Have I talked about my obsession with peas?
I’m not kidding.
I look forward to the brief harvest of pea pods from their delicate vines more than any other veggie. My grandparents planted endless rows of peas in their garden not so much because they needed that many for themselves, but because they had two wily granddaughters who spent many summer days amongst the plants, picking and eating peas still warm from the sun.
Soooooo.
I’ve done a really bang-up job of giving a monthly update on my food budget, haven’t I? I started in January, updated in February, and then… got busy. And it’s not that I haven’t posted other things. I have! I really wanted to tell you about this. And these. And my progress on this. Firsts of months came, and I thought, I should write a budget post, and then before I knew it, Fifteenths came by and it was no longer relevant.
If you’re new here, to ring in the new year I started meticulously tracking my food expenses, both for groceries and for restaurants, to get a sense of just how much of my money was going to local food sources rather than corporate, distant ones. Despite my lack of updates, I have managed to continue this tracking. You can check out my first post on the subject to see how I distinguish one type of purchase from another.
So without further ado, here’s a three-month update.
On the Grocery Dollars front, I’m making some interesting progress. Interestingly, the purple wedge (the one I’m trying to get rid of) has only reduced a little since January, about 3%. The convenience of a 24-hour store SO close to my apartment is, I confess, challenging to overcome sometimes. And oddly, there are some items I simply cannot find at the co-op. Brad’s preferred pickle relish. Instant tapioca. Our favorite sandwich bread. But look at the blue and red! Up from about a third to over HALF! Not surprisingly, I’ve got a lot more produce out of my garden in the spring months than I did in January, and the variety of food available at the farmer’s market has increased as well. Exciting!
And to the restaurants…
It’s June! And this first day of June is many things!
1. The first day of June, which is exciting enough on its own
2. The first day of National Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Month
3. The first day of National Accordion Awareness Month (who knew we even had that? Consider yourself aware.)
3. Mah birthday!
I’m spending the day doing what any sensible girl would do. Reading on the balcony, possibly getting a pedicure, re-organizing my spices in tiny matching jars (!!!!!!), taking a stab at cooking crème brûlée, seeing a movie with friends… it’s a lovely day off! Full of little birthday presents to myself.
My birthday present to you, however, are these cookies.
Last year around this time, we talked about carrot cake. I was never a particularly big fan in the past, but I now frequently find myself craving those tender bites of spice-filled, textured cake topped with a healthy dollop of tangy icing. Plus, the carrots in my garden are now bursting from the soil (okay not bursting, they actually require rather a lot of coaxing to come out of the ground), and my experiment with a curious variety put carrot cake on the top of my list to make.
Aren’t these neat? I wish I had taken pictures of them straight out of the earth, their brilliant fuschia dims slightly within minutes: they are easily the most intriguing vegetable I’d planted so far. And what fun would it be to use purple carrots for carrot cake?
Ah, summer. Welcomed in over Memorial Day with cookouts, good friends, and sunny weather, it’s a season of bounty in most of the States. In North Carolina, summer came (and often comes) early: the farms and gardens here are already flush with zucchini, peaches, blueberries, tomatoes, and even peppers.
I, however, skipped my market trip this week in favor of a long weekend visiting dear friends in Madison, Wisconsin.
As seems to be more and more common for me, I spent a lot of my trip observing not just the city itself, but the food. And let me tell you. I was pleasantly surprised by what Madison had to offer.
Just two blocks from my friends’ apartment, the crowds at the city’s largest farmers market were rivaled only by the huge quantities of locally produced food. At first glance, the market here looked like Durham’s two months ago: green spears of asparagus, waxy baby onions, and the first tender snap peas covered the tables.
But there were also treasures not easily obtained in the Bull City.
One would think that local market-goers would tire of cheese in the Nation’s Dairyland. But no… many booths, each of them packed with customers, purveyed cheeses aged for years and curds made only hours before (some of which may or may not have returned in my backpack with a small ice pack). Even beyond the tiny white tops of the farmers market, it was clear that Madison loves its food.
