The Art of Corona St. Cooking

This post is going to be about food. We love food, in case you haven’t noticed. We are obsessed with growing veggies, buying delicious ingredients, cooking elaborate feasts, and savoring every morsel. Today, we are going to talk about bread, giant sandwiches, and veggie tacos.

I know that we have talked about Dave’s bread baking in the past. These are just a couple of newer creations we’ve tried out. Looking back on our blog, it seems we have already talked about the herb bread we make with the fresh herbs from our garden, so I won’t go into that too much, except to say that this one was made with mostly just lavender, which made for a unique and delicious tasting loaf.

Pre-Cooked

Post-Cooked

The other thing we did was make rolls! Rolls are something that Dave has always wanted to experiment with but never did. We made a double batch of French bread so we would have a huge loaf for our giant sandwich. But it was just too much dough to work with, so we cut some off, formed it into little balls, and presto! Scrumptious rolls! These came out pretty much like white dinner rolls. Dave did some nice slashing action before they went into the oven, and they came out looking pretty professional.

This brings us to the Godzilla sandwich. We baked the aforementioned loaf, which was about 50% bigger than normal. We got delicious fresh produce, mostly from the Saturday farmer’s market and including our own homegrown cucumbers. I believe we had peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, cukes, onions, avocado, provolone cheese and mayo. This is one of our favorite meals in the summertime. You make it and cut off a hunk to eat right away, then put it in a bag and refrigerate it. If you can wait until the next day, it’s even better because the bread gets a little softer and the flavors all meld together. Really easy to do and so good. We don’t eat it when the veggies aren’t in season though, because it seems to lose something.

Lastly, we will talk about taco night. Our friend Molly recently moved back to Colorado Springs, and came over one night last week to make dinner with us. She has a great recipe for veggie tacos that she has perfected over the years. They include bell and spicy peppers, onions, corn and black beans, all thrown in a pan and let to cook down and get delicious.

We supplied the tortillas – we learned of these uncooked tortillas from our other friend Lin that you can get at Costco. They look just like flat white discs when you take them out of the bag.

You put them in a hot frying pan for a few seconds on each side and they puff up, get brown and are so much better than the pre-cooked ones you get at the grocery store. If you go to Costco, pick some up. They are also delicious as desert with cinnamon, sugar and butter. So, the veggies cooked, the tortillas puffed up, some cheese and sour cream was added at the end, and voila! These tacos were so quick and tasty. We had enough for leftovers the next day, which were great too.

We read an article last week published in the New York Times by food genius Michael Pollan. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=michael%20pollan&st=cse

He talked about how far things have come from the early 1960s, when Julia Child’s The French Chef premiered on PBS. He wrote that since then, food companies have taken the preparation – and essentially the food – out of cooking these days. Parents can buy pre-made frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches now! Yes, everybody is so busy these days working harder than they have had to in a long time just to make ends meet. But making food doesn’t have to be so laborious, time consuming and expensive to be homemade and fresh. We have learned over the past year or so that cooking can be a most rewarding and enjoyable experience. It is sad that so many people see preparing a meal as a tedious chore and not worth spending time on. A potentially deadly downside to buying prepackaged food-like product from the grocery store or loading up on fast “food” is that you have no idea what you are eating. So if you have the opportunity, get in touch with your food. Take an evening to shut off the TV, recruit friends and family, and cook a meal. Then do it again.

Quilted jars of relish

So you were all here for the can-tastrophe regarding the relish a few weeks ago. Luckily the cucumbers continue to grow. We had another load of them that all became ripe around the same time. The problem, as before, is that there are not enough that become ripe for a recipe but way too much just to eat in sandwiches and stuff. So this time we decided to supplement our pure, natural, special cucumbers with who knows what kind of cucumbers from the famer’s market. Anyways, I made the relish and canned it. We have to wait a month until we taste it so all of the flavors get together properly. I hope everyone out there is canning because it is so easy and you can make such great stuff. I didn’t burn myself, nothing blew up, and now we have several jars of hopefully yummy relish. This is all it took:

• 1. making the relish and letting it sit over night in the fridge
• 2. washing the jars and stuff

• 3. cooking the relish mixture

• 4. sterilizing the jars by boiling them in the canning pot

• 5. filling the jars with the cooked relish mixture

• 6. putting the tops on the jars
• 7. boiling the jars for some unspecified time (seriously, the recipe didn’t say so I had to make an informed guess by reading other recipes) don’t forget to adjust for altitude!

