cabra delicata

Fearing milk allergies and mucus production, my folks experimented with feeding me goat milk as a child. In rural Sonoma County back in the seventies, this was no way out of the norm. Although I don't remember much of the early diet shift (as it was pre-5 for me; my elder sister was the one who really had to deal with it) I have a long standing love/hate thing with goat products. Okay now, I'll back up just a touch and say overall, I like them, especially the meaty kind. However, pretty much straight across the board, nope on the milk form. Curdle it or age it though and like, wow. Some are simply divine. But cook the creamy products, and for me, all bets are off.

Funny how things happen. I got a package of goat cheese recently, brought it home and noticed it had a cut in the package, likely from a box cutter. The seal was broken. I was looking forward to this on crackers and olive bread but now I doubted serving it to my family. I thought: bring it back, or just cook it? Now, cook it with what? I had some delicata squash about to be cut and roasted in the oven. I started thinking about how dark caramel flavors from the roasted goodness would probably be strong enough to deal with a pound of goat cheese, if in the right form. Maybe add sugar and eggs for safe measure. Time for a cheesecake.

It turned out pretty and all, almost good enough to get into the colorful holiday cheesecake repertoire. Then I took a bite. It was nice and creamy, and the caramel squashiness was perfect. But the overtones of goat were just too damn much for me. I struggled through about half the cake before admitting defeat though. I mean, it was cheesecake after all. Reflecting on it now, I realize this is the second time I've attempted such a thing. Now with two strikes, I'll say with confidence that goaty cheesecake just ain't for me.

leftover week

Did you know that you don't need the tryptophan-laden bird in order to get a serious case of food coma on Turkey day? I didn't, but now do.

This year we honored the beast and had some faux-chicken sausages with some of the usual side dishes: mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing, and brussel sprouts. Even without loading the plate up a second time, the food coma set in and we nearly didn't get to dessert. Somehow, we managed. Then, despite no carcass, as usual, we had tons of leftovers. I say we should officially call the week after Thanksgiving leftover week, since chances have it, that's mostly what you'll be eating. So here goes: a look into this year's leftovers.

I started feeding the monkeys leftovers as soon as possible. The little dude is moving into hyperdrive with the utensil usage and gave cheesecake and brussel sprouts a go at the same time. He ate most of the sprouts, but every last speck of his cheesecake. Without any mess. Wasting none happens when you really, really like something, so I'll take that as a compliment and testament to his wanting more cheesecake in the future.

Yeah, speaking of cheesecake. I'm a fiend for them in case you don't know. But more specifically, the sweet potato kind. The addiction started a while back, before the blog. Then two years ago I made an orange colored one while recounting the original. Then last year, I found the right variety and we had a purple one. This year's had garnet yams again, as the purple variety of sweet potatoes were nowhere near the vibrancy of last years after cooking them. Oh well, just coat them in butter and brown sugar and eat them anyway.....aren't candied yams one of your favorites anyway?

But what I really loved the most from this year's leftover fest is that homemade stuffing, heated up and served with a gooey-yolked fried egg atop it, is damn close to heaven in a bowl. Especially if it's made with bread made the day before and toasted the morning of. Luckily we had a disproportionate amount of stuffing leftover this year, and eggs o' plenty. So, not only have I had this four mornings in a row, but unless someone comes and swipes the rest outta my fridge, I'll have my last hella delicious bowl of it tomorrow. There are still some candied yams (gone tonight I'm sure), some brussel sprouts (ditto), and mashed taters (uh, scratch that as writing this piece took too long). The last piece of cheesecake (it was a frickin' huge one) just might hang in there until tomorrow though.

Ahhhhh, the leftovers nearly done with and we're on to the next portion of the holiday season. Some folks mark it with counting down the days until x-mas, so to honor the tradition, we went and bought a couple of "advil calendars" this morning. You might know them by their better known name: advent calendars. I guess the bigger of our little heathens knows more about advil than she does about the advent, and being as though it has been a whole year since the daily chocolate dispensation occurred, it only seems normal she'd go with the more familiar sounding name. Considering we just survived really only the beginning of the holidays, maybe an advil calendar isn't such a bad idea.

Anyway, stay warm, enjoy the festivities, and may a homebrew be coming your way soon..........Happy December!

wrangler in rose

{Note: Fatherhood is the most rewarding task I have undertaken in my life, and equally stressful, quite often at the same time. This post is a recollection of some events that produced such a state. But most importantly, my kids are well and I have survived to tell the tale..........and as with each tale of wandering near the brink, whether of sanity, health or reality, this tale portends of future occurences and long lasting consequences.}


Where am I?

