CTN: Crispy Roasted Cabbage

The world's speed-eating record for cabbage is 6 pounds, 9 ounces in 9 minutes, held by Charles Hardy. I'm nor sure how Mr. Hardy's cabbage was prepared. If it was Crispy Roasted Cabbage, I believe I could give Mr. Hardy a run for his money.

 I bought two kinds of cabbage at the Farmers' Market--Cone Cabbage and Savoy Cabbage. I had never heard of Cone Cabbage before. I wish I had taken a picture of it. It looked sort of like a smooth protea flower. The woman at Suzy's Farm said that it is slightly sweet. Two heads of cabbage is a lot of cabbage. It barely fit onto my large baking pan.

Since I had already seen glimpses of some precautionary tales of greasy cabbage, I was very light in my application of olive oil. I brushed it on, as suggested by Melissa in the recipe, probably using one tablespoon for two heads of cabbage. I then liberally salted the cabbage with my rapidly diminishing supply of French salt (this is just a small hint for anybody who might be able to rectify that situation), and shoved it into the oven.

I then went on with my business of making winter pasta salad (broccoli, bell pepper, olives, marinated artichoke hearts, and some grated Spanish cheese). I turned the cabbage over once, and baked it far longer than the 20-25 minutes suggested. Maybe 40 minutes. I'm not sure.

As you can see by the lovely crispy Savoy leaf at the bottom right of this photograph, some of my cabbage was crispy--like cabbage chips. Yummmm. The rest was simply delicious. I ate half of the pan of cabbage myself. I could have eaten more. Maybe even 6 pounds, 10 ounces.

My only regret about this cabbage was that Maddy wasn't here to enjoy it with me. Natalie likes cabbage (Pete and Cassandra do not), but not as much as Maddy. I think it is quite possible that she is the only college student in the history of the world who has begged her mother to make her cabbage while home on break. So I hope Maddy's cabbage was just as delicious as ours was.

TWD:Julia. Chocolate Truffle Tarts

Wow. That's a bad picture. I was in a hurry, and didn't take pictures as I was going along. And the one picture that actually came out makes this tart look pretty bad. Gotta work on my photography.

I was actually scared about making this tart. I went on the TWD site and was reading about other experiences in making the tart. Mostly about how the crust was crumbly and messy. I only had a small amount of time to make the tart. I was worried this was going to be a disaster.

But it really wasn't. My crust was beautiful. I made it in the food processor. No extra water. When I poured it out onto the Silpat and mashed it out onto the surface as the recipe indicated, the dough came together nicely. After refrigerating it, it rolled out beautifully. I had a little trouble getting it into the really large pan (I used a 12-inch tart pan because I didn't have small tart pans, and my daughter calculated that the volume of a 12-inch tart pan was about the same as 6 4.5-inch pans).

I don't have a double boiler, so I just melted the butter and chocolate in the microwave. It took a while for the egg yolks to beat--about 15 minutes. I was imagining doing it with a whisk, as indicated in the recipe. Whisking for about an hour. That sounds fun.

I used chopped Hershey's chocolate, chopped Ghirardelli white chocolate, chopped toffee-almond biscotti, and used 70% bittersweet for the melted chocolate. And I have to say this is about the most intensely chocolate thing I have ever eaten. Pretty tasty in very small quantities.

Natalie and I were the only ones who ate any. Cassandra--the chocolate lover--was at her grandma's house. She missed out, because I'm taking the leftovers to choir!

Carey's Castle

Joshua Tree National Park is one of my favorite places in the world. Although it can get very cold at night, winter is definitely the time to go. I wish I went every year.
Took Friday off of work and hit the road with Troop 3116 to the Indian Cove campground. Spent Friday afternoon and evening scrambling around in the rocks around the camp, looking at the brilliant blue sky, and then, later, watching the stars and the satellites making their slow way across the sky.
On our first trip to Joshua Tree, we heard about a "secret" place in the park known as Carey's Castle. There is little known about this location. What we heard was that a man named Carey staked a mining claim in a very remote area of the park (an oxymoron), and that he built a home in the rocks. There were mentions of this in several guidebooks, but none gave information on how to get there. We spoke with a park ranger, who told us that she had heard of it, knew it was in the southern portion of the park, but did not know how to get there. She suggested we try to find someone who had been there.
Since then, every time we went to Joshua Tree, I checked to see if there was information about the trial to Carey's. There were more trip reports, but they always said the same thing--this is a secret location and we aim to keep it secret. Apparently, people even knock down the "ducks" others have left to mark the trail.
This time was different. Somebody finally posted the GPS coordinates online. Lisa downloaded them into her GPS and we were ready!
The trailhead is at the end of a road which has signs everywhere that indicate that it is private property and you are entering at your own risk. Since we have had experience with this, we were a little concerned. Until we discovered that the owner was the Metropolitan Water District. Not as scary as a private owner. We were happy to see four other cars at the trailhead--mostly because it meant we were in the right place.
And here is our journey, in photos.