If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: one of the biggest perks of living in hot, humid, far-from-home Durham, North Carolina is the immense support for local food amongst those who live here and in the surrounding cities and counties. With multiple farmers markets close by, dozens of restaurants that source their ingredients locally, and thousands of people willing to patronize them all, it’s no wonder these counties contain a vibrant network of farms, ranches, and community gardens.
One shining example of this community’s commitment to support local growers is the Piedmont Farm Tour. Hosted each spring over two weekend afternoons by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Assocation, forty local farms throw open the barn doors, as it were, and welcome in carload after carload of people eager to see the source of the food they buy each week at our region’s farmers markets. A couple of friends and I were some of those people.
Brad left North Carolina this time last week for his summer internship in O-HI-O. Merh. I certainly have enough going on to keep myself entertained this summer in his absence but I must confess: it’s a lot of fun to cook when he’s around. Why? Because nine times out of ten, he loves my food. And who doesn’t enjoy gushing compliments over something you just cooked?
But as I said, he’s in Ohio, crashing with one of his college roommates for the next three months, and as he is not quite the local-food-new-recipe-must-cook-cause-its-fun person that I am, I suspect his daily bread will not be made from scratch, if you catch my drift.
I, on the other hand, see no reason why I won’t continue to cook like I usually do (like an manic-foodie-control-freak), and this dish is a prime example.
You just can’t ignore the opportunity to make something amazing when you discover that something you’ve long-considered a thoroughly “exotic” food is in fact available at your farmers market. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the weekly market newsletter heralded their arrival.
Before I say anything else: Happy Mother’s Day!
Since moving away for college eight years ago (eek), I haven’t been able to spend Mother’s Day with my mom. I think I’ve lucked out for Father’s Day a couple of times as June was more conducive to cross-country travel, but Mom has had to settle for phone calls and packages.
This is a special Mother’s Day, too. My mom is retiring this year after decades of work in elementary libraries and classrooms, teaching young Coloradoans (myself included) to read, to write, and to appreciate books. I have many fond memories over the years of going to the library with my mom for work and for fun, of stapling long strips of playful bulletin board borders to the edges of her displays, of ogling over the annual book fair catalogs and knowing that if there was one place she would buy us anything we asked for, it was books. Her fervor for the written word has, no doubt, cultivated my own passion for books and penchant for writing. She’s the #1 fan of this little food blog and tenders her support through comments, encouragement, and little e-mails alerting me to typos (which, by the way, I welcome from ANYONE who spots one – I want to squash typos out like bugs). So thanks Mom! For everything. I wish I could spend today with you!
But since I can’t, how about blog-worthy pie?
Yes, those are beach umbrellas.
Yes, that’s a coffee table on a tenth-floor oceanfront balcony.
Yes, that’s homemade breakfast.
We just got back from a fabulous weekend at the beach, a weekend filled with sand and sun and all other manner of beach-y fun. But I also couldn’t resist the opportunity to utilize the full kitchen in our room. Unsure of what this little kitchen might keep in its cupboards, I packed, um, one or two essentials and tossed them in the car with my swimsuit and flip flops.
And to cook? I didn’t really have any meals in mind, but I filled a cooler with a smattering of ingredients anyway and put them in the car along with my box-o-kitchen-gear.
It turned out that breakfast on our first morning there was a great time to cook (Brad sleeps in like a champ). Based on the ingredients I had, I found two tasty latke recipes, which sounded so good I decided to combine them. I love a good potato pancake, and adding zucchini (first of the season!) seemed like an excellent idea. After I had set my heart on these little cakes of joy, I discovered one flaw in my plan: I had forgotten the box grater.
No grater! I know I unloaded it from the dishwasher, how did it not make it into the box!?!? After maniacally opening every drawer and cupboard in the kitchen in search of cooking utensils (and finding only a spatula, a can opener, and a corkscrew), I tried to regain control. This was no big deal. Surely I could figure out how to fry some dang vegetables into a patty without the comfort and ease of my trusty grater.
