Chris got me a new bread baking book for my birthday, Baking with the St. Paul Bread Club (I’m all about the bread babking by local authors).  I’ve been quite happy making my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, so  I was initially unsure about trying it.  The ABi5 recipes are easy, they require no kneading, no proofing, generally nothing more than stirring the ingredients and some space in your refrigerator.  But Chris brought up the fact that ABi5 has given me confidence to try more baking and thought that I might want to try some other techniques and recipes.  And honestly, I haven’t been making much bread recently, mostly because the ABi5 makes enough for 4 loaves, which is awesome in the winter when I want to bake all the time, but less great in the summer when I do a lot less baking.

So I gave it a try.  I started with a whole wheat sandwich bread that used buttermilk, because we had buttermilk that needed using.  I messed up the proofing the first time – I didn’t bother measuring the temperature of the water, and it was too hot and killed the yeast.  The second time, the water was too cool, but a little sugar solved that problem.  Otherwise, the recipe wasn’t hard at all.  And in some ways it was nice to have a faster bread – it requires less time to rise since you knead the dough.  Zoe and I did the mixing and kneading Sunday morning, we hit the farmer’s market for lunch, and got back just as the dough finished rising and popped it in the oven.  The resulting bread was good, but I think next time I might make it with honey rather than brown sugar.  I really like the honey flavor in bread.  It’s perfect for sandwiches, and has stayed fresh for the rest of the week.  I’m willing to give a couple of other recipes a try.  I’m not abandoning my ABi5, but I think I’ll probably use those recipes more in the winter, when I’m going through batches of dough more frequently.

Ok, truth be told, I mostly just wrote that so that I could share this video of Zoe kneading the dough (I already shared it on facebook, so if you’re a fb friend you’ve already seen it, but you know you want to watch it again).  As if the resulting bread wasn’t enough, this makes me want to bake a lot more bread:

We were at a bbq with some friends, and Chris noticed I’d given Zoe some brownie before she’d finished her hot dog.  (She’d asked for chocolate, and I sympathized greatly with that particular request, so I complied).  I made some comment about being a bad mom.  “No!” piped Zoe from my lap, “you are not bad, mom.”  It was awfully sweet, though I imagine the half-eated brownie had something to do with that sentiment.

This is part II of what I learned at the cooking class.  Part I covered the actual cooking parts.

As we were finishing up our last rotation on the grill, waiting for the corn to finish, I asked one of the instructors how they came up with their ideas for classes, and how they planned them out.  He was really open and thoughtful about what went in to the planning of a cooking class.  He and another instructor plan all the grilling classes.  They start by looking at what other classes are already being taught, and what techniques, foods, and preparations are not currently covered.  Then they look for recipes that would fit that.  They have to balance the class to make sure that the recipes can be done in the scheduled time, and that there are enough recipes covered that people feel like they’re getting their money’s worth, but still make sure that there’s time to really participate in all the aspects of the different recipes, while still having the time to see and taste the results.  What part of the recipes can be done before the class to help things go smoothly without sacrificing the learning of the participants.  They normally break up the participants in to groups so that a small group is working on a recipe or two in one segment, and then the groups rotate.  This means that it’s easier for everyone to really get in on each recipe, and everyone gets pretty individual attention with the instructors, but it’s an added level of complexity.  Now you have to not only make sure the recipes work in the allotted time, but that they can be broken up such that all of them work in a set time for the rotation.

We spend a lot of time in my department at work talking and thinking about teaching and learning.  How do you decide what to include in a class, and what to leave out.  How do you strike the right balance between enough relevant information that you’re not wasting the students’ time, while giving enough time for hands-on activities that will be engaging.  How well does it work to break students in to groups, can you have multiple groups working on different things?  Will that mean that different students are exposed to different things?  Is that bad.

I love that other people, in a very different field of education struggle with the same questions that we do.  I loved just hearing someone else think through the process of planning a class out loud.  The parallels obviously only go so far, but they were striking, and it really hit home just how much I do love the teaching aspect of my job.