At the trailhead. Need to journey off across this desert into the mountains.

Some of the beautiful plants we saw along the way.

And a beautiful little lizard.

Heading into the wash.

Shade!

It was getting a little hot. The rocks were cool.

Beautiful trees in the wash. And a lot of water.

Got excited and thought we were there. But just rocks to climb over.

Gotta climb up those rocks behind the girls.

Not a problem for the girls.

The rocks out beyond India looks promising. I was pretty sure we were there.

And we were!

Going in. I didn't take any pictures inside. It was full of rat poop. Pretty gross.

Nice place to eat lunch though.

Adventure Girl was excited. So excited she left her feet in my backpack.

Carey's Mine.

Now we have to climb DOWN all the rocks.

I thought this rock looked like something you would see in a home furnishing store.

It was a beautiful hike. I am glad that we finally found Carey's Castle. It was worth it. And I hope that it doesn't get a ton of publicity. I saw in the log book that people are saying that the traffic has increased ten-fold since the coordinates were published. We came across 3 other groups of hikers--which is a pretty small number when you consider we were there on a popular holiday weekend.

CTN: Lentil "Soup"

The fact this lentil soup was made in time for today's blog post is a miracle. I had no time on the weekend, and the week was looking bad for cooking. A last-minute cancellation of our usual Wednesday Girl Scout meeting meant I had time to get this done. It was actually a bigger project than I expected when I read the recipe, although pretty straightforward. The procurement of the lentils, however, was a story about the oddity of people.

I started working for Jim Hoey on 2/15/1989. Twenty three years ago. On Valentine's Day, Jim decided we would go out for lunch. We went to a new natural foods restaurant--which is next door to a natural foods store. I told Jim I was going to duck in there and see if they had red lentils. They had crimson lentils--$5.00 for a tiny bag. I bought them, and gave them a prominent place on the lunch table so I wouldn't forget them.

We got to talking, I lost my focus on the lentils, and the bus boy came to clear the table. I clearly remember that it was strange that the only thing left on the table after he left was my water glass. This seemed vaguely wrong, but my mind was not connecting the dots. When I got back to the office, I realized that he had cleared my lentils. I called the restaurant and asked if they had them. They did, and they would be waiting for me at the counter.

I went back a few hours later, only to be told that a man "wearing a suit, balding, and with glasses," came in and picked them up "for you." Nobody I knew. Honestly--who does that? Who sees a bag of lentils behind the counter at a restaurant and says "Those are my lentils, can you please give them to me?" Really?!

So I spent $10 on the lentils. They had better be good.

And I thought they were. This wasn't soup at all. This was lentils and rice. With onions. Lots of onions. Since I'm not a fan of onions at all, I was skeptical that I would enjoy this with all of the onions. Since the onions were caramelized, they were really good. They weren't crispy, but they were pretty darn tasty. I enjoyed the mix of spices (including the cinnamon stick, which apparently wasn't a favorite of Maria or Michelle). I made the buttery flat bread suggested as an accompaniment. Yum. Natalie and Cassandra also liked this. Pete, who again came home late after having dinner with Samantha, thought the house smelled terrible (the onions, I guess). 

And the leftovers were delicious for breakfast, as Melissa suggested.

My photography still needs work.  I tried to make this look beautiful. Not.

My ingredients. Note the tiny $5 bag of lentils. And I used the greens that came in my CSA bag.

This is A LOT of ginger!

And a lot of onions!

Bonus pictures:  Cassandra's cheese plate and my favorite new vegetable-the romanesco. A perfect example of a fractal and the Fibonacci number. Too perfect to eat. I'm obsessed with this vegetable.

