We Now Return to Your Regularly-Scheduled Blogging

(This is a blog post I started writing way back in January, right after we'd returned from our Christmas/India vacation.  The point of it was to summarize our entire trip, but it was just as the sickness and doctor's visits were starting, and so I was frequently distracted and never got around to finishing it.  I've considered attempting to restart the story, but my memories of the trip are dimmer, now, and I sort of like this little snapshot in time, saved right at the point where we knew something was afoot, but had no idea what it could be.  So I'm leaving this as is; perhaps at some point I'll go back and record my impressions of India for posterity [maybe a little prosperity].  For now, enjoy a short story about our cat and a brief glimpse into home life in New York.)

So, rather than prattle on about the intricacies of The Husband's gastrointestinal tract, let me instead share some stories about family, holidays, and the joys of traveling with an angry cat.

PHX-->BUF
Given that we would be gone for over a month and didn't have anyone to cat-sit the little hellbeast for us, we decided to bring Pannekuchen to New York, where I could foist him off on my mother while we did our little bit of globetrotting.

Now, I have to give Pancakes credit, as he wasn't absolutely terrible to fly with.  In all fairness, he was probably less trouble than many children.  Once we got him onto the plane and stowed safely underneath the seat in front of me, he calmed down, only howling uncontrollably during takeoff, landing, whenever we encountered turbulence, and anytime he could either see or hear us.

After the Dark Times of flight were over, Pannekuchen got to enjoy all that winter in New York has to offer, including snow (consensus:  he is not a fan), indoor puddles of melted snow (also not a fan), my younger cousin (probably a fan, given how much they chased each other around the house, possibly encouraged by my suggestion that Pancakes likes to eat children), and, most importantly, other cats.  After a rough start and much growling (a noise I wasn't aware he could make), he eventually reached a truce with two of the cats and actively befriended the third, Algaecat.

BFFs

We also got to enjoy all that winter in New York has to offer, including snow, cold, limited internet access, and nothing but Christmas songs on the two radio stations that work (thank goodness for my mother's new car and the free Sirrius radio, which was still always set on one of its 20 Christmas stations).  There were Champion of North America Wii bowling tournaments and I repeatedly bested my mother in pretending to play music while also pretending to be a Rabbid.

One of the best parts about going home during the winter is the fact that hearty, winter fare tastes much better when it's blizzarding out, so we made chili and vegetable barley soup and mushroom risotto and Brussels sprout salad and bruschetta and spiced gingerbread and Christmas cookies (the only time of year my mother consents to bake).  I ate my requisite bag of cheese puffs and learned that sourdough pretzels are fantastic with hummus.  We snagged some lovely, new, hard anodized pots and pans (which I have used and love) and an enameled cast iron dutch oven (which brings our total of heavy-cast-iron-dishes-that-will-be-a-pain-to-move to five).  And then we left.

IN A PICKLE OF A JAM.

I am not sure why it is considered a bad thing to be in a jam.  I can understand why one would not want to be in a pickle, given the connotations of cannibalism and whatnot, but jam?  Jam is sweet and tasty and good on toast and scones.  Yes, it is sticky and a bit messy and viscous, but that's never killed anyone (oh wait, yes it has).  Though jelly is suspect, as it's just so...unnatural.  Fruit is not smooth and shiny, people.  It is seedy and pulpy and complicated; let's keep it that way.

Anyway, idioms and jellyrants aside, I have gotten it into my head that maybe I should be canning things.  After reading through a few different canning/preserving books, I came to the conclusion that the general attitude towards canning is:  OH MY GOD IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THESE RECIPES EXACTLY YOU WILL CONTRACT BOTULISM AND DIE A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH ALONE AND FULL OF BITTER RECRIMINATION OH AND YOU'RE UGLY TOO.  Nevermind that each book has different recipes for the exact same things – there can be only one.  That won't kill you.