When Chris bought our Big Green Egg, it came with a coupon for a free cooking class at the store where we bought it.  We’ve taken a couple of awesome classes there before, and yesterday evening, we cashed in the coupon and took a class on grilling vegetables.This was a participation class, which meant we actually did a lot of the work and cooking ourselves rather than just watching someone show us how to cook.    I have to admit, I was originally skeptical.  I grill vegetables a lot, so I wasn’t sure how much I’d learn.  I’m happy to report that I was extremely wrong – I learned so much.  And got to eat everything.  And it was good.

What we cooked – and what I learned about it:

• Steamed and grilled artichokes – I like artichokes a lot, but I’d never bothered to try to cook them, it just seemed like too much work.  The class didn’t really change my thoughts on that a lot.  Artichokes are a pain – both in how much work you have to do, and in how much they can hurt you with those stupid thorns.  That said, steaming them, and then putting them on the grill for just a bit of char, and to evaporate the water from steaming, made for a really tasty artichoke.
• Lemon aioli – an aioli is just a mayonnaise with some garlic in it.  We made the aioli from scratch, which I’d never done before.  It turns out that most food processors come with an oil dripper, either in the lid of the processor, or in the bottom of the pusher that you use to push food into the food tube with.  Basically, you run the processor with the egg yolk and water and lemon, and then put the oil in the oil dripper and run the processor continuously as the oil slowly drips in and emulsifies.  It was cool.  Science in action creating yumminess.
• Oaxaca Grilled corn – you can grill corn in the husk or already husked, and I’d always done the former.  In this class, we husked the corn, then threw it in boiling water for maybe 3 minutes and then grilled it.  Again, the grilling in this case was mostly just to caramelize the corn just a bit.  Then we rolled it in butter.  Then we brushed it with mayonnaise.  Then we rolled it in cotija cheese.  Then we sprinkled it with ancho and a little lime.  Oh. My. God.  It sounds over the top, and it was, but it was so, so very good.
• Grilled Green Beans with charred red pepper and onion dip – this was the one dish we didn’t make, but they had it ready for us as appetizers when we first got there.  They tossed trimmed green beans with grapeseed oil and salt and pepper and then threw them on the grill for 2 – 4 minutes.  Awesomely addicted appetizer.  I’m totally doing this for a party some time.
• Bonus note on the grapeseed oil – they recommend grapeseed oil for grilling because it’s a neutral tasting oil, and it has a higher smoke point than canola oil.  Good to know.  It is expensive, but apparently you can get really big jugs of it so it’s a little less expensive.  Probably worth it if we’re doing a lot of grilling this summer.
• Hot and spicy grilled sweet potatoes with piquillo pepper ketchup – we cut the sweet potatoes in to wedges, tossed with oil, ancho chile powder, chipotle chile pepper, and smoked black pepper, and salt.  Then grilled them from 10 – 15 minutes.  While these were good, they were my least favorite, only because they were flavors I’ve had before, and struck me as a recipe I might have tried on my own.  Still, I’ll probably make them because I love sweet potatoe fries.
• Charred romaine salad with smoked tomato vinaigrette – this is super simple and amazing.  So you cut the hearts of romaine in half lenthwise.  Then you put them cut side down on a hot grill for 30 seconds and then flip – you should have charred bits.  Then you chop the romaine.  Toss with the vinaigrette – this had smoked tomatoes vinegar, garlic, chili, sugar, onion, and tomato paste.  So dang flavorful.  I love the depth of flavor with the romaine being charred.  This is being added to the list of things to serve at barbecues.
• Portobella sliders with basil pesto – we made a red onion jam – basically cooking onion, thyme, sugar, balsamic vinegar salt and pepper until is all soft and yummy.  Then you grill portobella mushroom caps (with the gills removed), and then put the onion jam in the mushroom.  Top with cheese.  Put on a top rack in the grill to melt the cheese.  By the way, that top shelf (warming rack) of grills is the hottest part of the grill when the lid is closed due to that whole heat rising thing – keep in mind so you don’t overcook things by setting them there.  Anyway, the mushroom caps go on toasted buns with butter lettuce and basil pesto.  A very, very good option if you’re doing burgers on the grill and have a couple of vegetarians – it’s a thousand times better than veggie burgers.  Plus that onion jam would be good on regular burgers, too (I imagine).

