Summer Days

So for all of May this was the weather: 75ish, rains every four hours. This has been replaced with Summer. Our goal for the summer is to be outside as much as possible and to enjoy the weather. Yesterday we did a pretty good job of it.

We began our day by going to the Kensington Farmers' Market with friends and neighbors Hannah & Mel.

In short, Kensington is pretty cute. It has a nice little downtown that the downtown with a band sponsored by the historical playing bluegrass and swing on the brick sidewalk. The farmer's market has a lot: farm fresh meat, fresh seafood, artisan cheese, bread, flowers, baked goods etc. However, its weirdly short on produce, which is problematic...

Well stocked on cheese and flowers we rolled over to nearby Downtown Silver Spring (tangent - Maryland is the least-incorporated state in the Union and therefore uses census desiganted areas and counties to define space. So while we live in Silver Spring, the portion of Silver Spring we are going to from out apartment is 20 minutes away and involves going through an area called Wheaton. The census designated area of Silver Spring wraps around Wheaton like a big Pacman trying to eat a dot.)

The Downtown Silver Spring market is about three times bigger than the Kensington Market and is full or produce. It also has a large flee market section which has more than one used book vendor. Note to self - buy books used, save big.

In any case, this one had the produce we were seeking. Back to home...

Summer thing number two - the pool. Our apartment has a decent sized pool. It's rarely crowded and given the family demographics of our complex the deep end is almost always empty. It is amazing how much a quick dip can cool you down for the rest of the day. Our only complaint has the been the music selection. They tend to play a local radio station called HOT 99.5 which plays all of the trashiest pop. But not only is it the trashiest of pop, but apparently they only have one CD on repeat. So its the same 12 songs over and over. I'm assuming that the CD is so HOT that they have to leave it in the player to go over and over. In any case it all melts into the background pool noise of happy kids.

Last summer thing - just being outside. We have a balcony that's about 6 by 10. We've worked to make it more comfortable with flowers, a table, chairs, and a rug that really ties it together. It only took us three years to have a basil plant that didn't die in the first three days. This year's addition is solar-powered twinkle lights in the shape of the sun. In all it's a good space for a drink and a book after work. But on this evening it was cake, drinks, and twilight (not the book) for five people after dinner. Did you know that the bugs are out now too? Go citronella go!

So summer is off to a good start. Hopefully get some cooler days to go running or cycling as part of hopeful triathlon training.

Last random thing - can we please get some other national news story between Palin & Wiener? So done.

So maybe we'll start posting again...

I think its been a year since we posted. I think it probably died out with my University of Wisconsin Synchronous Machines summer class last year. It was a wonderful class taught by a man who believed that he should teach concepts but give detailed homeworks that were not aided by lectures. You were supposed to research how to do the problem or "figure it out". So in other words last summer I compressed all my summer fun into three weekends and spent the rest of my time in the least fun book in our home.

Having learned my lesson, I signed up for an ethics class this summer. Which I already finished.

I recently bought a bike and its a huge improvement over my last biking experience. My last bike was a hand me down that came in three speeds: pedaling sitting down, pedaling sitting down, and reattaching the chain to the gear on the side of the road because I foolishly attempted to try to change gears. Also my knees no longer hurt when I pedal since the bike is correctly sized for me. I've learned that cycling is actually fun. I also see lots of picturesque nature scenes when exercising. Seriously, a line of 6 turtles sitting a log in a lake. Just like in books!

I am up to running 4-5 miles which burns about 500-700 calories. There seems to a roughly 2/5ths conversion of distance and calories between running and biking. So far I've been doing about 10 mile bike rides, which is great since all of the places I want to bike are about 5 miles away. Liz is about to start a Monday-Thursday 6PM-10PM class so its nice to have a "second car".

So once Liz is done with her summer class we are focused on making up for lost time from last Summer. Here are some of our hopes for the summer:

• Overnight at the beach (spend more time at the beach than driving)
• Kayak/boat (to prepare for our big trip to Belize)
• BBQ ( a lot)
• Use the pool a lot (exercise without sweating)
• Go the farmers market a lot
• Camp (and actually sleep)

Or at the very least use my TV to play video games rather than watching the interaction between exciter fields and reactive power. Off to summer...

- Patrick

One big catch up post

So compressed summer classes are fantastically time consuming. All of the time that we would do basic things like watch TV, leave the house, blog post, or clean got sucked into academics instead. But now the classes are over, except getting final grades, so it's time for one big catch up post. Here goes...

