All posts by Laurie Graves
The End of June, 2015
All in all, it has been a very good June. In Maine, June is typically rainy. Way back in the old days, I remember my father complaining about rotting beans in his garden—sometimes he would have to replant—and my friend’s father wondering anxiously if the weather would hold for haying.
A couple of years ago, it rained for twenty straight days. The slugs and snails blissfully chewed their way through my gardens, and I participated in what can only be called slug and snail genocide. (A jar of soapy water filled with the little slimers is truly a disgusting sight.) But finally I gave up. There were just too many of them, and by July many of my plants were in ribbons.
In disgust, I took this picture of my own wet feet, which looked this way too often two Junes ago.
But this year, June has given us a break. Yes, it has rained, and this is good. We need rain. But we have also had a number of sunny days, and at the little house in the big woods, everything green is flourishing—the herbs in my small garden, my potted plants, the flowers. There have been slugs and snails, but so far their numbers are few, and the hostas, for the most part, remain unscathed.
The other day, as I was at the kitchen sink, I looked out the window and saw two downy woodpeckers, about the same size. However, one was feeding the other, a parent with a fledgling. Soon the parent will no longer be feeding “Junior,” but as my husband noted, Junior now knows where the feeder is. I will be sure to keep it full.
The lightening bugs have made their luminous appearance, and at night, as Clif and I sit in the living room, we see them on the screens on the windows. A little blinking glow in the dark night.
As lovely as the backyard looks, it is not always a peaceable kingdom. Female hummingbirds fight fiercely for control of the feeder, filled with a sugar and water mixture. (Jodie Richelle recently wrote about this on her blog.) It seems to me that they spend as much time fighting as they do feeding. Yesterday, my husband and I watched in fascination as over and over, the hummingbirds dived bombed each other. It didn’t look as though any blood was spilled, but it must be exhausting to fight like that.
“If only they would cooperate,” I said sadly. “There’s enough for all of them.”
“It’s not their nature,” Clif replied.
I guess it’s not. Unlike, say, crows, hummingbirds have evolved to be highly competitive, and I suppose it has served them well. But still.
July is just around the corner. Two more sweet months of summer. I try to enjoy each day to its fullest, to spend as much time outside as I can, to take pictures of the burst of flowers, the insects, and the rush of green.
Ah, summer, summer.
A Rainy Sunday in which We Drink Margaritas, Eat Salad, and Marvel at a Grasshopper
Yesterday, our friends Jim and Dawna came over for dinner. We had hoped the day would be fine so that we could eat on the patio and Clif could make his legendary grilled bread. Unfortunately, the weather gods had other ideas, and it rained, rained, rained. Not just a light soaking, but instead a downpour.
So in we stayed. Dawna brought margaritas and chips and a hot cheese appetizer. Very tasty! Even though it was more a soup day than a salad day, I stuck to my original plan of a salad meal. However, the grilled bread was out, and I made a pan of cornbread. For dessert we had homemade chocolate ice cream.
With Farmer Kev’s delectable red and green lettuce, I made a salade niçoise, sort of, using a recipe by the inimitable Mark Bittman as a guideline. My salad niçoise had, along with the lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, sliced radishes, sliced cooked potatoes, sliced tomatoes, and tuna. (Note: Tuna is overfished, and we only eat it once or twice a year on salade niçoise.) I made a homemade vinaigrette to go on the salad. Capers would have been a good addition as would have olives and green beans.
I also made a Greek pasta salad to go with the salade niçoise. The Greek salad had mini penne, which are adorable, feta, tomatoes, Swiss chard, basil, mint, and several squeezes of lemon. It’s one of my favorite summer salads.
Dawna, Jim, and Clif are all accomplished photographers, and whenever we get together, at some point the talk inevitable turns to photography. I am the novice of the group, and I always learn something from these discussions. Yesterday was no different, and the advice I got from Dawna was “watch where you stand,” which apparently comes from the Ansel Adams quotation: “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” (In Adams’s case, he often stood on the roof of a vehicle to get his sweeping photos.) Yes, indeed. Some angles are better than others, and distance from the subject is also a concern.
I gave Dawna a few of my photo cards, including one of the grasshopper that stole the show on my most recent Wordless Wednesday post (6/24/15). We marveled at his eye, at his tiny wing, at his little black feet. “It looks like he’s wearing shoes,” Dawna said.
