Red Cabbage Braised in Vinegar

I got this recipe from my new cookbook, Molto Italiano (thanks Jan!). It says it's supposed to be sweet and sour, but of course I didn't have all the ingredients so there wasn't so much.... well, you'll see.

1 medium head (about 2 pounds) red cabbage, tough outer leaves removed, cut into quarters, cored, and sliced into 1/2-inch wide strips
1/4 cup evoo
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced.
1 Tbls Caraway seeds
2 Tbls sugar
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
salt and pepper.

Heat a large heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat, add olive oil and heat until smoking. Add onion and caraway seeds and cook, stirring, until onion is soft (3-5 minutes). Add cabbage, sugar, adn vinegar, and stir well. Cover and cook until cabbage is quite tender, about 20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Serve warm or cold, with sandwiches.


RESULTS: I left out the onion. This recipe caught my eye because, although cabbage isn't something I normally pick up at the store, I did this week but when I got home I didn't know what to do with it. It turned out subtly sweet, subtly sour, but I bet the onion would add some heat and flavor. Beware overcooking it, or the sugar will burn to your pan. I speak from experience.

I sprinkled it with parsley from the garden. I had it with a grilled mozzarella sandwich with tomatoes (from the garden) and basil (also garden), and some other tomatoes that didn't make it onto the sandwich.

Green Cleaning

Back in March I mentioned that I was interested in trying out more natural, less toxic cleaning products. Mostly, this is motivated through love of a dog that loves to lick every surface she can find (I think she just likes the way things feel on her tongue), but I figured it couldn't be bad for the humans of the household, either. I found a website called www.realmama.org that posted an article about alternatives to commercial cleaners, mostly using borax, hot water and vinegar, so it has the added appeal of freeing up valuable storage space used by all the various cleaning products with specific purposes. Will let you know how it goes. I'm still looking for an alternative to cleaner for the kitchen floor, which is naturally a favorite of Harper's (aka, my sous chef).

Alright, it's time for a recap.

The week before last was my big week-long conference that I've been planning all year. I don't really want to talk about it. :) It went fine, but I'll be so glad when all the paperwork is over. I swear, red tape is the worst.

On to fun things that I've done. Friday I went to the Monroe County Fair, which was one of the smallest county fairs I've ever seen. They did, however, have funnel cake and elephant ears, the pros and cons of which had been the talk of the town all week amongst my friends. I've been looking forward to the funnel cake, and I got about two bites into it and was done. I don't know why they don't sell those things in bite-sized servings for the same price, they'd make a killing. Anyway, the elephant ears, which I don't think I've ever gotten because I always get funnel cake, tasted rather like warm, floppy cinnamon toast crunch.

We went to watch the demolition derby. So much fun. First, the crowd voted for favorite decorated car (mine was the Maroon Baboon car, which had a giant stuffed animal on the roof). Then, they went in heats, bashing each other up. The top three cars from each heat advanced to the final round. It was pretty cool, several engines caught on fire. Good stuff. The funniest thing was that Suz, one of the classiest dames I know, knows everything about demolition derbies. She's from a town in Idaho called Salmon, and there's only one big event all year and that's the derby. She's also quite the elephant ear connoisseur.

We left the derby early because the next morning, yesterday, we got up and went to Deam Wilderness for a hike out to the lake. Nine miles round trip, and I am beat. It was such a perfect summer day for a hike, though. The only regrettable thing is that I have never seen so many ticks in my life. I got five ticks off of me, four in my clothes and one already latched on to my leg. These were the big dog ticks, we don't have so many deer ticks out here so there wasn't a worry of Lyme Disease, but it's so gross! It took Chris and me three matches and some bourbon (we don't have rubbing alcohol) to get that sucker to let go of my leg. Moral of this story: wear a hat to go into the woods. Anyway, it was really fun. Poor Harper's not going to get any long walks for a while, though.

Nancy sent this out a couple weeks ago, but my spam filter sucked it up. The Fergusons in the audience have probably all seen it already....




I promise I'll do a real post soon!

Reservations

This is pretty much how my day went:

I saw a mamma deer and her two fawns, complete with spots, on the way to work this morning. Mom definitely didn't like me. Deer never seem more threatening than when they're staring at you with their ears lowered and eyes narrowed. Scary.

I'm in the middle of a week at my annual workshop, trying to get the catering and meeting room setup people to do what I paid them for, while at the same time trying to field the oddball requests from the participants, things that I'm sure to them make sense, but would represent several hours of work for me to produce. Sigh!

