New England Bob's Barnacle Bisque

What do you do when someone you know is dying?
There really will be a kitchen story here, stick with me please...

Some 25 years ago when my husband and I began going to the church I had grown up in, we met Bob, Uncle Bob as many referred to him.  Bob is one of those people that just draws the world to him.  He is impossibly tall, pastoral is ways that I continue to stand in awe of (we Catholics are still figuring out that lay people can be incredible ministers without the trappings of titles), and always ready with a smile and a wry observation to share.  Bob, was a leader in our church in spite of himself and in ways that one could not likely find in any other Catholic setting.  Early on, he played a very key role in one of the most devastating times a young couple could ever encounter.  Bob offered himself to us in profound ways that I am still unpacking and will forever look back on with deep gratitude and appreciation.  Skip ahead a few years and Bob was no longer a regular presence in our community, I don't even really know how or why.  It could have been a slow departure, a rift with leadership, or something in his own life pulling in a new direction.  Well, slide to present day and Bob is back... for a while at least.  Some time ago a cancer diagnosis came; illness, treatments, symptoms, and the rollercoaster of feeling better and worse.  In this time Bob resurfaced at our church and brought with him some familiar faces of days past, he always did travel with an entourage.  Now, months in, Bob has made the choice to forgo treatments and live out his remaining days on his own terms.

So what do you do when someone you know is dying? I mean this is really happening, there are no positive thoughts, prayers or well-wishes that are going to chance this reality.  Bob is about to die.  I have not been in this place, of sitting in the presence of someone that is facing the imminent return to their maker since that time many years ago when Bob sat with us.  Full circle moment here.  So I reached out and told him how much he has meant to my husband and myself and offered the only thing I could think of... Can I bring you a soup supper each week?  Cooking for people is my go to way of sharing a bit of kindness and love with them.  So now we are a few weeks in, we have a lovely weekly dance of trading the empty half gallon jar for one filled with a freshly made soup and some biscuits or corn bread for dipping.  Bob refers to this as my lenten journey.

In trying to think about soups that will go down easy for one dealing with throat cancer, as well as something sustaining to help keep a bit of meat on his increasingly lean body, I went with a chowder with corn and smoked salmon this last week.  I consulted a few recipes for some framework but as usual I kinda winged it and crossed my fingers.  Each week as I am making soup for Bob, I feel such a sense of humble honor to be able to do something, anything that might be of help or support to him.  I am thankful for the opportunity to reconnect with this man who has been a pillar of our community, who even in these final days is finding ways to minister to and lift up those around him.  Bob sent me a message last night after sampling the week's soup supper offering and told me that I had not made a chowder but in fact a New England Bisque (I honestly have no idea what the difference is, but will dig into that research eventually), and Bob named my creation -- New England Bob's Barnacle Bisque.  Typically I am really a throw it together and call it good kinda cook, but this time I am going to create a real recipe for this dish and add it to our annual lenten rotation.  As a reminder of the man who gave it a name, the man who will forever dwell in our hearts as a welcomer, a challenger, and a giver.

New England Bob's Barnacle Bisque

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter
1 small yellow onion, diced
2 large carrots, diced
3 yellow potatoes, cubed
2 cups sweet corn kernels (fresh or frozen)
1 1/2 cups smoked salmon, shredded
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 - 2 tsp salt (to taste)
1 tsp fresh ground back pepper
2 cloves garlic chopped fine
1/4 cup flour
6 cups water
1 cup half and half

Process

Sauté onion in butter until just beginning to go translucent then add the carrots.  Continue to sauté these until carrots begin to soften then add the potatoes.  Once potatoes begin to cook through add the garlic, corn, thyme, paprika, salt and pepper.  Once this all gets going add the flour, and mix.  If it feels too dry add a small pat of more butter.  You want to cook the flour and spices with the veggies for a few minutes then add the water.  Turn your burner to a med low now and cook until the potatoes and carrots are soft, about 15 - 20 minutes.  Now you should have a very chowder looking situation going on, add the smoked salmon and the half and half and stir through and let the heat permeate the bisque.  I made this the day before gifting a half gallon and we were left with enough for 3 for dinner.  Serve with corn bread or buttermilk biscuits.  Enjoy and think of Bob!

