To Do

I must bake bread today! But first I have to clean out the fridge and make room for the bowl of bread dough. Do you know about the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day? Well, I got it for Christmas last year after using one of the recipes from it obsessively for months beforehand. Guess what? It really works! Well, actually, I always found that I had to turn the oven heat down and cook the loaves for about 30 extra minutes at the end of baking, but once I did that, the bread turned out great, and it was very convenient to be able to make four loaves over a period of two weeks with all the prep done on the first day.

Also on the to-do list for today is to print burning bridge cards...another job involving the fridge. The cards are made with Print Gocco and I keep the screens with ink on them in the freezer between uses. That keeps the ink from drying out and makes the screens last longer--cleaning them makes them wear out pretty quickly. I have to get some more cards to Elsa & Sam!

For breakfast today I made an egg (from my chickens) poached in fresh tomato sauce with basil. It was good, but would have been better with a piece of fresh-baked bread!

Update:
I went a little overboard with the bread-making. In my fridge there is dough for two loaves of honey-wheat bread with (you're gonna love this) COOKED GRAINS, aka leftover porridge, and also dough for three loaves of caraway rye. I couldn't wait for the second rising, so I made myself a single roll for lunch. It was the honey wheat, and thankfully, the whole grain bits taste great in it. I hope that the final product has a lighter texture, but even with the rising rushed, the roll was pretty good. Slowly rising in the fridge is a sandwich loaf of honey wheat that I plan to bake tonight, and I have two weeks to make the rye bread.

The lump of mashed potatoes-looking-stuff on my plate is actually a special treat: soft and delicious Black Sheep Creamery rosemary-garlic cheese. Also impressively good: Reliant grapes. You can get them at New Seasons right now, and you probably should.

There's a reason why gruel went out of style!

Yesterday my friend Serena came over to pick tomatoes with her two little girls. The girls brought their Easter baskets and filled them up with pretty, multicolored cherry tomatoes--it was so cute! Theresa gave them some eggs from our chickens to take home in their baskets too.

The porridge never did get to a point that I would call appetizing, but then, I really dislike oatmeal and all hot cereals, so I don't know what gave me the idea that I would start liking it now. However, I am determined, so I made pan-fried porridge-cakes with kinpira-style vegetables for breakfast. I won't give the recipe for the cakes, because they were not so good that they should be repeated. But Kinpira vegetables are delicious. When I lived in Japan, Kinpira Gobo was one of my favorite foods...and I was in love with the Kinpira Gobo Burger from Mos Burger. It had two toasted cakes of rice for a bun, and a pile of warm Kinpira Gobo in the middle.

Here is my simple formula for making Kinpira vegetables at home. The usual vegetables are gobo (burdock root) and carrots, but I like to add shiitake mushrooms too. And today I also included small batons of turnip and a handful of cauliflower florets. (And left out the gobo...you can find it here, but it's not exactly readily available. I got some last spring from Winter Green Farm at the farmer's market.)

Stir-fry about three cups of mixed vegetables, preferably including burdock, carrot, and shiitake mushrooms, all cut into slivers or strips, over high heat, in 2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil, with a light sprinkle of salt. (The traditional way of cutting vegetables for kinpira is to cut the roots as if you are sharpening a pencil, so you get sort of diamond-shaped slivers.) Add a few shakes of hot red pepper flakes. When vegetables are nearly done, add a generous tablespoon each of sake and soy sauce, and cook until there is almost no liquid left. Serve with toasted sesame seeds on top. (If you don't have sake, that's ok, just leave it out; sometimes I also add a teaspoon of sugar; and sometimes I leave out the sugar and add a clove of garlic.)