It’s not every friend who brings margaritas to your house and marvels over a photograph of a grasshopper. But Dawna is that kind of friend.
How lucky I am!
And for those who missed the photo, here is the grasshopper in all his (or her) glory.
When the Greens Cometh, Make a Quiche with a Cracker Crust
Summer’s bounty is starting to come in, and my refrigerator is stuffed with greens from Farmer Kev’s CSA. But luckily, my friend Alice Johnson has come to the rescue yet again with another delicious recipe—Summer Greens Quiche with a Cracker Crust.
Some thoughts about making pie crust: I enjoy rolling dough and making pie crusts. This might come under the category of tooting my own horn, but I’m pretty good at making pie crusts, and I am of the firm opinion that a bad crust can ruin a pie. However, I must also acknowledge that making homemade pie crust takes a fair amount of time and makes a bit of a mess. When you come home from work at 6:00 p.m. or so, the last thing you probably want to do is dig out your rolling pin to make a pie crust.
So what to do? You could make a crustless quiche, but a quiche without a crust is like a cake without frosting. It’s all right, but when you cook, you want something that is more than all right. You want something that is delicious and, on a work night, not too time consuming.
Enter the cracker crust. If you take 1 1/2 cups of cracker crumbs—Ritz, Saltines, Club, most any nonsweet cracker will do—and add 1/3 cup of melted butter, then you will have a tasty crust with a minimum amount of fuss. No, it’s not as good as a regular crust, but it certainly beats no crust at all.
Best of all, this summer greens quiche with the cracker crust reheats beautifully, with the leftovers tasting just as good as when the quiche was first cooked.
I count this recipe as a triple win. First, it uses greens. Second, the cracker crust goes together pretty darned fast. Third, it reheats beautifully. Oh, and fourth—it’s delicious.
So grab that rolling pin after all, but instead of using it to make pie dough, use it to crush cracker crumbs. (I use a large Ziploc bag to contain the crackers while I’m crushing them.)
Happy Eating!
Summer Greens Quiche with a Cracker Crust
Adapted from a recipe by Alice Johnson
Ingredients
For the cracker crust
- 1 1/2 cups of cracker crumbs
- 1/3 cup of melted butter
For the quiche
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 cups of loosely packed greens—spinach, Swiss Chard, or kale or a combination
- 4 eggs
- 1/2 cup of heavy cream
- 1/2 cup of feta
- a pinch of nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon of cracked pepper
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350°.
- Combine melted butter and cracker crumbs. Press into a 9-inch pie plate. Bake for 10 minutes or until it puffs up and browns.
- Meanwhile, coarsely chop the greens. Heat olive oil in a skillet. Add garlic and sauté for 30 seconds—don’t let the garlic get too brown. And greens and sauté until wilted. Remove from pan into a small bowl and set aside.
- In a medium-sized bowl, wisk eggs and heavy cream. Stir in the cheese, nutmeg, and pepper. Spread greens’ mixture on baked crust. Pour egg mixture on top.
- Bake for 35 minutes or until the mixture is set, and the top is golden brown. ( A knife inserted off center should come out clean.)
Happy, Happy Day! The Supreme Court Allows Nationwide Health Care Subsidies
Today, I was going to post another greens’ recipe—my refrigerator is bulging with them—but instead I am going to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision to allow nationwide health care subsidies.
The New York Times can explain it better than I can. “The question in the case, King v. Burwell…was what to make of a phrase in the law that seems to say the subsidies are available only to people buying insurance on ‘an exchange established by the state.’
“Four plaintiffs, all from Virginia, sued the Obama administration, saying the phrase meant that the law forbids the federal government to provide subsidies in states that do not have their own exchanges. Congress made the distinction, they said, to encourage states to create their own exchanges.”
This morning, “the Supreme Court ruled…that President Obama’s health care law may provide nationwide tax subsidies to help poor and middle-class people buy health insurance.”
To say that I am relieved doesn’t begin to describe how I feel about the Supreme Court’s decision. This October, Clif will be retiring. He is sixty-four, and I am fifty-seven. This means he is one year away from Medicare, and I am eight years away.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Clif and I live on a very modest budget that will be even more modest when he retires. We have some sidelines planned—Clif will be doing compter consulting work, and I will be selling photo cards and calendars online—but until those sidelines get going, our income will be quite small.
