Know Your Breakfast

Today started off with a cup that was hardly local, but whose producer is well known to us and many of our friends. I have visited the biodynamic farm of Byron Corrales several times, including this January. When I purchased his Maracaturra coffee for yesterday's coffee tasting on campus, I got some extra for home -- a perfect way to start the day.

Not just some hens --
THESE hens!

When it was time for breakfast, I toasted some apple bread I purchased yesterday, directly from the proprietress of Great Cape Baking in nearby Plymouth. She had been one of about twenty vendors on the Just Trade side of our event.

Then I cracked some eggs from Hanson Farm, a couple miles from our house. Every egg we purchase there helps to conserve open space in our town, as this hard-working family has chosen to farm rather than to sell out their land. The farm also hosts the town's interfaith Easter sunrise service, so my band will be singing there bright and early on Sunday morning.

I started an omelet -- cooked in butter from the Cabot cooperative in Vermont, and shredded some cheese from the same group of family farms that conserve rural open space to our north. I did so in an indispensable cast-iron skillet from Vermont Country Store, which also does a lot to protect the rural landscape which we occasionally visit to enjoy and study. I did not get the timing on the omelet quite right, so ended up doing exactly what our nephew does in this breakfast video, only with better ingredients and a better pan.

At our house, eggs that do not come from the hens at Hanson usually come from our friend Lori -- well, her hens. Lest we sound too pious, not ever meal or every morning turns out to be this idyllic; and it is a perfect opportunity to poke a little fun at our own earnestness, courtesy of Portlandia. Two different friends mentioned this scene to us recently, purely a random coincidence, I'm sure:

Our Super-Talented Nephew Strikes Again

Our nephew, Joe, co-wrote the lyrics and stars in this fun food/music video: Omlet in the Pan

Class of Ambition

Each spring semester, I teach a course called Geographic Frameworks for future teachers of geography. I treat the course as an adventure in learning how to find geographic lessons in just about any context. To help keep variety in the course year to year, connect the students to the broader community, and ensure some depth in the conversation, I usually build the course around the current selection of the One Book One Community program that takes place twice each year in our town and campus.

This semester, the book chosen is Ben Hewitt's The Town that Food Saved, about efforts to promote local and regional food in a northern Vermont town. The book itself would not really be suitable for the students these future teachers hope to work with -- mainly elementary -- but it explores many interesting aspects of the geography of food that are ideal for teaching students of any age.

In our conversations about how we would involve children in lessons about their connections to food, the idea of preparing food with students has been a recurring theme, so we decided to try it as a class. Fortunately, the class is small and -- more importantly -- has great camaraderie. So I was willing to suggest bringing the entire class of five to our house to prepare a meal together. (It is also fortunate that Pam had already undertaken something similar with a larger group in the winter -- they ended up creating an entire blog about the experience at Como Agua Para Chocolate Recetas. 

Since our class meets only twice a week and since we put this plan together rather hastily, menu planning was not as integral as it probably should have been. I did bring in a few of our many cook books for some preliminary discussion. We identified a few kind of dishes we were interested in trying, and figured out foods we needed to avoid. But in the end, I hastily chose three dishes, consulting a bit with Pam. The students then arrived a bit ahead of the official 3:20 start time and stayed a bit past the 4:35 end time, so that we prepared and enjoyed the meal in about two hours.

The students arrived with a mix of nerves and curiosity, and a range of cooking experience. We started with popcorn from Hanson Farm (an ear of corn, microwaved in a paper bag), and then got to work. Every student jumped right in to the process, however, dividing up to concentrate on the three recipes I had chosen -- a warm pasta salad, a grilled-cheese sandwich, and a frittata. I mainly provided tips on where to find things, and answered a few how-to questions along the way. Each dish ended up having one or two students who focused on it, but students also helped with other dishes, especially as some required a bit more time than others. Over all, though, the timing of the meal worked out amazingly well!

The recipe for Pasta Salad with Grilled Marinaded Chicken and Sugar Snap Peas comes from 365 Ways to Cook Pasta, which followers of this blog will recognize as a favorite stand-by in this house, though we had not tried this recipe before. This book must have the longest titles of any cookbook we own -- more an ingredient list than a title! The delicious grilled cheese is The Wisconsinite (in honor of our Cheese Head cousins) from grilled cheese, please!, another new recipe from one of our household standards. We found the frittata recipe in the Brockton Enterprise, our regional daily newspaper that is a remarkably good source of recipes.

(Note: My students are not fuzzy, though my camera phone is!)

The Wisconsonite grilled-cheese sandwich includes Colby cheese (the recipe calls for this plus blue cheese, but we all agreed to skip the latter) and a blend of cranberry sauce and Dijon mustard. Marbled-rye and shredded cheese were used, to delicious effect!

The frittata was a bit unusual, calling for a base made of potatoes. The Gruyere  cheese  was tart, contrasting with the smoked ham and asparagus.

The pasta salad called for pasta, marinated chicken strips, and steamed pea pods. We used pea pods from last year's CSA -- the last bit was in the freezer -- and hormone-free chicken from Paula Dean (of all people). Reading the recipe this morning,, I could see that the marinating process was a potential bottleneck, so I prepared that part of the meal ahead of the students' arrival. That one piece being completed allowed for the entire meal to come together at roughly the same time, though the frittata took a bit longer than the other two dishes.

The result: Some good lessons about teaching and cooking ... and a very satisfying meal. In fact, the students were so full that they refused the offer of dessert from nearby Peaceful Meadows.

