Arts Crawl in Downtown Kingsport

 

Thursday night (9-30-10) from 5-9 p.m., KingsportARTS (full info and admission @ their website) and downtown Kingsport shops, eateries, and studios are hosting the semiannual ArtsCrawl. This event has expanded significantly in the last six months (along with business in our real city center), so come support the arts in our fair city and see what's hopping in downtown Kingsport.

If you do come, say "Hi!" when you're at the Kingsport Ballet's new digs--I'll be there with the Kingsport Art Guild.

 P.S. I'm tagging this with food and cheese because there's always good nosh!

Better food in our schools

As you might know, I have a couple of kids in public school. If you have kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, friends, etc., in school--or if you attended public school, you know that the quality and healthfulness of school food leaves a lot to be desired.

Every once in a while I am shocked anew at a school lunch menu that includes fried chicken shapes, corn, rice, and a roll. If you're up on your nutrition at all, you know that this is carb upon carb upon carb. Pair that with the offerings of flavored milk and dessert and all I can do is shrug and throw up my hands in bewilderment.

The schools say they focus on teaching nutrition, yet seem to fall flat on their faces when it comes to practicing what they preach, due in part to strange and arcane guidelines they must follow from the government, which also is not practicing what it preaches (see the USDA's www.mypyramid.gov) when it comes to school nutrition.

I recently signed a petition to update food standards in our schools and invite you to do the same if any of the children you love attend public schools.

I also recommend the recent series Food Revolution--you can watch all the episodes online if you missed them the first time. Several years ago chef Jamie Oliver led the charge to overhaul the school lunch system in the U.K., to such an extent that a friend who lives there says she'd eat at her kids' school as if it were a restaurant, the food is so good. Can you imagine? The food is prepared from scratch, so rather than opening a can of sauce or fruit in heavy syrup, school cooks prepare sauce from scratch and students enjoy fresh fruit. And the food is sourced locally as much as possible.

Food Revolution recounts his recent initiative in Huntington, WV.

Other great resources include The Lunch Box (which includes recipes and menus for schools and action plans for parents, principals, etc.) and the Healthy Schools Campaign.

You know I rarely put political stuff on here (other than it's every citizen's responsibility to vote or shut up), so you know this is near and dear to my heart. Luckily my kids have recognized the lack of quality in the school lunches and frequently pack their own. However, regardless of whether they eat the school lunch, all the kids are getting the wrong message on nutrition from our schools.

You know you're in East TN when . . .

. . . you're sitting in a Japanese restaurant and suddenly realize you're listening to country music.

Observation by my DH at dinner tonight.

Nearly a year in Tennessee

Well, we've been here nearly a year and feel very at home. We've made the transition pretty well, the kids are thriving, DH loves his job, and I am in heaven in my studio. The weather is warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer, there's almost always a little wind, and the clouds (and thunderstorms) are way more impressive.

One of the hardest things to get used to is that things like pita bread are considered exotic here and only show up seasonally in most grocery stores. I haven't really figured out what the pita season is, but that's what the lady at the deli counter told me.

The other unexpected oddities are a couple of expressions.

A friend of ours is a physician's assistant (also a transplant to the area). When he first moved to the area he'd ask a nurse or an orderly to do something and they'd reply, "No, I don't care to." He, of course, was a little taken aback at this challenge to his authority, but figured he just had to earn his wings as the new guy and do it himself. But when he went to do it he'd find it already done. Turns out that in NE TN, "No, I don't care to," means, "Sure, I don't mind."

Folks also use this expression in a statement, not merely as a reply. For example, DH got a message asking him to "Please give me a call back if you don't care to."

And then there's "Bless his heart." You can say anything and add that at the end to make it all right, like, "That whole family has enormous heads, bless their hearts," or "He just can't hold a woman or a job, bless his heart." Now if anyone blesses my heart I wonder what they really mean. :-)

Northeast TN doesn't have a lock on strange expressions, though. Took us years to get used to the dual meaning of "Are you all set" in Western MA. If you're in line at a sandwich counter in western MA and the wait person asks "Are you all set?" . . . it's not a yes or no question.

If you answer "yes," chances are good the waiter will walk away thinking you have already ordered.