Cucumber pesto wrap

Recently, I've discovered a new favorite sandwich, taking advantage of the following three factors: 1) my desire not to turn my old oven on when it's super hot outside, 2) a glut of cucumbers that I was going to make refrigerator pickles out of but the sweet and sour squash is hogging the Tupperware, and 3) the presence of homemade pesto. Viola! The cucumber pesto wrap! I'll think of a catchier name later. I like it with mayo and pesto spread on the wrap, then thinly sliced cucumbers. No cheese, because you won't really taste it, and there's cheese in the pesto. You can use tomatoes, but keep in mind the juicier things that go in there, the more it'll drip all over your hands.

Sweet and Sour Pattypan Squash

1/2 pound green beans, trimmed
2 cups seasoned rice vinegar
2 cups white vinegar
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
5 cups halved yellow baby pattypan squash (about 1 1/2 pounds)
3 tablespoons thinly sliced shallots
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
12 black peppercorns
12 cilantro sprigs
4 garlic cloves, crushed
4 (1/4-inch-thick) slices peeled fresh ginger

1. Cook green beans in boiling water 1 minute. Drain and plunge beans into ice water; drain.
2. Combine rice vinegar and next 3 ingredients (through salt) in a medium saucepan; bring to a boil. Cook until sugar dissolves.

3. Combine beans, squash, and remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Pour hot vinegar mixture over squash mixture. Toss well. Cover and refrigerate 8 hours, stirring occasionally.

Note: Squash mixture can be evenly divided among 4 (1-pint) jars. Store in refrigerator up to 1 week.

Yield: 8 cups (serving size: 1/4 cup)

RESULTS:
I made this recipe for a BBQ at Jeremy's house. I was a little worried about it because 1) could not find cilantro in the store so I replaced the herbs with sage and dill, 2)I had unseasoned rice vinegar, 3) I didn't have enough rice vinegar so I had to 4) use some apple cider vinegar and sake to make up for that. However, I turned out pretty tasty, and it was super easy. It was VERY strong smelling, and that might have been because of the apple cider vinegar. I think I would have prefered it a little more subtle.

It's been an interesting Fourth of July weekend. Chris and I went out to a fancy pants dinner at a place called the Scholar's Inn on Thursday as a late anniversary celebration. I had fish with a red rice risotto, which I've never heard of but it was delicious. Then, Friday I went to the bbq and had a great time there. Saturday Brad, Suz and I and a few other of my Bloomington friends went out to a place in the middle of nowhere called the Story Inn (motto: One inconvenient location since 1851) for a roots / string band music festival out by the barn, which is one of three buildings in Story. Three. It was a beautiful location, smack in the rolling hills, forests, and wildness of Brown County, surrounded by horse trails and fields. Really, very romantic and picturesque. Take a look at the pictures. This is definitely one of the things I love about southern Indiana (There are a lot of things I DON'T like, of course). There's a strong community feeling in Bloomington and a desire to keep the traditions of this area still going, and this whole event was in support of the community radio station which tends to either play great local bluegrass or broadcast the goings on from the Bloomington town meetings. Anyway, it was a wonderful, beautiful day with ideal weather.

All that was wonderful. What was rather heartbreaking and sad was that Harper has discovered she is terrified of firecrackers. She's hiding in the bedroom right now, which is where she's been for a lot of the weekend. We haven't been able to go for a walk, no matter how short, without somone setting some off, and then her ears and tail get all scared and she makes herself so small. If they keep going off she panics and makes a beeline for home, regardless of whether there are obstacles in the way such as houses, trees, moving cars, etc. I've had to pull her out of the street at least twice because she doesn't mind the oncoming cars. It's so sad! My brave little puppy is scared of firecrackers. The worst is that there's nothing I can do except get her home as soon as possible. All this is confirmation that she would not be a very good gun dog.

Book Review Time!

It's time again for long unsolicited opinions of my latest reads, starting with Ishmael. I picked this one because of those surveys about high school kids' reading preferences that I typed up. One kid said her favorite book was Ishmael, and because I'm reading Moby Dick ("Call me Ishmael...") I thought they would dovetail nicely, even though I didn't have any idea what it was about. Ishmael turns out to be a philosophy book about a man who finds his guru, a gorilla named Ishmael who can communicate telepathically. This is surprisingly not a major plot point; I think this is really just a way to present his as an outside observer of humanity, whereas of course any human wouldn't be an outsider. Anyway, the whole book is a conversation between the two of them trying to discover why humanity is destroying the environment whereas animals don't. The gorilla breaks people down into Takers (people who've adopted what we would call civilization) and Leavers (those who didn't).

