farm share – Albany Eats! Local foodings with a grain of salt.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, Hunnies!

I’ve had this pumpkin just sitting in my living room forever, and I felt like last night was the perfect time to carve it. Just in time for my favorite holiday!

I love the comic strip Pearls Before Swine, and I decided to carve my favorite character onto the pumpkin. Yes indeed, I carved Rat from Pearls Before Swine on to a pumpkin.

My carving skills aren’t great, but are a lot better than I thought they’d be. Here’s all the tools I got out to do the deed. And by tools I mean knives. And a spoon to scoop the pumpkin guts out. Man, the pumpkin gut scooping was bitchy, tedious work.

Not pictured is a long, metal fondue fork, which came in INCREDIBLY handy. I’m never carving another pumpkin without a fondue fork. It was perfect for shanking out little bits of pumpkin flesh to let out more light and widen the openings a bit, without taking out any more pumpkin skin.

I didn’t even draw any blood, so this was a total success in my book. I mean, a few scratches, sure, but that pretty much happens every time I hold a knife. Want to know how to really scare someone in my house? Just go “Uh oh. I lost a knife… Oh man, maybe two.”

Sure, he may look a little wonky in some parts (his hands are behind his back, and that’s the story I’m sticking to), but c’mon guys. I’m pretty sure the last time I carved a pumpkin was when I was in elementary school.

Happy Halloween, from Albany Jane and Rat! What are your costumes gonna be this year?

P.S. Dear Stephan Pastis, I know you’re a lawyer and all, but please don’t consider this copyright infringement. It’s a crappy incarnation, and besides, you really don’t want my assets (for the record, my assets are: Hello Kitty paraphernalia, a few empty bottles of cheap booze, 3 broken pairs of shoes that I keep wearing, a retractable hairdryer, and the rear half of a Corvette [it was a gift]).

Baba Ganouj

Baba Ganouj. Baba Ghanoush. Baba Ganoush. Ba ba ba ba BUM BUM. I’m not quite sure where my mind is today, but this baba ganouj is probably the healthiest thing I’ve eaten in the past couple of days. Maybe I’m spacey from all of the beer and grease.

But any way. My CSA / farm share thing gave me one eggplant this year. One Italian eggplant. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I have a 50-50 success rate with getting the bitterness out of Italian eggplant, so I wasn’t really all that into making eggplant parm or cutlets. I like baba ganouj, so I figured I’d give it a whirl. It was just one eggplant, afterall.

I blackened the skin of the eggplant by holding it over one of my gas stovetop burners. Easy peasy. It gets a little squishy, but overall I had some nice charring going on. I guess this is what helps make it smoky. Then I wrapped it in tin foil and popped it in a 300F oven for about an hour.
It came out looking a little deflated and soggy. So I let it cool off in the windowsill.

Once it had cooled, I got it naked. It was a little leaky and a lot squishy. But the skin was pretty easy to peel off.

See? and very little waste. It was really just skin that came off, none of the eggplant’s flesh or anything.

I plopped in some salt, the remains of some old tahini, the juice of a little over half a lemon, and some olive oil in the bowl with the eggplant and mashed it up with a potato masher for a few minutes.

Once it looked like this, I stopped mashing and started eating. Smoky, tasty baba ganouj! How easy! I was quite pleased with how smoky it turned out by just blackening the skin over the stove. It was creamy, and not the least bit bitter. I think it’s even easier to make than hummus.

Yummy slathered on bread, or with chips, or eaten with a spoon.

Homemade Pickles!

Y’all! I made pickles!

Crunchy, crisp pickles!

My CSA had some pickling cucumbers up for grabs, and I grabbed about half of a plastic grocery bag’s worth of them. I haven’t been all that pleased with my CSA this year since the amount of food we’ve been getting has been pretty sparse, but I was excited to try out pickling (you know, saving this summer’s bounty and all).

And lemme tell you – wow, pickling is quite the event!

I had a rare evening to myself. Like, ALL to myself. My house is usually a hub of folks to begin with. Albany John is usually at home, and what with Slick having moved in that means that someone is at our house 24/7. And the usual cast of characters that winds up at my place for a meal and good times, too. Albany John and Slick went to play disc golf, and no one else was planning on coming over.

I had visions of myself drinking champagne while partaking of a leisurely bubble bath, followed by some primping and pampering about the house. Maybe I’d go out and grab myself a little snacky- or extra-indulgent treat. After making pickles, of course.

This would have gone off according to plan, except that making pickles isn’t quite a dash-slap job when you do it your first time.

First you need to boil your jars to sterilize them. I overfilled the water, so let me just make a long and burning story short by saying that it’s a lot easier to measure this out before hand.

After sterilizing the jars, I used my tongs to grab the boiling-hot jars out, dumped the water out and set them upside down on the cleanest cloth I had. Phew! This process took a long time just because those jars are really hot and heavy when they’re filled with boiling water!

