Geek Salad

Some of my meat-space friends know I don't always have an appetite.
I love to taste your food, but I can't get too much of it in my mouth without feeling... full. Queasy. Unwanting to eat.
I was lying in bed yesterday, with the New York Times and a big glass of buttermilk. I love, love, buttermilk. Cranky brings me a glass every morning because he wants me to get enough nutrients, and he knows I can't always feel enthusiastic about supper.
I turned to him and said, "Isn't it neat that we wake up so happy together?"
And then in about half an hour, I felt sick.
It was a usual pattern. My dairy "breakfast," unwanted lunch, and unwanted dinner.
I think I'm not a total dumbass, but it took me years to get to this. I whimpered to myself: "Why do I wake up feeling good, and then I drink a glass of buttermilk — what's the harm? — and start feeling bad."
BOINK! BINGO! BREAKTHROUGH!
The milk!
I looked up lactose intolerance symptoms on the Internet, seriously expecting not to fit the profile at all. It would be too easy, and nothing is ever too easy.
But. I fit the profile, even though I'm a white person of Northern European extraction. We don't GET lactose intolerance. Except a few of us do. And more, as we age...
Jeepers.
OK, disclaimer. I have not been checked out by a physician on this matter. I took things into my own hands, and today, I skipped the buttermilk.
Well! Hungry for lunch was I!
Cranky wanted to make a Greek Salad, but not hungry for feta cheese was I.
Yoda, I mean Cranky, toasted up some local walnuts and made a beautiful platter. Why aren't we all eating more walnuts? (Except for you who are allergic to tree nuts; gosh, now I understand.)
It was good.

Garden Update

No, we didn't grow the potatoes.
Wait, I lied.
We grew that tiny, pale, little one on top with the chive slice on it. The rest came from the farmers market.
We've been digging up the yard, putting in new food plants, and we decided to use last year's potato patch as this year's potato patch. (I hope it's OK. I know you're not supposed to put tomatoes in the same place in consecutive years.)
And, whoops! Up out of the dirt comes this petite little specimen. It was never going to grow any bigger, because the plant part above the ground has been dead and gone for months. But who knew cold storage underground would support the freshness of a baby tater for so long? We were thrilled. (Yeah, gross. Like being thrilled about your six-year-old's expelled teeth.)
Also, look at those monster chive flowers. The chive crop is still robust, but the seed heads are nearing expiration. If you have flowering chives, please eat the pretty blossoms. I doubt we'll get around to all of ours; so many.
Finally, the dressing on this potato salad was made with a sweet pear vinegar. I'm sad to say it was a purchased vinegar, because the bottle I fermented two years ago developed a little mold. I might still be able to save it. But a sheetload of new backyard pears is due in a few months; I could just try again.

Memorable Day

What do you mean, this is Memorial Day Weekend?
We have to start wearing white shoes now?
I'm not finished with spring yet!
We decided to heap great mouthfuls of spring on our plates: green garlic, morels, and fresh, bright eggs. There is also asparagus on the premises, but we figured three spring icons in a mouthful was heavy-duty enough. We'll do the asparagus in a few days, with green garlic and whatever else I think of.
Meanwhile, I alone am responsible for the drab color of this scramble. I know the rule, but I didn't follow it. When you scramble eggs in the pan with the cooked vegetables, the eggs are going to absorb all the greeny, browny juices. Bleah. I should have used two pans, and then combined the food after.
But everything brightened up considerably with the tiny sprinkling of minced parsley. Backyard parsley, bursting with chlorophyll and the elusive taste of anise. (Or is that just me?)
OK, let's see. White shoes.
Nah. I don't have any.

