Michaelmas Hygge!

Blackberries are traditionally eaten on Michaelmas, so here's my salute to the archangels, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael whose feast day it is today.

Someone gave me some homemade blackberry jam.  I saved it until today and made cream biscuits to serve it over.

Finished Product

Dinner last night was a resounding success!

I was too lazy to take nice photos.

So I didn't consult any recipe, I just threw it together and it came out delicious.

Filling:
Chopped up half a large onion
1 large clove of garlic smashed and chopped
Soften up both of these in some olive oil.
Threw in a lb of ground beef and cooked it up
Seasoned with Mrs. Dash (I know, but my husband is on a low salt diet).  I did add a bit of Himalayan salt and some black pepper too.

In the meantime I put a cup of rice in with two cups of chicken broth into my rice cooker.  The broth still had a some fat in it (I hadn't skimmed it off yet) so I didn't add anything else to the rice.

When the rice was done I stirred it into the ground beef mixture.

In the meantime, I put the oven on at 350 degrees, washed and cut in half my peppers, cleaned out the seeds and such from the insides.  Then I brushed them with a bit of olive oil and baked them by themselves for about 10 minutes.

Then I stuffed the peppers with the beef and rice mixture.  I topped each one with a bit of parmesan cheese and baked them all for another 20 minutes or so.

The peppers tasted really good.  Not too mushy, but not underdone either.

Can you even tell what this is?  

Fried green tomatoes:

I didn't have any bread crumbs, so I stole half of a small baguette and toasted it, then chopped it up into coarse crumbs in my blender.  I added a lot of Mrs. Dash.  I know, but I really like Mrs. Dash, ok???

Then I beat one egg in a dish and then dumped all the bread crumbs in and mushed it around till the breadcrumbs were damp.

I washed and sliced up all the green tomatoes.

I heated some olive oil in a pan and placed the sliced tomatoes in and then spread the bread crumbs on top.  At this point I think I added some garlic salt.

I covered it all and let the bread crumbs get really crispy and some of the tomatoes were browning.  Then I flipped everything over and did the same on the other side.  Then because I had the jar of parmesan still out, I sprinkled the rest of the cheese that was left (maybe 2 tablespoons?) on the tomatoes.

So delicious!

And tonight we are having the leftover peppers along with the leftover kale and potatoes from the night before with a couple of boxes of Annie's Mac and Cheese.  Gotta have a leftover night once a week! 

Zero Waste + Mediterranean Diet Cooking

I've been trying to reduce the amount of waste I and my family produce since last Lent.  It's an ongoing learning adventure!  I've also recently decided to transition to a Mediterranean Diet for my family's health reasons.  I've found this is a little bit of a tough combination.  For instance, if your recipes call for yogurt or feta cheese all the time, but both these things typically come in plastic packaging, what do I do?   I run into that sort of obstacle all the time.

To summarize what these two things mean:

Zero waste - means putting a great emphasis on the 5 R's in my daily living habits. 

Refuse - wasteful packaging and unnecessary purchases.

Reduce -  whatever waste you can - choose the product with the least packaging that can be recycled for instance.

Reuse - For example, if you buy something in a glass jar, you can then reuse it to store leftovers, thereby negating the necessity of buying plastic wrap.

Recycle - recycling isn't as great as it has been sold.  Only 13% of the millions of tons of plastic we produce each year actually gets downcycled (you can't recycle plastic the way you would glass or cardboard).  However, recycling is still vital for controlling the deluge of trash we produce every day.

Rot - composting is a vital part of this.  Everyone should be composting at least some of the food scraps they produce every day.

The Mediterranean Diet is:

Mostly plant based - fresh, whole, local produce

Uses olive oil mostly for healthy fat

Lots of fresh seafood - high in omega 3's

Meat and dairy are used more as accoutrements to the dish rather than the main thing - should be grass fed.

Incorporates more legumes, nuts and seeds than the typical American diet.

Whole grains emphasized.

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One thing I've found about combining these two elements, zero waste and Mediterranean, is that I have to really cook seasonally.  Instead of finding a recipe and then going to the store or CSA or farmer's market to get the ingredients, I need to go to the store, CSA or farmer's market with the limitations in mind that both the zero waste and Mediterranean Diet place upon me.  I purchase what I can, and then I come up with a recipe that fits what I've got.