I wish I’d gotten pictures, but I was too busy participating and eating.  Tune in for part II, where I talk with the instructor about class design.

We’ve been members of a CSA (community supported agriculture, also called farm shares) for 3 years now, though this year we changed to a new farm.  Our share gets us a weekly delivery of whatever fresh produce the farm happens to have harvested throughout the summer and early fall.  Or that’s the theory.  When I’ve talked about having a CSA, one of the things I’ve always mentioned, but never really paid much mind to, is that as a farm share member, you’re not just sharing in the produce, you’re also sharing in the risk.  You pay your share up front, to make sure the farmer is paid for their work regardless of how the season’s harvest goes.

This spring and summer have been strange weather-wise.  Spring was very cold through April, then very dry through May (the third driest on record, in fact).  June was a weird jumble of extremely hot, sunny days, tossed with just a few frosty days, and still not nearly enough rain.  Our new farm is quite communicative, the farmer sends us regular emails about what’s been going on at the farm, starting back in early spring.  Already by the end of May, we’d been told that the crops weren’t growing as quickly as expected and our first delivery was pushed back a couple of weeks.  I’ll admit I was annoyed hearing about other people getting their first deliveries of farm fresh veggies while we still waited.   Jealous of the fresh salad greens and sugar snap peas and green onions.  The day of the first delivery, the farm’s brand new delivery truck broke down.  We were able to get our box, but some people missed theirs.

We’ve gotten two deliveries so far this season.  They’ve been good, but small, but we live in Minnesota, you can’t really expect a whole lot in early summer in the way of produce.  But today we got a heart-breaking email explaining just how bad things had gotten.  Beyond the delivery truck problem – with all the expense involved in resolving that – their irrigation pump had failed, and the weather, drought on top of very late frosts had ruined quite a few crops.

Our farmer wrote, “I think back to the winter and the many conversations I had with so many of you; the descriptions of the many vegetables we would be growing and what you might expect in your boxes each week and, even though we also mention the “risk” asscociated with CSA, it really is not at the forefront of our minds.  The weight of knowing what many of you have expected and what the reality looks as though it will be is awful; Even though we have worked just as hard as we always have, perhaps harder, we still are coming up short.”  Accordingly, the current plan is that they’ll take a week or two off from harvesting and deliveries and focus on re-planting and irrigating, so we’ll miss a couple of our planned deliveries.

So I’m disappointed.  Of course, I am.  After two years of good CSA experiences, I really expected that this year would be the same.  I love getting the veggies.  I love the surprise of opening that box and seeing what we get.  The random salads that we end up eating so much of to use up the vegetables.  The pizzas that end up with crazy improv toppings from that week’s share.  But I feel like I’ve learned a lot more this year about what goes on with farming, and how interconnected things can be, and how easy it is for things to go wrong.  That was what I signed on for.  I think I’m more upset with the idea that some of the farm share holders might want their money back.  It is pretty clearly spelled out on the website that there is risk involved, and that the size of the shares can’t be guaranteed.  If you value small farms and sustainable agriculture, I still think this is one of the better models to encourage that type of farming, which really is riddled with risk.

I ended up sending our farmer the following:

I’ve participated in CSAs because I wanted to know more about where my food is coming from, and because I believe that small farms are a good thing, but I know they’re risky, and if I value that, then I need to take on some of the risk myself.  I’ll miss the veggies for the week or two that you need to take off, but I want you and the farm to succeed.   I don’t want you to reimburse the shares, to plough the fields under, or get a different job.

Wishing you luck and good harvests.

With support,
Ann

And now, just to end on a happy note, a recipe that we’ve made twice now this summer with our farm share kale.  It makes a really nice side dish for potlucks or barbecues.  I have to imagine that this general recipe could be adapted to add any number of other greens or herbs or other vegetables that could stand up to the polenta.

