A modest proposal

A few weeks ago at the Dupont farmers' market, I got to talking with my friend Bev about how much I'd enjoyed the lamb with which he'd supplied me for the Irish stew dinner. At one point, I suggested that more folks would be chasing him down for lamb necks if only they knew what to do with the inexpensive, meaty cuts. I also pointed out that though his meats are consistently stellar, his website was a little lean on content. (Hah. You must've seen that one coming.) Not a lot of recipes or recent blog posts, anyway.

About an hour later, as we sat yapping on the back of the Eco-Friendly Foods truck, a plan had formed: every few weeks, Bev would supply me with some of the less common cuts of meat and I would take them home and fiddle with a few different recipes. If things turned out well, I'd write things up and send along the recipe. If my experiment happened to go horribly amiss, at least then I could offer ways NOT to prepare certain cuts. Either way, it would mean more opportunities to hang out with my carnivorous dad (and mom, who is a good sport), along with some other adventurous cooking friends.

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know that I have been pretty adamant in recent years about not being wasteful, but until recently I've been focused on things like saving veggie scraps to make stock and composting. I have grappled a few different times during my life with the complicated idea of eating meat and how it fits with my beliefs. During high school and college I was a vegetarian. Many years later on the bikeable feast cross-country trip, as a means of really understanding what gets meat to my plate I participated in the butchering of chickens. I have finally settled on eating very little meat, and when I do eat it, sourcing responsibly raised meat from local farmers and chefs I know and trust. I believe in using the whole animal if it's going to give its life to feed us. And yet, outside of tasting some chili and lime fried pig ear that the chef sent to my table at Barcelona about a year and a half ago I have not really participated in the whole "nose to tail" movement.

Now, in an interesting turn of events, it's looking like coming months may feature pigs feet, jowl, face bacon, and some of the organ meats. (No liver, though -- I can't handle the smell of it, never mind the texture or the fact that it is the organ that absorbs all of the body's poisons. I can't get past that, sorry. I will leave others to enjoy pâté and liverwurst.) From the get go, Bev tried to talk me into making haggis, which I had managed to avoid on my travels through Scotland. If I can cobble together a version without liver I may try that in a few months, but I'm going to need to work up to it. My dad, upon hearing this latest culinary development, was especially excited about the prospect of making traditional Iraqi dishes with harder to find animal parts, and I had to talk him out of the stuffed lamb stomach for Round 1 -- I'm going to need to work up to that one, too. Mom will likely be sending some traditional, meaty Polish recipes my way soon. My friend Kathryn is already talking about smoked pigs feet for Round 2. (Meanwhile, I think I'm starting to fall for a cute vegan. It's going to be an interesting few months coming up....)

Bev's hinting about bringing me some pork shanks next weekend. Stay tuned!

I need some space

Oh, 35 pounds of tomatoes, the problem isn't you, it's me. (Well, actually, it's my limited burner surface area.)

Usually I can manage a rather high level of culinary gymnastics during a big curry night or a personal cheffing session by getting creative: starting some things in the stove and then moving them to the oven, say, or using the plug-in rice cooker for grains. But tonight I found myself with a bit of a math problem: 4 burners, and at least 7 pots that need them. (Where is my favorite math teacher when I need him?)

So riddle me this, culinary mathemagicians: How would you account for

• 1 burner: pot of applesauce that needs to be kept hot for canning
• 1 burner: tureen of vegan pho broth that still needs simmering for another 3 hours
• 1 burner: a large pot of boiling water for scalding tomatoes
• 1 burner: medium pot of simmering water to keep jar lids sterile
• 2 burners: the giant canning pot
• 1 burner: the tamale I was going to warm up for dinner...?

My solution: Work in waves. (This is the kind of problem solving that got me into advanced math classes back in 7th grade, thank you very much.)

