an ent knits

local dinner and a recipe

I signed up for continuing the One Local Summer challenge as the September Eat Local Challenge with Farm to Philly.  This is last week's local meal: cornbread and a tofu stir-fry.

I adapted the cornbread recipe such that the only nonlocal ingredients were the salt, baking soda, and baking powder.  The approximate recipe is in the extended entry.  (The details on the tofu and bell pepper stuff are on flickr, if you're interested.)

one local summer

Is it the last week of this year's One Local Summer already?  I marked the last OLS meal I posted as week 8, and then I wasn't home last week for any meals except Thursday breakfast, so this must be week 10 [of 10]...  Anyway, this is quiche, which I'd been planning to make for weeks.  It's still hot during the day--not that I notice that, wrapped in my sweatshirt and shawl in front of the microscope--but it's been cooling off enough during the evenings that I didn't mind turning on the oven last night.  The red pepper, zucchini, scallions, and mushrooms are all from yesterday's co-op run, all marked as local (same with the milk, which isn't exactly pictured).  The eggs, cheese (Hillacres Pride dill), and flour are also local, but the oil (I am lazy: I make oil pie crusts) and various seasonings were not.

I liked it.  It could've maybe been a little more garlicky or spicy...but quiche is hard to completely ruin, and it makes excellent lunches.  I wound up making two quiches because my pile of veggies looked way bigger than one pie pan (I still had leftover chopped veggies), so I've got more than enough for lunches the rest of the week. 

one local summer, week 8

I bought tomatillos yesterday, intending to make some black bean-tomatillo soup while it was still cool out.  That didn't happen--it's hot again today--so I decided to play with some chili-like thing that wasn't soup.  This is what I came up with.  It's beef from Winter Harvest (not quite as overcooked as it looks in this picture, but I do have less of an idea of how to cook meat than how to cook tofu or seitan), onion from the farmers' market a couple of weeks ago, garlic and a red pepper from the co-op, the carrots and the long, skinny red pepper from North Star on Thursday, and a little more than half the quart of tomatillos I got from Urban Girls Produce yesterday morning, along with about a third of the hot pepper that came with them.  None of the spices were local except for the bit of lemon basil I tossed in.

I called my grandmother this morning (not the one to whom I'm giving that scarf--the other one) to wish her a happy birthday, and we talked a bit about her birthday party.  She had a couple of my aunts and uncles over for a pesto-making party, which sounded like it would be awesome.  Some day, when I have someplace to put a garden, I'll plant lots of basil and have a party like that... 

one local summer, week 7

It's hot food weather this evening!  That makes me really happy.  It's pleasant out, and now it's pleasant in, even without air conditioning.

This is a sauté of seitan, peppers, and zucchini (with onion and garlic), seasoned as vaguely-Indian.  Mmmm.  (The spices weren't local.)

one local summer, week 6

Last week's OLS meal was probably my simplest ever--it's been hot enough that all I wanted was a salad.

Fresh Tofu Inc. tofu, Mill Creek Farm cucumber, local zucchini from the co-op, green pepper from a farmers' market stand whose name I don't know, red pepper from North Star Orchard, maybe an eighth of a sweet onion that was marked local at the co-op. 

I had this for two meals, actually, once with a non-local dressing, once just plain, enjoying the veggie flavors.  (Yes, yes, I'm an omnivore and I like plain tofu.)

We're also now into my favorite time of year: apple season.   I'll certainly be happier when apple season includes weather that allows sleep without air conditioning, but  Summer Blaze and Ginger Gold apples help a lot with my heat tolerance.  (Now, if I could just find local peanut butter...)

random wednesday (again)

This week: knitting progress, fiber prep, and some food talk.

Knitting-wise, I've mostly been working on the hand-dyed, handspun Dulaan scarf in Not My Colors.  I've just about finished that skein of random bits that I overdyed, and now I need more semi-coordinating yarn. 

Would it be too awful to use Mardi Gras colors with this?  Oh, probably.  Yellowy green, perhaps?  This is the battle between the desire to have this scarf done, soon, with the thought that it should maybe stay pink/purple/blue-y...

***

I've seen a bunch of posts lately that talk about predrafting lots of fiber at once and then having it sit by the wheel, predrafted, until one actually spins it.  So I tried predrafting half of the yellow/green/blue [on white] roving I dyed at dye-day.  (The other longitudinal half will go on the other bobbin and isn't drafted at all yet.)

