Roast Chicken

  

Step one on how to roast a chicken: 

Own a Crock Pot.

CROCK POT CROCK POT CROCK POT!!!

This is crucial if you want a great and easy and efficient way to cook.  You can stick stuff in it; and as long as there's sufficient liquid, you can let it cook all day, while you're at work; and it's so easy it is even fun.  Also, there is no need to heat up the whole house with the oven on or spend your time inhaling hot steam from a pot on the stove-top; all just for a simple batch of chili.

So far, we've had great success in cooking meats and poultry in our Crock Pot.  The best thing to do is to grease the inside of the pot-insert (butter/oil/lard - your preference), plop down a hunk o' meat (a small bird, a pork butt, a slice of beef) and top it off with your favorite herbs, spices, onions; and add some liquid.  About a half-cup of water or stock will moisten your bit of meat and keep the edges from drying out to burntness.

Today's bird is covered with wedges of onion, copious amounts of whole garlic cloves; and the time-honored "Scarborough Fair" blend of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.  All herbs in this recipe were home-grown, of course!  We hope that we can someday say the same for our chicken.

Step two in roasting a chicken:  grease the inside of the pot.

Step three:  fill with a chicken, fresh herbs, onion & garlic, salt & pep and chicken stock.

Step four:  set on "low" to cook all day

Step five:  pull it out, slice and enjoy!

It is possible for us to elaborate all day about the endless potential and advantages of crockery cookery, but we will save that for another time.

Thanks for joining us!

G & K

Pasta Salad

Something easy for dinner (or picnics; or pot-lucks), here we go:

1.  Pick stuff from your garden.
    Wash it, chop it up into bite-sized bits (our medley includes cukes, zucs, peps, basil, tomatoes).

2.  Cook one pound of your preferred shape of pasta (bow-ties, elbow mac, wagon-wheels).
    Drain, rinse with cold water.

3.  Open one or two cans of black olives.  Drain & dump into a bowl.
    Add cold pasta & pile of chopped vegetables.
    Toss with your fave vinegar-based salad dressing.  Newman's Own Greek or Oil & Vinegar are tasty.

4.  Add shredded cheese if you want.

5.  Go on, eat it!

Borsao Rose

It's pink!

It's tart!

It's Borsao!  ...whatever that means.

Borsao Rose

Bodegas Borsao Estate

S.A. Borja, Spain 

2011

It it only fitting that Bodegas Borsao, home to the best Garnacha vineyards in Aragon, makes their rose from these wonderful grapes as well.  The first thing you notice about this wine is it's (sic) luminescent color which evokes images of sun drenched strawberries.  Bright red fruit aromas and delicate spice flavors fill the palate making this the perfect wine for an aperitif or light meal.

We've found that this wine is:

Tart!  Like a strawberry or a pineapple, perhaps.  It's got this great, refreshing mouthfeel with kind of a lingering fruity finish.  It's not on the sugary end of sweet though; quite the opposite.  A sip of this is similar to that lasting flavor right after biting into a fresh Fall apple - tartness all the way down, which is pretty great.

Tingley!  After uncorking and pouring, we noticed a very slight effervescent on the tip of the tongue.  This rose doesn't seem to be officially carbonated, but gives a tiny ping.  Yum.

Tasty!  On the whole, we've really enjoyed this bottle of wine.  It's got loverly fruit notes without the syrupy finish that sticks to your gums.  At $7.99, we may buy a few more bottles...

On Salsa

Folks, you've just gotta admit that chips and salsa make for one of life's greatest snacks.  Crunchy and salty meet juicy and tangy  ...oh, the joy!

If you want to make your salsa taste anything like good salsa, it's got to include copious amounts of lime juice and cilantro.

CILANTRO!!

One of God's great herbal gifts to cooking:  it is so very fresh-tasting, and adds a little piquancy and a lot of green delightfulness to your Latin American and East Asian dishes.  Did you know it's also called "Chinese Parsley?"

The other day, we picked several kilos of tomatoes from the garden.  There were Pink Beefsteaks, Purple Cherokee and a standard red variety whose name we've forgotten.  It's heirloom; promise!  One pink beefsteak weighed in at 2.25 pounds.  You can't convince us that that isn't impressive.

