My Old (Read: “Actual”) Favorite Meal

A few days ago I wrote about a “Southwestern Green Chicken Chili” soup that I declared my new favorite meal. I may have been exaggerating a little bit in my enthusiasm for this newfound dish. You see, this weekend I broke with my self-imposed seasonal-eating rules and made what has been my long-standing favorite meal, and I was reminded anew that some upstart chili/soup thing, no matter how tasty, has a long way to go before it’s the dish I want to eat on my birthday.

So, my reasserted favorite meal is, unsurprisingly, a pasta dish (hey, I don’t maintain this Olympian physique by avoiding carbs, you know), and, unsurprisingly, comes from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials Of Italian Cooking. I first made this about seven years ago, and quickly memorized the recipe. I don’t know, at this point, if I’m still doing it the way the recipe was written, so don’t go blaming this on Marcella if it looks wonky.

The sauce starts with a pound of sweet Italian sausage, without casings, which you brown up in a dutch oven or large saucepan with a tablespoon or two of extra-virgin olive oil. Then I add two or three yellow onions, chopped, to the pan, and saute until the onions are translucent and very soft. Then I add two yellow bell peppers and three red bell peppers, which have been peeled (with a vegetable peeler — yes, it’s a total pain in the ass) and diced, and saute until the peppers are soft. Then I toss in about five small tomatoes, which have been peeled and diced. (In the summer, when I have lovely, huge tomatoes, I use two. This time of year, when I break down and buy the nasty-assed tomatoes in the store, I use five of those little ones that come on the vine. Marcella says to use plum tomatoes, which are, traditionally, the only thing in the grocery store out of season that tastes like a tomato, but I’ve found that my store carries really heinous plum tomatoes.) (And yes, the peeling of the tomatoes is another pain in the ass, with the scoring the skins, dumping in boiling water, then dumping into an ice bath. This recipe sure has a lot of steps in it that I hate, now that I think about it…) Then I season with kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste, and let everything simmer until the tomatoes break down a bit and get a nice, saucy consistency.

Now, Marcella’s recipe mentioned some kind of pasta shape that was supposedly traditionally perfectly suited to this sauce, but please. It wasn’t in my store, and I wasn’t about to make it. So I decided that I’d go with a very grown-up pasta shape, something that would reflect my maturity as a home chef:

Yeah, that’s right — wagon wheels. The first time I brought this in as leftovers for lunch at my current job, one of my coworkers actually laughed at me. But in all seriousness, these hold this sauce perfectly. The De Cecco brand noodles (my favorite) have nice ridges that cling to the delicious bell pepper-tomato sauce part, and the holes in the wheels grab onto the bits of onions and bell peppers and sausage. I really don’t understand why Marcella didn’t go with the wagon wheels to start out with. It’s probably because she’s not six.

Anyway, the last step, after tossing the sauce and noodles, is to top everything with a hearty grating of fresh parmesan cheese, and there you go. My favorite dinner. I love this so much. I love it with a glass of white wine on a Saturday night with hockey, I love it microwaved for lunch, I love snacking on it cold out of a tupperware. This is, bar none, my favorite meal.

It Seems To Have Sprung

The first day of Spring was two days ago, and it appears the plants in our yard got the news. I’ve spent much of this morning glaring jealously at the little cluster of crocuses at the base of our neighbor’s mailbox, until suddenly it dawned on me that we have a spot in our yard that traditionally gets a crocus or two, too. And lo and behold! Here one is!

I raced out to take a picture of it to send to Pookie, who’s stuck at work today, and on my way back inside, I glanced into the garden. The only thing that’s in there right now is the bed of garlic, which we planted in the Fall. It’s been covered with straw since November, with chicken wire over that to keep the squirrels out.

What’s this? Can it be? For reals? OUR FIRST CROP!

I can practically taste the scapes!

Self Medicacion

Hockey sucked huge rocks tonight. HUGE rocks. The entire hockey world collapsed around our ears. So, with the final buzzer of another Devils loss still echoing, we turned to the time-honored tradition of drink to soothe our tortured souls. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to make, but Pookie recently stumbled across The Cocktail Database so I figured I’d give the site a whirl.

