Kate F____, Girl Reporter

Hmm. I am feeling a little puzzled over what to do here. WordPress has released a new “feature” that adds a section to blog posts where they link to what they think might be related posts. The problem is that in addition to linking within my blog, it links to other WordPress blogs but doesn’t give me any choice in the matter. I am sure many of the links will be great, but I also don’t love the idea of having readers click away to some random site that may have a terrible recipe or be offensive or who knows what. I might just disable the feature completely, but it does seem to be sensible to link back to related posts I’ve written. What do you think? In the meantime, the bold links are within this blog, while the non-bold links go outside the blog.

Other WordPress users, are you keeping it turned on?

Well. I inadvertently made a meal from all Trader Joe’s ingredients:

That’s a Harvest Grain mix (israeli couscous, some orzo, baby garbanzo beans, quinoa), mahi mahi marinated in garlic, olive oil, and red pepper flakes, and a bag of baby spinach.

Doesn’t that look promising? Just wait, in the finished photo it looks even better. Sadly, this product was a total bust–the couscous and orzo, as you’d imagine, cooked just fine in the 10 minutes instructed by the bag. Any longer and they’d have been mush. The dried baby garbanzo beans? Not so much. As a result the texture was upsetting.

The fish Ben grilled according to the package instructions–7 minutes/side–and it was perfect. Juicy and very flavorful, though the marinade was too salty. Still, Ben liked it, so that adds another fish to our list! And I love mahi mahi, so I was happy despite the high sodium content. As for the spinach, I just sautéed it quickly with garlic and olive oil. Yum.

That extremely healthy dinner (if only the pilaf-ish thing had been better!) came together in about 15 minutes. Long Live Trader Joe’s!

Over the weekend we were down in Rockland County for a family event, so we decided to make a weekend of it and visit my cousin at Bard College, see a concert, and spend the night. I was stunned by how cool the Bard Campus is–it’s got about 90 buildings, many of them darling quirky houses scattered around as dorms or faculty housing. I took tons of photos of the Blithewood Mansion and its gardens. We went to a good concert at the Gehry-designed performing arts center, then had dinner at the bistro at Terrapin, in Rhinecliff. Fun place in an old church.

We stayed up in Hudson, in a really cool house/B&B run by a very fun couple, The Inn at Hudson. (Read all about the house and the owners in this New York Times story; the guest room they show is the one we stayed in.) On Sunday morning one of the owners, Dini, showed us his video (as his Drag alter-ego, Musty Chiffon), “(I wanna be) Jackie Onassis.” It was a cover of the song, which his New Wave band first recorded in the early 80s. The whole thing was amazing and I still have the song stuck in my head. You can watch the video, too, if you want…

Photos from the weekend…

Happy Earth Day! Along with most of the northern hemisphere, I’ve tried to switch to reusable bags this year, and I won’t lie, I’m longing for the happy and practical (they roll up so small! they still go over your shoulder!) RuMe bags that Not Martha posted yesterday–she has ten sets to give away! Delight.com makes this brilliant Starter Kit that would make it easier for anyone to switch to reusable bags and bottles:

(photo: Delight.com)
I definitely need to make or get some produce bags like that.

The other bandwagon we’re jumping on this year is the CSA (community supported agriculture) weekly farm box. We joined the Stone Soup Farm CSA–the farm is in Belchertown, MA and this is their first year running a CSA. We have gotten several extremely entertaining and well-written newsletters so far, and when I checked out the About Us page it turns out the farm is run by a very young and idealistic crew. I’m excited to see what the summer brings–here’s the lettuce growing in the greenhouses right now:

(photo: Stone Soup Farm)

Yum.

