And Yet, More Cheese

12/15/12 Fromagination

~Manchester, goat, VT
Creamy, light goaty taste, buttery w/ crumbly texture.

~Goat Chedder, goat, CO
14-16 months. Sweet, crumbly, easy cheddar taste.

~Midnight Blue, goat, CO
Very blue. Earthy blue instead of sour.

~Comte Com Frumae (sp?)
Original alpine cheese, used for fondue.

~Petite Frere w/ Truffle, cow, WI
Sort of a cream chese flavor, plus the sour-sweet of orange-lemon marmalade, mighty tasty.

~Marieke Gouda w/ Clove & Cumin, cow, WI
Like eating Christmas. Smoky, airy, festive.

12/21/12 Fromagination

~Vintage Van Gogh, this we bought
Salty, buttery & creamy.

~Ocooch Mountain Sheep, Westby, WI
Sharp.

~4-6 month-old Marieke Gouda, Jersey cow, WI
Mineral taste.

~Europa, Litchfield, CT, 6 months
Too sharp and mealy.

~Casa Bollo Mellage, 2 months
Delicious as always, but not what I was looking for.

~Delice, cow, Burgundy, France
Light, salty, young  fresh. Very sweet.

~Mt. Tam, cow, Petaluma, CA
Mushroomy, thick w/ flavor.

That's all for now, next will be our Christmas & Christmas Dinner Menu!

xoxoxo,
Kim & Emmy

NH part 5: Heading Home

I'm going to start this (the last, I swear) post by mentioning just how much I hate Illinois. Every darn state I had to drive through had something about it to dislike.

New Hampshire has crazy twisty-turny roads. Massachusets is just, well, toll-happy. New York is boring and the Berkshires are just mad. Pennsylvania is long and boring. Cleveland is in-f-ing-sane. Ohio is long and boring and there's nothing to see. Indiana is duller than an empty hatbox. And Chicago, ohhhh Chicago. From Gary, IN to the Wisconsin/Illinois border that whole stretch of 90westbound is just gross. And I meant it. Gross. Just gross. The amount of factories packed into one region makes the whole place just stink to high heaven. And I do mean stink. We stopped at a tollbooth just south of Chicago's sky bridge and when I rolled down the window I nearly gagged. The air was so toxic it literally, and I am not kidding you, smelled like sick. We changed the car's air intake and sped on, barely gazing as the city spires loomed out of a smog cloud so thick we couldn't even see them until they were directly in front of us.

As we drove this road I found myself thanking what gods I knew of that Emmy and I live in the fresher, cleaner Madison, WI. Sure, Wisconsin has it's faults too: cows, corn, and tree farms are all you'll see when driving around here, but at least it doesn't smell like 2-day-old mini-bar baked under a hot sun.

So on the way back I'm afraid we didn't eat much of anything interesting. All the food we had packed was used up, though we did devour the rest of the maple candies and some of the fudge. Just about the only food I can remember is what we ate at the Marriott hotel in downtown Cleveland. How we got to the Marriott is an interesting story.

About 30 minutes outside of Cleveland we set the GPS (Annie) to find us the Day's Inn. A cheap but decent national brand, I thought. After exiting the highway far south of the city, we drove past three car dealerships and several (as I thought at the time) bars. They weren't bars. Turned out we'd driven into the skeeziest area of town. Strip clubs and adult superstores everywhere. The hotel might once have been the Day's Inn but now it was the "Airport Plaza Hotel", $55 a night. The "club" attached to this "hotel" was rocking some bass music so loud I could feel it in my jaw several hallways away. There was even a sign behind the counter that warned pool-goers that half the pool was walled in glass "For the entertainment of the club patrons".

Ew. Just. Ew.

Now in my defense, we had just gotten off a 12 hour drive spanning 3 states and it was 11:00pm. We were bushed. Completely exhausted. Upon getting to the room we discovered that the fire alarm was hanging out of an enormous hole in the wall, the sheets had cigarette burns all over, the bathroom tile was cracked and limey, the carpet was gross, there was another huge hole in the bathroom door, the alarm clock didn't work, and both dressers were broken. I turned to Emmy and said "If we stay here, darling, my car will be stolen by morning. Let's go."

55 dollars I'm never going to see again. Oh, well. Sometimes safety and peace-of-mind is worth a little extra. We packed up all our gear once more and sped out of there like we were being followed by demons. After another GPS-kerfufle, which involved Annie leading us through the sketchiest part of Cleveland's dockside imaginable, we turned up a hill and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by glitz, glam, and some very sleek-looking buildings. Somehow we'd landed in the heart of Cleveland itself.

Marble floors. Huge Christmas trees. Wall-to-wall wreaths larger than me. Marble columns. Uniformed staff. People in suits and ball gowns everywhere. I had left Emmy in the little drop-off circle and so I approached the front desk.

"How much for two adults?"
"One bed or two?"
"It doesn't matter."
"We've got a double queen on the 22nd floor for $220."
"Oh. Ah, alright, do you know anywhere nice in the neighborhood for around $150?"
"We can do it for $149."
"Sold! Give me the room."

I ran out to a sleepy Emmy and she bravely gaurded the car and waved the room keys at her. "We're staying." "How much is it?" I told her the original price and I swear she paled down to this sort of grey color. I told her I'd gotten it for less and that we were going to the hotel's secure underground parking garage, where Baby would be safe all night. "Over there." I waved across the street to an enormous statue and fountain that literally took up a whole city block. "Under that."