Let's Talk Feast Foods...

Do you have must make recipes for holidays?  Foods that if they weren't part of your gathering it just would not be the same?  Foods you just have to make, whether anyone else eats them or not?  Do you potluck your holiday feasts or does one person do the majority of the food prep?  I adore hearing all about other folks holiday traditions when it comes to food.  Just yesterday I learned of two different families traditions that include Friday Pie-Day and a communal scavenger hunt.  I love these ideas and am gleefully working on figuring out how to work these in to our traditions in the future.  I mean Friday Pie-Day???  Seriously, this needs to become a phenomenon!  The woman I heard about this from told me she makes six pies of all sorts for Thanksgiving with the explicit intention of enough leftovers for many days of pie-for-breakfast for her and her kiddos to enjoy as well as a few extra pies for Friday Pie-Day.  They use the turkey leftovers to make turkey pot pie and have friends over for game night with loads of pie, sign me up.

For me I love to make fresh cranberry sauce, this year I found a game changing recipe that I do believe will become the keeper from here on out, it is like a cranberry sauce meets marmalade meets cocktail.  The red wine gives such a depth of flavor and cuts the tart of the berry just right.  We held some back from what we took over to my in-laws house just to be sure we had enough for home leftovers.  I also am often put on veg side dish duty for our family gatherings as I love coming up with tasty ways of sharing vegetables with others.  This year there were specific requests for waldorf salad and layered pea salad.  Leading up to Thanksgiving my youngest and I made candied yams to take to a friends-giving event at her school.  I discovered that when one reheats candied yams the marshmallows pretty much melt away, so we turned the leftover sweet yams into a new favorite meal by adding them to some big delicious sautéed brussel sprouts and chopped bacon for an amazing day-before-thankgsiving-eat-lots-of-veggies dinner here at home. My husband and I even enjoyed this for breakfast the day after with some leftover wild rice and a friend egg on top while our girls where off taking in all the Black Friday fun.  I am still thinking of that delish combo and hoping to recreate it soon and often.  This year I also experimented on a whim with a wild rice and sun choke dish that I really loved.  This started with sautéed leeks and sun chokes then added wild rice, pine nuts and dried cherries.  No recipe to share, but I do hope you will try combining these ingredients on your own,  the nutty flavor of the chokes and the rice made me very happy next to the turkey.  We even used leftover rice in soup the following day, repurposing leftovers makes me ridiculously happy.

I would love to hear about your favorite holiday foods to make and share as well as your family traditions, so please share them in the comments below, let's have a virtual feast together.

I Can't Stop Canning...

So let me start my saying this is totally unpaid and unsolicited praises for the book that got me hooked on food preservation.  Upon discovering this website and book I have become a total food preservation addict, I'm always looking for new and interesting ways to pickle, can and preserve what's in season at any given time.  Here are a few of the things I have been busy making of late...

All this lovely winter citrus has me loving things like honey and lemon curd as well as marmalade made with Cara Cara oranges and ginger.  Though I have made enough curd over that last few years to feel pretty confident on that front, marmalade is a new one for me so there has been a bit of a learning curve.  My first batch was so very tasty but I fear I cooked it too long and it was rather stiff, I almost recalled the few jars I had given away out of sheer mortification but was quickly assured that the taste was much more memorable than the difficult spreading.  So I tried again, decreasing my cooking time and it is just on the side of too soft.  So, here's to hoping the third time is the charm!  I used a recipe from the Food In Jars (my most loved and used cookbook), it pretty much mirrors this online version with the addition of 1 cup of ginger juice and substitution of Cara Cara oranges for the citrus.  Though it took a bit of work to make the ginger juice, the addition of it in this preserve is totally worth every bit of effort!  Make the time to peal, chop and strain all that ginger for this recipe.
I have also been dabbling in pickling, ANYTHING I CAN GET MY HANDS ON...  My most recent experiment has been pickling red onions, and oh gosh I am hooked.  So far I have loved them straight from the jar, topping hearty green salads, and over eggs, but I imagine slathering these over a fancy grilled cheese sammie for a little punch of something extra would be quite fabulous.

