i love my a.c.

this is our first summer in this apartment and consequently our first apartment with air conditioning. our place has a loft where we have our desks, closets, and bed. all of the heat is just collecting up there.

i resisted turning on the a.c. until this morning. i think the high yesterday was 85. it never cooled off in the apartment. not even over night. it is supposed to be 97 today. i figured the best strategy was to cool it off early and keep it that way. it feels good in here as long as i am within about 10ft of the air conditioner. actually the whole downstairs doesn’t feel too bad. once i get just a few steps up the stairs, though, it all changes. i somehow don’t think we’re going to be sleeping upstairs tonight.

does anyone have any suggestions as to how to counteract the chemically air conditioner smell? other than that i LOVE it!!!

afternoon snack

i spent this morning sewing and listening to podcasts. the cats like to help me with my sewing.

i’m working on making a curtain and the bed is the only surface big enough to lay out the fabric. the kitties thought it was very entertaining.

after i had worked up an appetite sewing i decided to bake some banana bread. i had some bananas that had gone past the point of no return and thought that some sweet, warm bread would be perfect on a rainy day like today.

then i inspected them further

so apparently bananas can get too ripe. i threw the bananas away but still had a craving for something sweet and baked. then i remembered the buttermilk biscuits i had stashed in the freezer. i popped a couple in the oven and figured it was a good opportunity to try the honey i got at the farmers’ market last saturday.

it is from raynblest farms in elkton, oregon. it was delicious on my biscuits! so different than the honey i have from the grocery store. i also picked up two varieties of prunes and a carton of eggs at their stand. oh, and i highly recommend making some biscuits and stashing a few in the freezer. i just added about 3 more minutes to the baking time and they were perfect!

mother’s day

i made my mom dinner for mother’s day. she and i went to the farmers’ market and looked for the best ingredients we could find. continuing with my plan to try new food i picked up some shitake and maitake mushrooms.

once i got home i was trying to think of something i could make that would be delicious and different, but not crazy hard. oh, and it had to utilize mainly what i purchased at the market. after hemming and hawing a bit i decided to make savory crepes filled with mushrooms and spinach, topped with a gorgonzola cream sauce, a tossed green salad with a lemon vinaigrette, and homemade pineapple sorbet for dessert. i had never made crepes before. fortunately my mom is adventurous, even when it comes to a meal in her honor.

first i made the sorbet and got it in the freezer. then i began to saute the mushrooms and spinach with a little garlic. once they were cooked i set them aside. i made the salad dressing and prepped the lettuce. i heated up some cream and added the gorgonzola. at this point my mom had arrived and we were enjoying a nice bottle of pinot gris. i made the crepe batter and crossed my fingers. all in all i think i did alright for my first attempt at crepes. they were all perfect until i tried to flip them. julia child says all you need to flip something is ‘courage and conviction’ which i kept repeating to myself. the first couple of crepes didn’t really flip, but moreso folded over on itself. i was able to salvage them, but they weren’t the model form of crepes either. naturally i decided i needed more courage and conviction so i flipped the next one higher! and it landed on the floor… my mom laughed and laughed, as did i. so i ended up with 5 out of 6 crepes. not too bad. i filled the crepes, put them in a baking dish, poured the sauce over and popped it in the oven for about 15 minutes. i tossed the salad and in a few minutes we sat down to a very tasty meal, if i do say so myself. unfortunately my husband was out of town on business and he took all of our cameras with him, so i have no photo documentation of the meal. i am confident, however, that i’ll be making this again quite soon. yum!

pea shoots

last saturday at the farmers’ market i picked up these lovely pea shoots. i hadn’t tried them before but decided to pick them up. when i got home i looked at a few recipes and decided to use them in a salad. it looks like they’d been good in a stir fry as well.

with the bunch that i purchased i made two salads. one was a combination of pea shoots and lettuce with a vinaigrette and grilled chicken breast, the second just pea shoots with a homemade caesar dressing, homemade crostini, and shredded chicken.

the pea shoots are sweet and remind me of eating snap peas right off the vine from my grampa’s garden when i was a kid.

buttermilk biscuits

in keeping with my decision to try new things last weekend i decided to try making biscuits. i was making chicken that was marinated in buttermilk and wanted to find a use for the rest of the buttermilk. usually it just rots in my refrigerator, but not anymore! i pulled out one of my favorite cookbooks, Cooks’ Illustrated New Best Recipe, and found a super easy recipe for buttermilk biscuits. well, super easy if you have a food processor. i don’t know if it is easy by hand because i didn’t try it that way. any kind of baking is fairly new to me still, except for banana bread, i’ve made that hundreds of times. back to the super easy biscuits! you put your dry ingredients into the food processor bowl and pulse to combine them. then you add a cold stick of butter cut into pieces.

then you pulse that for a bit, then you add the buttermilk. pulse a few seconds and it turns into this:

you pull the dough out and shape it into little balls and they’re ready to go into the oven!

they bake for about 12 minutes and then you have fresh, fantastic biscuits! i couldn’t believe it. i baked four and put the rest in the freezer.

i was so excited to eat them that i didn’t take the proper time to take a good photo, so sorry this one is a little blurry. you get the idea though, right? now my mind is swimming with all of the ways i could use biscuits… biscuits and gravy, picnics, brunches, dinners, breakfast sandwiches… i saw an episode of everyday baking on pbs where they made biscuits and strawberry butter. i’m totally making that when strawberries are in the market this summer!