So I said bupkus to all that and decided to forge my own path into this Brave New World of food in jars.  I also decided to forgo a stop at Long-Term Canning Corners and instead get off this I-guess-my-metaphor-is-a-train-now at Just Put It In A Jar Junction.  There are two reasons for this:  (1) I am lazy, and (B) it isn't like I need more things to put into my already overstuffed pantry.

To start off on my quest (wait – quest?  I need to work on keeping these metaphors straight...) to the land of food self-sufficiency, a friend and I staged a little canning party (even though nothing was officially canned).  We each brought two recipes to the table:  I planned on making dilly beans and pomegranate jam, and she would do apple butter and ginger beer.

(Ed. note: While writing this post, I was suddenly seized by the need for scones, which are now in the oven.   And now we return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.)

Dilly beans, for the uninitiated, are green beans that have been pickled like your standard dill cucumber pickle, plus lots of garlic.  They seemed like a nice beginner's pickle, mostly because green beans, unlike all but the babiest of cucumbers, fit easily into a regular pint jar, and neither of us were keen on buying several large jars for a single project.  Also, cucumber pickles, at least some of them, require fermentation to reach peak flavor, whereas dilly beans just need to sit overnight in the brine.

To start, top and tail some nice green beans, then pack them into jars (somewhat snugly), along with garlic, dill, and black peppercorns (it is easiest to put in the garlic and dill first, or at least in-between batches of beans).  Just pour over some boiling brine (about two parts vinegar to one part water, with sugar and salt added – BUT READ THE BOOK OR ELSE THE BEANS WILL GIVE YOU DROPSY OR SOMETHING).  The book also said that the beans needed to be processed via boiling to tenderize them, as they were cold-pack vegetables.  This is a lie, as boiling beans, even if they are in jars, for 15 minutes will clearly overcook them.

I. AM. A. HUMAN. BEAN.

The pomegranate jam was a trickier customer, and not only because they are tedious to de-seed.

Pictured: an hour's worth of seed removal.

Pomegranates are also low in pectin, which is the fiber in fruits that makes a jam set into a jiggly pseudosolid.  Because we weren't adding any additional pectin to the pomegranates, we would have to cook the pomegranates long enough for the sugars (both in the fruit and added to the mix) to do the work instead (if you've ever made fudge or candy, you'll understand; if you haven't, that's a shame because it's a lot of fun).  I got the recipe from here, but since I wasn't spending the money for five pounds of poms, I used pomegranate juice instead.

I can't comment directly on making ginger beer or apple butter, because I was caught up in my own food problems.  However, I did learn the following:

• Apples will dry out if you bake them in the oven
• Peeling and pureeing 2 lbs. of ginger is tedious and noisy
• Wringing the juice out of 2 lbs. of ginger will make your hands tingly
• Dry apples do not work well in a food processor
• Tasting ginger beer that only has half the recommended sugar will make your face hurt

In the end, this is what we had:

at least it's pretty.

I cracked open my jar of dilly beans today, and I'm really pleased.  It has a nice crunch, and a good bite from the all the dill.  The pom jam, sadly, did not set, even though the plate test told me it would.  However, it makes a tasty pom sauce, which will potentially be used in an ice cream at some point in the near future.  The ginger beer, once it was corrected for sugar and you add a little club soda and mint, was tasty, though super gingery – it's good, but only in small doses (though if you have clogged sinuses, it will clear them good and fast).  I still haven't had a reason to use the apple butter yet, so I cannot give a review; perhaps its creator reads this blog and will comment?  (Oh, and the large jar in the middle is spiced brandy.  It takes a couple of weeks to mull.)

Overall, I'd say I came out 1.75-for-two on my part of the grand experiment – I'm quite happy with the dilly beans, and the pom jam just needs to set to be a total success.

Oh, but I am not done yet!

Remember the shameful bronze of my Dairy Olympics competition-with-myself?  I am what you might call a sore loser, so armed with more cream, I tried it again, this time using the proper technique of letting it sit on low heat for hours upon hours upon hours.

