A Return... Not Necessarily Triumphant

I've been absent for awhile.  And I don't just mean since my last blog post, but since I was really here, engaged, inspired.  There have been a lot of things going on: busyness at work, school taking my time, and a little bit of soul crushing depression.  But I would be passing the buck if I blamed my absence on any of those things.  No, none of that is the problem.  Something has been missing.  Inspiration.  What am I here to say?

I watch a lot of Food Network, and right now the big show is Next Food Network Star.  Each time I sit down to write, I hear Alton Brown's voice in my head asking "What is your POV?"

Great question, voices inside my head.  What is my Point of View?  What makes me special?  What do I have to offer?  Why should you read my blog over any of the other thousands of food blog choices that you have available to you?  Yeah, I'm a locavore, but frankly that's less interesting to me than those people who make everything out of bacon.  I mean, being a locavore is awesome, but I can't keep saying it over and over without getting preachy and/or boring.  I thought, for a few weeks there, that I was going to buy a farm.  That would have been fun.  Then "Home Grown, Home Made" could have been more than just a good tag line.  But, after a faulty basement to snap me back into reality, and some serious conversation, I think I've got other things I need to do before a farm can happen.

So, what do I have?  What is my Point of View?

The answer actually came to me in my other, other job.  When I'm not here, and when I'm not at my "real" job, and when I'm not in school, I'm a teacher.  And I'm a really good teacher.  But that's not my POV either.  Here's what happened:

I was teaching a class on how to be a successful college student, and it was made very clear to me that I couldn't let the students go early because they needed so many hours in the classrom for accreditation.  This was my first time teaching the course, and I guess I underestimated how long things would take, because, on the last day, there were two full hours and absolutely no content left.

And that was when it hit me: I'm a good teacher, I'm a good cook, I'm a good gardener, I'm a good advocate.

But I'm an excellent bull-shitter.

You want to talk about nothing?  I'll talk to you about nothing.  You want to talk about something I know nothing about?  I'll talk to you about that too.  One thing that annoys my husband about me is that I will answer questions that I don't know the answer to.  Not big important questions, not meaning of life questions, or which exit do I take, or is this fish still good questions, but the type of question that you can usually just reason your way through:

Him: Where did you learn that?
Me: I didn't.  But it makes sense, right?

He's actually taking to asking me: "Is that true, or are you just assuming?"  9 out of 10 times I'm assuming, but 7 of those 9 times I'm also right.

Bullshitting, and being able to make (marginally accurate) shit up, is a fairly useful skill to have.  Not all the time, of course, and I hope that I'm not coming off as an enormous d-bag right now.  I'm not talking about the kind of BSing that belittles people, hurts their feelings, or gets someone hurt.  I'm just talking about a little mental improvisation.  For instance, back to my classroom example, I played Joss Whedon's Weslean University commencement address and, in the 13 minutes that it played, I figured out how it related to the class.

BSing is also a very important skill to have in the kitchen.

When people tell me that they don't cook, it's often because it's too expensive.  This makes almost no sense to me - eating out is what's expensive.  It was this Oatmeal comic that helped push me, again, towards finding this particular POV.  If you're not reading The Oatmeal, you probably should be.

Cooking is absolutely expensive if that's how you do it - if you  go out and buy the  ten or more expensive ingredients you need for that one recipe, in much greater quantities than you need, and then let the remainder sit in your refrigerator or on your shelf until they rot. Statistics say that Americans throw out half of the food they come in contact with, and that the average family of four throws away $2275 each year in wasted food. 

So you've basically got three choices: eat out every meal, figure out how to use up what you've got left after making your recipe, or figure out how to make that recipe with what you've already got. 

And that, my friends, is my new POV.  Not the first, the second two!  How to BS your refrigerator to make what you want and use what you've got.  Because, if you can do that, cooking becomes a lot easier, a lot cheaper, and eating locally is just a matter of where you shop. 

Here's a recipe that I BSed a few months ago, and that I promised a friend I would post for him. I had three goals in this recipe:

-use up as much in my freezer as possible,

- get as many vegetables on the dinner table as possible (which, honestly, is the hardest part of being a WI locavore in the winter and early spring), and 

-serve beets to people who I suspected didn't eat beets because I'm kind of an ass like that; I think making people eat and like a stereotypically hated food is fun. 

My favorite part about this was that it died the pasta pink.
And everything is better pink!

Super Beet Pasta

• 1 lb pasta (your choice of what kind. Preferably something textured like rotini or bow-tie, but a spaghetti, fettuccine, etc would also work.)

• 2 lb beets, roasted (I used beets that I had roasted and frozen in the fall. You could really use any kind of vegetable you wanted here, or a combination I vegetables, but that would mean changing the name. Cook the vegetables first to your preferred doneness. You'll be cooking the final pasta just briefly, so of it's something you don't want to overcook you may want to under-cook it slightly. )

• 8 oz beet greens (I again used frozen greens here. You could really use any type of hardy green here, but I was going for a theme with the original recipe.)

• 1/2 cup beet green pesto (or any kind of pesto you want. If you want to make beet green pesto, use my base pesto recipe here and substitute beet greens for the basil. 

• 1 cup shredded Parmesan or Romano cheese (or whatever kind of cheese you like in your pasta)

• Salt and pepper as needed

Cook the pasta according to package directions until it is just under-done. Drain and rinse.

While the pasta is cooking, thinly slice the beet greens and then drop them in boiling water for about a minute. Drain, then transfer to a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process. (Because I was using frozen greens, which were already cooked, I skipped this step and just sliced the greens thinly.). Cut the beets into bite sized cubes. Combine pasta, beets, greens, pesto, and 1/2 of cheese and toss until well combined. Top with remaining cheese and bake in a 375 degree oven until heated through and cheese is melty. 