I still like it complicated

Dave ruined a loaf of bread in classic dave fashion by failing to add salt. This is by far his most frequent baking error. You may underestimate how important salt is in bread. You shouldn’t. It is basically uneatable without it. And this is from a couple of people keep their standards low. It can be used for breadcrumbs or croutons. Trust us when we say a 2lb loaf of bread makes a lot of bread crumbs. The good news it was a loaf of anadama bread – that sweet dark heavenly loaf new englander’s know and love. yum. YUM! This is why that was good. Because earlier this week Amy C. requested more info on anadama. Since dave’s last attempt didn’t end up in an eatable loaf we are not sick of eating this type of bread and are totally ready for a loaf of anadama. Of course we wouldn’t have been sick of it even if we had eaten the whole thing because it is so scrumptious. So that entry should be forthcoming. Also, we may be attempting relish again. We had another bounty of cukes this weekend. As we speak dave is rushing to the farmer’s market to get baby cukes to supplement our own. Chances are when he gets there all the vendors will be gone or they will still be there, his hopes will swell that he will be able to get them, only to be disappointed when he learns that they have all been sold out. We shall see when he returns. This morning we were very excited to purchase a box of 2nds peaches (bruised or dented ones which are half of and perfect for baking) only to find out they sold out moments before we arrived. This was after talking with our friend molly for days about how delightful a peach cobbler would be… with either ice cream or homemade frozen yogurt to top it off. yum. YUM! YUM! (that is right, YUM! X 2). So no peach cobbler or peach salsa this week. Anyways, stay tuned for more news regarding the cukes and anadama bread.

Also, before we forget, dave played at raven’s nest open mic this past week. It was fun as always. He played lucky me, bus driver blues, colors, and only sleeping.

I like complicated

These are Dave’s words. You should know that we tried to make relish and failed miserably. We don’t have any pictures to show for it. Anyways, here is the story. We had a bunch of cucumbers that were ready from our garden all at once. The recipe called for about 4.5 pounds of cukes and we had about 3 pounds. We thought this would be no big deal and we would just tweak the recipe. However, Renee a canning cookbook which insisted that you not decrease the amount of salt in a recipe even if you decrease the cukes. We shredded our precious cucumbers and added onion. Then we added tons of salt to the relish, along with sugar and cinnamon. It tasted a bit salty but otherwise was fine. The next step was to cook the mixture. Something wild and chemical must have happened in that pot on that stove on the way to relish because the next time we tasted the relish it was horribly salty. Way way WAY too salty. Ew, horrible, we shudder at the memory. Renee was ready to pitch it but dave wasn’t going to give up so easily. He instructed that sugar be added. We tasted again. This time the result were so revolting the hideous brew was spit into the sink. The horror! Our lovely baby cucumbers, the first produce we grew with our own hands – destroyed. Turns out Renee was reading a page about pickles and the whole thing was a misunderstanding.

Wrapper Action

Dave has always been interested in mastering once-trendy but now-outdated crafts. He taught himself the way of the loop potholder

and the woven hemp jewelry

and now he has conquered the gum wrapper chain! It was tricky, and it was hard to find good directions, so to help out all aspiring gum wrapper weavers, we have included an instructional video. Music composed by dave.

Fix-it Time

We believe that part of being an artisan fixing things when they get broken. This is important because it allows you to practice artisanal skills such as sewing. Moreover, this allows us to remain in touch with the items that we love and resist participation in the extremely wasteful practice of buying, using, and throwing out. What choice do you have but to fix something that you love that isn’t made anymore? For example, when dave’s favorite corduroys get a rip they must be sewed because he has search for a comparable pair for 6 years finding no other pair rivals his favorites. How better to honor those pants that have served you well for years than to mend them rather than cast it out to the landfill? That is what this post is all about.