rabe

i have been trying to try new things i see at the farmers’ market. one of the best discoveries i have made so far has been rabe. so far we have tried kale rabe, brussels sprout rabe, and broccoli rabe. i read a few recipes on epicurious.com to see how to prepare it and learned that a lot of people find it too bitter to eat. all of the rabe we had gotten at the farmers’ market was tender and almost sweet. i couldn’t understand what they were talking about. then i purchased some broccoli rabe from whole foods. i prepared it the same way as i had the rabe from the market. it was so bitter we couldn’t eat all of it. if i had any doubts before about freshness affecting flavor, well i sure don’t anymore…

my favorite way to eat rabe is with pasta and chicken sausage. yum!

chopping it into 2″ pieces and blanching it for 2 minutes is key. it gets lightly cooked and remains fresh and semi-crunchy. meanwhile i boil two sausages and put a pot on high for pasta. i mince some garlic and heat olive oil in yet another pan.

when the sausage is done i slice it and set it aside. when the pasta is almost done i add the garlic to the olive oil, then the rabe and the sausage, tossing it all together. i like to add some red pepper flakes and salt too. once the pasta is done i drain it and put it and the sausage mixture into a large bowl, tossing it to combine.

then i add parmesan cheese and a little lemon juice. it’s an easy delicious meal that we love. i’m so glad i tried rabe at the market!

look at our pink/mauve counters. the interior design in 1986 sure was something else…

beaches, bubbles, and shepherd’s pie

last weekend in newport/nye beach was amazing. the oregon coast is almost rainy and cool, even if it is warm or even hot in portland. having grown up here i never expect it to be nice at the beach. i never pack shorts or a swim suit. that’s for california or florida, not oregon. well, it wasn’t shorts weather, but it didn’t rain! it was in the sixties and sunny and so pleasant.

we arrived on friday evening and checked into our hotel. we stayed at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in nye beach. it is a literary themed place and we stayed in the edgar allen poe room. there were collections of his books on the dresser along with taxidermied ravens. it was very poe, down to the axe hanging above our heads as we slept:

the pit and the pendulum anyone?

the next day we went into newport to check out the Rogue Brewery and the aquarium. both were great. then we returned back to the hotel for some reading. i took Julie & Julia by Julie Powell with me. it was a fun, easy read that inspired me to get back in the kitchen as soon as we returned home.

after our reading session we went to an irish pub in nye beach, nona’s i think, and had dinner.

the shepherd’s pie was so good and the soda bread had to have been made there. it was so fresh. i have made sheperd’s pie before and i think the next time i will make the potato topping like this one, slightly chunky with the skins still on. it was a good texture with the rest of the dish.

after our delicious meal we took a walk on the beach and stumbled upon people ‘blowing’ these gigantic bubbles.

the kids below would jump up and try to pop it, eventually succeeding, where they would then get drenched with the soap from the popping bubble.

all in all it was a good mix of relaxation, quality time, and sight seeing. yea for the oregon coast!

pasta and easy italian meat sauce

here is one of our all time favorite meals:

as you can see from my splattered cookbook, it has been made a lot. we used to have this every other week, sometimes every week, but we have since stopped eating as much red meat. why must the doctor be such a killjoy? at least now we’re using grass-fed beef, which has something like 1/3 the amount of saturated fat that regular industrial beef has. i’m thinking about trying to make it with turkey instead, but am thinking that maybe i’ll just leave it alone and have it be a special once-in-awhile kind of dish.

anyway, it is really easy and only takes about 40 minutes from start to finish.

so you melt some butter and olive oil, then add onions, garlic and a grated carrot and let it cook a bit, adding the beef. after it is browned you add tomatoes. we prefer diced but the recipe calls for whole. either way, delicious. this last time i made with fire roasted diced tomatoes. very good. then you add some milk and spices.

and let it simmer for 20 or so minutes. meanwhile boil some water and cook your pasta. don’t forget to add salt to the water!! it greatly enhances the overall flavor of the meal.

so easy and so good!

if you want to make this check out the recipe here. it’s way more specific that what i have written… it is from the everyday food book ‘great food fast’.

i’m still working on compiling photos and stories from the beach. i’ll post them soon-ish.

beachy fun!

we’re off to the beach for the weekend. this photo is from our last trip to newport, when we’d only been dating for 6 months…

have a great weekend!

tea time

if you read my post about my ridiculous schedule you may have noticed that i have allotted two separate spaces to drinking tea. that’s how much i love it. not only do i love tea, but i really only love one kind: jasmine. there’s just something about the flavor combined with the amount of caffeine it has that makes it perfect, at least for me.

and not only do i really only drink jasmine tea, i only like one brand. i discovered it at a local asian market where i could get a box of 100 bags for $2.99. amazing. then last year they decided to ‘remodel’ and tore the building down. it is in the process of being rebuilt, but not fast enough for me. fortunately vincent did some searching and found it at amazon here, but of course it costs way more. it still is totally worth it for me.

i don’t know if i’d really call myself a tea snob. can you be a snob about really cheap tea? i have tried expensive loose leaf varieties, organic versions, and other types of tea and i just can’t find anything i like as much. it just makes me feel so good. i get good feelings just thinking about drinking it. i wish i could drink it at night, but it keeps me up if i drink it past four in the afternoon.

i usually have a tea bag in my purse at all times. it’s rare to find a cafe that has jasmine tea, regardless of the brand. if i find myself completely stranded without any jasmine to be found and i really want a cup of tea i will get english breakfast with cream and sugar, or peppermint if i am feeling under the weather. or i’ll totally switch it up and indulge in hot chocolate…