Holiday latkes

Merry day after Christmas! I think the highlight of the holiday food was okonomi-latke, a mashup of Japanese cabbage pancakes and potato latkes, found in the New York Times: cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017037-okonomi-latke — they were on the salty side, but the addition of potatoes to okonomiyaki, which is already a staple in our house, added a creamy element that we’ll probably use in the future.

To keep up with the new tradition of virtually saving our holiday letter, here’s the 2019 letter:

Hello from NJ! Our annual highlights include work travel and new appliances! 

We kicked off 2019 by readjusting to our time zone after our December 2018 UK visit (which included watching Crystal Palace, our English Premier League team of choice, at Selhurst Park, and seeing Hadestown, a musical we’ve seen in three iterations on two continents). 

As usual, we headed to NOLA in January for the Crescent City Cup Scrabble tournament that Kate co-hosts. This was the only tournament she played this year, but we enjoyed excellent Scrabble socializing, especially at Scrabble weddings in Seattle (congrats, Jen and Evans!) and NJ (congrats, Mina and Cesar!)—also in friend news, Kurt moved to NYC for a job at NYU (congrats, Kurt!) and has been a bad? good? influence on our theater habits. Shows and concerts seen this year number about 50 (?!), with at least two more to come (West Side Story on Broadway and Moby Dick at ART in Boston). 

When we weren’t traveling back and forth to NYC, we took longer trips for work and family milestones. Kate spent a few days in Grenada on a medical school visit (occasional travel to Caribbean resorts is a job perk). Tim had no interest in sandy beaches, but his annual professional conference took us to exotic Oklahoma City, which was actually a pretty cute place to spend a couple of days (and to see our friend Nadine before she moved to Australia). Overall though, Tim wins the best work travel location by scoring a two-week teaching gig in Japan in June. The schedule only required classroom time on weekends, so Kate joined him in Tokyo for a week before he went on to Osaka, then extended his trip to see Nadine in Brisbane with a brief layover in Taipei (while Kate had to return to real life, alas). The adventures are captured pretty well on Facebook—lots of food, kabuki theater, shrines and temples. We are scheming about how to return to Asia ASAP (potentially this coming summer)... 

A Kate conference took us to Chicago for a few days in March, and we returned to the city in November to say goodbye to Kate’s childhood home and help her parents pack up for their big retirement move to North Las Vegas. Just before our trip to Japan, we headed to California for another family event: Tim’s grandmother’s funeral--we enjoyed reminiscing with all of the family who convened to celebrate her 99-year life. Our most recent family trip was to Urbana, Maryland, where we shared Thanksgiving dinner with Becca and her family.

At home, this July, we welcomed a new, somewhat antisocial but entertaining feline housemate named Clyde (www.instagram.com/clydesquatch/) who negotiates cat tree perches with Squeaky and Charlie. He came with a human named Conor, who is a somewhat more social and also useful in that he can pay some rent. Said rent has helped subsidize a new washing dryer, a new water heater, and a new French Door refrigerator—this has been on Kate’s wish list for years (and was also subsidized by Tim’s parents as a Christmas gift—thanks parents!). 

For the first time ever, we’re spending Christmas at home rather than traveling to family or abroad. While we’ll miss seeing people or new places, we’re pretty excited to have some quality couch time. Tim was awarded a $2.5 million grant this semester and has been working extra hard to get the project up and running; one of Kate’s colleagues left for a job in Seattle, so she has been working extra hard to make up for being understaffed. 

As always, we welcome all visitors! We still have plenty of space in the house (and extra space in the new and improved fridge), plus Conor and Clyde brought us about 600 board games, so there are plenty of games for the playing and cats for the petting! Happy holidays and stay in touch!

Happy holidays 2018!

Hello friends!

Instead of sending a paper letter this year, we thought it'd be more fun to send postcards from our London holiday adventure and put our yearly updates online.

