Prelude to Zucchini

First of all, thank you so much to all of you that sent me recipes and linked me up! I am overwhelmed with recipes.  My cousin Jesse alone sent me 366 recipes.  She's the sister of the cousin who gave the recipe for the delicious sounding pie.  Obviously my cousins know their way around produce.  Congratulations, Jesse.  You win.  Please come to Gray Court to collect your prize of one golden summer squash.

And in case any of you are still processing that number - yes, it's enough that I could make one a day and still not be done in a year.  

I have recipes for zucchini pasta, zucchini pies, zucchini cupcakes, zucchini muffins, strata, quiche, casseroles, and soups.  I was even sent a recipe for a zucchini slushie.  

This, friends, is going to be exciting.

It begins tonight.  We're eating leftovers (got to clear space in that fridge for zucchini cobbler and zucchini tian) and the Helpful Neighbors are coming over to help us check out the floor of our chicken coop, so I'm thinking that we'll be serving up zucchini chocolate cake.  Also, the recipe comes from Jesse, and it seems only fair to start with one of hers.

Going to be seeing a lot more of this.

Note: Since I intend to post every day (or nearly), I won't be linking to Facebook.  If you are interested in following this to collect zucchini recipes or just to see how long it takes me to go crazy, you can subscribe to receive posts by e-mail but entering your e-mail up on the right.  It's really easy to unsubscribe if it gets to be too much.  And I don't make money or anything if you subscribe.  I just makes me feel a little more self-important.

The Great Zucchini Challenge

It has begun.  It is the middle of June, and already Matt's generous planting of zucchini and summer squash is yielding bountiful produce.

Those first several squash are always exciting.  Matt worries that I pick them too soon, but I ignore him and slice them up thin to fry in olive oil.  Less than a week later, they are coming in a pretty steady stream.  We're eating sauteed squash every other night, and I am polling people at work to find out if any of them will take zucchini.  Within days, we are eating it every night and I no longer care if people at work like squash.  They are taking it home anyway.

Yesterday, I discovered we'd missed one (nine), and I found myself dealing with enough zucchini to start a baseball team (although, as vegetables go, these are shaped more like quarterbacks).  After sauteing one (half) for dinner, I decided to try my hand at zucchini baked goods.

Zucchini baked goods confuse me.  Maybe I'm missing something here, but the zucchini bread, zucchini muffin and especially the zucchini chocolate cake all just seem like a way of dealing with excess zucchini: a coping mechanism for zealous home gardeners.  It's the human version of peanut butter on Henry's monthly heart-worm pill.  You can either make baked goods with a rich, dense crumb or you can make a sub par and equally unhealthy product with shredded zucchini in it. Yum.

As a kid, I didn't complain.  We didn't eat sweet breads or muffins very often, but zucchini bread was permitted.  Quick breads = bad.  Zucchini quick bread = have a third slice.  It was like the ice cream we were encouraged to eat the last morning of vacation.  Then I grew up and started taking my calories without the zucchini, thanks.

But last night, the behemoth zucchini scared me, and I made muffins.  The recipe came from Smitten Kitchen.  Deb gave me the brownies that have never let me down, and I confidently grated my zucchini and stirred it into the batter.  When I came in from putting up my birds, the house smelled comfortable and promising.  I spread two muffins with butter and gave one to Matt.

They were just like I remembered.  Meh.  Not bad, but not great.  The dumpy country cousin to a real muffin.

Now I'm on the hunt for real zucchini recipes.  Recipes that celebrate the zucchini.  Recipes that can't be improved by eliminating the zucchini.  I have my eye on a couple recipes like this sandwich from How Sweet It Is and this pasta from The Pioneer Woman.  My cousin Jamie sent me one for a quiche that I'm super excited about.  And I'm even wanting to try this tart from Smitten Kitchen.

If you have any recipes that you like or are curious about, send them my way.  I'll try any recipe you send me  with three exceptions:

1. Crazy expensive - if it calls for 24 karat gold dust, it's not happening.  Twenty-four carrots are ok.
2. Really weird ingredients - I'll try almost anything.  But I'm telling you now, zucchini jello is out of the question.
3. Allergies - if it has cinnamon in it, I have to substitute nutmeg or allspice.

So that's where we're at.  Some people challenge themselves to climb mountains or quit smoking.  Mark Zuckerberg (spellcheck just tried to change that to cheeseburger, haha!) challenged himself to eat only meat that he's killed himself.  I'm challenging myself to eat copious amount of zucchini.  Baby steps.

As long as I have recipes and zucchini, I will be blogging zucchini.  Stay tuned...

A Vacation from Vacation

"It's like Dillinger once told me: 'Remember, it's always the darkest just before they turn on the lights.' " - from Anything Goes

I have this theory about vacations: they are for children, resort towns and swimsuit retailers.  In fact, I suspect they were designed by swimsuit retailers exactly the same way Valentine's Day was cooked up by card companies.  The gym is probably in on it too.