Dave’s glasses have been an ongoing object of repair. The pictures don’t really capture what has been going on and it is difficult to explain so we hope this makes sense. It all began 6 months ago. Dave’s glasses developed a crack on the top of the left rim (above the lens). It looked ominous but it didn’t really get worse - they pretty much stayed that way for 5 months. Then he dropped them onto the tile in the bathroom and they snapped – the lens flew out, it was quite a scene. If you don’t have glasses you may not know how terrifying this is. The bitter irony of vision impairment is that if your glasses break you can’t see to fix them. Renee picked up the lens and the frames and was relieved to discover it was just a crack along the top rim, the fissure from before had given way and could no longer hold the lens. Time for new glasses??? No! Using some packing tape renee placed the lens back in and taped the top. It looked pretty crappy for days, maybe weeks, until she went back and trimmed to tape more closely. About a 1.5 months later, disaster struck again. While at king’s chef diner dave attempted to clean his glasses. They broke again! This time, the top and bottom cracked, resulting in the glasses falling in two pieces plus the lens of course. Needless to say dave was very crabby and we had to get our food to go. When we arrived home renee employed the packing tape again and dave’s glasses are back together again. We are not sure how long this fix will last but we are hopeful they will hold on a while longer.

Another recent repair has been the mending of one of renee’s skirts. We are not sure how it all started but a 5-inch gash appeared on the back and bottom of one of her skirts. It should be mentioned that things sometimes go for long periods of time before getting fixed in our house; she wore it several times with the hole and it then lived on her craft table for a while before actually getting fixed. renee took a few minutes to sew it up while watching TV at a friend’s house. Very simple, only took a few minutes, and now the skirt will continue to be worn for an indefinite amount of time. It may be a testament to renee’s sewing skills or the type of pattern on the fabric but after the repaired skirt came out of the wash, she had to search and search for the seam!

Sometimes we dread fixing things. When the chain came off renee’s bike last week, it seemed like it would be a big deal to fix it, and we were not looking forward to this repair job. Last summer, both of renee’s bike tires went flat and dave had to fix them not having done it before. It was a stressful undertaking for the back wheel, since the chain and gears and whatnot had to be taken off and put back on. An hours-long job. This time, renee basically just looked at it and flicked it back on with no problems.

This kind of segues into another important facet of keeping your things in tiptop shape – preventative maintenance. This week, we are hoping to take our car in to have a leaky tire looked at, sharpen our knife set, and get dave’s guitar tuned up. They are the sorts of things we continue to put off, but thinking about this entry has helped to motivate us and hopefully will do the same for you. Do any of you have repair/maintenance stories?

Seahorse and Manatee

Last week was not very blogable. It was pretty typical, dave did do some baking but we didn’t create much otherwise. We did our big shop. That is basically a day of grocery shopping with supplies for 2 weeks, which we usually stretch out for 4 weeks. This week we went to three big stores for food and a big farmers market. Very exciting stuff. If you want to be more entertained you can stop reading this and start reading Julie’s blog. Don’t let the fact that she doesn’t like deer scare you off. Her musings of conditioner and dreams of heros are remarkably addictive. I suppose it is not all that surprising that her blog is so fun to read and addictive since she is an actual writer, like an author. She another of our favorite artisans in training. In addition to being a writer she is a generally crafty lady making her own jewelry and curtains. Anyways, we frequently check to see if she has new entries (often several times a day) because we can’t get enough.

Ok, back to the blog at hand. Things picked up for us this weekend. First of all Renee went to Christina’s house for some brewing. Christina chose a sour cherry beer for her first brew. What is craftier than brewing beer at home? Exactly, nothing. A good time was had by all, except for Dave who stayed home to record. Well, he had a good time, but not at Christina’s. He recorded an acoustic version of kathleen for the new compost shark/manatee’s album and my ghost a new solo. Those should be up soon. In addition to working on the new compost shark/manatee’s album dave is working on two of his own albums right now. More on that soon. Then Sunday Renee finally retrieved her current projects from Lin’s house and finished her new computer case. It was very simple, guided not by a pattern but by intuition which does involve some seam ripping but results in exactly what works for you. If you are interested in making one you should know that there is an outside (red) and an inside (blue).

Measure your computer, cut two rectangles, and sew them up! There are two layers of fleece interfacing on the front and the back for extra protection. Depending on how rough you are more may be in order. It seems like two layers is adequate if placing in a backpack or purse.