Wood Stove Cookery & Being Thrifty.

As promised, a little more detail on the soup.

Soup On The Wood Stove, January, 2012.

Some facts: our finances continue to be terrible, we like cooking, winter is cold, soup is good, & we have a wood stove & a lot of cast iron enamel pots.

For most of January, our propane tank was really low & we couldn't afford to buy more, but we are allowed to cut wood off our property, so wood is free. This led to using the propane stove as little as possible, & coming up with creative ways to cook on a wood stove. Solution? Frequently SOUP. 

(We boiled water for pasta & made red sauce & slow cooked bacon a lot too.)

It turned out to be a very good thing that we enjoy roasting a chicken as a cheap but really satisfying Sunday dinner & always make & can stock from any large meat thing we cook. Duck stock? Lamb stock? Yup. We moved a lot of frozen stock over to the new house, & we ate it in January.

Cheap Ass Back Woods Soup:  

Place cast iron enamel pot on wood stove. Simmer an onion & garlic in a bit of chopped bacon from your freezer supply for just these occasions. Add chopped beef from some large cut of meat you have been using sparingly from Stop & Shop. Add homemade chicken stock, a potato if you have one, rice or barley or both, a can of whatever beans you have on hand, season, cumin, oregano, sage, touch of cayenne, or whatever you like. Simmer at wood stove heat, stirring occasionally. Eat, hopefully with free day old bread & expired cheese from your work (one of my perks.)

Delicious. Keep reheating for lunches until gone. Repeat.

A tiny rant: I hate eating cheap meat. That really bothers me. I am a committed meat eater after many years in my teens & twenties of vegetarianism & veganism & my decision to eat meat is well thought out & firm but I hate supporting the meat industry that brings the cheap grocery meat to our tables. But what we can afford is the cheapest thing the grocery store has. 

I can't wait until we get to the producing our own meat level.  It'll happen pretty soon since we got straight run chicks with the intent of eating the males. It will be hard after knowing them from tiny fuzzy babies, but part of my eating meat agreement with myself is I be willing to kill it myself if I am going to eat it. If I can't do this, I guess it is vegetarianism for me once more.

For right now? We eat small amounts of meat & lots of kale (also one of the cheapest things at the grocery store, & way less troubling than the cheap beef).

That was a lot of opinion for one post. Dear me. 

I shall leave you with this: having a wood stove in your kitchen is very nice, & looking out the window while cooking on the wood stove to chickens is even nicer.

There Is Really No Better View Than Chickens.

An out take from Eating & Drawing @ Flying Object, & also a glimpse at our new life in Greenfield.

January 2012: Lunch At My Painting Desk With DR Watching the Chickens.

So having our chicken owning fantasy come true? It is pretty great. After all that time trying to figure out how to have chickens in our community garden plot, or in our tiny slopped front yard on busy South Street, & suffering through terrible chicken jealousy when someone did have them...wow, finding this place with its own resident hen in need of people, Lucy, a very opinionated & bossy & fabulous Plymouth Rock, was one of those moments of luck I still can't quite believe.

In another moment of craiglist brilliance, I found three Rhode Island Red pullets, Amanda Jo, Lulu, & Miranda. This was the afternoon of their second day here at Barton Heights. 

Today's words of wisdom: there is no greater gift to an indoor cat then a nice window seat with a plant & a view of an active chicken coop. 

What was lunch, you ask? As this is a food blog & all? Why homemade beef, barley, & chickpea stew, reheated on our woodstove in a cast iron enamel pot, a huge white vintage one from Denmark I inherited from my mom which is one of my favorite things. Oh yeah, did I mention the cottage came with a woodstove too? I'm really in heaven here. 

More on the soup coming up, to be continued... 

Memorial Day Weekend Meat Fest.

Look, I finally managed a timely holiday post! EnD, live from Memorial Day Weekend 2011!
I don't generally get three day weekends off, & I didn't this one either, but still I like to be festive. It was 90 degrees almost all weekend & I have definitely been ready & waiting to celebrate a weekend truly summer style, with, obviously, lots o' meat products.

Bacon Many Ways: Memorial Day Weekend 2011. 