On a side note, my thoughts and prayers are with all those impacted by the explosion in North Seattle early this morning.  That this happened in the middle of the night is something many are thankful for, this is a very busy area and I don't even want to think about what the scene would have been just a few hours earlier or later in the day.  These businesses are neighborhood staples and will be dearly missed, I am sure I am not alone in the hope that rebuilding is swift and we will be popping back in for coffee and gyros very very soon!

Breakfast For Dinner Taken To A Whole New Level

It all started when I spotted this post on the Smitten Kitchen Blog for a dreamy looking yam dish with chickpeas and a limey yogurt drizzle.  We love yams in this family but i've never really fancied them up, its always straight baked yams either on their own or added to another dish like black bean and yam tacos.  Last night I was feeling so uninspired for dinner, throughout the day the thought would flash "what am I going to make for dinner tonight?", and I came up blank every time.  Then I remembered a Smitten Kitchen post recently for what promised to be a tasty twist to our standard baked yam.  And, to boot I had all ingredients on hand, it was meant to be!  Though I think we would all have been happy to just totally gorge on the yams alone, the mom in me knew I needed to round it out a bit so I scrambled up some fresh eggs with the ricotta I had just made with the weekend's goat milk and tossed together a big green salad.  This was declared by all "A KEEPER".  In fact my oldest shared that this is the meal she wants to come home to from college.  So if you are looking for inspiration, give this one a go, it is fairly quick to throw together, requires pretty basic fridge and pantry ingredients, and well worth every bit of effort.  This is a breakfast-for-dinner game changer in my mind.  Enjoy!

Another Cake...

One of my most favorite ways to spend time is cooking along side a friend, especially in fancy-dancy kitchens.  Yesterday I got such a chance and pounced (maybe even inviting myself over), to bake with a friend who is an amazing baker.  Not only does she consistently wow us all with her delicious confections, she is fearless about tackling new and seemingly complicated recipes.  A while back I had posted this torte recipe from Smitten Kitchen but have been totally intimidated to try the whole meringue thing, but not this friend.  She jumped on it and has made the torte several times all the while raving about it and extolling its amazingness.  Earlier in the week she mentioned that she was planning on making said dessert for an upcoming school event and I jumped right in and invited myself over to watch and learn from this master baker.  She upped the anti on me, informing me that I would not simply watch and learn but I'd bake right along side her and make one for myself.  So I packed up my eggs, cream, chocolate, vanilla, sugar and hazelnuts and headed for her lovely kitchen.  We baked, she instructed, we chatted and had a generally great time.  It was a great way to spend a particularly cold Northwest afternoon, thank you very much.  What I most love about this dessert is; that it is naturally gluten free so no experimenting with flour mixtures, it combines two of my most favorite flavors (chocolate and hazelnut), and it is a show stopper.  If you are looking for a dessert to wow a crowd yet is really fairly quick and simple to pull off, this will be your new BFF.  I hope you will not be like me and let intimidation get in the way, do yourself a favor and head to the kitchen this weekend to make this delicious treat.

Freezing Fruit...