It's pretty genius, actually.

Glossy posters and shiny TV ads tantalize with photoshopped beaches that are a sharp contrast to my gray cubicle walls.  Images of people carelessly flung across a padded lounge chair haunt me as I wake up at dawn to sleepily pull on work boots and feed chickens.  

I buy in, and plan a vacation.  It goes something like this:

1. Decide on time-off.
2. Hope Matt and I can get the same time-off.
3. Apply for time-off.
4. Change time off-because Matt couldn't get approved for the same time.
5. Breathe a sigh of relief because we finally got the days in sync.
6. Find a place to stay.*
7. E-mail approximately two dozen people to ask exactly "how handicapped friendly are you?"
8. Find a place for the dog to stay.
9. Find someone just crazy enough to want to take care of chickens and still be relied on to not let them become skunk bait. 
10. Convince Katie to keep four baby turkeys for a week.  "They've only flown out of their cage twice.  Very easy."  
11. Confirm beach rental.*
12. Confirm all animal keepers.  Use lots of flattery to butter them up and ensure the well-being of animals.  
13. Mulch garden in attempt to prevent jungle tendencies.
14. Use Round-Up on everything else.
15.  Do laundry.
16. Find all the pieces of all the bathing suits.  Surprisingly difficult.
17. Attempt to have the whole house clean at one time.  It's never been done, but why not try again?
18. Mow grass within an inch of its life - must be done within moments of leaving .  Obviously.
19. Cram two weeks worth of office work into one week.  But do it in a way that does not imply that I can be relied on to work at these speeds when I get back.
20.  Schedule and pay contractors working on inspection punch-sheet for the house we're selling five days after we return. 

After days weeks months of that any vacation would seem like the lap of luxury.  Seriously, to sit down anywhere right now, I would think, "Wait - I don't have to pack a suitcase today? How incredibly indulgent!  I'm done following up on a sheep-sitter?  Well, well, well, look who is going all lazy today."

At this point the ocean shines brighter, the sand feels sunnier, the beach house more charming.

It is in the preparing for a vacation that the need occurs.  This is how the resort towns guarantee they'll stay crowded, the swimsuit retailers sell ill-fitting spandex, and the gym gets money for exercise.   

I plan to go enjoy the pants off this vacation next week.  And not only because I couldn't find all the pieces of my bathing suits.   

For a more poetic, sentimental view of our annual vacation, you can read what I wrote last year.

* I actually didn't have to do those things this time around.  Thanks, Dad!

Happy Valentine's Day!

A coworker brought in the biggest box of chocolate I've ever seen.  After eating most of them, we were inspired to make some Valentines of our own.

It might be a while before we're given free reign with chocolate again.

Hope you all have a happy Valentine's Day!

Note: The expressions on the Valentines are in no way meant to reflect the feelings of the models in the photo.

The Cookie Legacy

My mom is a chemist.  When I was young, this caused me some consternation.  I didn't think of myself as math or science minded, and I wanted to make her proud.  I didn't excel at numbers, Erlenmeyer flasks and graduated cylinders bored me, and my grades came with effort and not ease like in the language arts.  After high school, I dismissed science with a wave of my hand and set off to study music.  I chose a program that didn't have room for any science classes.  I knew my place in the universe, and it was in the arts.

Thankfully, with time comes perspective.  I understand now that an artist can't avoid the sciences any more than a scientist can avoid the arts.  And I also understand why my mom, and probably most of us, love chemistry.

Stress baking is nothing new.  Debbie Perelman of Smitten Kitchen wrote a piece for Martha Stewart Living in which she talked about dealing with the anticipation of childbirth by making brownies for the labor and delivery nurses.  In the movie Julie & Julia, Julie Powell is making a chocolate pie and says, "I love that after a day when nothing is sure . . . you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick.  That's such a comfort."

There is comfort in absolutes, and there are absolutes in chemistry.  I can't control how people act towards me.  But I can control the ratio of flour, sugar and butter in oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  I know that the lemon in a lemon meringue pie naturally fights with the bonding agent and has to be proportioned correctly.   And knowing that the temperature of the butter affects the quality of pie crust and biscuits makes me feel just a little bit more in settled.

I used to be an absolute dunce when it came to making cookies.  I didn't like to eat them and I didn't like to bake them.  I had no idea what I was doing, but now I do. Did you know that refrigerating the dough for 36 hours causes the oils in the butter to break down and absorb more of the salt and sugar?  It's chemistry.

Thursday, I had a bad experience at work.  It was exacerbated by the soup I had spilled down my front at lunch.  As I spent the afternoon giving my side of the story, I was always conscious of the streaks of crusty soup on my clothes.  So when I went home, I pulled out the mixer, the unsalted butter, and the chocolate chips and made oatmeal, chocolate chip cookies.