We started this blog with a plan to write about our food adventures, so let's start there. We spoiled ourselves when it came to restaurants this year, but our biggest celebration meal came attached to our biggest highlight of the year, which is that after 10 years of college teaching at three different institutions, Tim has tenure! We toasted the occasion at Eleven Madison Park in New York City. We racked up a lot of Michelin star meals in cool places, including Blue Hill and Gramercy Tavern and Kyo Ya in NYC, L'Astrance in Paris, and soon, we'll try Texture in London.

Aside from food tourism at home and abroad, most of our adventures have followed the usual themes: travel for work, fun and friends; theater; soccer. Kate didn't play any Scrabble in 2018, which was weird (though we spent our usual weekend in New Orleans in January for the tournament she helps to organize)--she played a lot of Pokemon Go instead, and she also picked up a Nintendo Switch and has enjoyed Zelda, Let's Go Eevee, and Katamari Damacy, among other games. She also nominally picked up bullet journaling, though it's mostly just an excuse to buy pretty pens and washi tape.

A couple of other departures from the norm: we took our oldest nephew, James, to visit a few colleges on the east coast. It was fun to pretend to be parents for a minute and also to learn about a few colleges we knew less about. We also spent a little more than a week on a European summer vacation: a few days in Madrid, a few in Paris where we were guests at the beautiful wedding of our friends Nadine and Ian, then a day each in Amsterdam and Brussels. We are now addicted to European gummi candy -- it’s somehow better than the Haribo you can get in the States. We met up with Nadine and Ian again in Chicago and cheered Nadine on as she ran a marathon in the rain, then visited with our friends Jessi and Kyle in Michigan before a quick visit to Ann Arbor. It was nice to be in the Midwest in fall rather than frigid winter. We also joined a gym near our house--Kate finds it motivating to have the trainers create new workouts for her every time, so we'll try to stick with that plan in the new year.

In the spring semester, Tim will be on a well-earned sabbatical, so he'll have some flexibility for new adventures at home--he might build a woodshed. The excitement never ends in the FC household.

If you're in or near NJ/NY, let us know! We'd love to welcome more guests to our place in 2019. The cats need constant love and affection, so you'll be doing us a favor if you come and pet them.

xoxo
Kate & Tim

x

Tomatoes!

We acquired about six pounds of tomatoes from our CSA this week and managed to eat almost all of them without wanting to boycott tomatoes forever! These recipes helped:

• Lovely Little Kitchen's BLT Bliss Bowls (minus bacon for Tim)
• Food Network Tomato Cobbler because anything is good with biscuits
• Something we made up that's vaguely like this polenta with tomatoes and eggs recipe

Also, hello! This blog needed some love, so here we go. Maybe I'll add more stuff this year. Or maybe it'll lay dormant for another three years before I pop back in.

New Home NJ Edition

hello, blog - it has been awhile. it has been so long, in fact, that i'm not sure whether to resurrect this blog or the livejournal, both of which lie dormant. i ended up here largely because this is a kate and tim post rather than a just me post.

empty rental house

so: we bought a house! this is our fourth house. i'm required to live here for at least four years so that we don't once again lose all the money by selling too soon. happily, i really love my job and can see myself staying here for another bunch of years.

it's energizing owning a house. i was so lazy in the rental -- there were tons of things i would've changed about it, but i never felt motivated since i was so unattached to the place. we moved into the new house about a week ago, and i'm compiling lists and curating pinterest boards with projects and ideas.

soon to be coffee cart

new garden

so far today: farmers market for tamales (as usual on saturday, and now a few minutes closer!), go to old house and finish cleaning (plus pot the plant we're leaving for the new tenants), drop off donations at good will, stop by home depot, sand and clean kitchen cart, weed garden. all of that before 2pm! now i'm sitting on the couch watching baseball, waiting for my back to recover enough to go out and work on the garden some more.