Success (mostly)!

There is really no way to make this look very appetizing, I apologize.

This is what two cups of cream looks like after sitting on a low burner for seven hours.  The wrinkly yellow skin is called the clout, and need to be removed (that's what I'm doing in the photo, and you can sort of see the fork peeling off a bit).  The thick stuff immediately underneath the clout is the clotted cream; under that is regular cream (though not full-fat, because most of that differentiated out into the clotted variety).  I say that this version is a qualified success because, while the clotted cream definitely coagulated out, the pan I used was too wide, which made the cream shallow and complicated separating the clotted cream from the thinner cream.  It all tastes good, but I wasn't able to skim just the clotted cream off the top; some of the regular cream got in with the clotted when I was spooning it out, so the whole thing is much thinner than it should be (proper clotted cream should be spreadable like butter).  It's really quite tasty spooned onto a scone with some pom jamsauce (though it is very messy, since all the toppings have the propensity to dribble off the scone). 

This might explain why I felt the need to make more scones at 9:30pm.

While on my pickling kick, I also wrangled up some pickled onions and peppers, which I enjoyed on a grilled cheese sandwich today.  I used red onions and yellow hot peppers, and the kick that both give off (though the onion only when raw) is tempered by the pickling process.

peter piper picked a peck of picked peppers and onions and liberty cabbage.

The large purple jar is red cabbage I am trying to transform into sauerkraut (the sour cream cup is just filled with water and is being used to keep the cabbage submerged).  Traditional sauerkraut is just sliced cabbage and salt; the salt draws out the cabbage's moisture, then mixes in to make the brine.  Sauerkraut is actually a made by lactic acid fermentation, in which various lactobacteria, which are naturally present on cabbage leaves, ferment the sugars into lactic acid, which both provides the sour taste and preserves the cabbage.  Once it has stopped bubbling, it should be all set; it takes about two weeks for sauerkraut to fully ferment, so here's hoping my wait will not be in vain (it also gives me some time to finish up the sauerkraut in my fridge).

IMPORTANT-TYPE ANNOUNCEMENTS!
In my constant attempts to keep this blog fresh and new, as well as trying to come up with a gimmick that will finally net me that book deal, I am hoping to start a few new series that will maybe get me to post a bit more frequently and help me maintain some focus so that not every post is a me prattling on? 

The first will be titled, "Hooray for Capitalism," where I will take you, the reader, along to some of my favorite food-related stores (as food-based shopping is my second-favorite kind of shopping) in the PHX and its environs.  The second, "Around the World in 80 Dishes," will feature me attempting to make vegetarian foods from all around the globe; I'm also trying to get The Husband to contribute suggestions for good music from each place to listen to while cooking and/or eating.  Hell, while I'm at it, I may even go back and tag and label some of my previous posts, in an attempt to maybe make sense of this place.  Who knows?  The possibilities are ENDLESS, except that they really aren't, as while the potential for the human mind may be infinite (though I doubt that it is), human life and our current levels of understanding are very much definite and bounded, which keeps our possibilities within defined limits.

So let's just say that the possibilities are MANY to keep us all from an existential crisis.

(Also, if you have any comments or suggestions of things you'd like to see here, let me know and I'll maybe take them under advisement.)

A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

Summer in Arizona, to be blunt, is terrible.  It is truly horrifying to wake up at 8am and have it already be 95ºF, and for it still to be in the triple-digits at 11pm.  Two weeks without air conditioning in the car didn't help matters; it actually got so hot in the car once that my eyes STARTED BURNING.*

The other problem with Arizona summers is that they drag on.

I thought I smelled brimstone.

Seriously, they seem to never end; you'll be taunted with a day or two of pleasant (read: mid-90s) weather, and then your dreams will be crushed with an extended heat wave.  So, in an effort to retain some of my quickly dissipating sanity,∞ I went home to WNY for some family time and a much-needed respite from the heat.