While letting the jars cool off and dry, I rinsed and picked over my cukes. Mushy ones got tossed. I also peeled and chopped some garlic and onions (also from my CSA) to add in for flavor.

I used this recipe from All Recipes. I was more concerned with having crunchy pickles than anything else and didn’t want to fuss too much with various ingredients. I mean, it was my first pickling experience. I didn’t want to shoot the moon and miss, you know?

Once the jars were cool I stuffed them with cucumbers, onions, garlic, and dill sprigs and heads (they also came with my CSA and I never really used them all. Those heads keep forever). I meant to stuff a chile de arbol in one or two jars as well, but I forgot.

After I jarred them I used recipe above for the brine and poured hot brine over the veggies in my jars. I had some sterilized caps and screwed those on top as tightly as I could.

Once they were all done I stuck all of the jars back into boiling water for 15 minutes. Thankfully Albany John and Slick had come back from playing Frisbee golf and Albany John used his muscular arms to yank all 7 jars out of the boiling pot of water for me (they were in a jar-holder thing). I would have needed a stool to be able to pull them out without covering my kitchen in boiling, briny water.

And then I left them in my back hallway to sit for about a month before popping a jar open. These are GOOD! I’m so glad I spent a sweaty evening making them! Ellsbells and my designer friend approved of the pickles, as did my bro, Albany John, Slick, and… I think those are all the people I made try them. They are clean, crisp, and have a great crunch to them. Hooray for crunchy pickles!

I opened two jars, so I’ve got 4 more cucumber pickles left and 1 jar of onion pickles. The slivers of pickled onions with the cucumber pickles were great too – crunchy, and just all nice and pickle-y.

I would really like to try and make more pickles out of other veggies I have. I think I have enough beets to make a jar of them, and hopefully I’ll get more pickle-able veggies from my CSA. I tried to make sauerkraut when I got a lot of cabbage, but trust me… that was a food project failure. And a stinky one at that.

I hope the pickles you wind up in today are delicious, my briny, noshable veggies of joy!

Cheese For Dinner!

I think I’ve mentioned that Slick has recently returned from No Man’s Land and is currently taking up residence at Casa de Jane & John. Awesome!

I first met Slick through Albany John. I believe it was after a day of drinking while watching rugby. And by drinking after a day of watching rugby, I mean that Albany John was actively watching the game, and I was actively drinking. God, I’m a good sport. But any way, they’ve been friends for what I’ve thought of as “forever”.

So now the Little Guy has returned to us and will be living with us for an indeterminate period of time. This works well since both Albany John and myself are pretty much incapable of cooking for only two people. And Ellsbells has been working like a madwoman, so it’s not like there’s anyone to foist all that food off on. (Foist? Uh, I mean, lovingly feed. Lurve Yew.)

Here’s a trio of goat cheeses I got from Trader Joe’s when we all went to Amherst, MA on Sunday. I took a pit stop in Hadley, MA. This was only $4.49 and all 3 are vacu-sealed. They are garlic and herb, plain, and four pepper goat cheeses.

I also have a fetish for Belletoile brie cheese, and Trader Joe’s sells it for insanely low prices. My arteries clog with happiness every time I eat it. Cheese is one of those foods that the mister and I just can never seem to finish in entirety. This was a lot of cheese for our house to purchase, and it has a tendency to go marginally uneaten, so cheese for dinner it was!

The three of us ate about half of the Belletoile, the garlic and herb goat cheese (on the right in the pic above), and the peppered goat cheese (on the left) along with some crusty bread I’d made earlier in the night. I liked them all – the Belletoile was buttery and delicious (I’m getting OK with eating the rind, too!), and the goat cheeses were creamy with a bit of a tang. The garlic was really garlicky, and the pepper was moderately spicy for me. I slathered brie on it though, which made it deliciously fatty, ergo, palatable.

All that’s missing was wine, but the boys (Albany John and the Little Guy) had just come home from playing disc golf and were working on some beers before opening the wine. I’ve been really spacey this week, so I’ve been opting to not drink for the past couple of days. I can’t tell if it’s because I’ve been using old contacts, not sleeping enough, or some kind of inner-ear/water problem from swimming, although I am leaning more on the last one. Albany John also theorizes it might be some kind of iron deficiency. See? Spacey.

Also, to toss a veggie in the mix, I peeled and mandolined some beets from my CSA that have been kicking around in the fridge since last week. We had 3 small golden beets and several more tiny red beets. I nicked off a bit of my nail when slicing them, which to me says “This is a good reason to keep your nails long-ish”. Shh, don’t tell Albany John. He hates my knife/cutting skeelz.