We All Sri for Sriracha

Once again, captivated by a food story in the New York Times.
Today it was about my favorite hot sauce, Sriracha. It's Asian, but it's made in Southern California. It's peppery but not too. It's garlicky, and yum.
Some people call it Rooster Sauce because of the image printed on the bottle, but the rooster simply happens to be the birth sign of its manufacturer, David Tran. (There are also shark, unicorn, and other logos on other brands; must try.)
Since I first discovered Sriracha, back in the 1980s, I've been putting it on tostadas, which are not Asian at all, though they happen to thrive under a squizzle of garlic-chile sauce.
But back in the 80s, Sriracha was hard to find. You might have wanted to resort to stealing a bottle of it off the table in a Vietnamese restaurant, but good manners prevented you. You remember visiting a friend who lived in a seamy South of Market loft, next door to an Asian market, and hoping it was still open so you could dash over and buy some. (It wasn't. Your friend tended to entertain rather late at night, past business hours.)
Eventually Sriracha became more widely available, and I've had some in the fridge ever since.
Yes. You actually do get to the bottom of a bottle now and then.
I do.
I did my best today, by drizzling some all over tostadas for lunch.
My lips are hot.

The "A" Vegetables

I love artichokes.
I'm trying to grow a couple of plants in my front yard, and so far they're not dead. No harvest yet, though. I give it a few years.
We eat artichokes a lot at my house; often as the sole basis of a meal. We invent madcap dips for them, even though as a child, I only ever ate artichokes with mayonnaise as a dip. (Hey! At least I was eating artichokes.)
I've gone beyond mayonnaise toward flavors like bagna cauda, simple yogurt with mustard mixed in, or (ooh) hummus. Never really did like the melted butter phenom.
I don't know how this came about, but the other day we needed to eat some artichokes, and we needed a new flavor.
Ohgah. Miso! There's been a plastic tub of miso (sort of brown-colored) in the fridge for — oh, just fire me now — years. All it needed was some loosening up (I used buttermilk), a little Asianing-up with a few drops of toasted sesame oil, and then some tightening up with thick Greek yogurt. Top with shichimi togarashi, for looks, mainly. Cute flecks.
Then eat.
It was very, very cool.
We used the leftover goop the next day as a dressing to pour into avocado halves. Another "A" vegetable I adore.

Picante en mi Boca

I'm just too proud of this. Surely something is going to go wrong, and I will be punished by the gods of Hubris Caliente for my overweening arrogance. But for now I'm basking. And boasting.
It all started about two years ago, when the Rev. Dr. Biggles brought a huge tray of homegrown jalapeños to my house. You can't eat them all at once (well, maybe you can), so you figure out how to preserve them.
I will admit (nah, I'm boasting again) that I just made up a method for pickling the peppers. Hot salty brine mixed with stupid white vinegar. Season it with whatever you like; I've used cumin and cinnamon (go gently there). Dump the hot bath over the sliced chiles in a clean jar, and you're done. Well, stuff it in the fridge for a few days and let it meld.
This turned out so successful and tasty that I grew a couple of bushes of jalapeños myself the next year. But it was a skimpy crop, and I had a hankering for heat.
So I bought a sack of fleshy green chiles at the farmers market; they resembled jalapeños but the farmer called them pimientos de padrón (note: not at all like the Spanish tapas snack that is so trendy). They pickled up just fine. But before too long, I fell off the sliced pickled pepper wagon in favor of prepared salsas. We can get some pretty good bottled hot sauce in Northern California; Tapatío need not apply. I was most enamored of the jalapeño salsa from Triple T Ranch, coincidentally the same guys who sold me the pimientos de padrón. Bought bottles and bottles of it, and it isn't cheap.
I saved all the empty bottles, of course. I am a hardened bottle saver; aren't you?
Then one day a few weeks ago: IDEA. Take the sliced pickled peppers (seeds and all) and grind them up really, really well in the blender. Add brine as needed to get a nice soupiness. Funnel this sauce into the saved (clean!) bottles. Be happy. Give some to friends. Be proud. Arrange to have a blog pal write about you.
Steal a photo off his blog without permission.
PHOTO CREDIT: CHILEBROWN, THE MAD MEAT GENIUS