We parked right by the elevators and enjoyed the beautiful, clean room with all our hearts. Dinner down at the bar, where a wedding party was camped out, determined to get drunk but equally as determined not to ruin there clothes. The new husband sort of looked like a tool. Emmy and I passed the time before our cheese pizza came Sherlocking the bar patrons, trying to guess their professions, likes and dislikes. Between us that pizza was gone in about five minutes. Breakfast was waffles, strawberries, scrambled eggs (E), and bacon. Smothered in maple syrup.

On our way out we tipped a young man (Josh? Jacob?) who helped us find an obscure ATM and left a tip for housekeeping as well. Emmy might have felt intimidated by our ruffled appearance and the granduer of the hotel, but we'd spied a couple other people in jeans and I knew that even if you can't tip much, you just tip. It's the right thing to do. Baby took a little roaring to get started (fixed now, thank god), and we were off to Wisconsin!

And so ends the account of our journey to New Hampshire and back again.
A couple more posts to make and then a Christmas post in a day or so and I'll be all caught up before the new year! Yay!

xoxoxo,
Kim & Emmy

NH part 4: Thanksgiving

Well, as we turn toward Christmas I have the last post to make about our Thanksgiving vacation. I do have to admit that I was mainly focused on family that Thursday, and as such I don't have an accurate account of what Mom & Dad cooked for us. But here's what I do remember:

On our belated Thanksgiving Day, Mom, Kath, Kath's sweetheart Chris, Emmy, and I all went on a short hike up Rattlesnake Hill/Mountain near Sandwhich, NH while Dad stayed at home preparing dinner. Kath had to get to work that afternoon for a short shift, so we had to make the hike an early one. We were the only ones on the cold, sometimes icy, trail and despite a chill wind our exertions quickly warmed us. Kath and I stayed close for most of the hike, talking mostly about hiking, what she thought she might do after school, and the appropriate clothing for winter and fall hiking. I felt closer to her than I had in a long time, and I also felt keenly interested in her future choices, since she was about to enter a section of her life that I had just finished with; the initial establishing of oneself after college.

Emmy and I made one more stop at Mill Falls in Meredith, NH on our way home. We got maple candy and maple-walnut fudge at Lee's Candy Kitchen, the only NH-local products, and then headed home for Thanksgiving.

Along with Kath and Chris, we were joined by my Aunt&Uncle from Hopkington, NH. It was a merry gathering, and I did go up for seconds, though it was mostly mashed potatoes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember there being

Mashed potatoes
Turkey
Stuffing x2, vegan (for Kath&Chris), and non-vegan
Green beans? (There was a vegetable, I wish I could remember what it was.)
Gravy
STICKY BUNS (We will discuss these soon, I promise.)
Pie
Ice cream
Hard cider (local, NH)
Wine (white, Prairie Fume, from Wollershiem Winery, Prairie Du Sac, WI)
Cranberry sauce

Although I'm certain this isn't a complete list. I'm not a stuffing or a side person, as evidenced by my plate filling up with turkey, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce, so I'm afraid I didn't pay attention to them very well. I do have to say, however, that when Dad took the effort to mention he'd gone down to the local co-op (I had no idea we had a co-op) and gotten a local hard cider, my heart swelled with pride. It still does, too, just to think about it. At the table there was much talk over the sticky buns, how no one dares change Dad's recipe, how I've been slowly perfecting it in my years since college, how the West Coast half of the family doesn't bother making them anymore, etc, etc. I was cautioned not to let a secret this good out into the world wide web, but I can't honestly hold back that recipe. The world needs to know. This year and last year Dad added a splash of a mystery ingredient, but said that nobody had guessed it last holiday season.

At this point Emmy takes her first bite and says, quite lightly, "Ah, vanilla."

Dad agreed that it was and Emmy felt rather proud of herself, too, for having such a refined palate. :)

xoxoxo,
Kim & Emmy
 

NH part 3: Boston Town

Let's see if I can lighten the mood in here...

So on Wednesday Emmy and I woke up abysmally late in the morning, 11am. We had a 2 hour drive from Meredith, NH to Boston, MA. "No big," I said, "Our day is simple.We'll have plenty of time." And we did.

Now, I have a system for getting in and out of Boston. It is the most brilliant thing in the universe. We drive south on I-93 and get off at exit 31 Wellington. Hang a left and go straight past a park and some shopping until you see the sign for the MTA, Boston's Underground. We found parking ($6 a day) and hopped the Orange Line Inbound for Boston. The best thing about this is that you don't even have to bother with the congested traffic around the old capital city. Which, believe you me, is a big plus.

So after obtaining the some Charlie Cards (so named for the MTA's fare hike protest song "He'll Never Return" in the 1970's, I think), we zipped into town. $15 might have done it for all we had planned to do, but in case we had energy for a 4th activity, I wanted to be prepared. So $20 it was. Boston is a BIG CITY, boasting the New England Aquarium, Logan Airport, and many focal points of historical and literay relevance. This was the home of the original Tea Party, the Boston Massacre, and Make Way For Ducklings. Boston accents are thick and varied, but don't wear a Yankees' cap unless you fancy a confrontation. When people cheer the Red Sox just go with the flow. You may hear a lot about Italian mobs in movies, New York, and Chicago, but the Irish ruled Boston and with good reason. South Boston was a concentrated Irish neighborhood before the installation of the highway brought new diversity to the area.