There's not a lot to this dish, so it's flavor really depends on what you're putting into it. Make sure the pasta water is well salted, and that the pesto is flavorful and well balanced. Taste it before it goes into the oven, and add salt and pepper as needed. Make sure you're taking the saltiness of your cheese into account when you're tasting. 

As with most pasta, you can really add anything you want to this. Mushrooms would be a nice addition if you had some. You could also add a splash of heavy cream, or some tomato sauce. 

So that's it. Pasta is pretty easy to BS, which is why you'll see it so often on chopped. I love comments, so if you have any questions please ask them below. 

Spring?

This is, in all honesty, the fifth "spring has finally arrived in Wisconsin" post that I have attempted.  I'm a little hesitant to try writing one again.  The last four were typed, ready to go, just needing a few finishing touches in the morning...  and in the morning it was snowing.  Snowing a lot.  Not just in the air snowing, either.  Actual sticking to the ground snowing.

And I just don't have time for that shit.

But, I think we might finally be safe.  It was nice all weekend, and the 10 day forecast doesn't show it dropping any lower than 40 at night.  I'm actually letting the seeds sit out overnight tonight.  I spent all day Sunday in the garden, and I've got most of my seeds planted.

There is something about planting seeds that speaks to me like very little else.  They're like magic.  Seeds, compost, maybe making bread...  All three feel a little bit like making something about what appears to be almost nothing.  (In reality, though, I recognize that it's not almost nothing, mostly because I have a compulsive seed buying problem.  I tried really hard not to spend any money on seeds this year, and I bought at least 15 packages.  I don't have room for 15 kinds of produce in my garden...  I did a Google search on "seed buying compulsion" and there's no official term that I can find in the first page of results, but I did learn that brain scans on squirrels show activity in the same areas of the brain as human hoarders... so there's that.)  I've got my balcony mostly planned out, although there's probably more planned to go out there than can fit.  I'm thinking this year I will plant my squashes and pumpkins on the balcony and let them vine onto the railings.  Last year they went up and over the fence into the neighbor's yard and I had to climb up and over to get them.  I got bruises on my arms and ribs, and scrapes up and down my arms, and this year they have a new rottweiler puppy over there, so I'm pretty sure that's a terrible plan.  We'll see if pumpkins story high fair any better.

We are currently in the final week of the worst three weeks in the WI locavore year, and my mind has turned very strongly to fresh food.  We are in the weeks after the Winter Farmer's Market ends, and before the West Allis Farmer's Market begins, where I'm left with what I've got canned and frozen, and the lettuce and celery root that they're selling at Outpost.  I suppose if you lived in Madison you'd be fine... their farmer's market started last week.  Stupid jerks in Madison thinking they're so fancy.

Let me take a quick digression to say that most of my interest in growing food (and slight but certainly not TV show worthy compulsive seed buying tendencies...) comes from being scarred as a child by The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  For those of you who memorize kids books, that's the one where it snows for like five years and Laura and Mary almost walk out into the prairie because they can't see, and everyone almost starves to death before Pa goes and steals the seed wheat from in between Almanzon Wilder's walls, where he hid it, so Ma can make some super crappy bread out of it.

Moral of the story - hide some damn seed in between your walls or you will starve to death!!!

Now, I have heard some question about whether or not all the stories in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books are true.  I will acknowledge, perhaps, that this may have not actually happened, and, perhaps, that I will not starve to death if I don't hide seed between my walls.  I don't think you can prove it didn't happen, and the number one thing keeping me from hiding seeds in my walls is the fact that I'm pretty sure squirrels already live in there - and any type of grain would probably increase that problem.  But I can imagine, at this time of year, when nothing has started to grow and the canned foods are starting to run low, being in a situation where one could eat just about anything.  If there was no grocery store, today would be the day that I would start looking longingly about the yard for anything I could possibly put into my belly.

And there we have it, my friends, is how this random nonsense will transition into my annual "eat dandelions" post.  

I've said it before, dandelions are delicious.  They are just starting to come up in my yard, so I have not had the opportunity to make any recipes with them.  This is a good thing, because the dandelion season is very short!  I'm giving you the recipes now, so you can start planning your meals ahead of time.  In a week or so, the dandelions will be up and leafy, but not yet blooming.  That's when you want to get them.  Once they start to bloom, the leafs get bitter and far less delicious.  You can, of course, eat the flowers as well.

I hear too many complaints from my friends that eating locally/organic/healthy is too expensive.  To that I say, make some dandelions or don't talk to me about it anymore.  You want to complain about the prices of organic food, then eat the free stuff.  It doesn't even take that much energy.  Go out to your yard, and pull up some weeds.  You're probably going to do it anyway, so you might as well eat them.  (Okay, if you don't have a yard, you're off the hook.  I don't want you eating any lawn that you don't know what kind of pesticides have been sprayed on.  If you would like to come over to my yard and weed/eat, you are more than welcome!)  I saw dandelion greens at Whole Foods this weekend for $5.99 a bunch. That's expensive.  We're in a recession here, people... I think.  Is that over yet?  Anyway, times are tough, and I'm sure each person reading this has, at one point in the past week, thought "gee, I should probably save some money somehow."  Well save money by not buying food and eating the food that's there and has always been there.  Try it this year.  I dare you!  I think you might actually like it.  Let me know!

You can use dandelion leaves anywhere you would use any other bitter green - in place of kale, or maybe spinach (especially if the greens are very young.)  They're great in a salad or on a sandwich in place of salad.  

Here are a few of my previous dandelion recipes.

This year, I'm thinking about making dandelion jelly.  I'll report back on that one.

Happy spring!  Enjoy it while it lasts.  Spring is very short lived in Wisconsin!