Being wildly creative, I plugged “rum” and “lime juice” (I know. Very daring) into the recipe search, and then picked The Nacional Cocktail as our simple drink for the evening. (It was already 10:30, so I didn’t want anything too involved.)

As it turns out, a combination of white rum, apricot brandy and lime juice is a very nice drink. Tart, brisk, sharp but still sweet — it’s not enough to make us forget the Devils game, but it’s certainly taking a bit of the edge off. What more can you ask of a cocktail?

(Oh, and those lilies in the picture? Yes, it does smell like a funeral parlor in here.)

The Object Of My Obsession

I have a problem. A big problem. I have an obsession, and it’s starting to detract from my functionality as a contributing member of society.

Behold:

This is a picture from my workplace; it’s the view around the side of my building and across the pond out back. At a casual glance it looks like a pretty “March” kind of picture. Bare branches, evergreens, the sunlight at 5:10 p.m. on the Vernal Equinox. Ho hum, whatever. But if you look closer you might see what has been consuming my every minute at the workplace for the last couple of weeks. See it? On the far bank of the pond? That willow tree?

Yeah. The willow tree is basically perfectly framed in my office window when I’m sitting at my desk:

And here’s the thing — I decided about three weeks ago that the willow tree was turning green. It was, like, 60 degrees for a day or two at the beginning of the month and I convinced myself that that tree was was busting out. I told my boss about it. I told him I was going to spend all my time staring at that tree and willing it to leaf out. I began channeling all my psychic energies into forcing the tree to turn green and bring Springtime to my workday landscape. Yesterday my boss stepped out of his office, looked over my shoulder, and said, “It’s not any greener.”

What is he looking at? Dude, that tree is as green now as any tree can be without actually having leaves. Seriously:

It’s crazy green!

Sigh.

Okay, I know. A watched pot never boils. But I can’t help it! Like I said, I’m obsessed.

My New Favorite Meal

Last week I made the “Southwestern Green Chicken Chili” from the Daily Soup Cookbook. At the time, I was too hungry to take a picture of it before devouring it, so I figured I’d just have to document it for all posterity at some later date. Of course, a few bites into my bowl of it, I realized it would be no trouble making it again to write about, because frankly, this is my new favorite foodstuff. It is just insanely delicious.

As with so many of the Daily Soup Cookbook recipes, this one has a first step that deals with poaching a chicken and reserving the liquid, and shredding it up, and blah blah blah. Please. I just cut up some boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about two pounds) and got six cups of homemade stock out of the freezer. With my stock melting back to liquidity, I browned the chicken in a large pot in a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil. Once the chicken was done, I removed it from the pot, added a bit more oil, and then tossed in:

1 large spanish onion, chopped
2 ribs of celery, chopped
2 green bell peppers, chopped
2 poblano peppers, chopped
2 pickled jalapeno peppers, chopped

After letting everything sweat a little and get soft (while scraping up the browned bits from the bottom of the pot), the next step is to add 2 tablespoons of chili powder, 2 teaspoons of ground cumin, 2 teaspoons of ground coriander, 2 bay leaves, and 2 teaspoons of kosher salt. Stir, and let everything saute at medium heat for about five minutes, until it’s all fragrant.

Once everything was sauteed up, I returned the chicken to the pot, along with the stock and 1 28-oz can of whole, peeled tomatoes (drained and chopped). I brought everything to a boil, then reduced heat to a simmer, partially covered, and let it all bubble away for 20 minutes. At that point, I added 1/2 cup (heaping) of quinoa, and let it simmer 15 minutes, until the quinoa got soft.

The recipe then called for the addition of 2 cups of frozen, shelled lima beans, but my grocery store is so dopey that it doesn’t sell frozen lima beans that don’t have some kind of butter sauce. I substituted frozen, shelled edamame, which I like more than lima beans anyway. Oh, and I thawed the beans first, before adding them. Once they’re in the pot, I let everything bubble away for a few more minutes, to get the beans warmed through, and then I added about 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro and 1 tablespoon of fresh minced garlic, stirred everything up, and served.