BURNERS 1 & 2: giant canning pot to sterilize jars, then process filled jars
BURNER 3: applesauce cooking, then tomato scalding
BURNER 4: 1 pot of simmering water to keep jar lids sterile

As for the pho broth: I boiled and then removed it from the stove and covered it to keep warm, then returned it to BURNER 3 when tomatoes were processing. Oh, and dinner: a tamale steamed in a strainer precariously balanced over the canning pot, along with a spinach salad and a limoncello tonic. (What, BURNER 4 was busy warming some tea to make a batch of kombucha!) Next time when I really get cooking I could also break out the portable propane burner, and maybe even the beercan stove -- how did I only think of those now? And maybe I can rig some kind of solar cooker in my sunny front room....

Propolaxis

Have you ever smelled the distinct aroma of propolis -- that sticky stuff that bees make to seal gaps in the hive? It's quite intoxicating: earthy, and a bit sweet. And yesterday, I smelled it for the first time. Ahhhh.

For two months last winter, with Ollie creaking beneath the weight of a pile of textbooks, I biked uphill through the frigid darkness to attend my urban beekeeping class at UDC. After full days of teaching, for two evenings a week I immersed myself in learning about all things apis: types of native honeybees, bee life cycles and behavior, components of home hives, safety equipment, considerations for hive placement, pernicious pests and diseases that commonly attack hives, the mysterious hive collapse phenomenon (I didn't sleep much after class that week), and all kinds of other technical information. By the end of the course, I had a basic academic understanding of how to keep bees. Soon afterwards, in the early spring, I bought a veil and a smoker, a hive tool and gloves. I was ready. Well, sort of. I'd had a chance, at one point during the class, to hold an empty frame; what I hadn't had was any hands-on experience working with an actual bee hive.

That all changed yesterday. Decked out in pants and a long-sleeve shirt on a sunny afternoon, I showed up at the community garden abutting one of my schools to find Kevin -- an experienced beekeeper to whom I have recently apprenticed myself -- waiting for me with a loaner veil and hive tools. As he got into his gear, I was tasked with getting the smoker going. (I think he was rather impressed at my fire-starting skills. I stuffed newspaper, twigs, sticks, and finally dried pine needles into the lit smoker to get it really billowing.) After donning some gloves and checking our equipment, it was time to calmly make our way to check and feed the three hives. Kevin talked me through how best to approach the hives, and warned against making loud noises or unnecessary vibrations. They also don't like being checked on too often. Or quick movements. Many sentences ended with, "They hate that, and you're more likely to get stung." Noted.

After examining a couple of them jointly, I used my hive tool to remove the lids and then a couple of frames all by myself, with my mentor patiently talking me through each step. Bees were humming and crawling all over the place, including me, and particularly near my inadvertently exposed wrists, but they seemed mellow enough after a couple puffs from the smoker. I was mesmerized. Slowly, slowly, I pried the first frame loose from the clots of propolis, lifted it straight up, then tilted it first on one side and then the other to check for nectar/honey development. Everything looked the way it should, in terms of store laying, it seemed. We squished a few hive beetles, then tucked in the supplemental feeding bags: gallon ziplocs half filled with a 2:1 sugar water solution. (This helps to make sure the bees stockpile enough honey to get them through the long winter.)

Calmly and slowly -- but not too slowly lest the bees get annoyed -- I replaced each frame, tapped it back in place, and then returned the inner and outer lids before Kevin secured everything with cement blocks to keep the wind from blowing the tops off. (I doubt with that much putty-like propolis that those lids were going anywhere, but I trust my mentor implicitly on these sorts of things.) I can't wait to help winterize the hives in a few weeks!

Pluviophile

My dad loves to recount our days of living in Saudi Arabia, when he would come pick me up from preschool during drizzly lunch breaks, swerving the car all over the road to hit maximum puddles on our ride home, smiling as I squealed with joy when we drove through a particularly splashy one.

