Spring Returns!

Cool nights and warm days. Kale, cilantro, and lettuce are coming up in the garden. Today it has been raining all day and doesn't show signs of stopping. Okay, I did just rake the yard yesterday, but other than that?

What really brought me back was making a kale and basil pesto today with some Red Russian kale and some basil that has been around all year, but is in a shadier spot so is still green and bushy. I am pretty sure I like it better than basil pesto because it has a bite and it uses kale!

I served it with what I had laying around today: Whole wheat penne, spaghetti squash, prosciutto, sauteed onions, parmesan cheese, and chopped tomatoes (salted and liquid drained for awhile). It would also be good with chicken, mushrooms, and /or broccoli. Don't forget to add pesto to the ricotta when making lasagna or stuffed pasta--you won't regret it! I credit that suggestion to this recipe: Vegetable Lasagna

Kale Basil Pesto
(Adapted from We Like to Cook, and Eat: http://weliketocookandeat.blogspot.com/2010/07/basil-and-kale-pesto-on-pasta-with.html)

Ingredients

• A handful of kale
• A handful of basil (I won't pretend to have ever measured either of these, just use what you like)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts or walnuts
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan

Directions

• Saute kale in oil with some salt and pepper. When it starts to wilt add about 2 tbsp of water, cover the pan, and let it cook for about five minutes.
• Combine basil, drained kale, garlic, and nuts in food processor or blender
• Add oil as the mixture is grinding
• Transfer to a bowl and stir in cheese and salt and pepper if needed

What they don't tell you about chickens

Today I raked the yard for the first time this year. Once I started to get the leaves into small piles a couple of hens decided those piles would be much better off spread out, just in case any bugs were hiding in them. I chased them away with the rake a couple times and they pretty much left me alone after awhile.

Similarly, the woman cleaning animal pens at the farm yesterday dumped the scrapings next to my garden in my attempted composting site. Soon after, the girls got right to work spreading that pile out to look for bugs. They aren't stopping for Sunday, either.

This should not have been a surprise to me because this spring I used this quality of theirs to help me prepare a seedbed for a benficial insect attractant mix. In the winter I had spread the contents of animal pens in the area outside the garden where I wanted to plant the mix. I noticed the chickens digging around in it a bit and how nicely broken up and aerated the ground looked after they spent some time there. I spread some of their scratch grains back there so they would concentrate their work, then stopped for awhile before I wanted to seed it.

From all I can tell it worked great. Though not all the seeds in the mix germinated, enough did to fill in the space. Of course, this didn't eliminate weed seeds that are present in the pen contents, but it was much easier than composting.

We love our chickens and they always win over the flowers and the cleanliness of the sidewalk, but leaf piles and compost making are going to have to be protected from them and their natural digging tendencies. I will harness these when I need them.

Girls hard at work making sure this pile is well-aerated, but doesn't heat up:

Cooking out of the Rut

Whenever I am depressed I cook and whenever I haven't cooked for awhile I feel depressed. Since recently finding myself essentially where I was one year ago, career-wise and having eaten out the night before (that is "awhile" in my world), I turned to the kitchen last night.

It was a push to get there. I told Jonathan I would make dinner when he went out as a form of accountability. But I didn't want to have to buy too much, if anything at all, and I didn't want it to be too involved. I had some tomatoes of various qualities sitting in the living room and in the garden so I decided to make pasta sauce, which I am ashamed to say I have never truly done.

Since the recipe I decided on called for canned tomatoes I blanched, peeled, and chopped mine first. I also didn't have any red wine so I used cheap white wine I had in the fridge. The salt factor frightened me, and so did the thickening, but both turned out fine.

I served it with sauteed mushrooms and fresh cayenne garlic linguine that my mom had brought me from RP's Pasta. I topped it with some freshly grated parmesan as well as some Tuscan Dream cheese, which she brought me from Edelweiss Creamery. The process fulfilled me and the product fulfilled Jonathan, who had been eating junk for the better part of the last week.
Tomato Sauce
(Adapted from About.com Southern Food Tomato Sauce with Vegetables and Basil)

Ingredients:
3/4 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced or mashed to paste
3 tablespoons oil
6 cups blanched and peeled tomatoes, chopped
3/4 cup dry red wine
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/3 cup chopped fresh basil
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Preparation:
Heat oil in pan over medium heat; add onion, cooking until tender. Stir in garlic, tomatoes, wine, parsley, basil, sugar, and salt. Bring sauce to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for 1 hour, stirring frequently.
Serve with hot cooked pasta and sauteed veggies, such as mushrooms.

Coyote Food Mentoring

Jonathan started getting the New York Times a few weeks ago and I'm now having a problem that I had when I was watching a lot of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" this winter: no food is good enough. I love cooking and eating and I usually believe my creations are pretty decent. But my butternut squash lasagna and homemade marinara sauce don't measure up to Le Chateaubriand and The French Laundry.

I think that everyone needs people, places, and/or internal forces that push their edges a little, that challenge them to do a little more and a little better than before. But as it is with all mentoring, advice to a mentee pushed too far will fall on deaf ears or end in arrested efforts. If I'm not careful, Wednesday's Dining section could paralyze me into a non-cooking (non-eating?) person who certainly wouldn't be any better than before.

So I remind myself that the aforementioned institutions are reserved for people with a much better wardrobe than me and that I live outside Cincinnati, which has no Michelin stars to its name. I don't have the specialized tools these guys have and my audience worries very little about presentation. I have all the mentoring I need right now in my own quest to cook and eat better food and it suits the circles I run in just fine.

Tomato Heaven

I worked in the garden for about an hour and a half last night pulling weeds and mulching part of a bed to cool the soil for fall crop planting (Is this foolishly soon? Highs are still in the 90's). It was an awesome work stint, but I needed to get back to work inside, plus it was getting dark and mosquitoes were coming out. I glanced over the tomatoes to see if I should grab any ripe ones before the birds had their way with them. I spotted a huge, pink brandywine, as perfect at first glance as any tomato could be in my endorphine-from-weeding high:That perfect appearance would, more likely than not, be shattered by bird pecks, a rot spot, or a split on the not-yet-visible underside. I slowly slid my fingers underneath the weighty beauty and she was smooth! I twisted her off the vine and turned her over just to make sure my fingers didn't miss something. Maybe the birds had been repelled by my ripening cayennes, or maybe they were satisfied with the rotten tomatoes I had been tossing in the paths and over the fence. Whatever it was, a beautiful brandywine tomato provided a euphoric conclusion to my evening in the garden:

Now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do with her.