It's a little overwhelming...

...and this is only a portion of what we are dealing with tomorrow. Canned tomatoes and tomato sauce for three families.

Our veggie CSA let us scrounge their rows for tomatoes this morning--they have so many that it's "all you can carry" organic tomatoes on pickup day. What they charged us to pick about 6 huge boxes was so embarrassingly little that I won't even say.

I've heard canning is big right now. It's good to know that the stars have aligned—as they do periodically—such that my routines have coincided with what's cool.

I've canned since I was a kid. This year, I'm teaching my friends to do it too. There's something about the steam, the sweat, the chatter, the kids and families running through the house, the finished jars cooling in neat lines. It's lovely.

But I do have to say that canning is not a good way to save money if you have to buy your produce full price or if you just hop on what's trendy for one year. We get our jars at WinCo (a discount grocery store) for about $7.50 a dozen, with lids and rings. Cheap, but that's still an investment up front, especially compared to freezer bags.

We get our pickling vegetables from our own gardens. We get peaches and tomatoes from friends and in bulk. We pick blackberries for free down the road.

Giving away those precious jars of jam for Christmas makes it even more cost-effective.

But it's work. If you factor in your labor costs, forget it.

For us, it's a lifestyle. We'd rather stand over a hot stove or pick a hundred pounds of tomatoes before work on a Friday morning than work overtime in an office. We like turning excess into a stocked pantry. We like convincing our friends that the intimate connection with our farmers and the soil our food grows in will enrich their lives.

(Bonus: Our farmers are cute. Agricultural eye candy.)

* * *

Our peaches were no gold-medal winners. We had jars of syrup with peaches floating at the top, exposed the air. Not so pretty.

Still delicious, so the agony of defeat is not so bitter.

But we're trying to figure out how to pack those tomatoes in more tightly. Wish us luck.

Canning

Somehow, I thought 75 pounds of peaches would be manageable. There were five of us after all, crammed into a gallery kitchen while the rest of the families watched the Tour de France and ate pizza.

I didn't factor in the endless runs to the store for more ice, sugar, lemons, jars, whatever. I didn't factor in the time it would take for 50 pounds of chopped peaches to simmer themselves into jam without pectin.

That classic advice not to double canning recipes? I laughed in the face of expertise and timed the recipes by 10. No mere doubling here.

Holy 9 hours in the kitchen, Batman!

I did discover that I suck at the whole check-your-jam's-jelling-point-with-a-plate-in-the-freezer thing. You know how this jam has reached it's jelling point? It spits.

The simmering bubbles get slower and bigger, and when you stir the jam, scraping the spoon along the bottom of the pan, you see pan for a split second. The liquid doesn't rush back around the spoon like water--it slides back, thicker.

And then it hisses spits little bits of hot jam, angrily. I have a collection of little round burns on my hands to prove it.

The jam was ready. And awesome.

Also on the the agenda were pickles and canned peaches in ginger syrup (above). Next round? Tomatoes and tomato sauce and salsa.

Dutch baby

When the toddler gets a little out of hand, I can growl, "We're eating babies for breakfast. That's right. BABIES!"

Delicious with lemon juice squeezed over the top and then sprinkled with powdered sugar. Washed down with coffee.

We make a little sidecar for the kid:


We use a recipe for Big Apple Pancake from an old Gourmet magazine as a guide, but add all kinds of fruit. Strawberry isn't actually my favorite. I think apricot and blueberries might be. The original is awesome in winter.

***

And before I jump into the recipe, let me just clarify my stance on unsalted vs. salted butter.

I don't give a fuck.

Seriously, I don't know why so many cooks get so worked up about salted butter.

I like salty butter on my toast, so it's what I have in the fridge.

I keep track of work schedules and the daycare center closures and doctor's appointments and when the dog next gets her heartworm meds and a complicated orchid fertilization schedule and on and on and on.

I don't need to regulate butter usage on top of it all: "No, no, that butter's for baking. Use THIS one." I think my husband's head would explode. He still hasn't recovered from that time he snacked on the crust of bread that I was saving for that night's onion soup dinner.

And I cried.

Because holy crap, I was looking forward to that soup with the toasty bread.

Poor guy.

Anyway, back to babies.

Dutch Baby with Fruit
--based on recipe from Gourmet, Nov. 2004
--serves 2

1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup flour (white or whole wheat pastry)
4 eggs
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
sliced peaches or apricots, halved strawberries, frozen blueberries (about a cup of fruit)
lemon wedges and powdered sugar

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 450°F. Put butter into 10-inch cast iron skillet and put in oven to melt.