It's all fluffy and pretty, and I definitely see the appeal.  I think it'd work better, though, if I had a catproofable room for my wheel--I usually like to draft only a couple of yards ahead, so I can balance my unspun fiber on top of my wheel when I stop spinning.  This looks like it'd be way too tempting for Mel...so it's on top of a high bookcase. 

***

I've noticed over the last week or so that I am no longer okay with pectin in my breakfast yogurt.  (The occasional single-serving flavored yogurt is different.)  I've been eating Seven Stars lowfat plain (or lowfat maple) for months...  It's my favorite yogurt, and it's local, which is extra-great.  And, since I've been using my not-really-jelled blueberry jam from a couple of weeks ago as yogurt-topping, the un-stabilized yogurt is easier to stir things into.  That goes for the granola, too.  (This has really only come up because the Seven Stars lowfat plain has been out of stock the last several times I've looked for it.)   Seriously, though, pectin belongs in jams so they'll stay in PBJ sandwiches, but it doesn't need to be in my yogurt.

local dinner and a sock

After two weeks of life exploding and preventing me from participating in One Local Summer, I finally pulled together a completely-local dinner last night:

This is salad mix under sautéed tofu, purple beans, purple pepper, zucchini, yellow squash, and mushrooms, all either acquired directly from local farmers at the farmers' market or labelled "local" at the co-op.  Non-local ingredients: olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, basil, parsley (imported from my dad's CSA).  It was pretty mild, but that meant that the flavors of the veggies came through.

This is the beginning of a sock I'm knitting out of my handspun.  I am possibly unreasonably excited about knitting socks with handspun.  (I'm also happy about knitting socks on a 3 and a 4 instead of a 2.5 and a 2.75mm needle.)

random wednesday

I've been reading and working and rereading, without much fibery happening, so you get pictures of other things today.

These are cranberry-spice muffins that I made last night, after discovering that I didn't have enough nuts for granola.  (Approximate recipe in the extended entry.)

And these are flowers from along my walk to work.  (I think they're dahlias.  Please correct me if you know they're not.)

one local summer: week two

Okay, this week's OLS meal is more like "real" food.

This is whole wheat linguine with ground beef, kale, zucchini, yellow squash, garlic scapes, fresh mozzarella, and lemon basil.  (Also included are an onion and olive oil, salt, pepper, and paprika.)

[This is about half of the leftovers, in sunlight instead of crappy indoor late-night lighting.]

as promised

As promised, I finished something over the weekend.  It just wasn't a fibery object.  And, as it turns out, the deadline got pushed back 'til tomorrow, so I may spiff it up a bit. 

Anyway, this is my FO of the weekend, a coffee-walnut torte adapted from this recipe on epicurious:

(It currently has a coffee glaze dribbled over the top; I think I'm going to do something buttercream-like when I get home.)  It's not incredibly pretty, but it smells wonderful, and the bit of cake that was stuck to the side of the springform pan was quite tasty.  (But it did inspire me to have tea (green with rose and lavender) this morning instead of coffee, just for a change.  It was interesting to walk to work carrying both the torte and my tea, so I smelled both tea and coffee the whole way.)

I didn't finish anything fibery this weekend, but I did do some knitting:

This block of sparkly cabled yarn will be incorporated into the green blanket.

This garter-stitch rectangle of kool-aid dyed wool was originally intended as a sideways hat for Dulaan (really, it was intended as concert knitting a couple of weeks ago) but may end up as a scarf for next year's Dulaan, since I'm not sure I have anything to go with it as a hat, and it should be easier to fudge for a scarf.

The Tess's yarn sock that I've been working on for a couple of months has been stalled for a while, as I'm both bored with 3x3 ribbing and afraid of running out of yarn while away from the rest of my knitting.  I should be able to finish it sometime soon, though.

I also knit a few rows on the Peacock Feather Shawl, but it doesn't look all that different from last time.  I spent more of my aware-time this weekend either baking (as seen above) or singing--a couple of friends of mine organized a big group of people to get together and sing madrigals and Bach chorales and Other Stuff, and it was incredibly fun.  I hadn't sung "real" alto parts in a couple of years, so my voice got pretty tired, but it was wonderful all the same.