Anyway, if you haven’t heard about CSAs, they are a program designed to help connect buyers with farmers so the farmers have some guaranteed income and the buyers know they’ll be getting a steady supply of local produce all summer, even if getting to the farmer’s market is inconvenient. I have been frustrated by how much of the produce at Whole Foods is trucked from California or is completely out of season stuff from South America, and I’m excited about challenging myself with the weekly box of whatever Stone Soup is harvesting. I’m planning to do at least a weekly post about what is in my box once it starts up in June. According to the farm:

“You can expect to see all of the following vegetables in your CSA share throughout the year: Arugala, Beans, Beets, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Celeriac, Celery, Sweet Corn, Cucumber, Diakon, Edamame, Eggplant, Fennel, Garlic, Kale and Collards, Kohlrabi, Leeks, Lettuce, Melons, Mesclun Lettuce, Okra, Onions (Red, Yellow and Walla Walla), Parsnips, Peas, Peppers, Popcorn, Potatoes, Pumpkins, Radishes, Rutabaga, Spinach, Summer Squash and Zucc., Sweet Potato, Swiss Chard, Tomatoes, Cherry Tomatoes, Turnip, Winter Squash, As well as the following herbs: Basil, Cilantro, Chives, Dill, Hot Peppers, Rosemary, Mint, Oregano, Thyme, Parsley.”

Wow. If I get even half of those things there will be lots of experiments to conduct!

For more information about CSA and how to find a CSA in your area (shares are getting very booked up for this year, so act fast!) check out Local Harvest.

Stone Soup’s geese keeping watch over the farm back in early March:

(photo: Stone Soup Farm)

I spent this weekend back up in Hanover helping my brother Tom get ready to leave for a two-month trip through Europe to absorb great works of architecture. He’s a smart puppy who won a travel grant to fund this trip. Since graduating from Dartmouth last June he designed and built a new timber-framed sugarhouse for the Dartmouth Organic Farm, worked at various timber framing jobs, and worked as a cabinet maker. He’s also a great cook!

I got up to Hanover Friday evening (after my first solo highway drive longer than 15 or 20 minutes–whee!) Tom was getting ready to grill dinner for me and for the college’s current Artist in Residence. We enjoyed sirloin, grilled asparagus, pasta with pesto and a delicious cabbage slaw.

He says he made the slaw using vegetable oil and cider vinegar with quite a bit of sugar for the dressing. I will experiment, since he wasn’t very precise with quantities! We ate leftover steak and slaw in great sandwiches the next day.

Tom has been working on a gorgeous custom fly-tying desk for a couple months, using many of the techniques he learned in timber-framing. He finished it on Friday and on Saturday we went to the woodshop to attach the top to the base and do a couple other final tasks.

Hardware and two doors will be added after he gets back from Europe. Pretty impressive, huh?

We also picked up some great book deals at the Five Colleges Book Sale, hung out with lots of Tom’s friends, finished packing up his stuff and figured out what he needed for this trip, which starts in Istanbul and finishes in Helsinki in late June. He’s packing very light (annotated version here):

Finally, almost a month ago Tom stayed at our place while we were gone for the weekend. When we came back I found this lovely handmade cutting board waiting for me–I can’t bear to use it yet; it’s leaning up against the wall in the kitchen, looking pretty:

Good luck, Tom! Safe travels…

PenFifteen, my photo blog with Bridge, is back up and running as of this weekend (after a nine-month break).

There has not been a ton of cooking going on in the Girl Reporter household, I’m afraid. I did come home from my pottery class on Monday and found that Ben had grilled sausages to eat with couscous and green beans–very impressive. But he couldn’t find my camera so there is no photographic proof.

Here are two “agh, dinner?” meals we ate last week:

Sunday night, starving but unmotivated, a bit concerned about the bag of arugula lying listlessly in the produce drawer, I cooked up some Rising Moon ravioli (a mushroom flavored package, though they weren’t, very) and sautéed the arugula in olive oil and butter. This was an experiment, as I usually use it raw or wilted into pasta dishes, rather than sautéed, but it worked very nicely.

A few nights later, we needed something homey and I had some broccoflower (…what a name), also languishing in the produce drawer, so I made my first absorption pasta in months and it was divine. Ben declared it a Top 5 meal, and I must say the leftovers the next day made me happy for quite a long time.

I took the sausage out of its casing and browned it, removed it, then sautéed the broccoflower florets (cut up quite small) in a little oil and garlic, like I did the cauliflower for the pasta with cauliflower and walnuts. I forgot to hold the garlic back till the end, though, and instead put it in with the oil before the broccoflower. At the time I was mad because it seemed to be over-browning, since the broccoflower (oh my god, that name) took a while to cook, but the dish, in the end, had a nice smoky flavor and I don’t know which thing I burned contributed that, but it worked out nicely.