First stop: Harvard Square & the Harvard Museum of Natural History
Down the Orange Line, over a stop or two on the green, and then up the red line (I think I've got the colors right) to Cambridge and Harvard Square. That's right, Harvard school, the famous one. Built or founded by John Harvard, the campus swarmed with all the normal-looking varieties of young students carrying oversized backpacks, and with tours going on in German, Korean, and Russian. Across the main square of campus and past a monumental cathedral, we found our way easily to the Museum. The Harvard Museum of Natural History has more variety and size of any taxidermy museum in the world. Dinosaurs, sea creatures, giant lobsters exceeding 2 feet in length, a North American exhibit, and various other regions were on display including: Afrian, South American, Mammalian, and the giant hanging whale skeletons from the museum's cieling. I loved the tigers, the snow leopard, and the grey wolf. Emmy was facinated by everything, but she really like the whales, dinosaurs, and also the tigers. A couple savage-looking monkeys made us steer clear of their cases, though.
Harvard really just looks to me like any other New England college, especially with its red brick and small windows, just like my old school in Keene, NH, so I never feel out of place visiting.

Second stop: Fire & Ice, early dinner
I should mention that we finally arrived in the city around 1pm, so now it was about 4pm. Instead of hopping back on the T to Arlington's green stop, we beat it back across Harvard Square and down a row of shops to a specialty flat-top-grill establishment that sits under the very streets we had just come from. Fire & Ice is a choose-your-own and I highly reccomend it. You can choose whatever toppings you want, mix and match your sauces, and then they'll fry it all up for you right there. The ingredients are top quality and never frozen or salted, like at Hu Hot or Flat Top Grill (both here in Madison, WI), and therefore far superior

E: Chicken, egg noodles, rice noodles, bacon, pineapple, green pepper, green onion, white onion, garlic, broccoli bits, fried rice. Sauce: mango garlic & peach bourbon BBQ.
Fruity, a little spicy & the noodles & rice gave it good texture. As a first-timer I may have gone a little overboard on the ingredients. Ate mine in a warmed flour tortillas--very tasty.

K: Top sirloin, bow-tie noodles, a little red onion, pineapple chucnks. Sauces: Yakatori, jalapeno lime, & hoisin ginger.
Open & colorful atmosphere. All you can eat, too. 1-bowl lunch special for earlier patrons, usually a dinner place, they have Sunday brunch hours as well. Salad and ice cream bars. My food is sweet with a little heat, very savory with just enough spice.

Third & final stop: Quincy Market
Coming off the Aquarium stop in the blue line of the T, we headed away from the water to be met with a 3-story Christmas tree and a long parade of lighted trees and strung lights. Beautiful. It was cold and dark now but that didn't stop us from shopping for artwork or getting black raspberry ice cream at one of the Market's many food shops.

8pm.
Finally get back the car & rev her up to wake her up (I've since learned what this problem is, don't worry), and we got back onto the not-busy highway and headed home. All told? Easy, quick, and with just enough time to have fun and do what we came to do. If you want my advice never plan for more than 4 stops on the T, and only 1 museum per day, since standing rather than walking can play more hell on your feet.

Next I'll post about our Thanksgiving!

xoxoxo,
Kim & Emmy

NH part 2: Tuesday at the Common Man

Maybe it's just because I'm a native-born New Hampshirite, but I just love everything about this place. Last Tuesday was fab to the max! Emmy and I slept for what felt like fifty-bajillion hours and then we were up and out to the spa!

SPA DAY WHOO-HOO

So when I was a wee lassie of general high school age Mom and us girls would pile into the van and go for a day at the spa. I'm not sure why Mom & Dad started making this a near-annual Christmas gift, but it always made up for not having as many presents under the tree as we got older. This particular spa is first rate, and not very far from "home" either.

The Common Man Inn & Spa in Plymouth, NH. Oh my fardles, you have to go. You've just got to. Every other year or so we (used to, maybe the NH family still does) go up there for our Thanksgiving feast, instead of making it at home. Yes, it's got a north-woodsy theme going on, but mostly in the way of flowing birches, and close, comfortable architecture and soft piano music. Emmy and I stuffed our jackets and backpacks away into white pine lockers and scurried off to take a dip in the hot tub.

By the time we arrived my sisters had already entered the special swirl tub, with a genuine waterfall feature that splashed down a rockwall had filled the tub with suds nearly a foot high. There are a couple photos somewhere of us all bobbing around, four heads in a sea of fluffy white. Then, our massage. Emmy and I got the Destressor, a quick 30-minute job with lavender-scented lotion. Emmy spent those 30 minutes in a new kind of heaven. I spent them, of course, talking about eating locally and sustainably to my massage technician. I think I might need an intervention.

After that, Emmy and I lounged in the padded wicker couches and toured the event hall facilities (we're thinking of having our wedding there) while the sisters got their Destressors and Mom got her toes done. Pure bliss.

Oh, but it got better.

We all piled into the car once more, this time with Emmy and I picking up Kath's boyfriend at their apartment. She dropped off her early Christmas present (a vegan cookbook), E and I met the kitties Audi & Enzo, and then we all squished back into Kath's Honda and drove south-ish to the Common Man Restaurant, in Ashland, NH.