So today for dinner I'm going to try stuffed peppers.

I will use up the rest of my rice, bought in bulk, probably at Whole Foods, though it could have come from Mom's Organic.

My CSA has lots of bell peppers this week.  This doesn't even include a number of other peppers we've already eaten this week, just as raw veggie slices to snack on.

I probably got the onion and garlic in the loose produce section at one of the grocery stores I frequent in my travels around the area.

The ground beef I got from Whole Foods.  It is wrapped in compostable butcher paper, so I consider that zero waste on my part.  I try to get whatever ground beef is on sale.  If it is more pricey I get 1 lb, if it is a little cheaper another week, I'll get two lbs.  This week it was pricier so I only got 1 lb.

Two things not included in this photo: the olive oil I'll saute the onion and garlic in - it comes in a glass bottle with a plastic pourer.  I can recycle the glass but the plastic pourer thing is both unnecessary and probably doomed for a landfill.  Also not included is the chicken stock I'll probably cook the rice in.  On Monday we had roast chicken.  The chicken is from a local farm, pasture raised, but it does come wrapped in a plastic bag which I rinse out and then throw away - also doomed to go to a landfill.  Yesterday I made chicken stock out of the carcass with some celery and carrots (bought without packaging).

To go along with the stuffed peppers, I think I'll make fried green tomatoes.  I got this box from my CSA.

Blurry photo!

I'll let you know how things turned out!

Camping and Recovery

Home away from home! It's supposed to be a treehouse but it is really a raised sleeping porch.

There are two things I really love about camping in the fall.  First, I love being outdoors all day long.  The weather isn't too hot, not too many bugs and it is perfectly comfortable to get up at 5:30 and drink coffee at the picnic table, hang out doing whatever you are doing, rest on the chaise lounge and read in the afternoon, prep and cook dinner over the camp stove, sit around the campfire talking and singing songs, hit the sleeping bag at around 9 or 9:30.  I think because I am too sedentary and stay indoors so much, there is something really exotic and exhilarating about that to me.  The other thing is food.  I have always liked eating al fresco but I really enjoy cooking outdoors too.  Which is crazy because I never go near my husband's grill at home.  He always does that cooking, but when I am at a campground, I seem to really enjoy cooking outdoors.

The lower campsite where most of the action happened.

The thing I don't like about camping are the lack of privacy and not really being able to sleep much in a sleeping bag.

Anyway, we had an adventurous weekend, with two girls cutting themselves just after the knife safety lesson and during their whittling project.  One had to go to urgent care and get two stitches and a tetanus shot.  I didn't take her though, one of the other leaders did.  She's the head leader and pretty much does everything for us.  And the next day we went hiking on the Appalachian Trail for 4 hours.  I kept protesting that the trail was marked as 'difficult' and I am not a hiker and in fact have plantar faciitus and arthritis.  But my co-leader assured me that we'd only go on the easy portion of the trail.  Hah, hah, hah!  It was easy for her, who has been hiking all her life!  For me it was treacherous.  I kept rolling my ankles and my knee started to ache.  She actually had a brace with her and I put that on my knee which made it better for a while.  I was so busy looking at the ground trying not to twist my ankle on all the rocks, that I barely took in the woods around me.  My hips began to ache also.  Did I mention we were in the mountains going up and down rocky inclines?  She was able to talk the whole time up and back!  It was a breeze for her.  I was really struggling, but one of the girls had a walking stick, so I used that and for the last hour, I swear that was the only thing that kept me from having to be airlifted off the trail.

Lunch break on the Appalachian Trail hike

I was so exhausted the next day and my leg hurt so much, I could barely move.  We left an hour earlier than planned and got home before noon.  I didn't make it to mass in the evening as I had planned.  I came down with some terrific stomach thing for about 4 painful hours that then vanished and then I slept for about 10 hours straight.  When I got up this morning, I felt like a new person!  I had so much energy and my leg didn't hurt.  Unfortunately, as the day progressed it did start to ache again.  But still!