And New York did not disappoint.  My first day home, I woke up, made a cup of tea, and sat out on our back deck and crocheted for a couple of hours.  This was what I was working on:

Let us hope certain family members do not read this blog, or else the jig is up!

And this was what I saw whenever I looked up from my yarn:

Is it still leaf-peeping if it's my backyard?

The next day was cold and rainy, which was pretty much exactly what I was hoping for.  You know what's good on a cold, rainy day, apart from yet more tea and several hours spent reading whilst cuddling with cats?

This.

After much cajoling, I managed to get a ride down to the Cider Mill, where I acquired a cinnamon sugar doughnut, a buttermilk doughnut, and a quart of cider†.  The cider was gone within a couple of days.  The doughnuts barely lasted 30 minutes.

That night, as part of my on-going effort to teach my family the value of vegetables, I improvised a little vegetable barley soup, full of good things like kidney beans and turnips and cabbage and broccoli and onions and carrots and celery (and barley).  I also got to bust out the crock pot, the likes of which I haven't used for years; the soup turned out good, after an extended cooking to get the beans to soften (crunchy, undercooked food seems to be a trend, here).  With a good hunk of crusty bread, it's a pretty solid way to end a chilly day.  Also, the weather started cooperating.

It's nice to be back in a place where one can stand in the middle of a main road and not get run over.

This was also the night where I taught one of our cats to play tetherball.

Not very athletic, this one.

It was a good game, until the RattyCat fell over and refused to get back up.

Friday involved more tea, more cider, a trip to the farm stand, the worst allergy attack I've had in months, the consumption of A LOT of Benedryl, an 8pm bedtime, and 12 hours of sleep.

Fortunately, this left me well-rested for Saturday, when my mother, my grandmother, and I drove up to the Finger Lakes to go to the Windmill (a large outdoor flea/farmers'/craft market) so I could get some good apples, visit wine country, and go to the best ice cream place in New York.

We used to go to the Windmill a lot when my family would go camping on Keuka Lake, the smallest (and most y-shaped) of the Finger Lakes.  My brother accumulated quite the Pog collection from there¥, and I always buy lots of vegetables and baked goods from the Mennonites.  This time, not only did I get some excellent apples, I also got this sweet apron:

Me?  Owls?  What a surprise.

Apron Owl is watching you master cakes.

and adopted this hand-carved decoy, named Rutiger, who joins Declan as our guard ducks.

Quack.

Onward we went to Seneca Lake, where we visited my favorite winery and I loaded up on my favorite wine.^  It's also quite pretty there, up on the hill overlooking the lake.

Mmm, future wine.

We also stopped at a couple of other wineries, but enough booze:  what about the ice cream?  Well, after over 150 miles of driving (and several missed turns), we arrived.

Oh, my mother will be displeased with this photo.

This is it.  Cayuga Lake Creamery in Interlaken, NY.  (Incidentally, we saw our third Finger Lake of the day:  can you guess which one it was?)ª

The ice cream selection:

The ice cream:

Don't be thrown off by the forced perspective: the ice cream cone was not as tall as the building.

This was mine: after much indecision, I decided on a scoop of sea salt caramel on top of a scoop of gianduia in a homemade waffle cone.

The verdict?  Delish.  And pretty reasonably priced, too; they were substantial scoops, and I actually feared I wouldn't be able to finish mine.£  Was it worth it?  Opinions most likely differ amongst the travelers that day, but I'm certainly glad I went.‡

Sunday morning found me waking up well before dawn to catch my flight home.  Arizona decided to greet me with sub-100º temperatures, which I appreciated.  The Husband and I have already planned an apple pie-baking day to celebrate my glorious return (and my bounty of apples), and Pannekuchen seems to have made a new friend.

Not shown: five seconds later when Pannekuchen tried to bite Rutiger's beak.