(I don't want you to get the wrong idea about my dad: he's actually a very good driver. It's just that 4-year-old-daughter delighting trumped road rules sometimes. And who are we kidding here, there were not "rules" so much as "guidelines" where automobiles are involved in that part of the world. In Kuwait, just a few years later, I saw my first sedan in a tree near a highway exit ramp. Kinda puts drivers in our nation's capital into perspective.)

I remember dashing outside with my mom in our bathing suits while traveling through Spain during fall break my junior year of college to take outdoor showers, giggling maniacally as we passed the soap and shampoo bottles back and forth as the pounding rain nearly blinded us. Even now, in my late 30s, I love splashing around in puddles during afternoon thunderstorms that often characterize our DC summer months -- umbrellas be damned. And so long as I'm not tent camping, I love falling asleep to the sound of rain.

Really, I like rain. I just don't enjoy *cold* rain, especially when biking is involved. I mean, seriously, I have decent waterproof gear, but how am I supposed to show up at the salsa clubs looking remotely cute when I look like a drowned cat shivering in rainpants and boots? Ollie's been squeaking her discontent all week as well. I'm ready for a break from this Seattle-like weather.

At least the celery and brassicas are enjoying it. So there's that....

Our food rocks the palate

How do I keep getting talked into things that begin early on a Saturday, across town? (Because I'm a sucker? It's possible.) Yet once again I was glad I hauled myself out of bed at the crack of 7:30am yesterday to get myself to the WIC Get Fresh Festival, where I was competing on a team with my friend and fellow food educator, Vera, in a farmers' market cook-off.

(I see you looking at the computer screen, eyebrow raised. Fine, I didn't actually get myself to RFK Stadium until closer to 10am. But I did get up before 8. I just move more slowly on the weekends.)

As Ollie and I rolled up, my team was in the midst of shopping for our three dishes. I locked her up and we jumped right in. We had to come up with an appetizer, main dish, and dessert heavily sourced from the RFK Open Air Farmers' Market. We'd have 90 minutes to cook, then present our dishes to the 5 judges, a mix of local chefs and Dept of Health folks. Oh, and part of the challenge was that our only heat source was a grill. I love a challenge.

Laden with bowls and bags of fresh produce, we headed to our cooking station. First, we began chopping the ingredients for a spicy tomato and watermelon salad with jalapenos and fresh mint, inspired by my teammate Levita. Beautiful presentation, no?

The juice at the bottom, after we'd served the salad itself to judges and market shoppers, might have been my favorite part. (I think the spicy, minty watermelon juice would've been even better with a splash of tequila, but that was not entirely appropriate for a family-friendly, Department of Health-sponsored event, so I tucked away that little bit of knowledge for later.) Next, I joined the main course team, skewering our veggie and paneer kabobs. The Indian cheese chunks were marinated in a delectable marinade of yogurt, garlic, ginger, and garam masala, and the aromatic, grilled kabobs attracted eager tasters like nobody's business. Props to Niraj for the ingenious recipe.

I was actually fairly removed from our dessert offering -- a fresh fruit salad with yogurt and cinnamon -- though I did chop some market peaches for it at one point. To be honest, I was busy near the end, scarfing grilled paneer that had fallen off some of the skewers. (You know, quality control.) As 12:30 rolled around, we presented our offerings to the panel and waited...and waited... It turned out there was a tie between my team -- Our Food Rocks the Palate -- and a lovely group from a vegetarian catering company. The judges decided we'd have to answer a food trivia question to determine the winner of the competition. Apparently having two teams in first place was not an option.

The million dollar question was: In one minute, list as many foods as you can that came from the New World. (Turns out that what WE did not know previously was that the emcee was a food history buff. But what SHE did not know was that I teach a series of lessons on food origins to 5th graders. Heh.) We won.