NOLA v 3.0

We're back from our third annual trip to New Orleans. Once again, the food memories are numerous. The standouts were Three Muses for dinner and music and Killer Poboys for veg and carnivore (cash only) lunch options. We returned to favorites like Besh Steakhouse, Central Grocery, Cafe Beignet, and tried out other new places including Root, American Sector and the New Orleans Rum Distillery (where we sampled tasty local rum and went on an informative tour). At some point, I'll get around to writing all of those reviews.

Now that we're back, I need to eat a little healthier for awhile. We bought an exercise bike, so I can hopefully refind a workout routine. I am not a dieter, but I can be more mindful, and not eat my go-to fried rice quite as frequently. Winter makes it tricky, since all I want to eat are comfort foods, but with everything in moderation, I think it'll all be okay.

New recipes from this week

Asian-Brined Pork Loin from Food and Wine Magazine. There were good ideas here, but also a few significant shortcomings. One, I have no idea how to carve a pork roast, so now I have a bunch of ragged looking slices of meat, and am gnawing much meat off of bones rather than trying to cut around them. Two, I am the only meat eater in the house, so a five pound hunk of pork is a little daunting when I realize I have to eat the whole thing. Three, I probably should've trimmed down some of the fat, so that the tasty outsides, seasoned up with the brine, were attached to meat rather than to the fat that I didn't eat.

Ultimately, it isn't that bad. The meat is versatile -- I mixed a little in with mac and cheese, I've made banh mi and fried rice, I've frozen a few pounds worth of pork, and I have plans for stir fries for the rest.

Orange Berry Muffins from Dorie Greenspan's Baking cookbook. This was a simple recipe, no giant mixer needed. I didn't have buttermilk, but I substituted some lowfat milk and some greek yogurt, and I used clementines instead of an orange for the juice and zest. This recipe included the novel step of zesting the citrus and rubbing the zest together with the sugar, to make citrus-scented/flavored sugar as part of the base. As usual, there was some magic and poof, muffins. These are probably worth making again, for their simplicity, texture, and ease of recipe.

Cookbooks in 2013

I am a little bit obsessed with cookbooks. From straightforward, text-heavy recipe collections from church/family groups, to food writing with recipes mixed in, to lush, illustration-heavy tomes -- I can't get enough. Since moving to NJ last May, I haven't unpacked any of our boxes of books except the cookbooks. We received four new ones for Xmas -- Smitten Kitchen, Bouchon Bakery, Meat Lovers Meatless Celebrations and Dorie Greenspan's Baking. I also have a bunch of other books I've been gifted or otherwise come to acquire recently that I don't tend to use as much as I could. So, this year I'm going to try to make at least one new recipe a week. That seems manageable -- nothing crazy like cooking all of Julia Child's recipes in a year -- just something that will keep me engaged with my new books.

Just out of the oven tonight is Dorie Greenspan's coconut tea cake. It's in a bundt pan, and I am notoriously bad at getting things out of a bundt pan, but it smells really good.

grilled corn salad

this is what happens when perfect summer ingredients come together...

Ingredients
3 tablespoons of your favorite vinegar
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
6 ears fresh corn, grilled
2 cups worth of tomatoes
8 ounces fresh mozzarella, cut into small cubes
1 1/2 cups fresh basil leaves
salt and pepper

 Directions
Whisk the vinegar, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Gradually whisk in the oil, starting with a few drops and then adding the rest in a steady stream, to make a smooth dressing.

Shear off the corn kernels with a sharp knife over a bowl. Toss in the tomatoes and mozzarella.

Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss to coat. Cover and let set for 15 minutes or up to 2 hours.

 (this is also good if you throw in some bacon, or some smoked salmon. i've used sherry vinegar, balsamic vinegar and white wine vinegar - all are good)

modified from food network's version

Dinner for 2...

Gramercy Tavern.  Tasting menus for each, super good.