By the by, the Common Man is a chain that runs the length and breadth of New Hampshire, with the company owning inns, restuarants, spas, ski lodges, and more. If it's got the Cman brand, you know it's good.

Dad graciously treated all us hungry kids and Mom to dinner and we all ate like kings (except with silverware).

Common Man: Ashland, NH
~Chicken Nachos, appetizer
Spiced & heaped nacho fixings.
~Camp Crackers, appetizer
Very cheesy, crunchy, & thin flatbread. Gorgonzola & mozerella chz.

K: Apple Chicken
Very moist chicken. Walnut-encrusted w/ cheese & baked apple slices w/ maple syrup on. Not overly sweet. Garlic mashed potatoes & whipped sweet potatoes.

E: Pork Sliders
Pulled pork on silver dollar garlic biscuits, dabbed w/ blueberry glaze. Such an interesting marriage of flavors. Delight fully complex. Side of coleslaw, pretty good.

~Tuckerman pale ale, from a local NH brewery
Very like the WI Spotted Cow from New Glarus brand. Bitter & light.

~Baked Apple, dessert
Like apple pie w/o the crust. Oh my god. Oh. My. Godddddd.

Have we convinced you yet?
Take a look at their website!

xoxoxo,
Kim & Emmy

Next up, Wednesday.

New Hampshire pt 1: Heading East

So I guess what I actually meant was that, as it turned out, I wouldn't open my laptop again until we arrived back home in Wisconsin. Sorry about that, folks!

After Emmy arrived home from work at 9:30pm on Saturday night we bundled ourselves and our gear into Baby (my '96 Toyota) and hit the road by midnight. As a night-shifter, I drove the 7.5 hours down to Cleveland, OH by myself, in the dark. For the ride we had what was left over from our apples, clementines, and sandwhich fixings to tide us over. We switched drivers on the East-bound side of Cleveland (I'm better in high-traffic situations) and I proceeded to get some shut-eye.

Not much shut-eye, as it happened. Turns out, I can't sleep in the car, at least in Baby, who rattles a bit in the wind and as a 1996 model, wasn't exactly designed with sleeping comfort in mind. A pillow and a blanket did nothing to help. I woke up about 1.5 hours later to discover that I had missed PA entirely, and we were now entering south-western NY. I just couldn't sleep any more. The weather was getting flurried and we were approaching Buffalo, so I took over driving once again.

Hungry and past caring about the travel budget I suggested simply plugging in the city and selecting what ever restaurant appeared first that sounded interesting. Well, after driving through sudden deep (lake-effect) snow, a harbor, an industrial complex, a sleek business center, and past an enormous rolling graveyard, we failed to find the restaurant Annie (my rather stupid and three-years-out-of-date GPS interface) had attempted to direct us to. I turned Annie off and we just cruised around until I spotted a place that looked likely to serve a decently priced lunch that wouldn't be made of burger or fries.

What ended up catching my eye was Tokyo II. I wanted Indian food, but Emmy protested on the grounds that we still had 9 hours or so more to drive and she didn't want to have a stomach emergency half-way to Albany. Japanese, and the thought of stopping along the highway with naught but the roll of emergency toilet paper tucked away somewhere in the region of the backseat for comfort quickly won me over.

Emmy's meal:
Green tea. I had my doubts, but it was really good. Loose-leaf, perfectly brewed. Rich yellow-green color, full-bodied, slightly nutty flavor which was reminicent of sunflower seeds. I'd guess a Chinese green from the nuttiness, but don't quote me on that. I could drink a whole pot of this.
Harumaki. Tip-of-the-tongue spicy. Slightly eggy outside, tender chicken & greens inside. Nice w/ the sweet sauce as a side, but I prefered it by itself. Parsley & M.Cherry garnish. (Needless to say E ate both of the garnishes, she's adorable like that.)

Kim's meal:
Chicken teriyaki. Unlike my last chicken teriyaki in almost every respect (that was the Traveler's Hearth, as you recall). This one was juicy (not dry), decently flavored, with most of the sauce available on the side for dipping at my leisure. Sticky white rice was also in evidence, a fact I quite happily enjoyed. My side was miso soup, of a rather thick broth and very tiny tofu chunks. When I was young I usually ate the broth and avoided everything else. But my hunger and adult palette pushed me to eat everything in the bowl, which I did. It was also delicious, and nothing was over-salted. A miracle today. Warm and hearty with the affore-mentioned green tea, we had an excellent, quiet lunch. (They do chef-prepared meals at the table, too, in case you ever want to check it out for yourself.)

Onward we went. I had made a phone call to some family by Albany and so our drive across New York in the blinding snow was made better by knowing that comfortable beds were 4 hours closer than they had previously been. My Aunt & Uncle served us food and we compensated for the short notice by sharing our special WI products I mentioned in the previous post.

Dinner in Delmar, NY.
White-bean chili with ground chicken. Clementine pieces. Holiday nuts to crack at the kitchen table. Cracker Barrel cheese and a supermarket's cheddar. Cranberry juice. Their new dog, Rusty, nosing around in search of scraps. Warm, safe, and happy on a snowy evening, one could hardly ask for anything more. But the drive wasn't over yet. Chili returned at breakfast at my request, though exhausted from a 20-hour day, I'm sad to say I slept till noon Monday.