Tomatoes were chopped, onions minced and hot peppers diced.  We decided to do a sort of salsa verde with the yellowy German Stripe tomatoes, with some green olives added.

Olives in Salsa:  this is a marvelous idea.  On our honeymoon, in Portland (MAINE, not the other Portland), we found in a little wine-and-specialty-foods shop a jar of Gin and Green Olive Salsa.  Now, we adore olives, salivate over salsa and appreciate a refreshing gin cocktail.  Dirty Martinis, of course, rank high on our list of favorites.  That said, we had to nab a jar of this stuff.

Olives!  Gin!  Salsa!  Rolled into one... this stuff (whatever else was in it) ended up being far too ridiculously spicy to truly enjoy.  Honestly, we tried eating the tiniest dollop on a tortilla chip, and it was still killer!  Just to get through the jar, we ended up mixing it with a small block of cream cheese, which barely took down the heat.  Disappointed with our inability to enjoy this seemingly wonderful concoction, we chose to make our own (tolerable) salsa with diced-up manzanilla olives in it.  Mediterranean and Mexican meet, marvelously.

Pictured below are a straight-up tomato salsa (left:  many tomatoes, chile pepper seeds, cilantro, garlic, a little lime juice) and the salsa verde (right:  German Stripe tomatoes, jalapeno peppers,olives, cilantro, onion, a lot of lime juice).

We liked the green salsa a bit better, possibly because of the higher ratio of lime and cilantro to tomato.  The red one ended up being a bit too juicy.  Also, the difference between garlic-in-salsa and onion-in-salsa seems to be that garlic offers a subtle, sweet tang, whereas onion gives more of a bite with crunchiness.

However hard it is to wait to enjoy your fresh, homemade salsa, it is a great idea to let it sit in the fridge for a few days to let all the flavors marry.  Do so before serving at a party to really impress your friends!

Organic gone wrong!

How to pervert your organicalness:

First, slice your delightful, ripe, pesticide-free, non-GMO, homegrown heirloom Brandywine tomatoes.

Next, cook a pot of plain ol' semolina spaghetti noodles.

Then, take all the cans you bought at the Dent 'n' Bent, each labeled colorfully with a fluorescent orange "$0.20" sticker, open them and dump into the pot of noodles.

Voila!  An only slightly organical meal!

Ours was a blend of enchilada sauce, refried beans and black olives.  What, were you expecting Italian?

Pass the Cholula!!

120 Sauvignon Blanc

120 Sauvignon Blanc

Vina Santa Rita

D.O. Valle Central, Chile

2011

"Honoring 120 patriots who helped lead Chile to independence"

According to legend, 120 patriots, exhausted after a long, hard battle during the fight for Chile's independence, reached the lands belonging to Santa Rita.  On that fateful night in 1814, these forces of liberty found refuge in the estate cellars.  Today, within these same cellars, our award-winning 120 wines are crafted to honor their heroic character.

Our 120 Sauvignon Blanc is crisp and youthful with concentrated aromas of citrus blossom and peach.  Fruity and floral nuances underscore the wine's fresh character.  A heavenly choice every time.

 A lot of wines these days can only pop off the shelf and into your shopping cart with a great graphic on the label.  Sometimes a catchy or comical name can help.

We selected the 120 (at one of New Hampshire's enormous state-run liquor stores) amid thousands and thousands of wines for three reasons:

A cousin of ours (whom we spent a delightful meal with recently) had mentioned that Sauv Blanc has become her go-to wine.  Barbara iterated that every restaurant in North America serves Chardonnay as its foremost white wine offering.  She's become unimpressed with its ubiquitous prescence on menus, and has opted for a white a little more fresh and a lot less oakey.  So, we took her recommendation.

We were on the lookout for semi-dry whites and roses, knowing it would be ridiculously hot and humid in Pennsylvania after a pleasantly foggy and cold Maine vacation.  At $6.99, it seemed a more than reasonable price for vino refreshment.

The 120 offered a brief explanation of their name on the front of the bottle (not commonly found among the many wine labels out there) and it pulled at a few heart strings:  Patriotism!  Independence!  South American dudes!  We imagine them hunkering together in the wine cellar, curiously popping corks for a boost in morale... wearing (of course) great, big sombreros and woolen ponchos... many a mustache drenched in purple sweat.