Albany John walked in after I cut up the yellow beets and went “What the FUCK are those?!” and it took some convincing to have him believe these were indeed beets. And then more convincing that one could eat beets raw. But the thin crisp slices of beets went really well with the rich cheeses and bread. Lightly sweet, but not bitter, they were very complementary.

Dilly Beans and Potatoes

My CSA share this week is: 2 bags of green beans, 1 bag of yellow (string?) beans, 2 zucchini, 1 small napa cabbage, 2 baggies of salad greens, 1 bunch of dill, and… I think that’s it.

Last night for dinner Albany John had a hankering for combining the fresh dill with the beans and some spuds we had kicking around the house. So while he was playing Super Paper Mario on the Wii, I was slicing off the tips of green beans. I am an excellent prepper. Super slow, but excellent.

I’d already roughly cubed up some potatoes and boiled until they were tender. They were fully cooked, morsel sized, and ready to go.

Once the beans were all sliced, I put a bit of butter in a wok (maybe 1/2 T) and let it melt with the burner on high. Add green beans and let them cook for a few minutes until some of them have browned a bit.

Give the wok some good flips and shakes. C’mon. You know you want to.

While the beans are cooking on the stove, have your handy dandy Albany John come in the kitchen and de-leaf the dill. Press about 4 cloves of garlic through a garlic press (or mince) and add directly to the pan with the beans.

If you don’t have an Albany John for the kitchen, I highly recommend getting one. They really come in handy and are quite deft.

Don’t forget to toss in your potatoes! And don’t forget to shake it! Shake it, baby! Albany John added some olive oil here, maybe 2 T.

We only had one small/medium-ish white potato, so I used half of a gigantic yam I bought at the Co-Op earlier this month. Normally I don’t like sweet starches in savory dishes, but it’s all we had, and I figured the dill would help cover the sweetness.

Let the stuff in the wok cook together for a bit while you mix together…

½ T Coleman’s Powdered Mustard
2 – 3 T distilled white vinegar
1 t dried marjoram
salt

We are going to have zesty, mustardy taters!

Pour it in! Cook it until all the liquid is evaporated and take it off the heat.

Ta da! All done. Mustardy dilly potatoes and beans!

I am sold on this dish – it was great! The green beans had a fresh sweetness to them and were very crisp. They were so small, they were more like haricots verts! So tender yet crunchy and delicious!

The mustard-vinegar seasoning helped blend all of the ingredients together and was a great seasoning (the marjoram was just ’cause we like marjoram. You can add whatever you like, or just leave it out). Are yams less sweet compared to sweet potatoes? Because I liked them in this dish – they weren’t crazy sugary-sweet, and had a nice potato texture with maybe a hint of orangey sweetness. Just, not in a cloying dessert way, if that makes any sense. Maybe boiling them helped cut the sugar as well.

Oh, and I had some frozen soup dumplings left in the freezer, so we ate the rest of them with this and some rice. Eh, they were ok and porky, but not great (they all broke while steaming).

Farm Share – I spoke too soon!

Wow, did I jump the gun on that one, eh?

I went to pick up my veggies today, and hoo-baby, is there gonna be nary a vegetable purchase for a while:

Let’s start with the bottom left corner and work clockwise. Or close to it.

The sliced open cantaloupe and the unopened cantaloupe just behind it (the tan ball shaped thing) I actually bought at the Delaware Ave Farmers Market, held every Tuesday from 4-7. They were a DOLLAR. I could not resist. The one I opened was pretty good, but not very flavorful.
The cucumbers are next to them.
Then there’s a big head of lettuce.
A gigantic bunch of carrots. I called these ‘Bugs Bunny Carrots’ as a kid. I’d always beg my Mom to buy them, then eat about half of one while shouting ‘WHAT’S UP DOC!!???!?!” before chucking it to the wayside. Supermarket carrots weren’t very flavorful, but these carrots were sweeter than any I’ve had in a while.
Skinny bunch of scallions; an adorable little head of cabbage that I am VERY excited to eat later on. I loves me some cabbage. Nother cuke…
The little whiteish blob is a white cucumber. They taste just like regular cucumbers.
Let’s see… we’ve got some more summer squash, a head of cured garlic, tomatoes, and back over to the melon.

Not pictured are the bags of basil and beans.

By the way, did you notice what the carrots were sitting on top of? An ENORMOUS squash. When I got there, we could get 7 summer squash. It’s kind of a lot to me. Maybe not in the one-a-day sense, but still, it’s a lot for someone who’s never eaten more than a squash a week, on a good squash week. I got strong armed by those tricky farmers into getting 4 more squash! Seems some other members of the farm share weren’t taking their share. And of course the gigundo one was thrown in there too. Evidently they’re like the little one of the same kind(yea, I’m bad with names. I think there was a brassica in the name somewhere), only at some point they morphed into these babies. Thanks for the extra squash, guys, and for the little tidbits of info I get every week.