Red Snapper, Kohlrabi, Shiitake Mushrooms and Smoked Jalapeño


Soft Shell Crab, Corn, Red Leaf Lettuce and Pickled Green Tomato


Halibut, Zucchini, Black Olives and Lobster Sauce


Squab, Barley, Sungold Tomatoes and Artichokes

Pork tasting plate

Tart for dessert

Communists:

Sweet Corn, King Crab, Shiso and Pickled Ramps

Heirloom Tomato Salad, Shishito Peppers and Pickled Fennel (there was also some cheese in here, and, when I had all the flavors together it might have been the single best bite of food all night)


Warm Bean Salad and Squash Sauce

Roasted Eggplant, Cucumbers, Peppers and Pine Nuts

Spinach Spaghetti, Tomato, Shishito Peppers and Basil

Cheese plate for dessert

Plus, the table was comped a strawberry tart from the bar menu that was superb.

Plus good beer:  Stone-Cali Belgique IPA, Speedway Stout, and J.W. Lees Harvest Ale, 1998 (it was ridiculous)

inauthentically delicious

We have added two foods to our summer repertoire of dinner recipes this winter, both with staunchly ethnic roots, both Americanized for my tastes.

Banh Mi -- very little cooking involved, refreshing with its creamy/sour, meaty/crunchy combo of flavors and textures, and infinitely customizable, we've enjoyed creating sandwiches whose only commonality is the pickled veggies, light smear of mayo, and soft, crusty bread. We've found the rolls at Whole Foods' bakery work well, even though they aren't baguette at all, but rather soft rolls. I haven't found the perfect baguette here - they're all too thick-crusted, and I have trouble getting balanced bites with crusty loaves. We use the master recipe here, more or less, alongside the pickled veggie recipe from the same blog. Since I am among the cilantro averse, I've added parsley in place of the devil herb, and I tend to lazily buy whatever meat is on the hot food bar at the Whole Foods, which completely obviates the need for cooking.

Lomo Saltado -- I had this at Acuario's in Port Chester NY, and (aside from having to pick off all the cilantro), it was quite perfect: marinated meat over an order of fries, with the juices from the meat basting the fries. Peruvian poutine. I tried out Food and Wine's recent recipe, adding just a bit of cinnamon, and pouring the meat over potatoes that we doused in olive oil, salt and pepper and threw on the grill. Perfect the first day, and just as good wrapped into a tortilla with cheese and lettuce, burrito style, the next day.


Lomo Saltado, adapted from Food and Wine Magazine

1/4 cup + a couple tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 garlic clove, minced
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 pound skirt steak
1 red onion, halved and slivered
Vegetable oil, for frying
1 large tomato, chopped
1/4 cup parsley
3-5 medium sized yukon gold potatoes

• Throw the steak in the freezer for about half an hour to make slicing it thin easier. 
• Cut the potatoes into 1/2" cubes, toss with a couple tablespoons of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Put potatoes on the grill over medium heat. 
• In a large bowl, combine the olive oil, cumin, coriander, garlic and a generous pinch each of salt and pepper. 
• Cut the steak into 4-inch pieces; slice the steaks across the grain 1/2 inch thick and add to the bowl along with the onion. Marinate for 10 minutes. 
• Heat a large griddle until very hot. 
• Add the steak and onion and stir-fry over high heat until the meat and onion are cooked through and lightly charred, 3 to 4 minutes. 
• Add the tomato and cook until softened and beginning to char, about 1 minute. 
• Add the potatoes and parsley and flip with a spatula to combine. Serve right away.

beets!

Today in food-news...  beet salad.

It's basically the standard beet salad that we make without even thinking about it these days.

Take some beets, roast them in an oven at 400ish for a while.  Peel, cube.

Toss with toasted walnuts, chopped parsley and either feta or ricotta salata (hard crumbly cheese, a nice blue would probably work too, but not too stinky)

Then, salt & pepper and a nice vinaigrette.  Do everything to taste.