All of June, I have been worrying about what we would do if the Supreme Court ruled against the Affordable Care Act. How in the world would we afford health insurance? We know from experience how expensive it is to buy private insurance without subsidies. We did so ten years ago when Clif worked solely as a consultant. It was $600 a month with very high deductables. Yearly physicals weren’t covered. Mammograms weren’t covered. It was catastrophic healh insurance only.
That was ten years ago, and premiums go up as you age. Since then, I have had breast cancer, which certainly qualifies as a prexisting condition. I worried that without the Affordable Health Care Act, we would we have to pay $800 a month or even more. How would we have managed?
Now, we don’t have to worry. We know that we can get good coverage at a price we can afford.
I feel as though I can breathe. Without good, affordable health care, especially as you age, you can’t be free.
Tonight there will be celebratory drinks on the patio. The weather is sunny and warm, and it will a perfect night to be outside.
What a happy, happy day at the little house in the big woods.
And tomorrow, I will post the recipe for a Summer Greens Quiche with a Cracker Crust.
Wordless Wednesday—6-24-15: The End of June
Greens, Greens, Greens: A Recipe for Stuffed Bread
June is wending its way to July, and the greens, they are a-comin. But don’t panic. This week’s Greens-Stuffed Bread recipe uses four cups of greens—spinach, Swiss chard, Kale, or a combination of the three—and you could even squeeze in a fifth cup if bags of greens are bulging in your refrigerator. So, slam! Five cups of greens gone. Just like that. And the Greens-Stuffed Bread is so good you’ll want to make it several times during peak-green season. (Many thanks to my friend Alice Johnson for helping me with this recipe.)
Here are some pictures of the process:
Greens-Stuffed Bread
Adapted from a recipe by Alice Johnson
Ingredients
- 1 (20-ounce) package of pizza dough, thoroughly thawed if frozen. (Note: I used pizza dough from Portland Pie Co., but any frozen pizza dough that’s about 20 ounces will work just fine.)
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon of salt
- Pepper, to taste (A few twists of the pepper mill will do.)
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil for sautéing and a little more for brushing on the bread
- 4 cups of chopped and de-stemmed spinach, Swiss chard, or kale, or a combination thereof
- 2 cups of shredded cheese: cheddar, mozzarella, or smoked Gouda or cheddar (I used the delectable smoked cheddar from Pineland Farms.)
Directions
- In a skillet, sauté the garlic in the 1 tablespoon of olive oil for 30 seconds. Add the greens, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Sauté until the greens are wilted, a minute or two. Put in a bowl and let cool.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll and stretch the dough into a 14-inch by 10-inch rectangle. (Note: Sometimes the dough is springy and stubborn, and the stretching and rolling takes a bit of effort.)
- Brush the dough with olive oil. Spread the cooled greens mixture to within 1/2 inch of the edges. Sprinkle with cheese. Roll up jelly-roll style, starting with the long side. Pinch seam to seal. Place the roll on a greased baking sheet. Pinch ends and tuck under the roll.
- Cover the roll with a light cloth, preferably linen, and let it rise in a warm place for an hour or so, until the roll is puffy. (It doesn’t have to double in size.) I usually put a pan with hot water on the bottom rack in my oven and put the dough on the middle rack. This gives the dough a warm, moist environment.
- Bake at 350° for 30 to 40 minutes until the roll is golden brown. Remove the roll from the pan to a wire rack. Let stand for 10 minutes before slicing. Serve warm or at room temperature. Yield: 6 servings.
Happy eating!
A Frying Father’s Day
I have a confession to make—Clif and I are crazy about fried food. For several years, Clif has been longing for a fryer to make home frying a little easier. Yesterday, his wish was granted. Dee and Shannon bought him a fryer for Father’s Day.
Was Clif happy? You bet he was. He immediately put the fryer to work and made French fries and crunchy chicken for dinner. We were joined by Mike, Shannon, and the dogs. Dee, alas, lives too far away to come just for the weekend.
Although the fries look delectable, they were a little soggy. However, the fault was ours, not the machine’s. We hadn’t thoroughly read the instructions and didn’t understand all the settings. In short, the oil wasn’t hot enough. Next time, we will do a better job.
Still the food was pretty darned good, as Clif the Yankee observed, and by the end of the meal, both plates were empty.