View from my chaise lounge

My big hygge today was buying whole wheat sourdough bread from the bakery when it was fresh out of the oven and eating that for both breakfast and lunch!  I also joined a new CSA where I can also get milk and butter and other things besides produce.

And another big hygge was I planted a little herb garden from a kit I bought for myself!

Really blurry picture of my new herb garden.  The chives look pretty limp.

Cream Biscuits and Peach Jam

Of course, I don't have an actual photo but I made this cream biscuit recipe for Sunday breakfast and then broke out my peach jam that I made over at a friend's house.  She was teaching me how to can.  While I think the biscuits by themselves aren't particularly interesting, putting a dollop of homemade peach jam over them made a very tasty breakfast dish.    The recipe for the jam is delicious!

Stole this photo from the recipe site.

The Egg and I - Book 27

I first read The Egg and I decades ago.   I remembered it as being really funny and light.  I've been into this homesteading you tube thing so I thought, hey, I'll revisit the Egg and I.  And yes it does have funny parts but it did not improve on rereading for me.  In fact it made me a little sad.  The first time I read it I didn't know the marriage portrayed would break up in four years.  Now reading it I can see all the strain and the growing alienation.  I hadn't remembered that she had gotten married at age 18 to a man 13 years her senior.  Big red flags going off there.  And then the way she portrays the Indians or Native Americans made me feel so sad for them.  They had completely descended into the most sordid way of life.  And MacDonald doesn't portray the other country folk around her too much better.  I mean they are sordid and so stupid themselves.  She's married to a chicken farmer and she hates chickens.  She marries a guy who loves the rugged life but to her it is exhausting and unnecessary.  The men in the book are all louts who do their physical work and then have lots of time for drinking and lazing about.  While a woman's work is truly never done.  And then some of the stuff she does or says is so really dated now.  For instance she looks down on the country folk for breast feeding their children.  Or she leaves her toddler napping in their truck pinned in with a blanket and pins while she goes around to visit the county fair.  Apparently everybody did this but now, oh my goodness, you'd get slapped with a criminal charge of negligence. 

So I was disappointed in the book and a little bit in myself for being disappointed.  I still love Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle though.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Friday night Hygge

To end a very stressful week for both me and my husband, we suddenly remembered we had bought tickets way back in May to see Steve Martin and Martin Short at a nearby outdoor theater.  So first there was the stress of him getting home in time from work.  He did and in fact he got a short nap in (he'd worked until 3 in the morning the day before).  Then there was the stress of not being able to find the parking sticker that we paid extra for so we could park in the closer lot and that would allow us to eat at the small restaurant there.  Couldn't find it, so we decided we'd just eat pizza with the kids.  J went to get the pizza at the nearby really good pizza place, literally about a 12 minutes drive.  He was gone forever.  Time was ticking away.  Finally he called.  They had closed off the main street for some kind of event and he was absolutely trapped in traffic.  He finally had to turn around and drive the opposite direction and circle around a really long way to get home.  So we ate our pizza quickly and drove to the show.  Parked and walked (which wasn't bad at all; it's the getting out of the big parking lot after the show is over that's the problem.)  T

The show was hysterical.  It was a little bawdy but then all classical comedy is, starting with the Greeks and their phallic obsession!  But most of it was just funny.  And they had Steve Martin's back up bluegrass band there:  Steep Canyon Rangers.  I love them!  I've seen them in concert before.  The violinist practically stole the show!  So fantastic!!!!  Really amazing playing!  I can't put in enough exclamation points!!!!

So it was a fun time.  We walked back to the car and while sitting in the parking lot waiting the long wait to get out, noticed we were actually on empty.  So we turned off the engine and waited.  Finally we were able to slowly progress out.  There's a fuel monitor device which tells you how many miles left.  Just getting out of the parking lot it said 0 miles.  We couldn't even drive to a gas station if we wanted to.  Fortunately, we live close to this venue.  It's about a 20 minute walk but a 5 minute drive, so we very gingerly drove back home and pulled into the garage basically on gas fumes.  LOL.  So even the very end of the week was stressful too!

Anyway, leaving you with the song the Steep Canyon Rangers played that brought everyone to their feet!