*Also, having to wear mittens when it is 115ºF so you don't burn your hands on the steering wheel while driving?  What?  No.
∞I'm going to say it looks like this: 

†This is normally where I would go off on a ranting tangent about how unpasteurized cider is so much better than pasteurized, and how things have never been the same since the fascists took unpasteurized cider off the market just because a few kids and/or old people got sick or died or something, but it's not like there wasn't a warning on the label and I drank the stuff for years and never got sick and the problem is today's kids being all mollycoddled, and besides a little exposure to bugs or bacteria is good for you and GET OFF MY LAWN, WHIPPERSNAPPERS.  But I won't.
¥Seriously.  One summer, that's all he bought.  I'm still not sure that he ever knew that Pogs were used in some sort of game; if he did, he certainly didn't know how to play it.  We keep a lookout for them, as the stall is still there (though it now sells marbles and rulers and cassette tapes).
^The 2008 Lemberger, if you're curious.
ªIt was Cayuga Lake.  If you didn't figure that out, you might want to go back and re-read the previous sentence.
£I lead a rough life.
‡Not least because this means that I am now winning in the (unspoken?) competition between The Husband and I over visiting all of these ice cream places.  IN YOUR FACE, HARD J!

PRACTICE SAFE EATING: ALWAYS USE A CONDIMENT.* (ALSO, FOOD PORN, BUT NOT THAT KIND OF FOOD PORN, SICKO)

Right now, I have a potato rösti in the oven, which will hopefully be a tasty brunch on a crisp disconcertingly hot autumn Sunday.

But I am not here to discuss potatoes.  I am here to talk about condiments, specifically ketchup and mustard, specifically specifically how to make them.

Now, the funny thing about this is that I've never actually liked ketchup or mustard† (or any condiment, really, save for maybe aioli, and I'm not sure that's even really a condiment in the same sense as ketchup or mustard, though it is mayonnaise, which is a condiment, which I also dislike, so I JUST DON'T KNOW).  BUT, I do like a challenge, and the concept of making ketchup and mustard seemed so quaint and useless that I obviously had to try it.

MUSTARD
I've recently come to accept mustard as an ingredient in things (what with mustard seeds/oil comprising its own food group in the Bengali food pyramid), though I'm still suspicious of mustard on sandwiches and hotdogs, but given how I don't really eat sandwiches or hotdogs, I don't worry too much about it.  We used to have tiny jars of Grey Poupon in the fridge for use as an emulsifier in salad dressings, but one day we ran out and decided, "Well, we have pounds of mustard seeds – why not just make mustard?".§

Now, if you have ever had that talk with your parents about Where Mustard Comes From, you'll know that making standard yellow mustard (akin to the kind that my parents seem to keep in the fridge for years) is very simple: take mustard powder, mix water, maybe add some vinegar if you're feeling sassy.  Voila!—Mustard.  However, I decided to make wholegrain mustard, because I am hardcore and like spending three days to make food I may never actually eat.

This is what the mustard looks like.

Yay for hoarding jars!

As for taste, I actually have no idea.  We haven't needed any since we made it (during the Time Without Mustard, we moved away from emulsifying salad dressings, and haven't yet gone back).  But it looks like mustard and smells like mustard, which means we are at least two for three here.  (Still, I'm a little scared of it.  I've taken a sniff, and it sort of burns my nose; I'm a tiny bit concerned about what it will do to my esophagus.)

KETCHUP
Though I had my ketchup consumption limited when I was young, my mother did not do the same with my younger brother, who took to ketchup with a will that I have not seen equaled.  He put it on everything; he probably would have put in on salad, had we ever eaten any, or pancakes, if that wasn't disgusting even for him.  I'm sure that part of my aversion to ketchup stems from his overenthusiasm.  I have terrifying memories of washing off plates simply covered in ketchup, like some horrible crime scene where the french fries or mac and cheese suffered a gruesome fate at the hands of a deranged psychopath.