Has it really been a fortnight of wranglin' around in a pastel ruled girlie land; a season of pinks, purples and myriad other shades, where rosie pink has infiltrated everything......



Two weekends ago it all started innocently enough with my desire to feed some farmers. The Ecology Center had their annual Feed the Farmers party and with purple sweet potatoes in the market it was time for that lavender beauty again. This is my favorite way to make cheesecake and the results are fantastic. The color of the finished product has folks wondering what's in it from across the room. When they find out it has sweet potato they usually raise an eyebrow in doubt. Then they try it, smile, and ask you once agin what's in it, because they simply can't fathom how your last statement of ingredient can yield such a tasty and royal colored treat. Or you get the "there's sweet potato in here?" questioning face, followed by the "but it's delicious!?" look of bewilderment. Try it sometime. You'll see what I'm talking about and then you can let me know what you had as experience for reactions to it.

Between making the cheesecake twice, eating some baked sweet potato for lunch twice myself, and feeding it to the wee one a few times as well, I spent each day involved with a lavendar hue at some point. Topped off with the elder monkey's hair having pink highlights, then coupled with her wearing pink and/or a princess dress for a few days on end while prancing and bopping, hopping and stomping around constantly, I was beginning to wonder if my eyesight had been "pink shifted." Like astronomy and universal expansion being seen in the red shift of things and stuff like that. Only closer to home, super girlie, and way pink. Before I realized it fully, my life in rose colored sight and taste had already lasted a week.

After the day of grotesque turkey consumption came the real days of pink though. Big girl turned four. It was birthday season. I thought to myself, Holy crap. I've got a four year old and a 6 month old!! Couple this with our orchids showing signs of blooming again this year and I'm startin' to feel like a real adult!

Plans for the momentous occasion began the previous weeks with late night store runs and the first rumblings of craft work. These were followed by actual progress on requested birthday items as the hours counted down. Last year we had a piñata, so this year we were being held to furnishing another. Only this time, with a preconceived notion of what the realm of possibility was, she requested a spiderbatflamingo. You've heard of one right? The great mythical creature of long ago. The part spider, part bat, part flamingo beast that was feared by some but loved and now revered by my kid. I hadn't heard of one before and was having trouble envisioning such a thing, but it didn't stop me from trying to accommodate her desires. Now the problem was how to find one. "Sure honey, we could have a piñata like that, no problem!" What the hell was I thinking? No one is going to have such a thing. I'll have to make it myself! I can do it!?


Well it only took about four hours of actual work on it, with maybe another ten of thinking about it real hard. It had a black widow body, and bat wings mounted near the intersection of the cephalothorax and abdomen, since I wasn't sure where a spiders wings would go, being that they haven't any. A flamingo neck and head complete with monkey chosen "poisonous fangs" mounted near the base completed the creature. We hung it from our dining room fixture for maximum effect. It was greeted on party morning with a "that's a flamingo spider!" Then after a wing-type question, "with bat wings!"

It was a hit, so to say. The underside of the spider didn't prove too difficult to whack through and the red violin shape was recognized by monkey and most others as belonging to a black widow. It made me think that maybe we have a future entymologist on our hands. Wait, or is that etymologist? Anyway, the treats seemed to trickle out in small handfulls with each turn of abuse. Perfect for the crowd. I was proud of my design, and the stress of the piñata making and the related worry over its ability to function, resulting in a bizarre sense of "performance anxiety," was over. The creature ended thoroughly mangled and empty of candy. My daughter's face was lit up and happy, beaming with the destruction and success. I patted myself on the back and gave my big girl a huge squeeze, feeling myself getting all choked up.......

Two days after the party, and finally a sense of normalcy is beginning to return to the house, after the holiday/birthday/special-nessy of it all. For me, it was time to start paying closer attention to our latest cider. I had managed to procure yet more apple juice for yet more apple hooch, making it three batches so far this year. And I'm proud to report that this time I went and bought the juice without squeezing it myself, thus saving an inordinate amount of time during a season that was lacking already. The juice was fresh pressed, unpasteurized and kept cold for a day. Not to mention, from one hell of a delicious fuji apple. Well, it was from more than one apple obviously, but not more than one variety. I can't wait to compare it in a few months with the rest of the ciders, side by side.