While it takes about 90 minutes, most of that's roasting the beets and letting them cool.

It's really only 15 minutes of actual work, although I turn my hands pink every time when I'm peeling and cutting the beets.

Also, we cut up and slurped down some melon we got at the Trenton farmer's market.  There's about half left, it sounds like what I'll be eating tomorrow...

It's been a week, but that's partially because I was in NH last week doing some roofing and eating carrots.  The carrot was awesome.  I ate all of them that I found.  We haven't seen many here in NJ yet.

This week's share included more zuke! Onions, garlic, chard (I love chard, if I wasn't already married, I might marry it.  I'm hoping for dino kale in the fall though, mmmmm), corn, cabbage and basil.

Food wise:  it was grillin time!  All the corn got grilled and then made into a salad with some tomato and mozz.  Tasty, I just ate the last of it.  Zuke got cut on a bias, tossed with oil, salt and herb and grilled.  My goal was to get a bit of crispy on it.


I'm also going to do my first brewing this week.  It's my project for Wednesday to celebrate a pretty decent work-week.  I'm doing an ESM that's an adaptation of Peter's 5-plumber Ale that I brewed in January.  I'm going to add more munich than is called for in his recipe because (a) I've got 10lbs of the stuff, and (b) it's lighter in color when made all-grain rather than extract and I'd like to bring a bit more body to it.

Monday?  Bah and nonsense.

More food fun was had...  I made souffle of zuke!  It was pretty tasty.  Then, we ate it last night and I killed it all today for lunch.

Sadly, one of the loaves of zuke bread has already gone bad, we haven't cut into the other one, so no idea if it's both.

Plan for today is:  strata with tomato (thanks Trenton Farmer's market), bread, chard and a bit of gruyere.  mmmm, tasty.

It's sort of food news:  I spend so much energy trying to get and stay hydrated due to all the running that I can't really drink anymore.  Most days, even one beer makes me have a nasty-hangover headache because I lose too much water.  How sad...

This week in CSA land:
a lot of onions (white & green<- too many of these)
more zuch
more beets
chard!
basil

Today's adventures in baking:  zuch bread.  It's in the oven right now.  I went with Bittman.  Maybe later today or tomorrow; zuch souffle!

What to do with the other zuch that's accumulating in the fridge?  When is 'national leave zuch on your neighbor's porch day" again?  Crap, I have to hold out til Aug 8?!?
http://www.squidoo.com/National-Zucchini-Day

Today in beer news, Tod Mott, longtime brewer of the Portsmouth Brewery, has decided to leave the job.

OMG, teh world is coming to an end.  Who will make Kate the Great RIS?  Who will make Coffee Milk Stout?  Who will make all of my other favorite beers?

Due to the fact that we had about a pint of jam in a tupperware and then another 1/2 pint popped so that it had to go in the fridge, Kate declared that it was to be jam cookies.

This was basically a sugar cookie dough rolled thin, with a dollop of jam, then baked.  I am not good at shaping them.

They're tasty, distressingly tasty.  They're good for breakfast, lunch and dinner...

So...  blueberry jam!

My first canning in some time and definitely the first here in NJ.  The last time I made jam I put it in pint and quart jars that were way too big.  We'd open one and then throw a lot of it out (unless it was being used in baking).  So, this time:  1/2 pint jars.

Easy as, well, jam:
0) Pick through and wash berries
1) Berries, lemon juice and spices into the pot
2) Squish it all up with your potato masher
3) Add pectin & bring to a boil
4) Add sugar & bring to a hard boil for a minute
5) Off the heat, into the jars
6) Process for 5ish minutes (I did 10ish for kicks)
7) Stick in basement and eat as needed

I don't understand how one of the farmers at the Trenton market can make anything close to a profit.  Last week I bought 12 pints of blueberries for $20.  This week, I had a coupon for $15!  We're eating them much more slowly this week (only 3 pints so far! I ate 3 pints last Saturday by myself).

