to eat once they are cooked.

    PotatoEdgingB
    PotatoEdgingC

    With their edges softened, the potato pieces will look more appetizing in dishes like potato salad, curry rice, and niku-jyaga 肉じゃが.

    PotatoEdgingD

    What to do with trimmed off edges? Toss them in a salad, put them in soup, mince them and use them to thicken stews, or let the chickens have them along with the other scraps you have for them. They’ll turn them into wonderful eggs.

    PotatoEdgingE

  • Last of the Garlic Scapes – Served

    GarlicScapesMade

    This is what the last of the garlic scapes became. You can cut the stems and use them like you would string beans. They taste like string beans cooked with some garlic. The garlic flavor is not strong.

  • Impatience Rewarded

    MisoA

    For nearly a year I have been waiting for this recipe to finish. Last August I made my first batch of miso and set it in the pantry to age. I meant to wait until August, but now that it almost mid July, my curiosity got the best of me. I brought the crock out of the panty.

    MisoB

    Lifting the lid, it certainly smelled like miso. I made my miso with soy beans, brown rice, barley and salt. What transforms this mixture into miso is koji, or Aspergillus oryzae, a fungus used to ferment a number of food products. Humans have been using Aspergillus oryzae for some 2,000 years.

    Lifting the parchment paper I used to seal the fermenting miso, I am face to face with my home made miso.

    MisoC

    Opening it a few weeks early was worth it. My impatience was rewarded with some of the best miso I’ve ever had. There really is something to making some foods yourself in small batches. Now I can start making a batch every three months. One of the places I researched said that if you let it ferment for two years, it tastes even better. If I make enough batches, I will have the patience to let some ferment that long.

    MisoD

  • Kneading Bread Dough? Use a Bowl

    I’ve been baking bread for half a century. One of my household chores as a small child was helping my mother bake bread. Even though I make bread without kneading, at times I just need to get my hands on a lump of dough and spend a good ten minutes kneading it. It is a very satisfying experience.

    KneadingDoughInABowlA

    Growing up we kneaded bread on a board sprinkled with flour. I’ve found that what works much better is kneading bread in a bowl. The dough doesn’t stick to the bowl like it does to a wood board, so you don’t need to use any extra flour. In a bowl, the dough stays in one place, and a bowl is much easier to clean than a large wooden board.

    KneadingDoughInABowlB