·:[ Sweet Pea Cooks ]:·
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I’m not even sure where the camera is these days–we’re getting down to the nitty gritty in these parts as we start our move to the other state.  We moved a bunch of stuff this weekend; Monday is the big day to finish it up.  In the meantime we are eating out all the time in order to hit up our favorite restaurants before we go.  Yesterday, we had sandwiches at the Pour House, a cheap little place in the Back Bay.  Today it was Yucatan Tacos, our favorite Mexican joint.  We had Thai at Phuket on Sunday night.  Slowly we make the rounds! I did, however, make a really good salad last night.  This was another number out of the free Gourmet notebook that came with an old subscription.  I made somewhere between half and two-thirds of the recipe, which should serve four.  We at the whole thing.  

You’ll need:1 lb red potatoes
1/2 lb Italian sausages (I used the no-fennel sweet from the Italian butcher)
3 c lettuce (calls for arugula, we had Romaine)
1-2 T red vinegar1 t saltbit of pepper
2-3 T olive oil
1/3 c roasted red peppers, sliced  

Start by boiling your potatoes until softened.  I used smallish potatoes, so they took  about 20 minutes.  Once they got going, I started the grill and tossed my sausage on there, which take 15-20 minutes to cook.  The idea was to have the potatoes done just a little while before the sausages. In the bowl you’ll be serving the salad from, add your vinegar and salt and swoosh around until salt is about dissolved.  Once you’ve drained your potatoes allow them to cool until you can just handle them, and chop into 1″ cubes.  Toss with vinegar mix.  They’ll absorb it like a sponge.   Slice sausages into 1/2″ rounds, and add.  Add everything else.  Toss.  Serve.  Yum. 

I bet you could even do grilled potatoes with this and avoid the oven/stove altogether.  Or, alternately, you could do the sausages inside and not use the grill. My oven right now is self-cleaning.  It’s really gross, but it’ll be much better for whoever is in here next.  We’ve lived here 6 years and never cleaned it, so it was high time. 

The heat has finally broken here, so I am excited to use the oven and stove again for longerthan a few minutes at a time. Tonight I’m making a feast–what you see here are white beans, pre-soaked and then simmered. They’ll be used in Mark Bittman’s , which seems to be making the internet rounds these days. I’ve been itching to make it, and while the recipe calls for two lemons and I have but one, I think it’ll be fine. I’m making focaccia to go with it; nothing fancy, just the foccacia I’ve made here before. With both of them, I plan to make pasta with a hearty mushroom and tomato sauce that I found in a Gourmet freebie–Weeknight Meals, I think it was called–discovered during the joy that is packing.Have I mentioned how much I hate packing? Oh, the happiness.Anyway, this feast is in honor of tomorrow being Mr. Pea’s last day at his job, a job he likes ok but which frustrates him more than it satisfies him, and the departure from which signals a lot of potential new things. So hooray for that.But as I waited for my pictures to upload on Flickr (my computer is waging a mutiny by routinely slowing down these days), I started thumbing through a coupon section from an old Sunday paper that’s being used as packing cushion for fragile things like vases. And I found this. I’ll enlarge it so you can see it:This ad….I don’t know. Weirds me out. Makes me kinda cranky. For one thing, it plays upon the fear of average working and middle class Americans of a looming recession, which, in all likelihood, will impact them more than other people. Things aren’t great right now, but technically, there isn’t a recession, but thanks for using it to boost your profit margin, FR. Anyway, above the photo is a receipt that proves this is a wise meal–that you can feed 4 for less than $10–and it includes pasta for $1.25, italian bread for $1.79, salad for 2.50, dressing for 1.59, and FR for 1.99. Grand total, $9.12. Ok. Now I know not everyone can/wants to make Italian bread or quick and easy focaccia, so I’ll let that go. Even the salad. But I guess what makes me kind of sad is that you could make a whole lot more for $9.12. Making your own sauce is going to cost you, on average, a buck and a half, so you’d get your 49 cents there, plus you’d be consuming less preservatives or whatever else goes into a jar of FR. Buying lettuce and a cucumber is likely going to set you back the same amount as “salad”. And you could make your own dressing, though I’m lazy and buy Newman’s Own all the time.  But I also really like their generosity–buy three jars, get one free.  Way to make an effort!  I think it’s the pushing of the buttons that gets me. Pushing of the buttons in the name of profit, which is kind of what got us in this mess to begin with.Rant over. Sorry about that!

This is the first full pair of PJs I’ve ever made. They are a very belated birthday present for one of my very good friends; she’s moved recently, and while I really wanted to send her a snoopy snow cone maker for her birthday, simply for “we’re-30-let’s-get-nostalgic” reasons, these seemed much more practical and easy to shift from place to place. What do you think?

They weren’t terribly hard to make; the shirt’s going to be big, but that’s comfortable, I think, for pajamas. My friend lives in California, thus the shorts. Here in New England these days, even shorts are too hot to wear.