Baby stalled in the driveway but we got her going again pretty quick (one more repair on my ever-elastic list. Won't this car ever just run?) and headed out. We opted to go over the mountains and forgo the rest of the toll road that would lead us down to Springfield, MA and from there up I-93. As we marched up and down and up and down steep hills that I hadn't seen in a very long time, I began to notice all the empty farmstands by the road as soon as we left Troy, NY. These farmstands, I knew, would be occupied all during the warmer months of the year and many small farmsteads had signs by the road saying that not only were they open, but still selling local meats, eggs, and some produce and cheeses. I felt happy and proud to understand the landscape in this way, to see the patchwork family farms of eastern NY and all of VT as less than a quaint novelty (as I had seen it in childhood) and more as a diverse and counter culture to the big agri-businesses of the Midwest. This was a significant shift in thinking.

The drive took us at a steady 55mph around some frightening hairpin turns with zero shoulder and even less room for error. We crested a rise with a Scenic Lookout somewhere east of the Appalachian Trail (I had promised myself I'd pickup any hikers if I saw them, and drop them off at the nearest town, and so had made an effort to know when we'd be crossing paths with the Trail) and I cried to Emmy, "Be my eyes, darling! See for me!" (Something I'd begun to say in Cleveland and repeated several times over the course of the trip, usually as I was white-knuckled and staring down the road ahead like a professional race-car driver, so at least one of us would get to see the view.)

Keene, NH. My college town. I knew the place by heart, since I'd walked most of it.

Prime Roast, coffee.
E: It's A Bloody White-Out. White chocolate, expresso, raspberry flavoring. Reminded Emmy of specialty chocolate and me of care-free days strolling down Main St and looking into the shop windows at trinkets I couldn't afford.
K: Fast White Banana. I substituted white chocolate for dark here, mostly because I figure that if bananas taste good dipped in chocolate fountains, why not covered in chocolate and whizzed with expresso? Again, a college favorite. The place has always featured local arts and crafts and has an excellent atmosphere.

By now it was dark, so we hiked all the way back to place we'd left the car and our dinner order, Athens Pizza. There is no better pizza joint in the world and I'm prepared to hike Monadnock in an Athens t-shirt to prove it. I already knew what to order so everything was waiting by the time we got back.

The familiar smells and sounds of college wafted back over me. Workers chatting over their stations, the hostess greeting everyone with a big smile, and the owner coming out in his apron to talk to a couple of older patrons seated not far from us about some goings-on in town. Bathrooms clean and immaculate, food swiftly and deliciously prepared, and TV's on, but thankfully muted, carried the news.

Athens Pizza, ie, the best food ever.
Steak and cheese 12-inch sub. Just cheese and meat, no mayo or onions. I must resign myself that every other steak&cheese I ever eat will simply be inferior to this one. I can't tell you what it is, time, love, or spices, but Holy Cow, does it ever work.
Garlic bread, with cheese. Between the two of us, Emmy and I ate all but one square of the garlic bread, including each and every stray bit of steak that escaped the sub bun. It was all so good I think I might recomend a visit from the "Diners, Drive-ins, & Dives" TV show. This place is certainly worthy of mention.
Athens, I don't know what your secret ingredient is, but don't ever change. This restaurant currently sits in my place of highest and most esteemed praise.

That being said, the rest of the drive was a cinche and we arrived in time to sample the rest of Dad's home-made mac&cheese w/ bread-crumb topping. Yum.

Food book-ends our travels together; snacks to help us on the road, and dinner waiting on a kitchen table, the lights of which stream out from the windows, all yellow and golden, and beckon us ever onward. Ever home.

Kim & Emmy

That Belated Thanksgiving Post

So you're probably wondering (or not, that's cool, too) where we've been since the last time I posted a month ago. I don't have much of a good excuse, except to say that Emmy and I have been avoiding restaurants and expensive things so we could spend all our money on gas and fancy food in Boston next week. That's right, Emmy and I are packing up the car on Saturday night and speeding off to New Hampshire to spend a belated Thanksgiving with my folks.

A couple things before I head off to my last night of work, though. I'd like to share with you our (very small) personal Thanksgiving menu, and the menu of Wisconsin Terrior that we're bringing home to share with the family. I would also like to add that I've discovered that I'm not a fan of acorn squash, raw cranberries are cool, and that my weight has finally dropped down to 132 lbs!

Thanksgiving, for those of you who don't know, is an American holiday that is a combination of the traditional Pagan harvest holiday and an homage to the first feast held by the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth in the eastern state of Massachusets. Thanksgiving didn't become a national holiday until the mid 1800's, under President Lincoln. For a long time, though, it was seen in the American South to be a Yankee occasion, and it wasn't celebrated. For the Native Americans, Thanksgiving is known as the National Day of Mourning, to remind us that the genocide and racism that began with the first colonies at Plymouth and Jamestown still continues today. No actual record of the actual harvest feast at Plymouth survives, but we can guess that they ate fowl, eel, squash, maize, venison, and a few local fruits. Today's menu of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and stuffed turkey seem a far cry from what was available in 1621, but our menu has had industrilization to contend with.