(On  a side note, I can't figure out how to position photos where I want them to be. It is annoying me.)

CTN: Parsnip Soup

One of my maxims is that if you have no-to-low expectations for things (movies, vacations, restaurants, etc.), then you will almost always be pleasantly surprised. Thus was my experience with this soup.

I am certain I don't like parsnips. My grandfather, Pete, loved parsnips. I clearly remember bowls of whipped parsnips at family gatherings. And remember thinking that the contents of those bowls were suspect and not to be consumed by me. And I was a lover of all things vegetable. In fact, I am pretty certain that the only vegetables I don't like are parsnips and lima beans.

So I was happy when my first foray to the farmers' market yielded no parsnips. It was looking good for substituting something I like, such as carrots.

I'm not one to give up, however. I knew they would have parsnips at Chino's--which isn't too far from my office. I was prepared to pay the premium for Chino's parsnips. Plus, that would give me street cred. As it turned out, I didn't have to pay that price. I found parsnips.

The search for parsnips, as well as the other ingredients in this soup, taught me few lessons. One: Don't forget to take pictures. The parsnips had beautiful foliage which was photo-worthy. Two: Don't forget about the middle-eastern market. It has EVERYTHING.

Looking at my schedule for the week, I knew that the only day I had available to make this soup (and to bake the White Loaves for TWD:BWJ) was Sunday. I got up bright and early on Sunday and made the bread dough. As soon as the dough was in the bowl to rise, I ran out to the farmers' market. I'm pretty sure I was the first customer. I scoured the farmer's market with my list: parsnips, leeks, celery, thyme, garlic, pumpernickel. Leeks, celery, and garlic were easy to find. But there were no parsnips, no thyme, and no pumpernickel.

In desperation, I asked one of my favorite vendors about parsnips. "Parsnips?" he asked. "Nobody ever wants those. But yes, I believe I have a few in my truck. We decided this is the last year we will grow them." He pulled a big bunch of parsnips out of the truck. As I said, the foliage was spectacular. Not so the disgusting looking tubers at the end of the foliage. He GAVE me the parsnips.

Parsnips in hand, I jammed over to the middle eastern market. I was worried that my bread was overtaking the bowl and spilling onto the floor, so I needed to rush. I LOVE this market. It closed for a little while and I had not returned once it reopened. Why? Where else can you find a counter where there is nothing but different types of baklava? Or vats of olives? Or 10 different kinds of feta? I wanted it all. I walked over to the spices to look for Aleppo pepper. As I did, I spied the beautiful parsnips in the produce aisle. I could have bought everything at Vine Ripe! Who knew? After carefully analyzing my many options for Aleppo/Turkish pepper (all of which involved a large quantity of pepper), and procuring the smallest loaf imaginable of pumpernickel bread, sans caraway seeds, I returned to my bread dough (which was fine).


Making the soup wasn't as full of adventure as procuring the ingredients. I did make homemade vegetable stock, which was delicious in its own right. I made the recipe exactly as written except I believe I used a few more potatoes than the recipe called for (I had a bag of potatoes that were covered in little spider-sprouts--they needed to be used.)

My celery was a bit aggressive, as can be seen by my horribly tied bouquet garni. I didn't have twine so tried to tie it together with thread. It didn't work. I had to fish this stuff out. Fortunately, my celery leaves were huge



And here is the final soup. Not a very good picture. The soup itself was the consistency of baby food. But it was delicious, especially drizzled with excellent olive oil and liberally sprinkled with the Aleppo pepper. Everybody loved it.

TWD:Baking with Julia--White Loaves

I was very excited that the TWD group chose "Baking with Julia," because I had baked my way through much of this book when it was first published in the 1990s. My family was struggling financially at the time, and I was making almost everything from scratch. With 2 young children, bread was a constant. So these White Loaves were pretty much a staple recipe.

I have not made these in years, so it was a pleasure to go back to this recipe. During my former bread-baking days, I always kneaded my bread by hand because I had a lot of stress to get out of my system and the kneading was very therapeutic. I went back and forth trying to decide whether to do that this time, but the machine won out. It was funny--I've had this KitchenAid mixer for over 25 years, but I think I have only used the dough hook two or three times before.