Meanwhile I cooked the pasta (risotto-style, people–link is above if you haven’t done this yet; it is luscious and so worth it), then stirred everything together and voila, I want more right this minute actually.

I am going to Hanover this weekend to help my brother get ready for his upcoming European Jaunt. Pictures to come, I’m sure! Have a great weekend!

Last Tuesday we grilled burgers (well, Ben grilled), and I tried to recreate Ben’s favorite Big Nick’s burger for him. I always thought blue cheese, bacon and avocado on a large burger was several steps beyond overkill, but he loved that thing. Well, the blue cheese I had hanging around was funkier than even blue cheese should be, so I swapped in cheddar, and despite my misgivings it was fantastic. I must say, I seem to have a good feel for avocado ripeness!

Anyway, we had some bacon and half an avocado left over, in addition to FOUR ciabatta rolls (thanks, Whole Foods, for only have bagels and tiny french rolls available one at a time), so in addition to ciabatta rolls with peanut butter for breakfast last week, I had the remaining avocado with half the bacon on a roll for lunch Thursday, and was unspeakably happy. And then Friday I made, in essence, a tiny bacon butty, with the last roll, butter, and the remaining bacon. I know it’s obvious, but seriously, people, revisit those simple, simple classics sometimes. That was the best weekday breakfast I’ve had in months. Maybe years.

Good Bacon.
Butter.
Good bread.

(Bliss)

Last week Whole Foods had some sort of fancy citrus bonanza, and I thought I’d get my fill at the tail end of the season. I picked up a pomelo (it was the size of my head!), a honey mandarin, two of something that I think were tangelos and one other. I’m sorry, I should have written down the names–I’ll look for the receipt later. I set the pomelo aside for later* once I’d broken down the other fruit and found that I had plenty.

I supremed the citrus to use in a breakfast parfait on Saturday. It’s really easy and sort of therapeutic, and makes the fruit nice to eat, juicy, and pretty.

Cut the ends, skin and pith off the fruit:

Then (I’m sorry my photos didn’t come out) use a sharp thin knife to cut along the membrane on either side of each segment. The pieces come out naked and tidy unless you didn’t cut the ends off far enough (not that I’d know anything about that…).

I got a container of full-fat greek yogurt, put a little in each bowl, then a scoop of the mixed up sections of citrus and a drizzle of raw honey on the yogurt:

Once I’d assembled this I worried a bit that the citrus/dairy thing would be a problem but it was quite tasty. And I loved making the supremes; I will definitely do that for salads and things in the future.

*Major disappointment. After enjoying the lovely scent of the pomelo for a few days, I broke it open only to find the flesh flavorless and pretty dry. So sad. Still, it was so huge and fun!

I previously wrote up my Mother in Law Christy’s meatloaf recipe, the one that opened my eyes to the power of a meatloaf sandwich. When we were on Long Island for Easter she taught me to make another easy weeknight entree (and one of Ben’s favorite meals ever), stuffed peppers, and I tried them out myself a week or two later. I’d never had a stuffed pepper before, so I don’t know if this is a typical recipe, but it is incredibly easy and SO tasty. I don’t even like peppers that much, but cooking the filling in them actually adds nice flavor, and I even ate most of the pepper with the filling! Ben likes the green ones; I prefer red or orange or yellow.

Christy’s Stuffed Peppers
(the recipe is pretty rough–just adjust everything to taste!)

For each pound of ground beef:
3 big or 4 small bell peppers
1 onion, chopped
1.5-2 cups cooked rice (I bought it for a fortune from the hot bar at Whole Foods but next time I’ll suck it up and cook it myself first… It would be a nice time saver to cook extra next time you’re making rice and use leftovers the next night!)
1 16 oz. can of tomato sauce (I used Muir Glen, and made sure it was not the kind with basil in it)
Grated cheese (Cheddar is good; I used a grated “mexican” blend from Trader Joe’s that I need to use up!)

Preheat the oven to 350.

Clean and core the peppers (I cut mine lengthwise but you can also just cut the top off and fill them like cups. I will do it that way next time. I overfilled one small and two big peppers and ate the bit of extra filling while they baked, because I was starving.)