Now, because this calls itself a chili, I served it on brown basmati rice (I will take any opportunity to stretch a pot of chili with brown rice), but with the quinoa, it really doesn’t need that. This is a really nice Spring-is-in-the-air kind of hearty one-pot meal, because the peppers are all zingy and freshly green-tasting, and there’s all that coriander in there. Of course, as “green chili” goes, this is awfully red-colored, but I don’t mind. I think I’m going to make this every week from now until I find a newer new favorite meal.

An Improvement On A Good Thing: Schnookie Burritos

When we were youngsters, Boomer used to make tacos as part of our regular rotation of dinners. She rocked them traditional-Midwestern-upbringing-style, browning up some ground beef, dicing up some tomatoes, sauteing some onions and opening a bag of shredded cheese, then serving them with taco shells. Everything then got topped with a nice layer of Ortega mild taco sauce, for that authentic touch. When the exotic foodstuff “tortillas” was introduced to our grocery store, we graduated from hard taco shells to burritos. And when we stopped eating beef, we healthied things up by using ground turkey. This culinary treat became known as a “Boomer Burrito”.

During the year that I was at Oberlin, Pookie and Boomer were left to fend for themselves, food-wise. I’m told Boomer Burritos were relied on heavily for sustenance. When I moved back home, the request was put in for me not to neglect Boomer Burritos when I was meal planing, even though they were sort of “slumming it”. And for years, I made them just the way Boomer did (isn’t it nice to have family recipes passed down between the generations?), but I recently made a break with tradition. The impetus for the change was browsing through Penzey’s Spices, where I found their taco seasoning blends. I decided to try out the Chicken Taco Seasoning and the Bold Taco Seasoning.

I alternate between the two (tonight I used the Chicken seasoning), and brown up some thin-sliced boneless skinless chicken breasts with a generous shake of the seasoning. And with that go the traditional additions: the onions, the tomatoes (plasticine and pink, this time of year) and the cheese (now freshly grated, none of that pre-shredded crap).

Of course, the secret to a perfect Schnookie Burrito is the same as the one for a Boomer Burrito — the Red Gold:

Everything gets layered up inside a warm tortilla:

And after about 20 minutes of prep, from start to finish, it’s time to devour dinner.

I go through phases where sometimes I make these every week and sometimes I can go a month or two without thinking of them, but lately they’re my go-to lazy weeknight meal. Perfect for a cranky Monday evening.

Revisiting The Classic

Many moons ago we were inspired to start this lifelong (we hope) foray into the world of cocktails by a rave review from the inimitable HG about a drink she had on a night out: the El Diablo. Early last Spring we made our own El Diablos (without documenting them), thanked HG profusely for introducing them (and a willingness to make cocktails) to our lives, and then moved on to the easy-drinking world of rum drinks. Fast forward to today, as I was listlessly poking through my cocktail books, looking for something fun to try today, and I stumbled across the El Diablo. Hm. Tempting. Of course, we didn’t have any ginger ale. What to do? What to do?

Let me pause for a moment to tell you about a legendary recipe in our family’s history: the El Hotto. Our brother invented this culinary treat when he was about 11, and it involved pouring a thick layer of Old El Paso Mild Taco Sauce on a tortilla, then heaping a pile of shredded cheddar on top of that, and baking for a few minutes until the cheese melts. And there you have it. An El Hotto. Whenever we make snacks or meals of similarly lowbrow, bobo quality, we like to call it some variation of El Hotto. So when I was confronted with trying to make a ginger ale-less El Diablo, we decided it would have to be called an El Devilo.

So what goes into an El Devilo? Well, I sliced half a lime into wedges, squeezed them into a glass filled with ice, and dropped them in. Then I poured in 1 1/2 ounces of silver tequila, 1/2 ounce creme de cassis, and topped the whole thing off with ginger beer. Stir, and enjoy.

The result is tart, tangy and still light, with a hint of a sharp edge thanks to the bite of the tequila and the ginger beer, and a balancing hint of syrupy sweetness thanks to the creme de cassis. It’s a fun return to the cocktail that started it all, and we quaffed this with a hearty toast to HG.