Here is our homemade pizza. Just dough (from the store), sauce, cheese, fresh basil.

Our usual grocery store doesn't carry premade dough, so we shortcut other nights by using whole wheat naan as our pizza base. This is a similar version with pureed spinach and goat cheese.

This is recipe is from my friend, Danny. We slice up our Yukon Gold potatoes from the CSA into discs, dip them in a balsamic vinegar and olive oil mix, then dip them in a flour and fresh grated Parmesan mix before baking in a 425 degree oven until done (about 20-30 minutes).

Look food! Since we made these first during the World Cup, we call them world cup fries. They are good with a balsamic vinegar or ketchup dip, or naked.

Here is a haul from a recent week of our CSA. Look at the enormous zuke! The yellow softball looking thing is a lemon cucumber. We love our mismatched, delicious, fresh eggs.

Here is an amazing egg casserole Liz made to use up some of our CSA eggs. It has a dozen eggs, red pepper, CSA onion and garlic, cheese, and a blend of cumin, cayenne pepper, and kosher salt in it. We top it with our homemade guac.

Here are the ingriendts for the swiss chard pesto we made before basil started coming in the CSA.

... and the result. Right now we make fresh pesto every week.

This has quinoa, citrus, avocado, raisins, and spices in it. Be careful to not too much citrus in.

Here is a farmers' market insipred creation. We took pattypan squash and sliced them into discs and made little pizzas out of them. So a little sauce, cheese, and leaf of basil. We do seem to have tendency to slice things into discs and make pizza out of them...

Onto dessert... Here is Liz's amazing Oero cheesecake cupcakes. They are from the Martha Stewart cupcake book and are amazing.

And one of Liz's angel food cakes. This is also fabulous.

Springtime 2010

So we had a lot going on this year, but we had a lot of good memories. With the coming of spring, the snow depths finally gone, we were able to open up the windows and the doors. One truism we've found in life is that you more effort you put into something, generally the more you get out of it. One such something for us was the balcony. This year we went all out (for our little space) in terms of plants and also tried to make it more room with little touches like an outdoor rug. It turned out really well, and we've used it a lot more this year than in the past. Here are some pics from one spring day:

View from the corner of the balcony.

View from inside - before we got things hung up.

Our strawberries!

Unfortunately, at one point since this picture was taken we were gone for 5 days, and the strawberry plants seem to have taken in personally. While they haven't died, they refuse to bear fruit. But hope is still out that the everbrearing plant will bear fruit, but we will see. Otherwise the tomato plants and sage are still going strong, but of course the basil is dead. We're not sure what to do with sage, but we have lots of it. I need to more research on what do with it - expect posts about sage in the future.

In other news, a few weeks ago we had my immediate family over for my Mom's birthday. From hosting a few of these gatherings, we've learned to try to not be overly ambitious in trying new recipes when we have large groups over as having we normally have to clean the whole apartment too. But we did try out potato slab pie (sorry no picture), which was a hit. Everybody fit in the apartment and had a good time:

And Liz made two kinds of cupcakes. One was lemon cupcakes with lemon custard inside and pink lemonade mini-cupcakes.

We've also discovered so much about our area this year. Liz and I keep looking at each other wondering where all of our time went last year before remembering we were planning a wedding. We've been on our balcony more, we joined a gym for a bit, now we go running on trails near the house (yes, Liz runs), and we have discovered a lot of new places.

More recipe posts coming soon!

Well, it's been a long time

So where do we begin? It's been nearly three months since our last blog post.

Here are the highlights:

• Liz is going back to school
• Liz has her license
• I finished another graduate class
• Farmers market season began
• We cooked but didn't post about it

Over the course of the next few weeks we'll post about some of the things we cooked over the past few months. Here is one, I made scrambled eggs with chives over asparagus. To the recipe!

Ingredients:

• 1 pound thin asparagus
• 4 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons of heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon thinly sliced fresh chives (from our window boxes)

To begin, set oven to warm. Then hold a asparagus spear in both hands, bend it gently; it will break naturally at the point at which the spear becomes tough. Repeat with remaining spears. Set the tender ends aside with all the tips pointing in the same direction; discarding the tough ends.

In a small bowl, beat eggs and cream together with a fork. Make sure to "measure twice, cut once" on adding the liquids so you don't waste 4 eggs like I did.