A calm settles over me when I'm baking.  I am reassured by the predictability.  And I feel close to my mom seven hundred miles away.  Because in the sifting of flour and leavening and the creaming of cold butter and sugars, I know I understand her better than I did fifteen years ago when I was so anxious to make her proud.  I better understand the wonder that chemistry has for her, and I'm grateful to share that wonder with her in the kitchen.  It is in these little things - not my bachelor's in music - that I begin to really know my place in the universe.

The recipe comes from here, and I saw it first here.  Here's the recipe as I made it:

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups of all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup of unsalted butter
1 cup of granulated sugar
1 cup of light brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (Original recipe calls for 2 teaspoons, but I'm using some seriously strong vanilla these days.  Thanks, Charise!)
2 3/4 cups of rolled oats
2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips

If you're going to bake the cookies immediately - preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Cream the butter and sugars until smooth.  Add vanilla and mix to blend.  Add eggs one and a time, mixing at medium speed until thoroughly combined.  In a small bowl, combine the first four ingredients (all the dry ingredients except the oats and chocolate chips).  Slowly add to mixer and beat until just combined.  Add rolled oats and chocolate chips and mix with a spatula until combined.  

Refrigerate at least one hour and up to 48 hours.  (Obviously, you can skip this).

Place generous spoonfuls of cookie dough on your prepared sheet and flatten with your hand.  Bake for 10-12 minutes.  It was 12 minutes for me - but my spoonfulls were pretty generous.  You want to remove them with the edges are starting to brown but the middle is still a little undercooked.  Let them sit on the cookie sheet for about 3-5 minutes then remove to a cooling rack to completely cool.

Little House in the Deep South

We looked for over a year and a half, but nothing we looked at even came close to having all of the specific characteristics we wanted.

1.Acreage
2. Flat pasture
3. One story
4. Wide door-ways
5. NO open floor plan.
6. Laurens County
7. Reasonable distance from work,

The houses with wide-doorways had small kitchens and open floor plans.  And the houses with acreage were hilly and mostly wooded.  Looking back, I should have know that any house we found that matched all these parameters would be unique and require work.

But then Matt and our realtor George found this house on fifteen acres.  Fifteen flat acres.  It fit all of our requirements and it was in our price-range.  As you know, we made an offer and finally moved our lives here.

It is, of course, a work in progress.  But for now, here is a photo tour of the house that has been the cause of so much consternation and excitement in our lives.

View of the front room looking in from the living room:

The kitchen is directly across from the front door:

To the left of that is a closet, the guest bath, utility room, and the stairs leading up to the loft:

Looking up at the loft and into the living room:

Another view of the loft with doorway between the front room and living room closed:

That glass paneled door leads to a bedroom that we are currently using to house lizards and spiders.  No tours of that!

Going through the pocket doors, here is the living room:

The master bedroom is off the living room:

So there is the first floor our farmhouse.  Pictures of the outside and loft to follow!

Life Lately

I didn't have to work today.  I always end up washing a lot of dishes on my days off, and today was no exception.  It started with the bundt pan for roast chicken at 9:30 this morning and ended with the bundt pan for banana cake cake at 9:30 tonight.  My day of dishes has come full circle.

In case you're wondering, I did not eat roast chicken at 9:30 this morning.  At least, I didn't intend to when I roasted it.  I wanted to roast a chicken to shred for some meals this week, and decided to try out a method for roasting that Jennifer had sent me last week.  When I saw that crispy skin, I couldn't resist cutting off pieces and eating them with my toast and coffee.  Possibly the weirdest and best breakfast I've ever had.

In spite of my snacking, I ended up with three bags of chicken for this week.

Chicken for chicken and biscuit casserole, chicken quesadillas and this bbq chicken quinoa salad I'm obsessing over right now. I used the carcass to make broth.  It was a good excuse to use the wilted celery and sad looking leeks in my produce drawer.

I am pretty excited to try this roasting method again - but with vegetables and to eat for dinner.  Have any of you roasted a chicken in a bundt pan before?

Thank you for all the encouragement after my last post.  The house is feeling more like home. My cousin Laurie (cousin by marriage - but I totally claim her) gave me some really good advice my first week here.  She said, "Remember in Night at the Museum how chaotic everything was on the first night?  And then at the end of the movie he's just saying goodnight to everyone and everything is calm?  Pretty soon, this will all seem normal, just like in Night at the Museum."  I don't think I'm quite to the end of my movie yet, but I am certainly more comfortable with Teddy Roosevelt and Sacajawea than I was four months ago.  Today I unpacked my last box.  Hooray!  I didn't realize how much that would go towards making me feel settled.

I took advantage of the sunny weekend to take a photo tour of the house.  I'll share that on here soon!

In the meantime, here is a picture of some new additions at the farm:

I call the lamb Sacajawea.  And I tell her goodnight every night.