While butter is melting, dump milk, flour, eggs, granulated sugar, vanilla, and salt into a blender. Swirl butter around skillet to coat sides and bottom. Add about 2 T. melted butter to blender, leaving the rest in the skillet. Blend batter until smooth.

Place fruit in one layer in hot buttered skillet. It won't cover the bottom completely--if it does, you have too much fruit and will end up with a juicy mess of breakfast.

Pour batter over fruit.

Put skillet in oven. Bake until pancake is puffed and golden, about 18 minutes (depending on amount of fruit).

Serve immediately with lemon wedges and powered sugar.

When left to my own devices

It's rare that I get a meal alone. A real meal at home, not leftovers packed into a Mason jar and eaten on the bench outside my office.

When I do eat alone, it's simple and utterly personal. For dinner, spaghetti with butter and garlic.

For lunch, like today, a fried in butter grilled Swiss cheese sandwich. Dipped in "rooster sauce." With a heaping mass of homemade sauerkraut on the side.

I scarfed it down so fast I didn't take a picture.

I agree, you don't need a picture. It's obscene enough already that I shared. But dude, look at this. I'm not alone.

For dessert? Coffee and back to work from home via laptop.

BLT pasta, with avocados

I'm cheating a bit on this one, I know, opening a can of tomatoes from Costco instead of waiting for the organic goodness of fresh summer fruit. But good lord, this is delicious.

I couldn't wait.

This is one of those things we make a lot, without measuring and with constant variation. In fact, there is really only one rule:

Use more olive oil, salt, and bacon than you think you need. A lot more.

BLT Pasta

Mix the following into a large bowl (big enough for pasta too):

about 4 large tomatoes, chopped
2 avocados, chopped
a handful of basil leaves, roughly torn
a couple handfuls of arugula, roughly torn (or skip it)
a half a sweet onion, slivered ultra-thin (or thin slices of green onion)
2 pressed garlic cloves (or chopped green garlic or garlic scapes)
a couple good glugs olive oil
juice of half a lemon
salt
pepper

Cook 1 pound pasta until al dente. While pasta is cooking, fry up some bacon. For this recipe, I avoid the bacon flipping altogether—I cut it up into strips with kitchen shears and then saute in a cast iron pan.

Drain pasta and mix with sauce. Toss and serve topped with bacon strips and crumbled blue cheese.

*Make-ahead note: This sauce is none the worse for wear after having sat on the counter all afternoon while you played in the sprinklers.

Quinoa child

One of the hardest parts of parenting for me is letting the 2-year-old DO, not jumping in and fussing over how she does it.

Flour all over the floor, pants on backwards, bubble wands held sideways, balancing acts gone wrong--every bit of my parenting being strains towards jumping in and fixing. I manage to restrain myself most of the time.

Because look what she does when we give her the chance.


She asks for a bowl, a wooden spoon, some playdough. For pinto beans, garbanzos, orange lentils, then quinoa. All by name. She makes pretend dinner alongside papa, who is making actual dinner.

She hardly spills at all. Then she climbs down from her stool and asks for the vacuum to clean up stray beans.

After she's in bed, papa and I actually clean up the stray beans.

It's worth it.

--

Other nights, she winds around our legs screaming "HOOOOLLLLD YOUUUUU" while we try to saute. Ahhh, two!

Local love

We eat seasonally and locally. We are not one of those trendy restaurants* with the "we buy local and organic produce whenever possible" tagline on their menus. I've worked at some of those, and found that cost or inconvenience too often override the declared intent.

But at home, we are authentic**, and pretty quiet about it. We try to honor our bodies, our community, our soil, our beliefs, and our neighbors--and we try to shut up about that with our friends.

Instead of the evangelism, we dish out food.

We try to hook the devoted grocery store shoppers on green garlic, local lamb, fresh tomatoes. We try to make them part of the loop--to make explicit that connection: soil, water, seeds, spirit, farmer, food, table...

And if they want a little of the joy in their own lives, well, we've done something right.

I imagine, those of you out there with more traditional faiths than mine, that this is a familiar feeling.

This recipe--another version of the classic asparagus/egg combo--is spring. Easy and epic. Try it now, before summer is in full swing and asparagus is a memory.

Don't you dare use grocery store asparagus in November or jumbo-pack eggs for this one. It is largely unadorned and depends on freshness.


*Ah, restaurants. Oven-branded forearms, coke and testosterone, bands of misfits united against the unsuspecting customer. I get nostalgic every once in a while.

**Authentic, not perfect. We all snack on bananas from Trader Joe's. We buy potatoes and onions and garlic and citrus all year. Other than that, each season brings a new, eagerly awaited treat: Asparagus and favas and onion scapes. Peaches and tomatoes. Hot chilies and tomatillos. Winter squash and escarole.