Now, let's take a moment to talk about WWI and WWII for a second. I believe in my previous post about the Eat Local Challenge that I mentioned most local foods were produced by Victory Gardens after WWII. America and the other nations involved in those wars had a long time to think about how best to get what was at the time very fresh, very perishable, and not very portable food all the way across the ocean and into the hands of the soldiers fighting all across Europe and the South Pacific. That's when this whole hullaballoo about processed foods got started. And then? Well, the War ended and those processing companies didn't want to go out of business, so they turned right around and started marketing campaigns to get those processed foods out of their warehouses and into the kitchens of the 50's American Housewife. That's right, "I Love Lucy"'s time period was the height of processed food culture, and it's gone down a little bit since. So, if you want to blame anybody for this whole Evil Processed Food Culture, blame Hitler.

But back to Thanksgiving. Did you know that the typical cultural menu for turkey day is a mostly-New England menu? Turkey run wild in the NE backwoods, pumpkin squash are a very Native American food, and cranberries could probably have been found in some of the backbogs of Massachusets. No wonder the Southerns thought it was a Northern holiday!

At last, our mini-menu. I regret to say, as a foodie, that we didn't do anything particularly sha-zam or wow this year, but that's mostly because we're having a bigger family feast in New Hampshire next Thursday.

Menu:
~Rotisere (sp?) chicken
~Canned cranberry sauce
~Mashed Idaho potatoes
~Pillsbury buttermilk rolls
~Prairie Fume, a white WI wine
~Apple cider, from PA

As you can seen, everything we ate was processed and only the wine was local. Ech. I'm not doing that again, but it suited our schedule and our budget this year, so I won't complain too loudly. And now we have lots of left-overs for the drive out tomorrow.

Wisconsin Terrior. I think I'm beginning to taste what that means, now. There's something heavier, denser, and more meaty about the local flavors. I may pick up local cranberries and cheese curd tomorrow morning, but this is what I have so far:

~Praire Fume, an American Seyval white wine from Praire Du Sac, WI.
This wine was specially bred to survive the tough WI winters, where it can get below -10 degrees F for several days at a time. The Seyval grapes were brought specifically from France 50 years ago and the minerals they bring up from the hills north of the Wisconsin River are very obvious in this first-made wine.
~Cranberrry Mustard, by WI Wilderness Co. bottled in Milwaukee, WI.
The cranberries are from WI, up near Tomah (halfway between Madison and Eau Claire), but unfortunately the mustard isn't. Mustard, as it turns out, is very picky about where it likes to grow, and this mustard is bought and shipped from western Canada.
~Root Beer Mustard, by Sprecher, bottled in Glendale, WI.
Sprecher is a local company famous for their root beer and other sodas. They have restaurants, also. Again, the mustard is from western Canada, and I can't say where the root beer comes from, even though it is made/bottled here in WI. The ingredients do specify, however, that they contain Raw Wisconsin Honey, which I've always found to have a very nice, deep taste. Both mustards were purchased at the National Mustard Museum in Middleton.
~Extra Sharp Chedddar, 3 years old. by Carr Valley Cheese in La Valle, WI.
Cow.
~Caso Bolo Mellage cheese, 2 years old. by Carr Valley Cheese in La Valle, WI.
Goat, sheep, & cow.

That seems to be it for now, though I'd just like to add that Dad shipped me some local Vermont cheese from Shelburne (just south of Burlington) and the taste is completely different from all the cheeses we've sampled here at Fromagination. Just like a wine enthusiast, you really can tell where a different cheese is from. The answer? It's all in the terrior.
~Cheddar, 6 months old.
~Cheddar, 1 year old
~Cheddar, 2 years old.

Holy Cow, www.shelburnefarms.org . Go there. Go there NOW. Their cheese is amazing, go buy some!

See you kids in NH!
xoxoxo, Kim & Emmy

Terroir Wisconsin: Eating Local pt 2

Aaaand we're back!

Didn't want to overload you there with too much information. Okay, Kim, you might say at this point, I now know why eating local is a good idea (and my local library has given me lots of other information also). But how, exactly, does one eat local? Well, I reply, it begins by eating with the seasons. I'd starve! you say. Not at all, what's available in late fall is generally available during the winter, and then there's canning, of course. Not to mention meat and dairy products are available year-round. Canning today isn't strictly necessary, and it's not a matter of life and death, but it does add variety to an otherwise rather regulated diet of apples and squash.

Places to get local food:

~Farmers' Markets
There are way more of these around than there used to be, since there was a serious dip in local food production between the Victory Gardens at the end of WW2 and the local food/foodie interest explosion of recent years. Between those times commercial agriculture has thrived and flourish and, to be quite honest, festered. Farmer's markets don't just have leafy greens, you know. They can have local meats, wines, honey, syrup, oils for cooking, spices, pastas, etc. Pretty much everything you need to stock a pantry, actually. :) A quick Google search will bring up what's available near you.

~Co-ops
Co-ops usually recieve local ingredients, although not everything, and not all the time. It's worth doing a bit a research to see what's available in your area. Then again, some local supermarkets may also carry what you're looking for, too. In Madison the Willy Street Co-op and Metcalfe's (sp?) are two examples.

~CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)
These are, as far as I understand it, sort of like doing a dedicated mail order of food. You sign up with a local farm for a period of anywhere from 3 months to 1 year, and every month/week or so (there are lots of choices). You pay the farmer up front, which is where the risk factor comes in, and then for the given period of time you can come and pick up your food at the drop-off point every few weeks. You get to meet your farmer, give direct feedback, make friends, exchange recipies, and in some places you can even volunteer to assist in the production of your own food or manning the drop-off tent. Be a part of the experience, in other words. You can always ask your local farms if they do CSAs, or if they're a meat farm, whether you can buy a whole/half/quarter of an animal the next time they butcher.