Despite the fact that I am melting away, I am going to cook dinner! I have the beans soaking, and everything else cooks in a few minutes. We’re having an old standby, curried couscous, though without the chicken.

This is likely the last craft project before we move; Mr. Pea aims to have our place cleared out of darn near everything but furniture and the cat this weekend, so that’s pretty much that. It’s ok; once we get to our new place, I’ll start assembling the quilt, which should be more than enough crafting for me.

This is my house. It’s in these boxes, and the other half-dozen or so around the floor. I don’t cook much these days, as I mostly just put things in boxes and try not to melt. It was in the low 70s all weekend but now we’re in the steamy 90s, so I’m avoiding the oven pretty much entirely. We’ve also begun our Farewell Tour of eateries and friends around town, so that’s keeping us from our kitchen, as well. Yesterday I went hiking with a friend of mine in the sun most of the day; that night I met my cousin for dinner with his friends and forgot I was both dehydrated and hadn’t eaten in a while. A little bit of wine went an awful long way. 

This is a photo of round two of one batch of jam. I love to can things, but jam and I are not friends.

I had some berries about to expire, so I cooked them down with sugar as instructed, and boiled them to a certain degree, and then jarred and put them in a water bath. Nothin’. So then after several days I opened them, poured the guts into a pan, and added pectin, a powder derived from apple juice that’s supposed to make this process easy, following instructions. This was Saturday. Today, still nothin’. I’ve put them in the pantry so I’ll stop peeking at them. This time I even did a gel test with a spoon and it passed and STILL no jelly. Jam. Preserves. Whatever. I’m giving it two weeks before I try one last time, following the pectin packages “didn’t set?” instructions and hoping for the best.

The ironic part of all this is that last time I tried to make strawberry jam, many years ago, it turned into a brick. Ha.

Do any of you have experience with this and can make some suggestions? It’s making me batty. It tastes so good, too, which almost makes it worse. Sigh.

Hi!

I’ve been working on a freelance project pretty much nonstop for June, up until yesterday. Today I am finally free. Though I spent most of my time in the last few weeks on the computer, I tried to avoid doing anything fun there in order to get myself back to work. This made me into a news junky, which, given the news lately, has made me into a cranky old crab.

Anyway. Today was my first day of freedom and it’s not too hot, not too humid–probably because I left the house early enough that these two hadn’t settled in completely. Today I went to city hall and officially dissolved Sweet Pea. It had to happen eventually, and there it is. Nearly all the paperwork for related things like sales tax is completed; it’s pretty much a done deal. This is good, because it’s time to start packing it all in not simply metaphorically, but quite literally. We move in three weeks.

I loathe packing. But that’s something else.

Lately most of my cooking has been limited to things I know I can cook quickly and well, in order to get myself back to work. I’ve also done some recipes from other blogs, but I didn’t want to post them here and seem as though that’s all I do, borrowing from other people.

Among the few things I made that went well and were fairly new was homemade barbecue sauce and pulled chicken. After reading Omnivore’s Dilemma some time ago, I’ve been working on limiting my intake of corn syrup. In addition to that, our bottled sauce was long expired. In any event, I made my own. This is part of a new project of sorts for me–making my own of things I buy and take for granted.

Now unfortunately, the main ingredient here was ketchup–seeing as we had a full bottle I wasn’t about to make my own, and our full bottle is loaded with high fructose corn syrup. You just can’t escape that stuff. So my bbq sauce does contain plenty, but I have good intentions to someday, when our bottle of Heinz is gone, make my own.

I put about half the bbq sauce yield in my slow cooker with some boneless skinless chicken thighs and turned it to high for a couple hours, as they were still frozen; I then turned it down and let it simmer away. They cooked for probably five or six hours. The last hour, I left the lid off so that the condensation inside would begin to evaporate and thicken. I was rewarded for my efforts–the chicken easily just fell apart as we loaded it onto bread and ate it with some cole slaw. While the slow cooker does generate some heat, it really wasn’t too bad and didn’t make my kitchen terribly hot, especially if I left it on low.

The sauce recipe is from Joy of Cooking. I made a half-batch.
1 1/2 c ketchup
1 c cider or red wine vinegar
1/4 c worcestershire sauce
1 c packed brown sugar
2 T dry mustard
4 T chili powder, or to taste (I use less)
1 t ground ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T veg oil

Combine in a medium pan over medium heat and stirring often, cook until it comes to a simmer. Simmer 5 minutes. Keeps 2 weeks.

This turned out well…much better than my next project, strawberry jam…

I apologize for the wonky formatting. I’m not sure why, but my changes won’t save.