Oh my, doesn't all that fruit make your mouth water.  I love the bounties of summer, especially the complete abundance of freshly picked fruit.  With what we've got growing in our own garden like rhubarb, blueberries and strawberries, the fact that I can't pass up a local roadside fruit stand to save my soul and that we love to go berry picking each summer there is always an overwhelming amount of fruit in our kitchen throughout the summer.  Berry picking has become a summer tradition for us, what a fun day out and the eat-as-you-go policy that our favorite raspberry farm has is just what the kids need to keep them interested and motivated to fill those boxes.  We went out with friends recently and between the girls and I we picked over twenty pounds of raspberries.  It was unusually hot in our neck of the woods that day, topping 90 degrees, so we had to call it after just an hour or so.  Once we got home we gorged ourselves on berries for days, but knowing that it was not likely we could actually consume our weight in berries before they turned into sad mushy boxes of goo I got right to work, baking some into muffins and baked oatmeal, cooking some into jam, and freezing what I could to tide us through winter.  I love freezing fruit!  It is as low maintenance as it comes in the preserving world and the results don't disappoint.  The method I have settled on with greatest success is to line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper and lay the fruit in a single layer on it.  For things like raspberries, small strawberries, blackberries and blueberries I keep the fruit whole and for stone fruits and larger strawberries I cut them in half or wedges.  After the fruit is arranged I pop the tray in the freezer for a few hours or more likely overnight.  Once everything is frozen solid I fill gallon ziplock bags with the frozen fruit and label with date and name of fruit.  So simple and yet it yields such pleasure throughout winter.  Then when you have an inkling for a raspberry/rhubarb crisp or some strawberries over yogurt it is as simple as a quick defrost and you are good to go.  So when you see that fruit stand don't hesitate to stop and pick up a flat or two of fruit, if you aren't into canning or making jam at the very least you can freeze a few gallons for later.

Are We There Yet?

This is a constant thought running through my head over the last few days. Last week I was feeling so strong in my rice and beans resolve, but I must admit that as this week goes on I am seriously waining. I bet you all could use a break from all these pictures of beans too, right? I am on the count down, how many more rice and bean meals am I cooking this week, runs through my head each day as I plan for that evening's dinner. I am glad we stuck with it, to be so mindful of what and how we eat is always a good practice. I do hope it will become a tradition we take on each year throughout Lent and in preparation for Easter celebration. Our lives have become so fast paced and somewhat semiconscious, I love changing something so routine as dinner in order to refocus our presence with each other and the food we put into our bodies. There is something about the idea of commonality or solidarity with what most folks subsist on in the rest of the world that is very thought provoking and a very striking reminder of how lucky we are for the immense amount of choice we are afforded in our lives. All that said, I have started daydreaming and scheming of what to cook once the week ends... This dish may well be the very first non rice and bean dinner we have. And this... Oh and these spring veggies look so delicious don't they. And of course there is a sweet treat on my list. One of many temptations has been all the talk and posts online about folks' Passover plans for Seder Dinner, I was particularly struck by this one. What a beautiful and profound tradition, I would very much love to experience this someday.

Keeping It Real...

Lest everyone think it's always peaches and pie around here, I'll dispel that right here and right now. The long and short of it all is that my lovely chicken's have dug up, eaten, and decapitated all that I have spent the last few weeks planting in our backyard garden. All those peas... gone, lettuce sprouts... gone, radish starts... gone, and the poor arugula didn't stand a chance to their prolific digging. The last few beets from fall have had all their lovely crimson leaves methodically munched, the mint and dill I had started with hopes of mojito afternoons and herb fortified salads this summer were dug up and left for dead. I did replant both the latter with care in great hopes they will find a way to resurrect themselves, fingers crossed. Oh yes, I may have uttered a very long string of choice words under my breath as I discovered the full extent of their carnage this weekend. This was the first year I actually planned and plotted what, how, and when to plant in our little garden. I drafted a site plan on graph paper, researched optimal times for planting each and every type of seed I intended to grow, and had even managed to plan and execute some succession planting as to extend the season of some of our favorite items. Best laid plans... I have started replanting lettuce, peas and radishes, nursed that very droopy mint plant back to health (she looked much perkier today), and by sheer luck was just today offered two kale starts by a friend so I planted them with care in the arugula patch that is no more. And just because we loved that key lime tart so much the first time around, I made another one Sunday afternoon. I mean if you are going to spend a day replanting, you might as well end the day enjoying a slice (or two) of something tasty.