Readying The Earthworks

Ah, March. The time of year when you wake up to steel-gray skies, bare branches, and a 50-degree, drizzly day and say, “It’s a great day for gardening!”

Well, okay, it’s not a great day for gardening, per se, as much as it’s a great day for garden readying. We’re still a few weeks out from doing the actual planting part of things, but our seedlings are motoring right along, so it’s time to start getting their future home ready for them. The garden beds were winterized with thick layers of straw, so this was what we were starting with:

We’re not sure who or what was making those circular holes in the straw (the latest theory is mourning doves), but at least we’re reasonably confident we didn’t have as many squirrels burying shit in the beds this year as last. We’re hopeful that without an autumn spent loading the beds up with acorns, the squirrels will be less inclined to dig up the beds in the Spring. It’s not likely to play out that way, but what can I say? We’re hopeless optimists.

We pulled the straw off the dirt, praising ourselves for saving this task for today instead of doing it yesterday, because a long night of steady, frigid rain really made the straw nice to handle. It’s always surprising to see how low the soil level is after a summer of crop harvesting and then a winter of weathering. In a month or so, our nearby nursery will be selling leaf compost by the cubic yard, so we’ll be able to fill the other beds with that, but for the early-planting beds, we can’t buy in bulk. Instead, we’re making our own enriched-soil mix.

We ended up with two parts “garden soil”, one part Bovung (or dehydrated cow manure. “Bovung” is, like, our favorite brand name for anything ever), and one part leaf compost. (Yes, we do have our own compost bin, but we hardly have enough usable compost in it to be able to fill one of our big garden beds.) After much lugging and dumping and raking, the bed looks super-lush and inviting for young onion plants.

Matsui supervised the whole process from the front door.

Of course, we’re still expecting at least one more hard frost, and while raised beds allow for earlier planting because the soil warms faster than in-ground beds, we’re still planning to get the soil that much warmer for our precious baby plants by putting a cold frame over it. We’ve never used a cold frame before, so it’s going to be interesting to see how this all works.

This is a super lightweight, collapsable, one-piece, crazy simple structure that folds into a little tote bag and springs from that state with just a flick of the wrist to its full splendor. Our plan is to warm the soil with it, then maybe do some hardening of the flats of seedlings, then actually plant the seedlings in their final growing spot with the cold frame over them, so we can get a little jump on the growing season. It’s such an easy structure to move around that it shouldn’t be at all difficult to take it off when the onions are ready to go out into the world on their own.

This is what the inside of our onions’ house looks like:

If I was an onion, I’d want to live there.

It felt wonderful to be working in the garden again. Last summer was a bit of a lost season for us, as we only half-heartedly planned any crops (thanks to the kitchen being in mid-remodel), and then neglected the condition of the garden because we were in a holding pattern waiting for the fence and pea gravel installation. The whole thing was overgrown with weeds and unmown grass, and the only crops that grew at all were potatoes and the world’s most unstoppable catnip patch. But now the kitchen is ready for all the bumper crops we can throw at it, and the garden is fenced and has nice paths. It’s ready to not be a headache anymore. And after a chilly morning of dirt-hauling, it looks, from the front door, like it means business.

Breaking Out Of The Joann’s/Michael’s Box

Gentle Readers have been clamoring for the low down on where we find the charts and materials for the stitching projects we do. Here are some links to various resources that I use for finding and buying the supplies to fuel my stitching obsession (i.e. to make sure my stash is always in a state of being “more projects than I can complete in a lifetime”). There are many more out there, but these are the ones that I find most consistently useful for the kinds of projects I like to do (samplers, samplers and more samplers).

1. The Attic Newsletter: Attic Needlework is a shop in Mesa, AZ that is pretty much my idea of heaven on Earth. The store has a Wall of Samplers that is legendary in stitching circles, and it’s what inspired me to return to cross-stitching. While they’re not really an online or mail order business, they are an excellent source for finding new designs thanks to their weekly newsletter, which can be found in PDF form at

www.atticneedlework.com/newsletter.html

(You can also have the newsletter sent via email; I think the quality of the pictures is better in email.) The newsletter highlights new designs coming into the shop; they have a wide variety styles of projects, from historic samplers to fun seasonal stuff to contemporary designs. Another fun thing about the Newsletter is that Jean (the shop’s owner and my stitching hero) will often include pictures of the linen and threads she’s using to do the Sampler of the Month. They do do mail orders, but as they do a very, very steady business in-shop, they are sometimes a little slow. What they lose in speed, they make up for in spades in quality! (I should also point out that all of our framing is done by their extremely talented framer-in-residence.)