I’ve been meaning to write about this year’s container garden, which has been growing happily for a few weeks now. We’ve had a really nice spring, save 4 days of what’s really extreme heat for early June, which I’m surely not complaining about given the condition of much of the country. I started my little garden mainly from plants from the Farmer’s Market, which opened in the city a few weeks ago. I have to take 2 buses to get there, but it’s totally worth it. Most of my plants are being grown nearly organically: the majority of them are from Atlas Farm, an organic farm in western Massachusetts; most of them I potted with organic soil. A few, however, have some really old Miracle Grow soil mixed in from last year’s very early containers. I didn’t have any new soil yet, and figured I’d reuse/recycle. So nearly organic, for the most part, will have to do. This first photo is my favorite container out there: it’s a window box that contains a small flat of mesclun and another of romaine. I just added the romaine and I’m a little afraid it may be overcrowded, but we shall see. We’ve already each eaten two salads from the mesclun alone, and it’s due for another pruning. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have some. Atlas sells these flats for $2.50 each at the Copley Square Farmer’s Market.

This here is another Atlas plant, a regular Italian basil. I love basil and can’t get enough of it in this summer. This was a pretty small plant when I bought it a few weeks ago now; it looks small here, but that’s because I gave it a serious pruning last night and made pesto for some fettucine. We ate that with some swiss chard, also from the Atlas Farm, and some garlic scapes from a farm I can’t think of now. Scapes are tasty–I’ve never had them before, and figured I’d give it a go. They’re kind of like garlicky scallions.

I like basil so much I thought I’d start a few seeds. I hope thinning them out won’t be necessary, or if it is, a huge hassle. But I want lots and lots of pesto to freeze for winter, which I don’t want to think about now, but there it is

And here’s this year’s tomato plant, also care of Atlas Farm. I wanted to get plum tomatoes, but this one, a Celebrity variety, claims it’ll grow well in containers. I hope so. I’d like to still get my hands on some heirloom plants, but I haven’t seen any yet this summer. My husband, on the other hand, with an eye to moving in the next six weeks, thinks I have more than enough plants already.

Like this Thai basil, which smells spicier than it tastes, but is delicious nonetheless in a stirfry:

And this rosemary:

And that’s about it. I have some cherry tomato seedlings started, but they’re only an inch tall so I don’t think they’ll really make it for this season. I have some swiss chard seeds to plant, too, after my first seedlings croaked several months ago. Those I might wait until late summer to put in soil, as the chard at the market right now is so tasty and pretty inexpensive.

If you’ve never gardened before, container gardening–and with herbs–is a great and easy way to start. Any garden center will have little plants available, which is a heck of a lot simpler than starting from seed. Seeds and I, as a rule, aren’t friends. But as long as they’ll pair up with a local farm and I can buy the little plants, it all works out.

The perk, as I see it, of closing down Sweet Pea is that I get some time and inspiration to craft again. I’ve decided to make a quilt, which I’ve never done before. It’s made mainly out of scraps in my bin, but also with the scraps of other crafters who were kind enough to share some posh Amy Butler stuff. Here are the pieces, as I tried to lay them out. Because I didn’t have even numbers of rectangles, it was a little willy-nilly. As you can see, I have a helper.

My rows are all set now; they’re in big pinned piles, and soon I’ll start pinning them end-to-end to sew the strips. I’m using this pattern, free from Amy Butler:

Amy Butler Quilt PDF

Wish me luck!

Local berries. So shiny! So warm! So tasty!

One of the things we’ve always had a problem with is letting perfectly good food accidentally sit too long and ending up tossing it.  I’ve been working really hard to reverse that trend; in the last couple of years, I’ve always planned meals before going to the grocery store, which has helped, though it’s not too unusual to have something planned go unmade and d’oh! a zucchini or something rots.  We’re generally good leftover eaters, unless there are really copious amounts that we can’t stomach after a while.  We’re not good at eating the same thing everyday.  Anyway, lately my big thing has been really working on using up all the odds and ends in the fridge.  It’s going ok.  I know there are some nasty scallions that need tossing right now, but I just ate most of the broccoli that had only another few days of life in it, so that’s good.

The other day I sliced a london broil steak in half horizontally; I dusted it with salt, pepper, and a little garlic powder and tossed the halves on a hot grill for just a few minutes on each side to get it medium-rare.  We ate one half  that night; the other day, when it was really hot, we chopped up some romaine in the fridge, a tomato half, a cucumber, and warmed up the steak a minute in a skillet before slicing it and adding it, with some gorgonzola, to the salad.  This wasn’t a meal I’d planned for the week; everything was in the fridge for different intended meals and were generally leftovers.  It made me quite pleased to work all those “extras” into a solid and very tasty meal.

And you’ll be happy to know I resisted the urge for takeout last night.  Joyously, a sea breeze picked up for a little while and made having Alla Checca a possibility.  You chop some tomatoes, basil and garlic and toss with salt and olive oil in a big ol’ bowl and let sit.  When it’s time to eat, you cook up some pasta and toss.  Quick, easy, and relatively heat-free, save boiling the water.  Perfect for the rare occasion the heat wave cracks a smidge.