Now, Clif and I certainly know that fried food qualifies as a treat and shouldn’t be eaten every day. We plan to use the fryer once a week, probably on a Saturday night. We’ll primarily make fries, but we will try other vegetables, too. Crunchy chicken will also be on the menu from time to time. Then there is fried dough and maybe even donuts, that quintessential New England treat.
I’ll keep you posted.
Starting the Weekend with Cookies and Homemade Ice Cream
Today begins what counts as a feverish swirl of activity at the little house in the big woods. It just so happens that for the next four days various groups of family and friends will be coming for a visit. This, of course, means there is a flurry of cooking and cleaning.
Today, three friends from the library are coming over for granola cookies and strawberry ice cream, both homemade. We will be celebrating several things—the library’s new addition, reaching the project’s million dollar mark, and “only” having $41,000 left to go on the project. The four of us will clink our iced tea glasses together to toast all who have given to our beautiful library and to toast all who have worked so hard—for years and years—to make this project a reality. I hope the weather will cooperate so that we can eat on the patio. Right now the sky is is cloudy with small patches of blue. If it doesn’t clear, then never mind. It will still be a clink, clink, clink, and hooray kind of afternoon.
Tomorrow, different friends will be coming over for movie night, where we’ll be watching Monk with a Camera, a documentary about Nicholas Vreeland, grandson of Diana Vreeland, and how he decided to become a photographer. And a Buddhist Monk.
Sunday is Father’s Day, and that can only mean one thing—cooking for Clif, the special man of the house. Shannon, Mike, and the dogs will be coming over to celebrate, and Shannon and I will make what Clif has requested—fried chicken and French Fries, both homemade and cooked fresh. For dessert—strawberry shortcake made with Maine strawberries. (At last they are here.)
On Monday, my friend Barbara will be coming over for French donuts—actually nutmeg muffins dipped in melted butter and rolled in sugar and cinnamon. Barbara and her husband spend the summer in Maine, and I always joke that until they come to Maine, summer can’t be begin. It’s always good to see her.
Summer time, busy time, but good times. We always enjoy having guests come to our house, but we especially like to do so in the summer when everything is lush and green, and time can be spent outside.
So It Begins: Farmer Kev’s Summer CSA and a Nifty Way to Eat Radishes
On Tuesday, I received my first box of vegetables from Farmer Kev’s Community Supported Agriculture program—henceforth referred to as CSA. I’ve written about Farmer Kev many times in this blog. For new readers: He’s young, he’s energetic, he doesn’t come from a farming family, and he’s been farming on leased land since he graduated from high school. Go, Farmer Kev!
This year will be especially exciting for me and, I hope, for Farmer Kev. He’s become a sponsor, of sorts, of this blog. In exchange for writing about his vegetables and ways to use them, I get a free CSA share. (I will write for food, as long as it comes from a source I approve of, and I most definitely approve of Farmer Kev.)
For the next month, I will, of course, be focusing on greens because let’s face it—when those greens get going they come in an avalanche that can be downright alarming. What to do with all those greens?
I have some ideas, and I am lucky to have a good friend who is also a good cook. Her name is Alice Johnson, and when she heard about how I would be writing regularly about Farmer Kev and his vegetables, she jumped right into the fray and has been sending me wonderful recipes that will make short work of those daunting greens. (Farmer Kev, you are in effect get two heads for the price of one.)
But for this week, which is just the start of the greens avalanche and should thus be manageable, I am going to focus on the humble radish. Yes, yes, they are good in salads, and I’m sure everyone knows this. But they are also good on buttered toast, which is a relatively new trick for this Yankee cook.
I got this idea from JoEllen Cottrell, who is director of the Winthrop Food Pantry. A while back, she told me about toast and radishes and said this is something that is eaten in Germany. (She has a German daughter-in-law.)
Really, toast and radishes couldn’t be easier. Make a toast—the better the bread, the better the toast—and butter it. Top the toast with thinly sliced radishes and sprinkle with a little salt, if you like.
The butter and the toasted bread go very well with the crunchy, tangy radishes. I had this for lunch yesterday, and I had it again today. It’s strangely good.
Starting next week, I’ll begin posting recipes that use spinach, Swiss chard, and Kale. I even have an idea or two for salads. With the help of my friend Alice, we’ll show those greens a thing or two.
Happy eating!
Notes From the Hinterland 