If you answer "no," chances are good the waiter will walk away thinking you need more time to decide.

And in Pittsburgh "City Chicken" is pork or veal. Go figure.

Making Panir

I'm a little behind on the whole blogging thing, but have had some company and some deadlines, all of which ended well, so am trying to catch up now.

So, I went to a retreat in January and the first thing I learned there was how to make cheese. Cheese?! Yup, and it was excellent! Here's a little something from Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (page 131):

" . . . it takes less time to make a pound of mozarella than to bake a cobbler, but most people find the idea of making cheese at home to be preposterous. If the delivery guy happens to come to the door when I'm cutting and draining curd, I feel like a Wiccan.

"What kind of weirdo makes cheese?"

Well, uh, that'd be me.

Anyhow, inspired by the great mozarella and ricotta we made at the retreat and that quart of goat milk Rosemary (the cheese mistress) game me, I returned home ready to strike out on my own. However, a local scarcity of renet meant I had to make panir. Boy, that was a shame! Mmmmm, mmmm was it good!

Panir is made of milk and lemon juice. That's it. Well, you can put a little salt in it, but I just salted mine before I fried it lightly and it was great. I hear you can do anything with panir that you would do with tofu, and I recommend it, but then again I'm not crazy about tofu.

I was a little worried because I don't have a cheese thermometer, but it turns out that my electronic thermometer is perfect for cheesemaking because I can enter a target temperature and an alarm goes off when the milk reaches that temp. Just about takes the brainwork out of the process.

Anyhow, all the utensils and surfaces you use during the precess have to be super clean so you don't contaminate the end product. Shiny, eh?!

I got my recipe from fiascofarm.com. It was easy to follow and there were loads of other recipes as well.

So, after the milk gets hot enough and stays there for a few minutes you add the lemon juice and stir gently. All of a sudden you have curds and whey instead of hot milk. It's cool. It's magical. It's alchemical!

Anyhow, I just strained the cheese in a collander lined with a clean flour-sack-weight dish towel then hung it over the bowl to drip a while.

Some time later I had a ball of cheese which I cubed and cooked in a simmer sauce (shown here--doesn't it look good?).

I also tried making my own saag panir--it was all right, but bland. It will be better next time now that I've finally unpacked my Madhur Jaffrey cookbook. (Thanks, Margaret--I'm still using it after--yikes--20 years!)

By the way, don't just let the whey run down the drain! I use it in breadmaking instead of water or milk, and when used as the liquid for cooking rice or potatoes it gives them a nice creamy mouth feel without fat. It also is supposed to be great for watering gardens if you can't get in to using for cooking.
___________

As an aside, once I managed to get my hands on some (vegetarian) rennet in March I made mozarella and ricotta as well. The mozarella was amazing and the ricotta (made with the whey left from the mozarella process) was beyond words. I don't particularly care for ricotta, but this was like nothing I have ever tasted before. So good!

I used them together with some cottage cheese I made--yup, I'm a cheesemaking fanatic now--for a lasagne (noodles cooked in whey, too) and it was wonderful. Of course using the sauce my eldest made and a little homemade italian sausage helped, too.

I'll add photos of those processes once I repeat them. Just paid attention to the process the first time. And paying attention sure paid off!

I made cheese!

I'm on my way to bed, but I'm so excited I had to post. Made goat's milk cheese today and flavored it with Penzey's garlic salt. It's soooooo good! Had it on a salad of baby romaine with mixed raisins, a drizzle of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, salt, and pepper. It was wonderful.

That's all. Nighty, night.

Thank you Rosemary, for the knowledge, the courage, and the milk!

Repost of Mmmm, Mmmmm Good

So. We traveled to Des Moines, IA, to spend Christmas with my 93-year-old Grandma and it was fabulous. We ran into weather driving both ways, but what do you expect when you arrogantly decide that driving 14 hours across the Midwest in winter would be a good idea?

Anyhow, the visit was lovely even if the drive was not, but the thing (besides my own bed) that I most enjoyed upon returning home was . . . my morning smoothie.

So ifyou think you might like drinking liquid sunshine, check out this post that has the recipe with photos. It's a great way to jump right on that healthy eating resolution I know you've all made--you won't even mind it!