Blanch the peppers in boiling salted water until they are tender but not soft. (A few minutes) Drain and set aside.

Sauté the onion until soft, then brown the beef.

When the beef is cooked, add in the tomato sauce and the rice and cook for 15 minutes or so, or until it tastes well blended.

Arrange the peppers on a baking sheet or in a casserole pan. Fill with the meat mixture, top with cheese, and bake for 15 or 20 minutes, until the cheese is melted.

The melted cheese looks so sad in these photos, I’m sorry!

Despite the simplicity of the recipe, these were incredibly flavorful and tasty. We ate leftovers for dinner a couple nights later and they were even better, though reheating was a bit tricky. I think if I knew I’d have leftovers I would leave the cheese off those when I was baking them, and then microwave them to heat the filling before adding the cheese and broiling them for a couple minutes.

So if you were cooking for someone who had a terrible cold and was very congested and having trouble breathing at night, what would you make? Probably chicken soup or something equally clear and comforting. Probably not Mac and Cheese made with 2.5 pounds of dairy (and 1/2 pounds of pasta). I am not smart sometimes.

But I made poor, suffering Ben this Milk Bomb last week and he’s still alive (and his cold seems to be tapering off), so no long-term harm done.

I remember seeing this mac and cheese recipe in the New York Times a million years ago (back in my Brooklyn days, when I never actually cooked) but I forgot about it until I found it in the Smitten Kitchen archives last week. It is FAST to pull together.

My favorite part of the recipe is how after the ingredients it says things like “Not lowfat.” Thank you, Ms. Moskin!

Creamy Macaroni & Cheese
From the NYTimes via Smitten Kitchen

Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

2 tablespoons butter
1 cup cottage cheese (not lowfat)
2 cups milk (not skim)
1 teaspoon dry mustard
Pinch cayenne
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 pound sharp or extra-sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1/2 pound elbow pasta, uncooked.

Lots of Dairy:

Let’s look again at that pound of extra-sharp cheddar (Tillamook: Go Oregon!):

And behold, once again, the magical powers of the Cuisinart’s grating abilities:

A pound of cheese grated perfectly in 30 seconds. Love!

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees and position an oven rack in upper third of oven. Use 1 tablespoon butter to butter a 9-inch round or square baking pan.

2. In a blender, purée cottage cheese, milk, mustard, cayenne, nutmeg and salt and pepper together.

I blended it with about half the milk to start with, to get the cottage cheese really smooth, then added in the rest. Blending without enough milk made my blender shut itself off several times, oops.

Reserve 1/4 cup grated cheese for topping. In a large bowl, combine remaining grated cheese, milk mixture and uncooked pasta.

Cheese-to-pasta ratio:

Pour into prepared pan…

Fine, that looks unappealing but it will improve!

…cover tightly with foil and bake 30 minutes.

Note that it does NOT say to add on the reserved cheese on top before bundling it into the oven. So it should not have looked like this before I covered it tightly and baked it:

I only realized that once the cheese was on and the thing was in the oven. Too late.

3. Uncover pan, stir gently, sprinkle with reserved cheese and dot with remaining tablespoon butter.

Since I’d already put the cheese on, I tried to stir delicately and leave some cheese still on the top, but I pretty much failed. Oh well.

Bake, uncovered, 30 minutes more, until browned. Let cool at least 15 minutes before serving.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings.

We had large arugula salads on the side to cut the fat. I toasted some walnuts to scatter on top–a favorite combination, since the bitter nuttiness of the arugula goes great with walnuts.

The mac and cheese was very tasty and easy to put together but I’m afraid it didn’t reheat very well–the cheese congeals and the whole thing gets oily, ugh. I think to get a smooth, re-heatable result I’d have to go back to a bechamel technique, no? But if you’re feeding a couple dozen hungry adults (ok, more like 6 or 8…) a pan of this is a nice tasty weeknight dinner. The NYTimes story had an alternate recipe for crusty-toppinged mac and cheese that I might try, or I could try this one again with a topping of breadcrumbs. I am in the crisper-toppings mean better-times camp.

Hopefully it will feel like spring soon, though, and I won’t try out any more heavy mac and cheese recipes until next fall. Please?