But don't take my advice, go out and find out for yourself! There are plenty of resources on the internet, as well as your local library, where you can discover the hidden possibilities of eating local.

Well, now we know why it's a great idea and where to get pantry-fodder. Some markets even take place in the winter-time and so do some CSA's, so you won't go completely hungry. :)

I've got lots more I'm learning, and a few things I looked into in person while Emmy and I were down at the Dane County Farmer's Market this weekend during our weekly pilgrimage to Fromagination, but I'll save those for next time.
Hope I've piqued your interest! Feel free to leave me a comment below and tell us what eating local is like where you come from!

xoxoxo
Kim & Emmy

Terroir Wisconsin: Eating Local

I want to talk about a couple things with you today, namely, the sudden well of interest I've discovered in myself as far as eating local is concerned. Given that I'm always naming off restaurants and other clues, I may as well just say that Emmy and I live in Madison, Wisconsin, USA (in case that wasn't already clear). For those of you who don't know, we're a few hours north of Chicago, bordered on the west by the mighty Mississippi River, the northwest by Lake Superior, and the east by Lake Michigan. We share state borders with (the non-mitten-shaped part) of Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa. I confess I had to look most of this up (the correct spellings, actually), since I am a New Hampshire native, not a Wisconsinite.

What is terroir, you ask? Good question. Leda Meredith, in her 2010 The Locavore's Handbook: The Busy Person's Guide to Eating Local on a Budget she describes it as follows:

"But there is still something about the concept of 'what here tastes like' that intrigues me. Other places have tastes associated with them. If I say 'Italian food' to you, I bet something comes to mind immediately... Those are place names richly associated witht eh flavors, textures, and aromas connected to their cultures. Why shouldn't our place have a taste? You could say New York City tastes like bagls, or some other food that has become ubiquitous and traces its history to the diverse waves of immigration that came through our port. Those foods do belong in the 'what here tastes like' category, as does the magnificent array of cuisines from every part of the world that reflect how international our city is. But hose tastes do not offer a sensory hold on the agriculture of our region, the particular mineral makeup of our soil-what the French call terroir. I am still discovering what here tastes like."

What does Wisconsin taste like? Not just within a 100 miles of Madison, or even 250; what does Wisconsin taste like, from its shores to its rivers to its hills, the Driftless area, the Big Woods, the orchards of Door County? Can any of you, my hungry friends, tell me what "here" tastes like for you? Sweet, savory, meaty--what?

The question of Wisconsin's terroir came up several weeks ago while I was reading the feature article in that week's Isthmus, the city's weekly free newspaper. A gentleman from the area had, just this past summer, done an eating-local challenge for a whole month. What is an eating-local challenge you ask? It's where you set some serious ground rules, with a minor amount of flexibility built in, that for a certain period of time you will only eat foods made within a certain number of miles from where you live. For example:

The gentleman in the Isthmus' article lived in Madison, WI. His food range was 100 miles and his challenge lasted 1 month.

Leda Meredith, the woman I quoted above, lives in New York City, NY. Her food range was 250 miles and her challenge lasted 1 year.


But Kim, you say; firstly, that's unreasonable. What the heck am I supposed to eat? And secondly, why do it? What's the benefit, and what in pity's name am I going to eat when it snows 3-4 months (or more) out of the year?
Well, I reply, that's the question, isn't it? Let's explore those questions.


WHY:
Now, I'm not going to pretend that I've done a bunch of research on this or anything. I'm just starting to read up on how, since it sounds tasty I'm already sold on the why. To break it down, this is what I've gathered,

~Help the enviornment, a.
Most food in the USA is shipped an average of 1,500 miles or about 3,000 if you happen to live in a secluded area like the upper East Coast. If every family ate one exclusively organic-local meal every week, the potential savings per year for the country are in the billions of dollars. Gas is $3.50-$4 per gallon at the pump right now where I am, I shudder to think about how it's going to rise in the next couple of years. How much gas does one of those double or triple Mack trucks take? I thought so.

~Help the enviornment, b.
Pesticides! I know, I know. Who wants bugs in their food, right? But think about it, in commercial agriculture the bone I have to pick isn't about bugs, it's about poison. Do you want that stuff in your mouth (or your baby, if you're heading that route), your food, your groundwater, your air? Not to mention the run-off is highly toxic or that there's a lot of dirty business involved? (Food Inc anyone?) Buying local and organic cuts down on the demand for pesticides to be used, and it's better for you and the enviornment. Who knew? Check out your local library for more, if you're interested.

~Support small businesses!
Meredith brings up a great point about tax dollars going to farm subsidies that don't benefit smaller, family-owned businesses. So how do you change that when boycotts (and avoiding your taxes, yikes!) don't work anymore? (Avoiding your taxes might have worked for Henry David Thoreau, but it won't work for you, don't do it.)
The answer is to vote. Vote, vote, vote! Vote at the polls and with your fork. If you want to see a larger-scale change on the town or city level then feel free to approach your local town hall/office to see how you can campaign to make a difference. But other than that, remember how I said eating locally saves money? It does, and since you know supporting local farms will put money right back into the community, what better way to invest?
(As we used to say in my college town, "It's Keene to shop locally.")