2. The Scarlet Letter: This is, in my opinion, the premier online source for reproduction samplers. This site is easy to use (pieces are rated on a scale from Beginner to Very Advanced) and they helpfully offer projects in just chart form or with a whole kit (linen, threads and needle included). They do a nice job of explaining what’s interesting about each piece and they are mindful of the history of the craft. The sampler page is divided into time periods and geography which gives the site a bit of a educational air as well!

http://www.scarlet-letter.com/title/tableocold.html

I’m a big fan of 17th and 18th century English samplers, and could probably happily make every one on the site! Their charts come with excellent instructions with clear stitch guides. A beginner stitcher could do really well with any of their simpler designs.

3. Carriage House Samplings: Carriage House Samplings is one of my favorite designers; while their work is probably more rustic than I’d generally think my taste runs to, I find I consistently adore their charts. Since the designs are generally pretty reliant on big blocks of color, they are pretty solid choices for beginners.

http://www.carriagehousesamplings.com/

They do not have online ordering yet, but they do mail order.

4. The Drawn Thread: This company publishes pieces that are more contemporary than Carriage House, and which are steeped in an aesthetic that is delicate, intricate and graceful. The colors are generally muted and soft, giving an overall impression of peacefulness. Don’t be fooled by the pictures — their designs almost always look a thousand times better in real life.

http://www.drawnthread.com/index.html

They do not have online or mail ordering, but they are so big in the industry pretty much any retail shop will carry their charts and kits. The designs range from super easy to very advanced, but they do not make that distinction on their charts. The intermediate and advanced charts are great learning pieces as they often include a variety of specialty stitches; the charts include very clear instructions and stitch diagrams. The site also offers free printable charts for tiny pieces.

5. Prairie Schooler: Prairie Schooler was where it all started for me and Schnookie — our very first projects when we were in grade school were small Prairie Schooler kits. These designs have a very distinctive look, very simple and static, with big blocks of rustic colors and a delightfully non-hokey country style. Many of their designs are seasonal, making them the perfect projects for when it’s mid-February and you’re dying of Spring fever or when it’s mid-July and you can’t wait for Christmas or Winter.

http://www.prairieschooler.com/

I’m particularly excited for the designs they’ve been rolling out in the last year or so which include little verses about the seasons. These projects are ideal for beginners, and the charts so charming they are fun for stitchers of all skills. You can see some Prairie Schoolers I’ve done here and here. While my examples were done in silk thread, the designs are intended to be done with DMC floss which is readily available at craft stores everywhere.

6. Moira Blackburn: While not an extensive site, this British designer has some spectacular work. They designs are very historical in nature, but the colorways make them slightly more contemporary in feel. The designs look intricate, but usually involve only counted cross stitch, making them good for intermediate stitchers.

http://www.moirablackburn.com/index.htm

Please note that the site is British so while you can order online, the prices are in pounds and shipping might be pricey!

7. Elizabeth Bradley: Schnookie works on Elizabeth Bradley kits almost exclusively. The kits are unusual in that they are done in wool on canvas in a style called Victorian Cross Stitch. The end results are simply stunning and straight out of an English manor house.

http://www.elizabethbradley.com/index.php

The kits are carried in many retail shops, but they also do mail order (again, it’s a British site). There are several small kits that are good for giving this technique a whirl. You can see some of the smaller kits and designs done up by Schnookie here.

Buying Supplies

The following are great sites for ordering supplies and browsing for other designers (many of the ones I’ve listed will be available for purchase, as well).

http://www.maryjanes.com/

http://www.nordicneedle.com/

http://www.thesilverneedle.com/

http://www.wyndhamneedleworks.com/

Another good resource is Just Cross Stitch, a periodical that includes charts and tons of ads for local and online shops.