Just when I thought the season of pink might come to an end, I get roped into "let's put some of the foamy stickers on the cider daddy!" Willingly that is. You see, I'm a sucker for my monkey. She's trained me how to be a dad, and she deserves all I can give. I'm proud. And stressed. And comfortable in my masculinity amongst all the girlie-ee. Stickered in pink, even wearing a skirt or ribbons in my hair, I've never been happier in my whole life.

what you didn't miss while I was gone

Despite the paucity of posting, this past week has been filled with activity. I had good intentions on a few of the days of putting something up, but whatever it was turned sour in some way, shape, or form. Let's have a re-cap, shall we?


Our weekend of fun in the snow was really more graceful than this pose indicates, however, it is this one that comes to mind when I look through the lens of hindsight at my past week. Something was askew in nearly every situation involving either food or the monkey, from Sunday afternoon, straight through to Friday morning. Well, maybe more like starting on Saturday afternoon, where my steering abilities while sledding were completely lacking, leaving me at the bootom of a small hill with my body doing the work for the sled.

Take Monday's dinner for example. It is the partial remains of a honey whole wheat crust pizza with an Ajvar sauce (thanks callipygia), cheddar, parmesan, horseradish jack and mozzarella cheeses, with black olives and artichoke hearts. The crust was a bit off, being as though the dough was really made with the intention of sandwich bread, of which three quarters of it became so. But we had alot of cheese in the house and I was jonesin' for a hot pizza pie. I just had to. It was spicey and nice, but really, it wasn't very photogenic and you really didn't miss anything. I will make a note for the future: try Zergut as sauce again, like this upcoming week.

And this picture.....ugh! Tuesday afternoon, eating stuffed squash leftovers did not go well. The lighting sucked, and the angles were all wrong, and re-heated stuffed squash, on second thought, is NOT all that appetizing sounding. The bread positioning was a failed attempt at best, and with the monkey going into hyper-drive, I really didn't have much time for the shot. No surprise there. I tried a shot the night before, but the squash came apart while trying to serve and looked horrific. I reserved myself to a shot when it was cool, the following day. Good thing I waited huh? (and yes, that would be a hint of sarcasm there)

Even though this picture ain't all that, it does document (poorly) how silently and precisely plants can maneuver....in an afternoon! Our beans in our bedroom are in want of something to climb. The drawcord for the blinds spent no more than 5 hours in close proximity to the green grapler. This is apparently enough time for the tip of the vine to go at least once completely around the string. When I saw this, I got the impression that if the plant could talk, it would have been muttering lowly "nothing to see here, do-de-doodle-doo.......what, y o u ' r e not using this anymore are you?

Funny, that most of the time they were silently growing and twisting inside, I was outside noisily building a coldframe for them to twist and grow into.

Keep movin'. Nothin' to see here. Nothing exciting that is. Just some plain whole wheat oatmeal sandwich loaves and a few english muffins. These have been standards around here for a while. What was cool was that it was my first time making either successfully while using all whole wheat. I've been working on my gluten addition proportions and I think I'm making some progress.

Uhhh....yeah. What this photo is lacking in composition or focus, it made up for in flavor and aroma. This was my first adventure into making cheesecake using quark as the cream cheese component. It was fluffy and light, more akin to a sweet souffle than a dense cheesecake. If only the chef had bothered to pre-bake the crusts before filling, they might have been easy to pop out of the muffin pan and keep the crust intact. I'm really gonna have to have a few words with that chump.

Instead, we had the equivalent of pineapple upside-down cake, only it wasn't pineapple flavored, or upside-down for that matter. When removing the individual servings, it was a challenge since the crust was a crumbly gooey mess and the cheesecake portion didn't have much strength. In general, they split apart and managed to really be two tasty pieces atop a sugary gravel mess. After this pic, I gave up, and ate the rest upside-down with the crusty bits sprinkled on top.

So after making it to the aquarium on Thursday morning, with kid in tow and at least an hour late, the clownfish set us straight. They did their comical dance among the anemones and managed to pull me out of my funk for a bit. Thanks Nemo. It's a good thing you're small, and behind a few inches of acrylic, because despite their portion size, the little bastages looked mighty tasty and given the chance, I would be attempting some sort of tropical cioppino soon.

Friday, everyone's attitude was much improved, the day was clear and beautiful, and I felt once again that I had the confidence to post something. But while drafting this one, I realized I got tagged and have since been contemplating what to reveal to my small group of pals. That's right folks! The next post is all about mememememe.........catch you soon!