Friday night we got old fashioned & grilled burgers in the driveway behind my 1989 Toyota Cressida (homemade bacon sausage cheddar jalapeno burgers using leftover ground bacon sausage we conveniently had lying around). Sitting on the hood of an old car at dusk drinking PBR & cooking meat. Sigh. Good times.
Then Sunday night dinner with Izaac rolled around, & that always means something special. A bacon weave wrapped around ground steak & then deep fried, bacon & collards, & garlic roasted marrow bones & toast, in this case. & the champagne of beers, since it was a holiday, after all.
Besides eating bacon, I cleaned off the front porch & hauled a table & chairs out there, & that's where I did this drawing just now, mojito in hand. The dog & I swam in the river, I planted dragon beans & repotted lots of tomatoes, & I spent as much time as possible in the sun. It's currently Monday afternoon, the dog is passed out exhausted from all the fun (he enjoyed a lot of marrow bone activity last night) & I am going to take advantage of more good porch time.
The drawing happens to complete this particular sketchbook, begun last November with these drawings.
Here's to opening my new sketchbook & another season of eating & drawing.

Cali Part One: 3000 Miles From Cheezits to Red Snapper

Some things have happened since my last long ago post, mostly spring & summer & hence gardening & nightswimming & long evenings outside & much less internet. Also some family happenings, & what says family history memory the most?

Yup, food (which shapes our lives, etc.).

My dear sister & I flew on a plane to California in October.

Being us, we ate things. Lots of things.

Through the Sky to Dallas & LA.

Airports, airplanes, drive-thrus, & our Gramparents' House: Cheezits in the air, Starbucks' Iced Caramel Macchiatos, a Blimpie's BLT sub in Dallas, "El Potato Burrito" @ Miguel's Jr, Grampa's Famous Stuffed Shells back on Eureka Street.

So we knew we were home, in that sense of being at home in one's own past,

Grampa's Roast Beef & Sides, AKA The Taste Of My ChildHood.

The meal that I thought of first when we planned the journey. The smell that still means "FOOD" to me. Roast beef covered in pepper & onions, whipped mashed potatoes with tons of butter, canned peas, steamed carrots.

I think this meal is why I like to eat, why I learned to cook. So I could produce this feeling myself. I still can't cook this right though. Better maybe, but not right.

A classic shopping adventure with Gramma, to a (at least to me) fabulously insane California mall restaurant, The Elephant Bar.

The Elephant Bar, where two girls from Massachusetts meet Americana + Sushi.

Seriously. We split a tempura shrimp roll, & then I had ahi tuna over brown rice with seaweed salad & smoked tofu, & Ali enjoyed mac n' cheese & coconut shrimp. All presented in a completely over the top fashion with oddly low lighting as befits a fancy/trashy mall restaurant. According to Gramma, the bar was also an excellent place to meet men. We unfortunately did not get a chance to check this out theory.

Although the Elephant Bar was a tough act to follow & Although I am 32 & Ali is 27 we will always be "the kids" to our grandparents, one night they actually let us cook dinner. This was a very difficult trip in many ways while it was also perfectly wonderful in others, & in one of our worst early moments we found a grocery store we liked, the delightful Henry's, & it saved everything. Shows what food, & the option to purchase the food you want, will do to save a situation. We took many, many a trip to Henry's to enjoy the lovely cashiers who did not look at us & our outfits like we were crazy freaks like pretty much everyone else in Corona, & buy very cheap but delicious California white wines to drink in the jacuzzi & avocados & tomatillos & chilis & lemons & grapefruits & other amazing California things. What can I say? We like to eat in our family. Those first bags of groceries we brought home from Henry's were a turning point.

On this particular night: Red Snapper, with Asparagus roasted with garlic & olive oil, Baked Potatoes, & Salad with excellent California tomatoes & bermuda onions.

I will admit I caved under pressure so this is my mom's classic recipe for baked fish with butter & bread crumbs (my Grampa's favorite, always), usually as we are from Cape Cod done with cod. & I never make baked potatoes & had to actually ask Ali how to do it. But Oh well I wanted Grampa to like it. At least I snuck in the asparagus, kind of controversial in that house as not a pea or a carrot.

Us two transplanted Massachusetts girls spent ten days in our second childhood home, & as you have noticed, it was complicated. Stayed tuned for the rest, Family & Food & Feeling, here we go.

& Red Convertibles! & Shopping! & Pumpkin Smoothies!

Happy Valentine's Day From EnD.

Feed the ones you love, & make it pretty.

The actual food: pot roast simmered in our new-from-the-noho-transfer station cast iron frying pan (one of two) (yaaay dump finds) in olive oil, a yellow onion, garlic, white mushrooms, fresh thyme, & wilted snowpea sprouts, with sides of heavily buttered russian banana fingerling potatoes & my always classic roasted garlic brussel sprouts.

NOTE: cost of this meal = $3.72 + there were leftovers. Us poor folk do know how to live.

Cooking food is, as always, a metaphor for love.
& so, love love love, Happy Valentine's Day
(one day late, because I was, um, enjoying my own valentine's day sans internets)
& good eating.
xo, liz.