If you have any questions or comments, I’d be happy to hear from you! You can reach me at interchangeablepartsblog [at] gmail [dot] com. Happy stitching!

Why, Is That Trellis Stitch I See?

I returned to needlework from knitting in 2001, when I stumbled onto stitching an entire sampler in miniature by mistake. Looking for a suitable follow-up piece, I was drawn to Darleen O’Steen’s “Cranberry Sampler”, because… well, because it had squirrels on it. I have a bit of a thing for squirrels, which is good for a cross-stitcher since they’re a popular and traditional motif in historic samplers and reproductions. So I bought the chart, pulled the threads, picked a linen and then sat down to start. Oops. I realized instantly I was in way over my head. The design called for a bazillion fancy stitches I hadn’t done before: double cross, long arm cross, detached buttonhole, needle weaving and wrapping, double running, and two that would become my nemeses — Montenegrin and the dreaded trellis.

Somehow I managed to stumble through it (thanks to Boomer’s collection of needlework reference books) and finished it:

The design followed a traditional true sampler style, where the work got harder as you go top to bottom. The first few rows were pretty simple satin stitches (just long, straight, easy-to-count stitches) and reversible cross. The going got tougher with the carnation motifs.

The green vine was done in Montenegrin, an interwoven stitch that manages to squeeze 10 different needle positions in the space of a normal cross stitch. Counting it and going on a diagonal nearly killed me. But it makes for a stunningly intricate, dense finished result. It shows of the richness of a nice silk thread well. The carnation leaves were filled in with my favorite stitch of all time, queen stitch and the petals with long arm cross.

The next fun bit was the boxers:

Boxers (little putti outlined in double-running stitch) are a very traditional motif in 17th century English band samplers. They bring a fun insouciance to the piece, I think, with their jaunty smiles, crazy hair-helmets and detached-buttonhole loin cloths. There’s a matching set on the other end of the band, but those are deliberately left unstitched to mirror authentic antique samplers. I entered this work in the Phoenix Needlework Show in 2002 and was marked down for not finishing it. Morons! That was intentional! Sheesh. Some people!

Things really started to heat up with the two big medallion motifs. The first one was pretty much a repeat of the stuff I learned doing the carnations and it turned out well as a result:

The second one? Not so much:

The green blobs you see pretending to be leaves are supposed to be intricately and evenly filled in with trellis stitch. (Trellis is so evil no one has diagrams of it online!) It was a disaster. A complete and utter disaster. I ended up just sort of randomly weaving and knotting the silk until it sort of filled in the space it was supposed to. Just after finishing the entire work I proudly showed it off to a member of the Embroiderer’s Guild of America. Of course the first thing she did was point to that mess and say, “Oh, that’s an interesting stitch! What is it?” “Trellis,” I sniffed, and walked away. Stupid trellis.

Fortunately whatever self-esteem I may have lost after Trellis-stitch-gate, I gained back with the bottom portion:

This section is all about whitework (stitches done in a thread that closely matches the color of the linen). The first part was mostly satin with some buttonhole bars tossed in; it was fun and easy.

The second part was sheer terror. The technique calls for hem stitching an area and then cutting out every other two threads, making a bigger grid than the linen’s usual weave.

OK, cutting threads out of the middle of a project I’d already spent months working on? NOT FUN. I’m still not entirely convinced, four years later, that the entire thing won’t unravel if I look at it funny. Once I got the threads cut and pulled, I wrapped the threads that remained, making them into a sort of lace-like substance. The design of the squirrels is created with dove’s eyes, the perfect stitch for a perfectionist (which I’m most distinctly not when it comes to stitching, particularly when I’m this close to the end and just want to get it finished and hanging on the wall).

All in all, I’m incredibly proud of my work on this piece. I absolutely adore the design and the bright (but still historic and classy) colors, so I desperately wanted my contribution to the piece to stand up to the designer’s. True samplers like this are a tremendous amount of fun. I may grouse about doing diagonal montenegrin, and I may not be able to do a perfect (or even adequate) trellis, but I tried and mostly succeeded to learn something new.