Action shot of the dough trying to escape the bowl.

After mixing the dough, I put the dough in the "herp room"--otherwise known as Natalie's room-- to rise. I have a Red-Tailed Boa Constrictor, who needs an ambient temperature of 80 degrees, so this one room in our house is always 80--perfect for bread rising. I ran out to the Farmers' Market, and when I came back, the dough had risen very nicely. I punched it down and divided it up into loaves. This is when I discovered I only had one regular loaf pan. I guess it has been a while since I have made bread regularly. I have also given away a lot of my kitchen equipment. I found a weirdly-shaped loaf pan and figured it would do.

Here are my lovely loaves before baking. I decided that I liked the weirdly-shaped pan at this point. It made a nicely shaped loaf of bread.

And here are the baked loaves. I took the shorter, squatter loaf to a Super Bowl party. Bread is a very strange thing to bring to a Super Bowl party. The hostess, however, had just bought some delicious strawberry-rhubarb jam, and we polished off the loaf. The second loaf we ate with dinner the next night, with a little left over for toast.

These White Loaves were exactly what I remembered them to be. The type of homemade bread that my mom made in the 60s and 70s. A somewhat plain, but very delicious loaf of bread.

Some Girl Scouts, a baby, and a Pomeranian go for a walk

As part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouts, Troop 3116 has organized 100K of hikes. The number of participants dropped dramatically once the hikes were more than 5 miles. Normally, it is only Lisa, me, Natalie, Jessica, and Wendy and/or India.
Today's hike was Mt. Woodson. Our crew was Lisa, me, Natalie, Jessica, Wendy and India, Bob, Tara, Nora (the baby--she is actually 3) and Kirby (the Pomeranian). This is the third time that Wendy and I have done this hike.  I really like it because it is difficult, but not too difficult. Jerry Schad says that it is "moderately strenuous." That is a good characterization. The trail is an out-and-back 6.8 mile trek through chapparal. The payoff is an incredible view on top of a mountain which is bristling with radio towers. Great view; ugly surroundings.
And it was another spectacular day in San Diego. The temperature when we started was 62, and it was sunny and clear. There was a junior fishing tournament going on at Lake Poway--so parking was at a premium.

 The hike skirts around Lake Poway.

 There are actually super nice bathrooms along the trail. You can see one behind Lisa. Natalie was feeling good about life at this point. We had maybe gone 1/2 mile.

The Girl Scouts plus Kirby with Lake Poway in the background.

We apparently ignored the part of this sign that said 2.9 miles to the summit. Too busy taking the picture.

 All the girls with the 2.9 miles to the summit sign.

 And here is Tara with Nora. She carried this 25-pound child up and down the 6.8-mile trail. It was incredible.

 The ceonothus were in bloom and very beautiful. There were plants with white flowers and plants with purple flowers. I didn't capture how beautiful they were.

 Mt. Woodson is fun because of all the rocks.

Beautiful view to the west. That is the ocean off in the distance.

 Natalie started feeling bad shortly after the picture with the sign. She is feeling really bad in this picture. But she wasn't going to turn back because she needed the miles. Wonder where she gets that.

 This is my favorite place on the Mt. Woodson trail. It is a beautiful tree surrounded my rocks and there is a spectacular view. It is the kind of place that makes you think that you probably have gone far enough. But you know you haven't.

 It was a complete surprise to us that we still had this far to go. We had apparently ignored all of the prior signs.

 Lisa took a nice picture of Natalie and India hugging the cold rock. I took a picture from the other side.

 Cool rock formation. I wanted to go climb it.

 The "potato chip." There was actually a line of people waiting to stand on this rock.

I elected not to take a picture of the top bristling with radio towers. And my view photos were too view-y.

Jerry Schad says this hike take 4 1/2 hours. His time predictions are almost always spot-on for us. We left the parking lot a little after 8:30. We took our time getting to the top, stopping several times for snacks and stopping at the top for a nice break. And we were back to our cars right at 1:00.

 Natalie was feeling much better at the bottom and went to hug the cat.

Everybody else came over to hug the cat too. Even Nora.

It was a fun hike. It was, however, uneventful. We have found that eventful hikes are the ones we remember the most. This was just a moderately-strenuous hike on a beautiful, sunny San Diego day.