So you can see why I was so excited to make some.

I've occasionally tried ketchup since then, often by accident and usually when I'm sharing a plate of fries and my half gets infiltrated by the Red Menace.  I still can't see the appeal of ketchup – it's overly sweet and, for something made of so many tomatoes (and classified as a vegetable for the purposes of school lunch pyramids), it tastes nothing like tomatoes.   And I like tomatoes.

While back in New York this summer, I started watching re-runs of Jamie at Home, a cooking show about the exploits of Jamie Oliver and a loveable hobo^ as they garden their way into good food.  (Or something.)  It is probably the food-porniest food porn I've ever seen, all about soft-focus shots of Jamie cooking at his wood-fired grill, or close-ups of fresh fruits and vegetables from the garden, or (clearly re-dubbed) sounds of food sizzling in hot oil, or slowly-panning money shots of glorious-looking food on adorable rustic plates.  None of the food is too fancy; the focus is more on using great ingredients simply so that the natural flavors shine through.  Turns out that Joliver (as we call him) had a ketchup recipe, one with lots of tomatoes and not much sugar and some interesting ingredients.  I used the recipe from the cookbook companion to the show, and while the tomatoes were simmering, The Husband and I sat down to watch the episode in question ("Pickles and Preserves").

Of course, the recipe in the book is not the same as the one on TV.  Well, the ingredients are the same, but the methods differ; the recipe I give below is a combination of the two, using what I think makes most sense.  Either way, the ketchup was a success; we made some grilled potato chips for our first tasting, and I really enjoyed how the tomato taste shone through, and was complimented by the acidity and sweetness of the vinegar and sugar.

Strange-looking honey.

HA!  Take that, Heinz.  Ketchup does not need high fructose corn syrup, thankyouverymuch.  It also doesn't need to be a non-Newtonian fluid.¥

RECIPES

MUSTARD (from here, which you should totally buy because it is awesome and will teach you how to forage for limpets)

Ok, to make wholegrain mustard, take 6 T. brown mustard seeds, mix in 2/3 c. white wine vinegar, and let it sit out for 3 or 4 days (the longer it sits, the hotter it gets).  After it's done soaking, use a mortar and pestle to coarsely grind the mustard seeds and vinegar (just enough to crack the seeds – you aren't making a paste).  Grind 1/4 c. yellow mustard seeds in a spice grinder (or use mustard powder if you're lazy, not that I'd judge you or anything...) and mix this into the mustard/vinegar blend, adding another 1/4 c. white wine vinegar, 2 T. honey, and 2 tsp. salt.  Pour into a small jar, and store in a cool, dry place.

KETCHUP (adapted from here, to compensate for Jamie Oliver's inability to remember his own recipe)

1 large red onion, chopped (everything can be roughly chopped, since it'll all go into a food processor later)
1/2 fennel bulb, chopped
1 stick celery, trimmed and chopped
thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
1/2 red chile, de-seeded and chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
bunch basil, chopped
1 T. coriander seeds
2 cloves
1 tsp. black pepper
2 lbs. roma tomatoes, chopped
3/4 c. + 2 T. red wine vinegar
1/3 c. brown sugar

In mortar and pestle, grind up the coriander, cloves, and black pepper.  Add this, along with all the onion, fennel, celery, ginger, chile, and garlic, to a large saucepan and saute 10-15 minutes, until soft.  Add the tomatoes and 1 1/2 c. water; bring to a boil, then simmer until tomatoes break down and the liquid has been reduced by half.  Add basil leaves, mix, then remove from heat, pour into food processor/blender, and whiz until well-blended and pureed.  Put the sauce through a fine-mesh strainer into a clean saucepan, then add the sugar and vinegar (NOTE: I didn't think this was enough vinegar, so I added some cider vinegar as well, to taste), bring back to boil, and simmer until it reaches the consistency of ketchup.  Add salt and pepper to taste, then spoon into sterilized jars.  Close tightly and keep in a cool, dark place – it should keep for up to six months.