Lagniappe

Just before the students arrived for the meal, I noticed this photo online -- sorry, no location or citation at this time -- and I offer this colorful "tire farm" as a lagniappe to the students who participated. The week before, they had enjoyed the many varieties of small gardens that appear at the end of the delightful film Truck Farm.

Pseudo Shamrock Shake

One of the first people I met when I moved to Massachusetts was my friend Jenny. My daughter was about 3 weeks old, and Jenny was about 5 months pregnant with her first child. We became fast friends and discovered that, even beyond new parenthood, we had a lot in common. We both taught Spanish, we both loved the movie The Wizard of Oz, and we looked forward each year to the "limited time only" Shamrock Shakes at McDonald's. We started going together every year to get our treat, but discovered that some stores didn't have them, or perhaps we waited too long, and they were no longer available. A few years ago, rather than risk not getting our special dessert, we decided instead to go to a local dairy,and ice cream stand, Peaceful Meadows, who will make a shake out of any flavor of ice cream they have. So we each ordered a mint chocolate chip shake, which was made with actual ice cream, rather than an ice-cream-like substance. This year was especially busy for us and we could only find about an hour of time that we were both free, which was not enough time to get to Peaceful Meadows and back in time for Jenny to pick up her daughter from dance lessons, so I bought some mint chocolate chip ice cream and we made them ourselves. A pretty simple recipe with all measurements "eyeballed" - about 6 scoops of ice cream, and a glug and a half of milk, and a few drops of green food dye (the ice cream was "all natural" and therefore had not been pre-greened). Into the blender it all went, and mixed until smooth. Yum. I think Jenny and I have found a new twist on our old tradition.

Pi Date

We talked about making pie today, in fact, we talked about making two - one dinner pie, and one dessert pie, and then we completely forgot, even though James remembered that it was March 14 - pie (pi) day (3.14). I had already picked out a recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and James had bought the ingredients, so I just went ahead and made the Chickpeas with Potatoes and Tomatoes. The dish was cooked, and served, in our indespensible cast-iron skillet, so at least it was pie-shaped. The name of the dish leaves little room for surprise as to the main ingredients (2 cans rinsed garbanzo beans, 3 red potatoes, and a cup of diced tomato) but there is a bit more to this tasty, high fiber meal. I started by chopping one onion to sautee. To this I added two peeled and diced carrots, and 3 peeled and diced red potatoes and cooked for about 10 minutes. I added some red pepper flakes and 1 very large minced garlic clove, and sprinkled in some dried cilantro. The tomatoes and chickpeas were added along with a dash or salt and a twist of pepper from my pepper mill. Just before covering to simmer, I added a few splashes of water. It took about 20-25 minutes of simmering before the potatoes were fully cooked. Fresh parsley was thrown on top at serving time. This was pleasing to look at, hot and spicy to the taste, as well as satisfying. We paired this with some of our rye homebrew - a fine choice.

To top off the evening we re-watched a movie we saw for the first time about 13 years ago: Pi -a creepy black and white film about obession, numbers, the Torah, and insanity.

Here's to you, Izzy

Yesterday was the anniversary of my grandmother Isabelle Laurerman's (neé Beanblossom, yes, Beanblossom) birth. She would have been 96. Today is the 17th anniversary of her death. Although she was quite ill, and medical professionals told our family she should have died weeks before, she steadfastly refused to give up the ghost until she turned 79. Then, I guess feeling it would put too much of a damper on the celebrations, waited until just after midnight the day following her birthday to breathe her last.

Grandma loved her Peppermint Schnapps. I am not really sure if she just drank it in shots, or made mixed cocktails, but I know she always expected to find a bottle of it in her Christmas stocking.  In her honor, I picked up a bottle yesterday and prepared this recipe for Peppermint Patties, a mixed drink of Peppermint Schnapps and Coffee liqueur (we used Kahlua). I must say it did taste just like a liquid version of a York Peppermint Pattie.

Almost-Favorite Lasagna/e

A Christmas tradition in our house is Pam's preparation of Everyone's Favorite Lasagne, entry #122 in our well-worn 365 Ways to Cook Pasta (see all of our entries from this book). Browsing last weekend as we planned the week's menu, I noticed that we already had several of the ingredients required for entry #121, Chicken and Broccoli Lasagne in Parmesan Custard. (I notice that the word can end in e or a -- this book prefers "lasagne," though I have always used "lasagna," which seems to be a slightly more common spelling.)

Lasagna is always dish-intensive, and this is perhaps more so: it requires a sauce pan, a mixing bowl, a cutting board (two boards or one that is washed during the preparation), a skillet, a stock pot, and a casserole -- plus half the utensils in the kitchen. The result is a blonde lasagna -- no tomatoes were harmed in this production -- that is sweet and savory.

Preparation begins with a custard of egg, milk, flour, butter, and Parmesan cheese, which is eventually poured under, within, and over the final dish -- becoming almost a matrix for the chicken, vegetables, and cheese that are layered between the noodles. The custard includes a pinch of nutmeg, which gave the final dish a mild sweetness. The recipe calls for ground red pepper; having only crushed red pepper, I substituted a pinch of cayenne. In retrospect, I was too cautious, and should have used a bit more to compete with the nutmeg.

We of course used real lasagna noodles. The existence of fake, no-boil noodles takes away our whining rights about the dishes, but I really cannot imagine doing all 80 percent of the work of a lasagna but leaving the noodles to chance.

Our filling was mostly organic -- chicken and carrots from the grocery store and broccoli and green beans frozen last summer from our Cochester CSA. The recipe calls for more than a pound of broccoli, of which we only had about half a pound. Cooking it together with some green beans worked out well. We were a bit short on mozzarella cheese -- about 2/3 of the called-for pound, but the end result was still quite delicious!