Kale and Polenta Pie
from Jack Bishop’s Vegetables Every Day – which by the way, is a fantastic cook book for anyone with a farm share, or who has a tendency to home with too many veggies from the farmer’s market.

• 1/2 pound Kale, washed and chopped, with the center vein of the leaf removed
• Salt
• 1 Tblsp Olive oil, plus extra for greasing the pan
• 1 cup instant polenta
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Grease a 9 inch round cake pan with olive oil.
2. Bring 3 1/2 cups of water to boil.  Add the kale and 1/2 tsp salt.  Cover and cook for about 6 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Reduce heat to low.  Very slowly add in the polenta while stirring constantly until smooth.  May take about 1 minute, and it may still have some lumps.  Just make sure it’s mostly smooth.  Partially cover and cook another 2 minutes.  The polenta should be thick.
4. Remove the pot from heat and stir in the cheese.  Taste and add more salt if necessary.  Scrape the polenta-kale mixture into the cake pan.
5. Bake until the pie is firm and golden brown – about 20 minutes.  It won’t get browned like bread does, it’s really more of a bright golden color.  Let the pie cool for at least 30 minutes, though it’s perfectly lovely fully cooled.
6. Cut into wedges and serve.

Zoe woke up early this morning – like every morning.  I’d promised last night that we’d make muffins, so we did (corn muffins, from America’s Test Kitchen’s New Best Recipe.  We use yogurt instead of sour cream).

It rained pretty hard this morning, but had stopped just as the muffins finished up.  Zoe mentioned that we’d need boots to go outside, and so that’s what we did.  It was great to be outside when it wasn’t quite as hot as it’s been recently.

For all the bunny-enthusiasts, I have exclusive video of Zoe and bunny (it’s hard to hear her, but she says “hi bunny, how are you” and “it’s a bunny!”…

And then a bit of splashing…

A good morning, but I am still not going to be a morning person.

I went to yoga class this evening – back to the non-profit yoga studio now that the community ed class is over for the summer.  It was lovely.  It was supposed to be an hour and fifteen minutes, but it went longer than an hour and a half.  And that’s just fine by me.  The class was taught by what must be the tallest, thinnest yoga instructor out there, but he had a surprisingly vivid way of describing what we were doing, and it really helped – he invoked Axl Rose at one point to explain how we were supposed to move (in an unrelated note, how uncool am I?  So uncool that I had to look up the correct spelling of Axl Rose).

The final relaxation in corpse pose went much longer than I’m used to, but again, this is not a complaint.  My mind drifted pretty quickly and I lost track of what our towering teacher was telling us.  Instead my mind wandered back 2 decades to when I lived in Colorado in elementary through junior high school.  I retraced all my walk to school (both elementary and middle – had to take the bus to junior high).  I remembered all those friends that I’d walk with, laughed to myself at the teasing (”Annie Macaroni” – hard to take insult to that).  And in the back of my mind, there was my first real, unrequited crush.  Ah.  I tried to ignore him and pretend I didn’t care back then, and it seems that even now in my relaxation there was that awareness.  Funny that it doesn’t go away despite the time.  We’re friends on facebook now, he seems to have just as bizarre a sense of humor now as he did then.  But before I could spend much mroe time thinking about it, the instructor started talking again.  Or maybe he never stopped, and it’s just that I started paying attention again.  I’m pretty sure that’s not quite how the relaxation time is supposed to go, but at least I wasn’t snoring like the person a few spots over.  I wonder where my mind will wander to next week.

"our" bunny

Fighting Windmills asked about the bunny that keeps stopping by our yard – she’s been nesting in our front yard for the past two years and raising her babies in the spring. Even though in general, I hate the bunnies that eat my lilies and garden vegetables, this rabbit has won me over, and I now have a very soft spot for her raising her little ones in the yard.  I was especially looking forward to showing the babies to Zoe.

