Eggplant 2012

Sadly, summer is winding down.  Soon it will be time to get back into the classroom so I had better make good use of the vacation time I have left.

I'm still reading a lot, which makes me happy.  It might be better if I read one thing at a time, but I currently have three things open.  As of today I am reading Foxes of the Desert which is the story of the Afrika Korps battles versus Britain told from the German perspective.  There are worse things to be consumed by but I just love reading Edgar Allan Poe.  Every so often I dig out a collection and read and read and.... I tend to like his mystery/horror stories best.  The third item I have opened is the September issue of Asimov's science fiction magazine.  Anyway that is the reading list, until the next new comic day.

Last week I decided I wanted to make another batch of eggplant.  The process was held up because I wanted to get a larger contained to use for the salting and soaking.  Honestly I am glad I did this.  The container I bought last week has a locking lid (so hopefully no spills when moving it around) and it has a grate.  The grate, a piece of plastic, was the best thing ever.  Putting this in the container while the eggplant was in the water/vinegar mixture with a small bowl on top kept everything submerged. The whole time!  Success!!

I packed up three jars this time.  Next weekend I will sample and see how it is.  After salting the eggplant over night I baked some of the slices (picture above) and marinated them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, and some herbs.  This made a pretty tasty sandwich filling.

Not wanting the weekend to be dominated by the eggplant festival I made these scones but substituting chocolate chips for the dried fruit and because I had leftover heavy cream I made this stew. Good stuff.

Pureed what?

While on vacation in Wisconsin I ate brats made from locally raised pigs, corn on the cob, various homemade jams and pickles. My Texas hosts fed me ribeye steak and steak fajitas cooked over charcoal.  No surprises there, I think.  I pitched in with cooking some breakfasts.  One morning I fed the crew bacon, fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs.  I will note here that one of the hosts is a vegetarian and was kind enough to let us make her house smell like bacon.

While it is always nice to eat food prepared by other people while on vacation I was happy to cook for myself when I got home.  While looking through my freezer I saw a bag of roasted green chiles from last fall so I decided to make green chile stew.  Since it was barely 100 degrees here last weekend the stew really helped take the chill out of my bones.  (This is the type of joke you make to make it through an Arizona summer.)  I also decided to make something new.  After paging through my copy of the Italian Country Table I decided to make fava puree.  Yeah, you read that right.  Apparently you can take dried fava beans and over cook them (with potato slices) and mash them up so they look a lot like mashed potatoes.  No really!  I wasn't sure how this would turn out given that as the beans cooked and I stirred the pot, what I saw was just a pot of beige water.  Yum?  It looked bad and I nearly tossed the pot's contents to start over.  However once the potato slices disintegrated and most of the water cooked out, the whole thing came together.  It still looks little gross in the pan, but it looks better when plated and drizzled with olive oil and pepper.  I'm not sure what I was expecting this to taste like, but damn it is was good. My version was pretty lumpy as some of the beans didn't get mashed up.  Not a problem though.  Wonder how long I will wait before I make this again using the leftover dry favas?

Pickle update:  So far so good.  They are a bit sweeter than I'd like but they survived the pickling process and taste good. 

Pickles, Dill

It is strange to say that going on vacation gave me a pickle craving.  I acknowledge I am weird so let's move on.  I had homemade pickles made by my hosts in Wisconsin and one of their friends.  My hosts pickles were fairly standard dill pickles.  The other batch I sampled were provided at a potluck we went to.  As soon as I bit into the pickle I said, "Ooo the brine has cinnamon in it."  That was a new experience for me.  So when I came home I decided to make a batch of pickles.   I've made bread and butter pickles before, but I wanted to try dill pickles this time.  The restriction was that the recipe needed to be for refrigerator pickles.  Some day I will be brave enough to try canning.  If I ever live somewhere cool I may even take a crack at making pickles in a crock.

Here is a link to the dill pickle recipe I settled on.  Easy enough to make except for finding pickling spice.  Neither store I went to had it stocked with all the other spices.  I thought I was out of luck but then it dawned on me to check the bulk spice area of the second store.  Whew!  They had it in stock and oddly their pickling spice has pieces of cinnamon stick in it.  (Yes, I will be checking the bulk spice section of the first store I went to.)

It all got put together and packed in jars last Saturday so now the wait begins until they have pickled enough to try.

I finally went somewhere!

Yes it is funny to have "vacation" in the title of a blog that never mentions going anywhere.  This year I finally got myself to go visit friends in both Wisconsin and Texas.  Over about two weeks I took planes, trains, and automobiles to travel to Chicago, Monroe, WI, Tulsa, and the San Antonio area.

I spent the week July 4th in Wisconsin. Of course I had to pick one of the hottest weeks of all time to visit so hid indoors a lot. Some activities included:

• Sampling fudge for friends who are in the process of opening a candy store in Monroe, WI.
• Eating Braunschweiger and chili at Baumgartner's.

• Attending Sunday Mass at St. Victor's church where a friend's uncle was the pastor and is now honored by a statue in front of the church for work with the disabled (Apostolate to the Handicapped/Campion's Champions).

• Went to the Sky Vu drive-in to see Brave and The Avengers.
• Saw Fireworks!

• Went to Cave of the Mounds.

When the week finished I traveled by minivan with a friend and her two children aged nine and six from Wisconsin to San Antonio, spending the night in Tulsa.  Texas activities included:

• Sunday mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

• Visiting a snake farm/petting zoo.

Toured the San Jose mission instead of the more touristy Alamo.

I even helped to bottle a batch of beer.

It was a fun couple of weeks.  I have been to both places before but I had never traveled between them.  All the trees lining the highway through Oklahoma was unexpected, but all the rest of the terrain was pretty dull. Sorry Midwesterners.