In a large skillet, bring an inch of water to a boil over high heat. Add asparagus, keeping all the tips pointing in the same direction. Boil until just tender, about 2 minutes. Lift asparagus out with tongs and transfer to a clean dish towel. Pat dry. Drain skillet, return the asparagus to the skillet and toss gently with 1 tablespoon of butter and salt to taste, taking care to keep the tips pointed in the same direction (I never figured out why they care about this so much). Transfer

asparagus to serving platter and place in oven to keep warm.

The directions call for making the eggs using a double boiler, which we don't have, so I just made scrambled eggs as I would normally with the chives mixed in. The directions say you should put the eggs over the asparagus just as they set. I just finished them and spooned them over the warmed asparagus.

This one is out of the book "Fresh From the Farmers' Market". The book is very useful, it outlines how to pick the best of different kinds of food and how to store them. For example, strawberries shouldn't be stored in the containers they come from in the store. They want to be stored in an airtight and dry container. So I now move the strawberries into a Tupperware with paper towels when I get home and they last longer.

More posts soon we hope!

Sweet Potato Soup

Tonight I made something that was outright good. Not that the other things weren't good, but this was "I want to share with this other people RIGHT NOW" good.

Here are the ingredients (link to full recipe):

• Olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 2-inch chunk fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced - about 1/4 cup
• 3 large sweet potatoes, about 2 1/2 pounds - peeled and cubed
• 3 tablespoons light miso
• 4 cups chicken or vegetable broth, or water
• 1 cup whole milk
• Salt and pepper

First prepping the ingredients:

Now that I had all of our ingredients ready to go, I sauted the onion and ginger in olive oil until the red onion is nearly translucent. We didn't have fresh ginger so I used 1 tsp of ground ginger instead. So at this point I'm fying onion, ginger, and garlic - so the kitchen is very aromatic.

And now the sweet potatoes and miso:

I sauted it all a little longer and then added 4 cups of vegetable broth and let it simmer for 25 minutes.

Okay, now one DVR Simpsons episode later, it's time for the fun part. This is my second time making soup and my second time using the immersion blender. Look at it go... (Liz helped)

Now to just mix in 1 cup whole milk and some salt & pepper and we have soup!

I've never had miso before to my knowledge, but I'm guessing that is flavor that is pulling this all together and making it awesome. The garlic provides a nice background flavor and the onion has occasional but somewhat understated presence. It is also filling but pretty much guilt free as the only fatty ingredient in the 2 quarts of soup is the 1 cup of whole milk. It also has a lightly spicy aftertaste.

Liz's quote says it all "this is so good that I'm not missing that we don't have bread".

Pie!

I made pie! This is a chocolate peanut butter pie from Good Eats. In the episode this recipe is from Alton Brown roasts his own peanuts, makes them into peanut butter and then uses then in the pie. That was a little ambitious for me so I used the home-style peanut butter from the deli section at the grocery store.

Ingredients

6 1/2 ounces chocolate wafers
1 tablespoon sugar
5 ounces unsalted butter room temperature, divided
3 ounces powdered sugar, approximately 3/4 cup
12 ounces of "homemade" peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 ounces good quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon heavy cream

First preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. I always forget to do this ahead of time.

In the food processor, combine the cookies and sugar. Process until the wafers are fine crumbs.

Melt the first 3 oz of butter in microwave and drizzle into the crumb mixture. Use the pulse button to mix it so that the butter doesn't pool at the bottom. Pour the mixture into the pie pan and press it into place. I used my fingers and a rubber spatula. Bake for ten minutes.

While the crust is cooling put the peanut butter and the last 2 oz of butter in the food processor. Process for 1 minute. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and process for another 1 1/2 minutes. It totally changes texture as the peanut bits get smaller and more air gets into the mixture.

Dump it into the pie pan.

Carefully spread the mixture into the pie shell and then bake for 10 minutes.

While the pie is cooling make the ganache to go on top. The recipe calls for chopped chocolate but I used chocolate chips because that's what I had on hand.

Place the heavy cream into a heat-proof bowl and microwave on high. I over did mine a little. Next time I pay closer attention. Pour the chocolate into the bowl and let it sit for 2 minutes. I actually timed it so I wouldn't cheat. Mix it up with a spoon. It takes a while to combine.

Pour the topping over the pie and spread with the back of a spoon. It says to chill for 90 minutes but we only waited thirty minutes. Yum! I'll definitely do this one again.