This year she’s been hanging around quite a bit.  Zoe is thrilled every time she sees the rabbit, she’ll stand a ways back and shout “hello bunny, how are you?” For its part, the rabbit is extremely unafraid of us, and will just hang out in the yard quite near where Zoe is playing. She only runs if we start heading directly for her, and then she only runs a few feet before calmly grabbing another dandelion to eat (that may contribute to my soft spot for her).

Zoe and the bunny, both ignoring each other in this picture

But though we’ve found a burrow in the front yard and in back in my vegetable garden this year, none of those burrows has ever held any bunnies.  I have to admit to being pleased that no babies ever showed up in my vegetable garden, I have a soft spot for the bunny, but not so soft to want her raising her young on my home grown heirloom tomatoes and tomatillos.  I’ve also noticed recently that she’s been limping and not using her front foot.

favoring her front right foot

Some people consider rabbits to be symbols of fertility and good luck.  It’s a good thing I don’t put much stock in symbols like that.  My lucky fertility symbol has a broken foot, and keeps preparing for babies that never arrive.

In less than 90 minutes, that will be my age. I’ve never been one to complain about aging, and I’m not going to in this post either. Just felt like mentioning it.

I’ll get back to blogging more. I will. I hope. What would you like me to write more about? I’m feeling overwhelmed with topics that seem interesting until I start to write them down.

I was tagged by Coffeegrl for this, and it looks like another good way to get me out of my posting slump.  Actually, this is kind of hard.

Eight things I am looking forward to:
1. The end of the school year.  I like the change of pace once we hit summer.
2. Our CSA (farm share) starting up and lots and lots of good veggies.
3. Heading to DC to see my brother and sister-in-law and our best friends.
4. Fresh tomatoes from our garden.
5. Harry Potter movie this summer. (I stole this one from Coffeegrl, but it is true)
6. Starting the great pizza grilling experiment – we’re going to play around with different crusts, sauces, and toppings, I can’t wait.
7. My birthday (in only 2 weeks?!).  Even if I have to work, I’m still looking forward to it.
8. Swimming at the lake now once it gets a little warmer

Eight things I did yesterday:
1. Yoga (last class of the session, sadly)
2. Answered a reference question about the Web of Science and EndNote
3. Did a lot of work on Little Four Eyes
4. Realized it was June.  What?  When did that happen?
5. Read a bit of From Dead to Worse, a wonderfully fun and light vampire romance.
6. Drove the van pool because our fearless original driver/benevolent dictator has left us.
7. Failed to answer a reference question about an obscure Byzantine patriarch (I’m a science librarian for a reason)
8. Ate sushi

Eight things I wish I could do:
1. Write easily
2. Get pregnant without medical intervention
3. Enjoy exercise
4. Convince myself to go to sleep early
5. See an active volcano
6. Get up north (northern MN, that is) some time this summer
7. Draw well
8. Sing well

Eight shows I watch:
1. America’s Next Top Model.  (what?)
2. 30 Rock
3. The Office
4. Leverage
5. The Amazing Race
6. Make Me a Supermodel
7. Top Chef
8. Project Runway (ok, so I like the reality tv)

Eight favorite fruits:
1. Strawberries
2. Apple
3. Pear
4. Mango
5. Raspberries
6. Peaches
7. Clementines
8. Dates

Eight places I’d like to travel:
1. Antarctica.  Really.  I’ll get there some day.  I would love to work there for a summer.
2. India
3. China
4. Spain
5. Hawaii
6. Alaska
7. Iceland
8. Space.  Even though I know I’ll never get there.  I really would like to go.

Eight places I’ve lived:
1.  Minneapolis, MN
2. Edina, MN
3. Northfield, MN
4. Keitum auf Sylt (in Germany)
5. Kaputh (in Germany)
6. Ellettsville, IN
7. Greeley, CO
8. Sioux Falls, SD

I know I’m supposed to tag, but I’m horrible at tagging.  I’m afraid I’ll upset someone by tagging them, or by not tagging them.  It’s a silly hang up.  But I’ll never actually publish this thing if I spend the time trying to decide who to tag so I’m just pushing publish.