In case you're wondering, no, there was no million dollar prize. In fact, the prize was a small box with plastic vegetables in it and a plaque mounted on the side proclaiming, "Get Fresh Festival -- Grill Chef Competition -- First Place," that will live at nearby J. O. Wilson High School, where a few of my teammates work. And a sense of pride, of course. Go team!!

Setting boundaries

It is quite something to get me out of bed at 7:30am on a Saturday, but the 60-mile fundraising ride for Phoenix Bikes ( http://www.phoenixbikes.org), sponsored by my favorite bar in the city, on one of the nicest days of the year decidedly fit the bill.

Yesterday I went on my first long haul in a long time, joining my fellow cyclists in the 3rd annual Boundary Stone bike ride: an all-day, hill-laden tour of the District's original boundary stones. From the southernmost stone to the west, north, and east, the ride took me to parts of DC, MD, and VA that I'd never explored during my many years of living -- and a handful of years biking -- here. There were hills, parks, and bike paths I never knew were there, and many dozens of fun cyclists I'd never met before but hope to encounter again. We even had ride mascots: Chrissi's two chihuahuas, Chili and Queso, who lazed in her bike basket, adorably, the whole time. It was awesome.

Even though my knees were aching by mile 20, I made it about 50 miles, to all four corners of the original DC boundary, ending up at Bloomingdale's great Boundary Stone public house for my complimentary pint around 7pm. Boy did that beer taste amazing. And boy did my bed feel like the best place ever last night: I slept like a Viking.

For next year's ride, my new friends Melissa and Chrissi are talking about configuring a beer cooler and solar pizza warming bike rack contraption so we can have readily available snacks on hand. I'd better start working on brewing a batch of bike tour appropriate beer....

Rotten Tomatoes

Okay, Mr. Irate SUV Driver, I think I understand why you're so angry.

1. You spend a lot at the pump to keep your gas guzzler rolling. 
2. It's hard to find parking for that big honkin' thing in the city. 
3. There's always traffic in DC, and you're stuck in it. 
4. Pedestrians don't cross the street quickly enough for your taste. They pay no attention to whether the light says they should be walking or not. And it's worse on Sundays. (I have to deal with them, too, by the way.)
5. There's a good chance you were not loved as a child... or frankly, with that mouth, as an adult.

It must suck to be you. But do you really need to lean out the window and yell at a cyclist for being on the road? (Legally, we cyclists actually are supposed to be on the road, rather than the sidewalk. but somehow I doubt you are up on modern urban transportation policy.) Let me ask you: is it appropriate to yell and curse at a total stranger across the street because you didn't make it through a barely yellow light, where you'd have to wait at the imminent red light on the next block? No.

Did you bother to notice that it was not the cyclist but the dawdling automobile driver in front of you on his cell phone who was probably the reason the line of cars didn't move quickly? It was not the cyclist who even held you up, sir. (Okay, let's be real, sir is a stretch.) No, again.

Is the world a better place, are you happier, feeling more fulfilled having made a young woman feel anxious and frustrated on her way to the farmers' market this morning? She tried to explain that it was the car in front of her as she was trying to make a left turn, but did you listen, or even care? Once again, no.

Why do so many drivers seem to actively hate bikers? Though I do have a "Cars Are Coffins" bike water bottle, I actually am not a universal hater of cars or their drivers. I have friends who drive. (Ha ha.) But seriously, I've been trying to cultivate better driver-biker relations in my own small way since becoming a cyclist back in 2009 -- moving out of the way so cars can make right turns on red lights, taking my allotted turn at stop signs, signaling when I'm going to change lanes or turn, not going the wrong way down one way streets. Even so, some people like you, mister, really make me want to throw a rotten tomato at your windshield. Except I wouldn't want to waste the tomato: it would do more good in the compost.

(Incidentally, that's the same reason cars double-parked in a bike lane RIGHT NEXT TO AN OPEN PARKING SPOT don't get tomatoed. That, and the fact that I don't usually bike around with a satchel of rotten tomatoes.)