Although I think finding a way to live here more harmoniously is very important, I found this book rather frustrating to read because I thought it had some major logical inconsistencies. For example, at one point it stressed that there are some Leavers who practice agriculture, they're not all hunters and gathers. But at a different point, the major breakthrough moment of the book, the man comes to the realization that the primary difference between Leavers and Takers is that only Takers try to control their environment by practicing agriculture. Also, there was a lot of "historical reconstruction" of things that happened thousands of years ago using myths, which is never something I tend to be convinced by. It SOUNDS like a nice theory, but there's no way to prove it, or even disprove it. Bottom line: a disappointing book, more so because I agree with the author that it's important for us to find ways to leave smaller footprints.

Moby Dick, by the way, is getting interesting, but Beth has read a little farther ahead of me and she claims that there's not much more in the book that makes sense. Sigh!

I sort of skimmed through the parachute book. Generally it was about the whole process of applying for jobs, from networking to your resume to interviewing, and I'm more interested in just getting ideas for what careers to look into next year, sort of something to point me in the right direction, or any direction. It finally got sort of to this towards the end, but it had a lot of what I'm sure are good tips on self reflection and prioritizing, but it just made me want to watch cooking shows instead of find a career path. Plus, I never found out what the heck the title of the book meant. There was no mention of parachutes or colors or anything.

Anyway, I mentioned all this to my officemate Jane. Jane is the sort who, well.... Jane is really friendly, and she used to own a used bookstore so she did a lot of reading of lots of random stuff, and she's a mom who is very involved in her children's lives, and this involvement sort of spills over into all her relationships. If you have any problem or question or curiosity, she either knows the answer or will attack it like Ian's Shih-tzu Zeus goes after his little toy badger (this isn't Zeus, but it gives you a good idea. Turn your sound on). She brought me a book called Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for you Through the Secrets of Personality Type.

Chris scoffs at personality typing, but I think it's an interesting way to look at things. This book uses the Meyers-Briggs, which is the one with the four letters (ISTP or ENFJ, for example). First it walks you through figuring out your personality preferences, making sure you understand that it's really just a preference not an always. If you're J, it means you like making decisions rather than keeping things open-ended, but that's not ALWAYS and not in every situation. Anyway, then it tells you what sort of positions are generally appealing to people of that personality type. For example, INFP types (Introvert, iNtuition, Feeling, Perceiving) generally tend towards jobs where they have a lot of creative control where they can express themselves and help people, so they tend to be more comfortable as, say, a professional artist or a therapist rather than a job that requires more getting out and meeting people and convincing, like a salesman or politician. It didn't really tell me anything I didn't know about my preferences in a career. but it was more helpful to make it clear that my preferences aren't EVERYONE'S preferences. The book lists the characteristics of a job that personality types tend to like, such as working with a team vs. not, having a structured ladder to work up vs. organic unstructured companies, etc., and I was reading the ones for my personality type thinking, well of course everyone would want this in a job. And then I turned to some of the other types and they were making me cringe thinking about having to work in those environments, but some people prefer that. Some people LIKE making cold calls, which is not something I can ever begin to imagine liking. Anyway, it all makes sense, and I'm sure I already knew that on some level, but it was nice to have it presented like that. It's a neat book, if you're interesting in personality typing I'd recommend it, even if you're not looking to change jobs.

Finally, here's a picture that I found on the internet of what Harper might have looked like as a puppy (one of our great regrets is not seeing what she looked like as a puppy, although that's more than offset by her coming to us already excellently housebroken, which we don't think we would have been so good at teaching her).

Pesto

I made pesto on Sunday. I though that I'd just have to use part of my basil crop, but I ended up practically stripping them just to make a half batch. It's amazing! You think you've got all this food, but it's really not. I replaced the pine nuts with walnuts and reduced the amount a little; it tasted pretty good and was cheaper, too. I'd print the recipe for you, but I just found it online, and then the computer froze up so I lost the website. I'm sure you can find it somewhere.

Chris and I saw the cutest little itty bitty baby deer today while we were walking Harper*. She didn't see it, of course, even though it was rather in plain sight, just sort of lying in the sun next to a house. Each ear was bigger than its face! I wanted to look for a while but Chris thought for sure we'd be gored by a huge buck that was sort of hovering. His antlers were still velvety, I'm not sure he could have gored us. Stomped on us, sure, but I'm not sure about goring.

*This sentence originally read that "we saw the cutest, etc, baby deer walking Harper." Ah, misplaced modifiers. Gotta love them!