*Bet you never heard THAT witticism, or any variation of same, before.
†This is a lie.  I used to eat ketchup constantly when I was a wee little one.  But one day, my great-aunt told my mother that, if I was allowed to wantonly eat ketchup on everything, I wouldn't eat food that didn't have ketchup in it.  So I was cut off from ketchup, and by the time I was allowed to eat it again, I wanted no part of it.  This general sass continues to this day.
§Because this is how normal people think.  Right?  Please say yes.
^This is another lie.  He's not really a hobo.  I think.
¥Science!

THE OL' PESTO CHANGE-O.

Pesto and I have a long and semi-complicated relationship.  I first attempted to make pesto during my senior year of college.  I had given up meat for Lent (a harbinger of things to come?) and a friend and I decided to have a meatless dinner.  I offered to make pesto, and, long story short, it turns out that fresh basil and dried basil aren't the same thing and you can't just straight substitute one for the other in a pesto recipe.  I can't remember what happened to dinner that night; I think my lovely friend gamely tried to eat some, whereas I took one bite, almost threw up, and maybe ordered pizza.

Fast forward some odd number of years, after I had moved to DC and inherited the food processor that my mother took when she left her job (or got as a wedding present – the story varies).  Enough time had passed since the dreaded Pesto Tragedy of 2004 that I felt confident in giving it another go.  Long story short (too late), fresh basil is tasty and my love affair with pesto was born.

Even though my love for pesto has waned a bit over the years, we are still on good terms.  In fact, there is almost always pesto in the freezer, as it is my and The Husband's* go-to dinner option when we are feeling lazy and uninspired and can't be arsed to cook but still want to act like grownups and have something more than cereal for dinner.  However, we sometimes resort to pesto pasta more often that we'd maybe like to admit, which leads to feelings of resentment, which leads to me feeling pretty apathetic towards making pesto, AGAIN, even though I bought the basil and we clearly won't use it in anything else.

That's the problem with pesto and I; pesto often becomes an afterthought.  It's what I make when I have leftover basil (and there is ALWAYS leftover basil).  I never seem to make it because I want to; I make it because basil starts to go bad the second you get it home and I'm tired of wasting food, so I begrudgingly whip some up and then throw it in the freezer and forget about it.

However, tonight I actually wanted to make pesto, if only to replace the unpleasantness that was the lemon basil pesto from a month or two ago (lemon basil has its place, but it's not in pesto).  One of the stalls at the farmers' market yesterday had basil and arugula; it was bag-your-own, so if you could cram it into a bag, it was yours for $3.  After much furtive glancing around the market to ensure that no one was watching as I stuffed already overflowing bags with more and more leaves, I sauntered off with a tidy sum of greens and a hankerin' for some pesto.

I ended up with two types: your standard basil and pine nut (extra garlic, natch) and an experimental version of arugula pesto, this time using toasted pepitas, a bit of spinach (to cut the spiciness of the arugula) and basil oil.  I had some of the arugula pesto on whole wheat fettuccine (with chopped tomatoes and Parmesan) for dinner, and I was terribly pleased with myself.  The rest has been dolloped out into an ice cube tray and popped into the freezer; once it hardens, the individual cubes of pesto are transferred to freezer bags, and voila!  We have single-serving portions for the future.  MAGIC.

(I had taken some photos of the pesto to illustrate the fascinating color differential between the basil and arugula versions, but the basil pesto looked thoroughly unappetizing; I tried to adjust the color, but fixing the basil meant that the arugula looked radioactive.  So, instead, I offer you this photo of our cat, Pannekuchen.  He is lounging on our copy of "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," so this photo is relevant to my post and I'm only partially cheating.)

Let's be honest: he is a cat, and this is the internet.  This will always be relevant.

Next up, a long and rambling story about mouse books and the resulting obsession with scones.