Mmmm, Mmmmm Good

Glorious Asheville

So, of course I forgot to take my camera, but went to Asheville, NC, on a day trip with ma familia today and it was awesome! Felt like being back home in W. Mass. but bigger and with better weather. I discovered Earth Guild, which is smaller than WEBS but still a great supplier of weaving, woodworking, clayworking, felting, dyeing, and basketmaking supplies. Also visited toy shops, book stores, an organic festival, a decadent sweets/ice cream shop, various other shops, and finally the Lobster Trap, a fabulous restaurant with fresh Maine seafood--go figure!

Anyhow, Deborah and Francesca, if you're reading this, I thought of you all off and on all day--thanks for recommending Asheville! And the rest of you, if you're ever down this way, definitely stop there.

Next time I go alone and walk from gallery to gallery to art supply shop to gallery to gallery to coffee to gallery to . . . well, you get the picture.

Seat-of-the-pants wrap-up--Part I

I'd love to create a long post about favorite places in the area (Pioneer Valley in Western MA), but that would require heights of organization and planning that I, frankly, am incapable of --aside from plans for our (very) impending move, so I'm going with a much more seat-of-the-pants approach . . .

Today I had lunch at Judie's in Amherst, MA, with my friend Cindy--fellow quilter, fellow dancer, fellow ex-Pittsburgher, fellow office supply junkie, fellow Belchertowner (for a couple more weeks anyhow), and fellow foodie and Judie's devotee.

And while my sister is the queen of photographing beautiful food before digging in, I apparently am the queen of gluttony.

I dove right in to my lovely, velvety bowl of seafood bisque. I excavated all the best bits of my decadent lobster salad and enjoyed them with Judie's scrumptious creamy onion dressing. And . . . well, the key lime pie with creme brule cheesecake top (pure culinary genius) boggled the mind and I savored each bite in between sips of a perfect cappuccino.

Then I remembered I was supposed to be taking pictures. So here's the one photo I did get:
Guess this is why I trained as a journalist, not a photographer.

More as I can . . .

Tuna Tower

I dragged my poor friend Lori to Whole Foods last weekend ostensibly to buy wine and peppers to prepare for a Memorial Day party, but really so I could take a picture of this before the display changed:


She surely thinks I'm a nut, but it just illustrates my growing sense that taking a little time and effort to make even mundane things colorful and interesting is worthwhile. Hey--it made me smile, which canned tuna fish does not generally do!

Everything's coming up . . .

. . . shibori!

I had a lovely three-day dyeing workshop with Jan Myers-Newbury last week (or at least it was last week when I began composing this post).

(By the way, Jan, I lived on Summerlea St.--I knew the knowledge was in there somewhere, but it only surfaced today.)

At dinner she pointed out that the ceramic lazy Susan on our table (at Susanna Foo's--excellent food!) looked like shibori, and she was right.

Then I noticed the bathroom wallpaper looked like shibori, as did the wood grain on a table, bare branches against the sky, and the clouds we looked down on during our flight last Sunday.

And then there are the clamp-resisted wannabees, like this cool building (very "early fortress")

and the reflection of a beaded curtain, also at Susanna Foo's

.

I even found an arashi shibori overdyed with a clamped resist--or is it a clamped resist overdyed with arashi shibori?

I know that shibori originated as textile artists observed and mimicked the world (particularly the natural world) around them, but it's fun to come full circle and suddenly see much more intensely the patterns around me. Thanks, Jan.

Anyhow, met lots of interesting people and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Took a day afterwards to visit college friends and that gave me a great boost, too. They say you can get the measure of a person by the company she keeps . . . therefore I must be a truly phenomenal specimen of humanity!

Never had much use for butternut squash . . .

. . . but these are great!

Monday was Martin Luther King day, so the kids were home, and it was the one day this week that we all felt fabulous. The youngest had a friend over and I got inspired to try the recipe for these little delights and they went over really well. My youngest dubbed them "muffcakes" because they're muffins but good enough to be cupcakes. Plus they have icing, so there you go.

Then the week went downhill for the kids (who both ended up with strep), particularly my oldest (who developed an allergy to her medicine, which resulted in--so far-- two days of bodywide hives).

