Also we tested out a recipe tonight that we will be making for our new parent friends this weekend: chicken, leek and apple soup, with apple juice (we used applesauce since we have that) and apple cider vinegar as well as chunks of apple. It was VERY tasty. I think I need to start putting a dollop of vinegar in soups and other things.

And then, while watching streaming Iron Chef America (scroll down for goodness), I was overwhelmed with the need to bake brownies. I had to search around a bit to find a recipe for brownies from scratch that had only 2 eggs, since that’s all I could spare, but soon enough I found this 101cookbooks forum post with the following recipe at my preferred level of recipe specificity:

The recipe:

Melt 1 stick of butter – add 1/2 c cocoa, 1 cup sugar and mix. Add 2 egss 1 at a time- mix – add vanilla and walnuts if you like. Add 1/2 cup of flour and stir to combine. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 25 minutes. Batter fits in a 8″ square pan.
ENJOY!

I added lots of chocolate chips and also some chopped up 57% chocolate bar that I found in the cupboard. Very successful thick, rich, fudgy brownies. Nom.

So I was deposited at the market, which is always a good deal, even when the market is closed … which it turned out not to be! I was lured in by the buckets of tulips, and found that the tulip vendor was still open, and also found that the pre-assembled bouquets were $4 each, instead of the usual $10. Score two tulip bouquets for Lauren!
The next surprisingly-open place was my favorite veggie stand, Sosio’s, who had local asparagus and spring onions. Plus peaches, which smelled so good I couldn’t resist getting one ripe enough to eat tomorrow. (I have found it to be very valuable to tell the produce chooser when you will be eating your fruits; it helps her to pick good ripenesses, such that you have one good fruit for juicy eating tonight, and one for each of you for lunch tomorrow, and more for later this week … when left to my own devices, I get all the ripest ones and most start to go bad before I can eat them.)

Dinner, then, was grilled balsamic-and-olive-oil soaked spring onions and fresh asparagus, with steak from our pals at Skagit River Ranch. I am so happy about grilling season, but am freaking THRILLED about asparagus season, and the reminder that it is just the beginning of delicious food time.

Man, food is awesome.

(cross-posted to Dropstone Farms blog!)

I had been perusing Apartment Therapy: Kitchen, as I tend to do when it comes into my RSS reader, and this recipe for calzones caught my eye. For some reason I felt like a make-your-own-pizza-ish-thing party was very high school, but it also sounded fun — like very little else in high school, really — so I was decided.

We headed in to Seattle on Saturday, to the U-District Farmers’ Market, and picked up some sausage from Sea Breeze Farm on Vashon, who we love, and some mozzarella from a cheese vendor whose name I don’t know, and some fresh arugula from someone else, and some garlic from someone else. And some tulips, because I am so happy for spring. Yay.

(Sunday morning to mid-afternoon was spent working hard in the garden; we are both sore now. I dug up ~3 inches of the floor of the chicken coop, wiped down all surfaces with a 3:1 water/vinegar solution, laid down chicken wire, and re-inserted the old dirt. We’ll cover with straw and pine shavings when the chicks move in. Garth moved several square yards of compost from the delivered pile to the garden area, and spread it around, and also put up a deer fence. So we got to cross two big things off our list.)

Washed up after yardwork, I sautéed up some leeks and some mushrooms from our CSA. Toasted some pine nuts. Blanched some arugula, chopped some basil (early! from the CSA) tossed it in the food processor with pine nuts and some parmesan and garlic. Roasted some small-cut broccoli and some garlic cloves. Made some tomato sauce (from canned, not ours, unfortunately). Made some ricotta, using Meyer lemon juice, which didn’t curdle it like I expected; we theorized it was due to lower acidity in the juice (not sure if that’s true) so added a few glugs of white balsamic vinegar. Still resulted in deliciousness. All of the above worked well in calzoni (?), in various combinations.

The leftovers from the fun mix-and-match dinner became tonight’s frittata
, with leftover broccoli, sausage, ricotta, and pesto. I also used the whey from making the ricotta instead of milk in the egg mixture. Topped with some pesto and pine nuts, and served with some delicious local greens that G. found at the grocery store.

——–

In other news, I am searching for some good summer shoes. I know that I am searching for good summer shoes because I have been staring at, and evaluating, everyone else’s footwear. I see a lot of people on the ferry and the bus every day, and they are people with similar needs to mine, so I consider them a good source of shoe inspiration. Currently I wear red Dansko clogs, which I like because they are comfy, and easy, and I don’t have to think about them — I just put on the shoes as I am going out the door, and they go with whatever. And they are supportive of my poor broken feet, which I have not discussed here yet. But I cannot do the clogs and above-the-knee skirts look — some people can, but I cannot — so I needs something that fills the same niche of comfy, all-purpose, easy, good for broken feet, allows my orthotic inserts, but goes with my skirts: lighter colored, not clunky, little or no heel. I got these green cute sporty things that will go with one skirt that I love dearly, but with which I will not be comfortable wearing red, which is approx 33% of my wardrobe. I can augment the green shoes with some lighter-colored (pink? white? tan? … ?) simple sneakers, like Keds or similar, but will they support my broken feet? And how do I find them? And will they go with my favorite red skirt/shirt/other shirt/other other shirt/sweater/other sweater?

Wow, shoe angst is boring.

So we did outside chores — we are spreading the 10 cubic yards of compost that was delivered last weekend, and I am going to start preparing the chicken coop, and we need to start putting up the deer fence (but it started raining really hard). And there are inside chores — the chickens’ bucket needed to be expanded, and grow lights needed put up, and there is laundry and dishes as usual. And there is knitting and video games to play.

And I am cooking! We are going to G’s mom’s for dinner — his stepdad’s daughter & her kids are in town from Hawaii — and I am bringing this citrus parmesan farro salad. I was going to make buttermilk biscuits and/or sweet potato biscuits from Mark Bittman, but they have enough bread already. Now I have to find something else do with ~6 large-ish sweet potatoes. Anyone?

We had cancelled our veggie box over the summer, due to farmer’s markets and our own garden, but then we had this awkwardly-timed move. We moved in much too late to plant any fall crops at all, and too late for much of anything that is supposed to over-winter, except garlic, which we planted the first weekend we were here. So we restarted the veggie box, even though they keep wanting to send us totally non-winter things like avocados and bananas. It’s time for KALE, people. Kale, and broccoli, and cauliflower, and more kale.

And squash! Which was tonight’s dinner:

with steak from my pals at Skagit River Ranch. I started from a recipe for the squash, but modified it thusly:

• Combine oil and butter in a saucepan to melt the butter. Add some dried ground thyme and some crushed garlic cloves to this, which will add garlic flavor as the fats heat.
• Drizzle the leftover fats (and garlic) over the rings before putting in the oven.

Very tasty. My mom would be proud. I’ve come a long way since the time I held a bite of squash in my mouth for so long that it made me gag and I had to spit it out in the toilet, and she thought I had actually thrown it up and she never made me eat squash again. Now I am planning to grow several different varieties!

PS My house is awesome!!!

(Song: “Flat-chested Girl from Maynardville,” Bobby Bare Jr.)