Food

  • Food,  Thoughts

    Thoughts of 6+ Months of Being Vegetarian

    Two years ago I spent a week as a vegetarian. We were still living in Florida at that time and Chris had been sent to work in New Jersey for a week. I’d been toying with the idea of being a vegetarian for awhile, mostly because I’d become interested by learning from my friend Eliana who went from being a vegetarians to becoming a vegan, and I wanted to give it a whirl. Chris being gone seemed to make it a perfect time to put it all on trial. The week was spent well and I learned a lot, mostly that I could be a vegetarian and it wasn’t nearly…

  • Food

    In the Kitchen | Orange Marmalade

    A coworker gave us a bag of oranges from a tree in her backyard. I thought Chris might make juice with it since he made juice with oranges from natural areas in Florida, but apparently those were sour and made for orange-ade’s and these, well, these were for making marmalade. He spent half of last Saturday researching recipes and watching YouTube videos before making a batch. He had to re-cook it a bit because the first round didn’t gel, but it worked out! Now we have jars of marmalade for a good while!

  • Food,  Gardening

    Bounty

    I wasn’t expecting to have this much of a harvest last Thursday. It started raining around 4pm, a heavy rain, one that I was hoping would refill the rain barrel. I was glad I didn’t have to water as the last time I went the well had run dry, spitting air out instead of water and twisting the hoses around like one of those old 80s water games. I started poking around not expecting much but I’d lift a giant zucchini leaf to find a fruit waiting to be harvested, and cucumbers cautiously hiding behind leaves. It was a surprise every time I went to a new bed, finding more…

  • Food

    Pickles and a Carrot Cake

    Now that we are starting to harvest cucumbers we are turning to pickling them. I’ve made a recipe of my grandmother’s before, my mom’s mom, and I love it. Chris is branching out and trying some other recipes. The one in the photos below are a type of Claussen apparently. I didn’t take photos but I made two jars from a recipe of my other grandmother, my dad’s mom, that I found amidst fluttering sheets of paper tucked into an old, red Betty Crocker cookbook. Chris’ birthday was last week so I made him his favorite cake, carrot cake. Honestly I do not like carrot cake but this recipe was…

  • Food

    Eggplant Parmesan Sandwiches

    I can’t take credit for this recipe. Our field boss made these for us last spring at the Big Thicket project and ever since they have become a favorite. I didn’t grow up eating eggplant, in fact I only really ate it for the first time a few years ago. This is a very tasty dish, easy and for the most part healthy. Things you need: +Ciabatta buns or your favorite bread +Eggplant +Large slicing tomato +Good mozzarella, not the sliced kind. +Basil leaves +Olive Oil and spices to taste +Other condiments as necessary but it is not needed Slice, spice and grill the eggplant and tomatoes until tender. Apparently…

  • Food

    A Week of Food

    I think a few people, Katie specifically, who were interested in what we made for our dinners since we pre-plan right now. Here’s a sampling of our meals for the past week: We kicked off with homemade pizza last week. Chris used a dough recipe he found in a cookbook from the library, a recipe we really love. I think it would even be a great flatbread/dipping bread, too. He made two crusts for us to each have our own pizzas the way we wanted them. He had a little extra dough so he made a few mini pesto pizzas to much on. Very good! A few weeks ago we…

  • Food,  Thoughts

    Food and other Thoughts

    When we moved in Chris and I decided we’d start planning our weekly meals out in an effort to safe money and not to waste food. So far we have done well and I’ve enjoyed doing what we’ve planned. Our one night out to eat is on Wednesdays and we look forward to that. I’m sure we will be a little more hectic once Chris finds a job and we both have to come home tired from work, but right now I have house-husband so I normally have a meal ready or nearly ready to eat when I get home from work. Yes, it is nice! He did tell me…

  • Food

    How-To Eat a Mangosteen

    We’d stopped by Central Market, a grocery store that is a bit like Whole Foods but with some Trader Joe’s and other indie food type stores mixed in, last week to pick up some things for my mom’s birthday. They have a good coffee selection so that was our main goal but while perusing the fruit and vegetable section we spotted mangosteens. Our first encounter with mangosteens was while living in Florida when Chris began reading about them to grow. They are a super tropical plant that really cannot be grown anywhere in the continental U.S. and even Hawaii has problem growing them. You can read more in detail here…

  • Food

    How-To | Homemade Butter

    I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. My mom used to make it when she taught preschoolers and many blogs out there talk about making homemade butter. Most places I read said it would take 10-20 minutes but it took me an hour. I think separating it into two jars was the trick. You should give it a try sometime. PS: Find a good movie to watch while doing this

  • Food,  Thoughts

    The Vegetarian Conundrum

    I’d of thought that with vegetarianism and veganism being much more prevalent and accepted these days it wouldn’t be difficult for people to grasp the concept or get orders correct. It seems that it is increasingly common for wait staff and/or kitchen staff to continually screw up my order. I mean, really how hard is “no meat”. I didn’t say “no guac, no onions, no meat, no cheese”. Just one thing was taken out. I want everything else. That pasta I ordered? I want the pasta with everything but the meat. Instead I got a kid sized order of pasta without meat. I didn’t say re-size my pasta. I *don’t*…