*In Wyomingese: The Husband and I's.

THE PROBLEM WITH BLOGGING: I SOMETIMES FORGET TO BLOG (PLUS A RATHER LONG STORY IN WHICH I ANTHROPOMORPHIZE CORN)

Here's the interesting thing about blogging: you need to remember to actually write things, otherwise you're less a blogger and more a lazy person who happens to have a blog.  And laziness will not net me a book deal, nor will it bring me fame and wealth and UNSPEAKABLE POWER.  So, I need to get kraken.  I mean, cracking.

cracker?

All right, so I don't have any recipes per se, because I am not-so-good with remembering those sorts of details when I'm in the midst of cooking.   I also don't have any photos, because (a) I am too impatient to dig out my camera and waste precious moments between the food being ready and the food being in my stomach, and (b) my camera (or our lighting) gives everything a yellowish tint, and I don't want you thinking that all of our food is afflicted with jaundice.  (Given these qualifications, I am clearly well on my way to food blogging success.)

BUT, I do have a story.  A story of meat, and corn, and one woman's attempt to learn from the mistakes of others and make a damn fine meal for herself.

The Husband had decided to skitter off and feign interest in professional sports, so I was left to my own devices for dinner.  Since I would be dining alone (so, so alone), it seemed like as good a time as any to tackle the pork ribs that had been sitting in the freezer.  (NOTE: Yes, I am usually a vegetarian.  It was one of the three or four times a year when my bloodlust rises up and can only be satiated by hunks of sweet, tender flesh.  Stop judging me.)  I had also just received a shipment of mole powder, so the choice was obvious: braised pork mole.  In addition to the spices and chiles, I decided to add some Roman beans (because we have too many beans - seriously, I HAVE PROBLEMS) and – this is where it gets interesting – some posole.

My friend Soups has written about her adventures with posole, so I thought I knew what I was getting myself into.  I bought pre-treated corn (it said CORN FOR POSOLE right on the bag), I soaked it overnight, and I planned on an extended cooking time.  After making up a sauce with garlic, onions, roasted chiles, Mano y Metate's Pipian Rojo mole powder, tomatoes, tomatillos, and vegetable broth, I quickly seared the ribs, threw everything (pre-soaked beans and posole included) into a pot, and boshed it into the oven at 300 degrees.  After four hours, I removed the pork to a cutting board to cool, then moved the entire operation to the stove, where it simmered for an hour.  I de-boned and cut the pork (more like pulled apart the pork, since it was so tender and fall-off-the-bone and buttery and it all sort of made me question this whole vegetarian thing).  I popped the pork chunks back into the mix, salted and peppered, and let the whole shebang cook for another hour.

Now, at this point, it was 7pm.   I was starving.  I took a taste.

The pork was still fantastic.
The beans retained a bit of their meaty texture, but still melted in your mouth.
The mole sauce had just the right amount of bite and sweetness, with some smokiness from the roasted chiles.
The posole...?

The posole was crunchy.

SIX HOURS.  That's how long it had been cooking.  Six hours of roasting and simmering and filling the apartment with delicious aromas, and still the posole taunted me.

Now, under normal circumstances I would have left the posole to simmer all night if I had to, all the while muttering dire threats and suggesting that, if the food didn't cooperate, I could not be held responsible for what might happen.  But I had bar trivia obligations in two hours, still hadn't showered, and needed to eat something, as English pubs are not known for their vegetarian-friendly fare. 

So, I gave in.  I ate the crunchy posole.

Overall, it wasn't terrible.  Apart from the chewy bits, the whole thing was quite tasty; I originally ate it over rice, but it was even better the next day with a hunk of crusty sourdough bread.

The score so far: posole 1, Heather 0.  But I still have a lot of posole left, as well as three other mole powders and a hill of beans.  And a pressure cooker. 

There will come a time when our paths will cross, posole, and I assure you: I do not intend on being defeated again.