Luckily I had not forgotten a big sharp knife. After much, much, much chopping, breakfast was near! Without long shreds of potato and zucchini, I was a little nervous about the patties holding together. How could these little chunks of vegetable adhere to one another strongly enough to become a latke? But miracle of miracles! Eggs and flour came to the rescue (as usual), and with some careful, two-spatula flipping, these little pancakes came out golden-brown, crispy, and full of flavor.
I’ve enjoyed latkes before with a little sour cream, but I did not have any in my tiny arsenal of ingredients. I did have cream, though, and after a few minutes of vigorous whipping and a dash of salt, I had just the dollop I was looking for. Thank goodness I didn’t forget a whisk.
And then breakfast! Enjoyed in the warm May sunshine and a salty breeze.
And with one hell of a view.
Makeshift Zucchini Latkes & Savory Cream
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, both here and here
For the Latkes
1 1/2 c zucchini, finely chopped or grated
2 c potatoes, finely chopped or grated
3/4 c onion, finely chopped or grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/4 c flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp lemon juice
canola oil for frying
Slice zucchini in half length-wise and scoop out seeds with a spoon before chopping or grating. Finely chop or grate zucchini, potatoes, and onion and combine in a strainer. Squeeze out as much liquid as you can through the strainer. Pour vegetables into a large bowl and add garlic, egg, flour, salt, black pepper, and lemon juice. Stir until thoroughly combined.
In a large frying pan, add canola oil until the bottom is coated and heat over medium until oil glistens. Once oil is hot, carefully scoop a heaping tablespoon of the vegetable mixture into the pan and flatten with the back of the spoon. Use spoon to tuck stray pieces of potato or zucchini up against the latke if needed. Add three or four spoonfuls to your pan, depending on the size, to cook multiple latkes at once. Allow latke to cook for 2-3 minutes. Use a flat spatula to carefully lift latke from the pan. Then, have another spatula on hand to flip the latke onto, then returning it to the pan to allow the other side to cook. I found I had fewer tragedies using this method rather than flipping the latke with one spatula. Once both sides are golden brown and crisp, remove latkes to a plate lined with paper towels.
Serve hot with a dollop of savory cream (see below) for dipping.
For the Savory Cream
1/4 c heavy cream
dash of salt
Pour cream into a bowl and whisk/beat until cream has thickened to the point where it holds a soft peak. I found that returning the cream to the fridge every few minutes (mostly when I had latkes to flip) helped to keep the cream cold enough to hold shape.
Once cream has thickened, add just a little bit of salt to taste.
Congrats to Jessica, the lucky winner of two awesome railing planters!
I’ve never grown my own food yet (Sad!), but when I start, I’ll want strawberries, green peppers, and peaches. How long it would take for a peach tree to fruit I have NO IDEA. But it would be delicious.
I’m not sure green peppers would be successful in these pots, and I’m 100% certain a peach tree won’t fit, but I wager strawberries might actually work!
Thanks to all who participated… the array of food you want to grow is intriguing and inspiring!
When we moved to North Carolina, I had some plans for our apartment on which I was unwilling to budge:
1. I would obtain a dining table and chairs.
2. I would paint some wall, any wall, some pretty color other than white.
3. I would grow some food on my dang porch.
Quick trips to Ikea and Home Depot made it easy to accomplish the first two goals, but it took me a couple of months to figure out the best way to complete the third. For one thing, I still, still, after two years of low-sun apartments in DC, struggled to get direct beams to my balcony for more than a few hours a day. To complicate matters further, the lovely lattices on our porch railings broke up what little sun that did reach the balcony: an excellent situation for lounging on the porch without getting too hot, but not so great for keeping plants alive.
Containers on the railings had to be the key. But alas! Every style I could find at stores in my area was designed with a bolt or a screw or some other attachment mechanism I’m sure our property managers would not appreciate.
But then.
I found them online! Two feet wide, six inches deep, and adjustable to whatever width of balcony railing you want to hang them on. I bought some lettuce, some mums (to feel fancy!), and plopped ’em into some soil. By the tim spring rolled around, well, I had expanded my little fleet to the size it was when I first introduced this hodge-podge little garden last April.