Frontgrounding Meat

I got in trouble the other day for backgrounding meat.
Of course, my tormentor was a meat magician.
He knows I often pad my diet with plants.
Still, he expects me to eat muscle now and then.
Today was one of those days.
A small, cozy gathering of fellow bloggers and fressers gathered at Meathenge Labs for a smoke-a-thon. I still stink, but so good.
Chicken, sausage, tri-tip, bacon, pork ribs. Lamb sliders! Oh, hell, even the asparagus was smoked.
I did sneak a little potato salad and guacamole, but the main message was meat.
Can you imagine juicy, dripping-juicy, smoked chicken?
Hah.
Still licking my fingers.

Putting Things in Perspective

After my amazing vegetarian birthday lunch, we figured we might need a little cow on the premises, as an antidote.
I had first tasted the cut called Flatiron Steak a couple of years ago; it's billed as the second-most tender piece after filet mignon. But the cool thing is, it's way flat, and it reminds me of skirt steak or flap steak or... you know, those fun, chewy ones.
I read a story in the New York Times last week about butchers rummaging around in all that heretofore misused animal tissue, seeking out succulent new bits they can give a clever name to and put on the market. Beats throwing all that good muscle into the meat grinder.
So I wanted a flatiron steak. Cranky was stunned, but he's no fool. He dashed down to the farmers market and scored a nice specimen from Prather Ranch. We tossed about ideas for making an herb melty, or maybe a rub, possibly a marinade. But in the end we decided the meat should be treated respectfully, which meant a quick sear in the grill pan and a smear of butter.
Still. We had our hearts set on all those chives growing wantonly in the backyard.
Idea?
Chive mashed potatoes. When you are growing a wild field of chives, you find you can be so much more generous with them than if you just had a few dinky sprigs in a pot. We went nuts.
Thus, the perspective. Because in truth, I really did eat more potatoes than meat. Even though the meat was dandy.

The Herbivore's Delight

This is what I had for lunch on my birthday yesterday.
Cranky is sensitive to my reluctance to do celebratory meals involving undifferentiated slabs of mammal muscle, so he suggested we return to Ubuntu, in Napa, a vegetable restaurant.
It was a gray, rainy day, but the place was filled with bright, happy people enjoying their plants. The vibe is not weird. It's unbelievably normal, even if there is a yoga studio upstairs.
But, enough. I just want to tell you what I ate, and vow that I will try to get a close replication at home, no matter how many tries it takes. It was that good.
It's a bowl of yellow corn grits. I know. Dull dull dull. I think the grits were infused with goat's milk whey. Not dull!
Into the soft, flowing grits was dropped a fresh egg, to cook gently in the ambient warmth. You can see some of the pierced yolk on the left.
Finally, the grits were showered with shaved cheese (parmesan? something good), sprinkled with herbs, and topped with [bugle fanfare] "trumpet crisps," essentially crisp fried slices of trumpet mushrooms. Why didn't anybody tell me you could do this with mushrooms? Snappy and crackly as snack food, with amazing flavor. I still haven't decided if the kitchen sneaked a little truffle oil in there. Or, no, wait, maybe the flavor was more like vanilla. Maple!
See, this is going to be hard to replicate.
It doesn't matter, though. I'm just so thrilled to know this meal, I suspect anything that comes even close will be divine.

What Does a 50-Pound Canary Say?*

·Today is the sixth — SIXTH — anniversary of "Mission Accomplished."
·Three American servicemen were killed in Iraq yesterday.
·It is the first of May, and it's raining.
·Our furnace is malfunctioning.
·The photo is of French toast made from pumpkinseed bread, slathered with fig jam and topped with sliced strawberries. Somehow the little tiny seeds in the figs and on the berries met up in a perfect, lovely crunchy crackle, almost as if on purpose. So, not all's bad.

*TWEET!