Now... to tasting:  this wine gives a fresh, grassy aroma.  We could not detect the scent of citrus blossom, but that may have something to do with never having lived in Florida.  Also, we found that the aroma is not as peachy as described.  Its appearance is wicked clear, with a bare hint of yellow ...but, who cares?

This Sauv Blanc is very refreshing, with slight notes of pear.  It's on the dry side, very clean, which is nice in the summertime.  We drank it with a tapas-based meal including some homemade salsa.  It interacted interestingly with the spice of jalapeno, amplifying the heat on the tongue.  If you enjoy the spiciness of Mexican (or maybe Thai) food, we'd recommend this on the side.  If you want a wine that quenches and brings down the intensity of Scoville units in your mouth, choose another.  Its crispness and light-fruitiness may lend a splendid pairing to pork roast and hot dogs in the summer.  YES, you don't always have to have beer with hot dogs!

Be sure to save a glass for after dinner, since 120 Sauvignon Blanc offers splendid refreshment on its own!

All in all, it's a good wine to drink when you're pissed off at a stupid storm that ruined a decent portion of your crop in your community garden plot and you've just come back from a nice, Northern vacation, and it's too freakin' hot here!  Something like that...

Sunflower Remains

Here are some photos of the remaining sunflower blossoms.  We filled an 8 quart pot with them!

Sad pile of blossoms and foliage

So beautiful!  Traditional "Tigers Eye" variety and ... whatever the poofy ones are.  I guess we grabbed a starter plant out of the wrong bin... oops.

Disaster Strikes

Disaster struck at the "farm" last night.  All day, we had been driving back to Pennsylvania from a great week-and-a-half of vacation in Maine - a scenic journey with loads of incredibly slow traffic and some wicked thunderstorms.  Since we returned quite late, we slept in (as far as was possible) and arose around brunch-time.

Brunch didn't come quite as easily as we had thought it would.  There was a small amount of victuals in the refrigerator, left over from the week.  Milk was all, though.  We decided to hit up the local doughnut shop, which serves freshly fried cake doughnuts (topped decadently with syrups, sprinkles, bits of candy - it's like a hot version of an ice cream sundae) and also sells somewhat local milk.  The milk comes in glass bottles, which is a nice throw-back to the days of milkmen and re-using before recycling.  One of these bottles has been sitting atop our fridge since the last visit we made to the doughnut shop.

Anyway, we drove uptown to discover new road construction, a new sign above the pretzel shop, and the fact that the Frying Dutchman is closed on Mondays.  A catastrophe! Plans foiled all at once!

Crossing the street, we thought we'd try the new crepes shop in town ... which is also closed on Mondays.  Typical restaurant behaviour.  Ugh!

Our initial brunch idea of hot doughnuts and (homemade) toast turned into dippy eggs and fried scrapple with toast.  A visit to a local Mennonite grocery provided fresh turkey scrapple, which was super delicious.

We finally got through our first meal of the day and went to the community garden.  Upon entering the gate, we could not see our plot.  This was absolutely shocking, because a week ago we had two enormous sunflower plants - the branching-out-like-a-bush variety - that had just begun (finally!) blossoming at 9 and 11 feet tall.

Running over to our plot, we discovered the horror of the two dead sunflower-trees, laying in ruin across half of the whole plot.  Our twelve tomato plants were slightly blown over in the same direction.  The sunflower trunks had snapped at the base and were laying across and crushing our zucchini plants.

The horror!

The agony!

The devastation!

It was awful.

To our chagrin, we spent most of the afternoon cutting through the wreckage.  Blooms were collected and snipped for enjoyment at home.  By looking at the number of blossoms and buds-to-come, we figured that in a month, we would have had several gallons of sunflower seeds for eating.  All a loss.

There were no vessels large enough for all the blossoms we collected, apart from an 8-quart stock pot.

On the upside, our green bean plants are happily climbing their trellises, and eggplants are joyfully producing purple and white fruit.  We collected a large number of tomatoes today - one pink beefsteak weighed 2.25 pounds!

Later, it was made known that the severe thunderstorms we witnessed in Massachusetts and Connecticut had also made their way through Pennsylvania.  High winds.

Rest in peace, oh loveliest of sunflowers.