.04 acres and a monkey

I'm feeling some pressure to provide more homegrown nourishment for my family, simply because it is getting bigger. Our monkey is growing up, way fast. "I'm HUNGRY dadda, maybe we can have some more lunch!" I've been thinking of her energy conversion powers as a wonder of nature. It makes me think: we need to find a way to run the planet off of kids. Yeah, that's the ticket! And no, I'm not talking child-labor, I'm talking about somehow harnessing the energy bursts some describe as screaming, or maybe rigging little magnets on them and having them slide repeatedly down a copper-coil tube (okay that would be child-labor) Focus now: or how about that dream of turning this untapped source of audible energy to work for us parents, who are usually the focal point for receiving such a release. I'm gonna need to provide more calories in the future to keep up with the energy absorption/emission curve.

We have limited garden space, on the north side of the house and in a yard that is only 15 feet deep. It contains a thick, black, expansive clay, that when we first started working it, contained tons of glass and gravel, with the occasional rusty nail and old toy. Two months ago we performed our largest "amendment" to the yard, but this does not make up for the fact that it only receives direct light for an hour in the morning and a few more in the afternoon. We do what we can with a few wine barrels placed out front that have served various functions over the past few years (including a staging area for things to be transplanted). We have them out front, facing south, where they get good light from sun-up till about mid-afternoon. So today the monkey and I took action and built a small planter box, to help expand out acreage if you can call such small increments. We brought it out back and rewarded ourselves with some pretty cheesecake for a job well (no, more like halfway) done. We'll get to that cheesecake later.

We filled the box with soil, and then began transplanting some of the spinach we had purchased from Berkeley Hort. While we were at it, we transplanted the beets seen here into the sunniest spot in the back yard, with hopes of at least beet pasta come late spring. The spinach would fill most of the new box, but we needed something else. Maybe with a streak of color, hardy, and certainly edible. "Hey let's go look out," I turned around and there they were:



The "Pot of Gold" container chard from last spring. I had planted it amongst the tomatoes last year, trying to fill in areas wherever I could with various seeds to see what worked. Turns out that in my yard, container chard stays a tiny little thing when it gets shaded out by tomatoes. But it is also hardy, for when I finally had the gumption to rip out the dying tomatoes, it was still its tiny little self, all four inches high and in about 8 or 9 places. I left it there, and a few weeks later it was twice as big. Well, this is certainly worthy of attention, so I took them out of the ground before the previously mentioned amendment by putting them in a container and in the sunniest spot in the backyard. Now they are thriving, and starting to really crowd their container. They needed thinning and would be a nice compliment to the spinach. I placed two plants at either end of our new planter and gave it a little pat-down. Now for the hard part: getting it upstairs and outside the window for living on the roof in the most direct light available.

Now our view of the elementary school across the street includes some greens for braising and salads. It is a small purchase of space, but we're hoping the rewards are great. Last year our attempts in the garden yielded a few tasty things, namely some peas and tomatoes, but really it had plenty of room for improvement. This year I have made a pledge to use our little bit of space in a fashion more befitting of its capabilites. We need more variety, more fecundity, out of our little space. With more use of our sunny roof, perhaps we can achieve such things.

Back to fecundity. And that bigger family remark. We are about halfway toward harvesting our "potato" crop. As with all tubers and subterranean veggies, this one will depend on the moon and other environmental factors as to the exact date it first sees the light. We're just hoping the arrival will go as smoothly as ours in late Nov, 2003. As seen by the in-utero headshot of "Pablo" (as the monkey calls her sibling), our potato has eyes, nose, lips and chin. Just as they should. Let us do the rain dance and pray for good spring weather. So far it's promising to be a bumper crop!



Oh yeah, and that cheesecake thing. You see, the one pictured at top, that we pre-emptively rewarded ourselves with, had some chevre in it, comprising about a third of the cream cheese component. I've been dying to try some goaty-goodness in a cheesecake for at least a year now, so this was a focus for this version. It had the typical (these days) sweet potato for body, color, and flavor, but I did go out on a new crusty limb and used ginger-zing granola and animal crackers for the bottom. It was tasty, but a little too goaty. I'm thinking, in the future, keep the goat on the savory side of the cheese.

And the reason all of these things spilled out of my mind, only to be put together in my dweeby little blog?