So I've been in domestic goddess mode (have no expectation of getting any art work done, but have been cooking and tidying and taking care of the children). It's actually been very revitalizing for me, a nice pause to think and reflect, but oh the poor kids!

Anyhow, made a second batch of these muffins yesterday because one butternut squash is enough for two batches--but mostly because they're really yummy! Hey--waste not, want not!

So, the muffcakes are really Jamie Oliver's "butternut squash muffins with a frosty top." This recipe is definitely a keeper. I did have to make a couple of modifications because my kitchen isn't outfitted the way his is and I use American measures (previously known as English 'til they went all metric--not that there's anything wrong with that):

1. 400 g squash is about a pound, 350 g. brown sugar is about .875 pounds, 300 g. flour is about .75 pounds, and 175 ml of oil is about 2/3 c. At least those are the equivalents I used and it worked out fine.
2. I buzzed the butternut in the food processor but had to break out the mixer for the rest because it wouldn't all fit in my processor.
3. I had no extra virgin olive oil, so I used canola oil instead.
4. I had neither lemons nor clementines nor vanilla pods on hand so I made a thinned-down version of brown butter icing instead (recipe below). It's very nice and doesn't overwhelm the surprisingly delicate flavor of the muffcakes.

About brown butter

Brown butter is a Pennsylvania Dutch staple that I learned to make from my husband's family. Apparently also used in fancy French cuisine, but I wouldn't know about that.

The idea is to brown the milk solids. When the butter melts, the milk solids will separate from the ghee. The milk solids are what you would strain out to create clarified butter. However, we're going to leave the solids in to create something even more wonderful!

So, melt your butter.

There is a little extra water in almost any butter, but the cheaper the butter the more water will have to boil off. This will happen with fairly loud largish bubbles.

Swirl your butter around regularly so the solids don't burn. Pretty soon a fine foam will develop and the solids will start to go a bit golden, which might be hard to see because of the foam. Keep swirling.

The butter will start to get a beautiful nutty scent--that's one of the signs you're almost done. Keep swirling. You want the butter to all go golden brown, including the foam, but stopping too soon is better than stopping too late. Plain melted butter is better than burnt butter every time!

Brown butter is killer on green beans, carrots, asparagus, mashed potatoes, and baked seafood. And it makes for a mighty tasty frosting, too.

Brown butter icing (modified for the butternut squash "muffcakes")

Put 1/2 a pound of confectioners sugar in a mixing bowl. Add a splash of vanilla and a pinch of salt.

Brown 1/4 c. of butter in a skillet on medium heat, swirling periodically until done.

Pour brown butter into mixing bowl and begin mixing. Add about 2 to 4 T. milk and mix well to make a thin glaze. (Optional: Add a Tablespoon or two of maple syrup if the spirit moves you.)

Let the frosting set up a bit, give it another good mix, then frost the tops of your 24 muffcakes.

Brown butter icing (original recipe for cakes)

Put 1 lb. confectioner's sugar in a mixing bowl. Add a splash of vanilla and a pinch of salt.

Brown 1/2 c. of butter on medium heat in a pan, swirling periodically until done.

Pour brown butter into mixing bowl and begin mixing. Add 1 T. of milk at a time (up to about 4 T.) and mix well until you get the consistency you want. Frost cooled cake. Generously covers a 2-layer cake, a 9 x 13 cake, or 24 cupcakes.

Mmmm, Mmmmm Good

Didn't realize how much I had missed my ubiquitous breakfast until I got back from the holidays and indulged once more. And it's a good sort of indulgence--no guilt, just joy!

So here it is, my recipe for a joyous start to a fabulous day:

Put in a blender:

1/4 to 1/3 c. frozen blueberries3 large or a few small frozen strawberries1 banana
1/4 to 1/3 c. ground flax seed
enough orange juice to blend it all together to the consistency you like.Blend, beginning at a low speed, moving up to moderate speed as things are pureed, ending on high speed for a little "fluff" action. How sweet or tart it is depends in great part on the time of year and the stawberries you use.Lots of fiber, some healthy Omega 3s, and your first serving of fruit for the day. Plus it's easy and tastes a treat! Enjoy!
And props to Lori and Bob in Vermont who introduced me to this smoothie in the first place--you created a monster!!