Going Nuts For Donuts

I love a good donut. It is on the short list of foods I will make a gluten exception for (pizza is the other). So when I saw this recipe on My Whole Life Food I knew I had to try it. The original recipe isn't actually gluten free but, still on my buckwheat kick, I wanted to try my hand at converting it. I had a couple of bananas browning by the minute just calling out to be used in a sweet baked treat, and some leftover buckwheat flour so I gave it a go. I linked to the original recipe above and below have rewritten my own gluten free version that turned out pretty great. I know my kids are going to be excited to dive into these when they get home. And once again I am loving that subtle, sweet, nutty flavor that the buckwheat flour adds. Banana Chocolate Chip Donuts 1 Cup AP gluten free flour 1 Cup Buckwheat flour 1/2 cup sugar (I used fair trade organic sugar) 1/4 cup melted coconut oil 2 very ripe bananas -- smashed 3/4 cup whole milk yogurt 1/4 - 1/2 milk 1 tbsp vanilla extract 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp salt 1/2 cup chocolate chips Preheat oven to 375 degrees and grease your donut pan. I whisked all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl, then mashed and combined all the wet ingredients with the exception of the milk and chocolate chips in another smaller bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix well, the batter will be rather thick, this is where I slowly added the milk to thin it out a bit, use your best judgement but I'd start with the 1/4 cup and slowly go up from there. Your going for just thick enough to be able to spoon up in large dollops. At this point add your chocolate chips and stir just until combined. Spoon into your donut pan just under the lip of the pan. Bake for 12 - 15 minutes in the center of your oven. Let cool and enjoy with your favorite coffee, or for the younger crowd, a big glass of milk.

It's All About Buckwheat These Days

I am so loving the warm nutty flavor of buckwheat right now. I seem to be finding ways of working it into most baked goods as a whole wheat flour replacement lately. At first I was a bit worried about the notorious overpowering nature that buckwheat can be known for, but to the contrary I am finding that when I grind raw buckwheat groats the flavors are much more mellow and delicate. Today, it was just the girls and I home for Sunday Breakfast and I wanted to try something a little different. I used the suggested recipe by Gluten Free Girl and it did not disappoint. I had a little bit of cream cheese that I mixed with 2 parts plain yogurt and added a bit of honey just to sweeten, this was used as a crepe filler along with some of our summer blueberry stash. I am kind of embarrassed to admit that my inspiration for these crepes came from a commercial for a pancake-house chain restaurant that I saw recently and have not been able to get the thought of a fresh fruit crepe out of my head ever since. Well, once again I will take the fact that all the crepes were gobbled up right away as a sign of a job well done.

Fall Indulgences

I am always drawn to the heart of every home I visit, the kitchen. I love the way so often it becomes the gathering spot for family and friends. In our home the kitchen is not only where meals are prepared, but also where homework is done, songs are sung, tea is sipped, hugs and kisses abound and where we open our hearts to one another each day. If I could craft a home, it would start with the kitchen and everything else would be designed around it. I hope to share my view and vision of all the beauty and magic made from this special place.

I love the fall and all of the wonderful flavors that it brings. Our kitchen is currently stocked up with various squash, persimmons, bitter greens, pears and apples. In our csa box this week we received a bunch of sun chokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes). This was a new veg to our family, so through a quick query online I found an amazing lemon chicken with sun chokes recipe. My folks were joining us for dinner so, in true form for me, I decided to experiment with a new recipe. We also currently have a plethora of persimmons and there were more in our box, luckily so was a recipe for persimmon pudding cake, and another opportunity to experiment. I am pleased to say that both new recipes came out wonderfully, pleasing everyone. "Keepers" for sure as we like to refer to such experiments.