Kids.

colorful holiday cheesecakes

When I shop for sweet potatoes, I always hold a sort of hope that a taste of the islands can be found. You see, on the two trips I have taken to the Big Island, we delighted in sampling some of the local produce: coconut, bananas, papaya, pineapple, guava, longan, and some of the more familiar to us tomatoes, corn, and sweet potatoes. Only one thing, these sweet potatoes were purple. Heavenly, yummy, purple, gorgee-ous little sweet potatoes. Some of the local restaurants served it up as a side dish, to say a seared ahi steak or grilled ono fillet, in the form of light and fluffy lavender mountain, with a red colored salad sprig stuck in the top, representing lava spewing out. I fell in love with this form of mashed potatoes at first tasting, and we later purchased some raw ones at the local farmers' market and tried mashing them up ourselves. Well, our selections in lodging somehow never managed to have the right utensil, namely a masher in a kitchen drawer. We made do with forks and big spoons, and plenty of cream and butter I believe, and they ended up palatable. If only we could find these back home....


Shopping at "The Bowl" one afternoon last summer, I'm cruising the tuber section in produce and see something called an okinawan sweet potato. I look at it a little closer and see that the flesh looks like it has purple streaks in it. Ohhhhh, could it be........one of...........those.........hawaiian ones..........? I make my way toward the register to read a book I brought from home for entertainment while standing in line (or so I wish, about every-other time I'm in the place) and purchase somewhere near ten pounds of them. I get home and google it. I had found them. The very thing. I was so happy. I looked up a few recipes and found something entitled "Sweet Potato Cheesecake with Haupia Frosting " by anonymous locals. One look at the ingredients and you could tell they meant island locals. So, for thanksgiving last year we had this purple cheesecake for dessert.

Looking up the recipe again yielded this site:
http://www.e-hawaii.com/features/Christmas/recipes/sweetpotato.htm


Sadly, this year I have not seen the sweet little purple things. I've been back to the source, then another, but without luck. I should probably check chinatown, as I did last year and found them, but you see, most of the crop comes from Hawaii. This doesn't sound too bad right? Think about it a little harder and consider the requirement that the USDA has on irradiating them first, before shipping them the 2,500+ miles (at least) to your door. Purchasing them, should I even find them, is something I just can't do now, for either of those reasons, when there are just so many great locally grown sources of equally delicious tubers. So this year, our family has happily plugged away at eating our papas in the white, yellow and orange color scheme. And as it happens, this week found leftover baked garnet yams, sitting in the fridge, just waiting to be made into something else. Sister A was spending some time with us, so technically it was a holiday and all......so why not, let's do another colorful cheesecake!



Based on making the purple variety twice, adjusting for my own preferences, and of course altering the recipe into one more accommodating to my ingredients, it became something like this. So for a first time, I shall put something into an actual recipe form (of sorts), so here goes:




Garnet Ginger Grenadine Cheesecake (a work in progress)

1 cup chopped pecans (fine)
1 cup mashed graham crackers
1/2 cup buttery stick
2 tbsp chopped candied ginger

combine and pat into that fancy pan you have for such occasions and bake at 350 for ten or so minutes

1 and 3/4 cup mashed garnet yam (1 cup at least, or up to nearly 2 depending on consistency and size of eggs used)
3 jumbo eggs (use large sized if using only 1 cup potato, more like 4 large or 3 jumbo if using nearly 2 cups potato)
1 pound cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

combine these together in a large bowl, preferably in a mixer to save your arms from breaking off. when finished, wrap your pre-baked and now cool pan with tinfoil (if using a springform pan) and pour this mixture in. place the pan into a large roasting pan that will hold it and lots of boiling water around it (should you consider a water bath, which I highly recommend) pour in boiling hot water (around the cheesecake pan please) and bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes. it should be hardly done (no more jiggle in the middle). carefully take the roasting pan out of the oven, making sure to not scald your arms off with sloshing HOT water. DO NOT POUR WATER OUT while cheesecake is still in the roasting pan. it will slide to one end and not being horizontal at this high of a temperature will destroy it. siphon off the hot water with a turkey baster or the like and then remove the cheesecake pan from the roasting pan. place on a cooling rack and leave for several hours on the counter until it is totally cool. mix up 1 cup of sour cream with a few tablespoons of grenadine. pour this over the cheesecake and smooth it out. place in the fridge to chill for a few hours before serving. when chilled, place pomegranate seeds on the top, hopefully in a pattern more thought out and interesting than the one above.


Oh how I love leftovers like these. Because when the weather outside is dreary and gray, I feel like wrapping myself up in a blanket and snuggling down with a nice piece of cheesecake. Besides, it's kinda funny to see the colors of Fall on a plate, and be reminded that this weather will pass (after a few more months of rain that is) as this season of colorful cheesecake comes to an end and ushers in a new year.