We also picked up a pint of plus, nectarines and sour cherries.  I sucked down the cherries in a 30-minute session of joy.  I'm such a fan, but I only knew of one sour cherry tree within 40 miles of us in NH.

My goal for Tues or Wed is to make some jam.  I'm thinking of making some blueberry spice jam.  It's basically blues, lemon, sugar, nutmeg, & cin.  Should be super easy and I'll can it up and be all happy in the winter with tastes of summer.

This week in the CSA:  chard, beets, cukes, zuch, corn, garlic, onion and scallion.  Nothing really on-tap for those things yet.  I'll probably do zuch bread, since that's fast, easy and tasty.

Cleaning out the fridge...

I knocked off 3 zuch with Zuch pie.  It was super easy and dang tasty:


4 cups chopped zucchini (chopped small)
A few cloves of garlic
1 small onion, diced
1 cup flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup Italian grating cheese (Romano, Parmesan, or Asiago)
½ cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
Salt & Pepper
Fresh parsley (optional)


Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Mix all the above ingredients together.
Pour into greased 8 or 9 inch square or round baking dish.
Bake at 375 degrees F. for 45 minutes (or until nicely browned).

Also...  lots of salad (I've started making honey mustard dressing because I love it)!  Plus, some grilled potato on the fourth when we also pounded out bulgogi and marinated tofu and carrot-apple salad.

Finally, there's been red-lentil, sweet pot, and chard curry going on in the house for a few days.  That was dang tasty and pretty easy to make.  I did it up early in the morning to beat the heat and then let it hang out for the day.

Summary:  most of the big leafy greens are gone and we're down to just 3 beets.  So, not bad right now, hopefully it's not another box with 3 heads of lettuce tomorrow.

CSA values...  We stopped being CSA members when we lived in MD for a couple years.  We signed up when we were moving after a year while in IA.  The IA CSA was amazingly cheap ($150?) for the summer and literally there was so much food we didn't know what to do with it.  I made tomato sauce like a maniac!

The MD CSA was something like tripple the price for one grocery bag of veg per week.  It was decent produce and I did like the fact that it was super-local, but there was an amazing farmer's market that was even closer and we went there every week anyone (partially?  mostly? for the scones).  So, it just didn't make sense (especially on our salaries at the time).

For 3 years in MA and 3.5 years in ME we had amazing CSAs, great prices, good selection of veg and super convenient.  We still went to the farmer's market with frequency, but often it was as a cultural excursion (and for pastry).  For example, Heron Pond Farm was $550 and we were working hard to eat it all, but (as an example) this week includes 2 tomatos, 2 zuch, 2lbs of potato, 1 pint of peas, 2 onions, 1 head of lettuce, 1 bag of greens, 1 bunch of chard, and a bunch of carrots (we looooove carrots, they are like orange crack).  See, it's a good mix, makes sense together and would be a good, but not unreasonable amount of anything for a week (turnips and rutabagas in the winter are a different thing, too many).

We moved to NJ and we got into a CSA that's about the same price (a little more, but NJ costs more, so that's fine), but has a MUCH bigger client base (2700 households, it's got to be one of the biggest in the country). It's certified organic which our two previous weren't, so that's probably a bit pricier too.  But, let's compare shares;

3 heads of lettuce (after getting 4 for the last 4 weeks)
1 bunch of beets
1 bunch of chard
1 bunch of onions (4)
2 heads of garlic
2 zuch

So, less diversity, more overwhelming quantities of one product (we're now turning into lettuce fairies), and less quantity in general.  What since rolling into the Trenton Farmer's market I'm strongly considering not renewing for next year.  I'm underwhelmed so far and can see easy ways to get my fill of local produce with better variety and balances, plus, we're almost certain to head to the markets a lot anyway...