~Great food :)
The food in your supermarket (the produce section, anyhow) has been bred specifically for hardiness and toughness, not really for flavor. Let me give you an example. Those blueberries you spy in January on the shelf, do they even taste like real blueberries? Compare that to the sweety-tartness of those tiny, wild mountain varieties you can pick yourself. Plus, produce in the supermarket has likely been several days in transit and there's no telling how many times it's been handled or by who. This is what makes diseases and recalls difficult today.
On the other hand food that you find at your local co-op, farmer's market, or get in your CSA share is much fresher (and with a higher nutrient content than their store varieties), possibly even picked that morning. Produce starts to lose its nutritional value the moment it's picked, so shortening the time it takes to get to your mouth/favorite preserving method makes for a tastier treat.


Okay, perhaps I've convinced you, gotten you interested a little, or you're certain I've gone off the deep end into Granola Hippie Land. Emmy promises, at my insistence, that she'll let me know if I ever need an Intervention. :)

Keen on learning more? I sure hope so! Pony on down to your local library to find out more about the benefits, and to check my facts, if you like.

This post is getting a bit long, so I'll split up my replies to those pesky questions. Be right back!
xoxoxo
Kim & Emmy

Only In Wisconsin

So yesterday, as Emmy and I made our weekly pilgrimage, one of the Fromagination employees, Gabriel, a new kid who's taller than any basketball player I've met and has just as much enthusiasm (just in the cheese department) was dressed up for Halloween as cheese. This may not seem like an enormous leap, given his chosen profession, but he had a foam wedge hat on, a full body yellow biking suit on, and a sticker on his cheek that proclaimed him as "Marieke Gouda", a delicious young cheese with lots of bold flavor.

We had great laughs about it and then Priscilla came around to help us, as usual. :)

Again, this post as two weeks' worth of food notes & cheese notes. There are several reasons for this, the first being that Emmy is changing jobs, so training at her first job and then going to work another shift at the job she's leaving has left us both a little ragged. The second being that I've suddenly hit on the Localvore/Locavore subject; more on that later.

For now, cheese from 10/21/12:

~Marieke Gouda, aged 6 years, cow
Very sharp, local, & deliciously crumbly. This is what we got. There was only a half a pound left, and I'm sorry to say this amazing cheese will never be made again. It was the only one of its kind is existence. When we've been eating this we've eaten it in tiny slivers about the size of your thumbnail. Wish I could save some for my folks for Thanksgiving, but I wager it'll be gone by them.

~Sottocenere al Tartufo, cow
Pale taste, with truffles in.

~Wensleydale w/ Cranberry (E's note, & her request to taste)
Sweet, almost a hint of spice. The sweetness is in the cheese itself, not just the cranberry.

Fromagination 10/27/12. This week I specifically as Priscilla for the most local cheeses possible since I've begun to research what it means to be Localvore in southern Wisconsin (Local-vore, literally, eating locally). Priscilla and I aren't natives to the state so it's hard for me to conjure up an immediate mental map when people mention places like Spring Green, Monroe, and others. She did try, though. Turns out the cheesemakers in the area produce a good amount of blue cheeses, as well as cow cheeses.

~Cocoa Cardona, goat, LaValle, WI
Smooth, creamy, rubbed w/ cocoa, slight hint of sweeter chocolate taste. (We purchased this.)

~Cambozola Black Label, cow, Germany
Cave-aged taste. mild blue. very like a brie in texture & creaminess. Tried w/ fig confit. :)

~Hook's Original Blue, cow, Mineral Point, WI
Very acidic, powerful blue.

~Rogue River, cow, California (I think? I'm not sure about its origins)
Intense blue, but not moldy, b/c wrapped in fig leaves & soaked in pear brandy. Tasted w/ pear confit, yum!

So we didn't quite meet our Wisconsin-only goal this week, but I have several stories I'll be posting later today, including our fondue adventure last week, our in-the-near-future breakfast adventure today (We'll be leaving shortly), and what I've been learning about eating local.

See you soon!
Kim & Emmy

Deep-Pan Pizza

Yes, we cook a lot.

This weekend we set out to make pizza. Not just any pizza, the pizza born in Chicago, deep-dish pizza. Did you know that when pizza is advertised in Madison, they advertise flat pizza as New York-style? Our recipie this week came from the Naked Chef's "Jamie's America", which we're currently working our way through. Per Jamie he says that deep-dish pizza was actually the way that the Italian immigrants protected the base of the pizza from the soot of the coal-fired ovens at the time. Who knew?

I won't reproduce the whole recipie here, as I'm sure you can find it yourself on the Food Network, Jamie's website, or just pop on down to your local bookstore. But I will say that I have never seen, or tasted, a better home-made tomato sauce.

~A swig of white wine vinegar (we used mango balsamic, but that's cuz we're cool cats like that)
~1 clove garlic, peels & end removed (I chopped mine into large chunks to make it easier on our dinky little food processor)
~A handful fresh basil leaves (make sure you wash them!)
~1 x 14oz can diced tomatoes
~salt & pepper to taste

To make: add to food processor (mine holds little more than 3 cups max, and it was the perfect size) & puree until smooth-ish. Have a taste & season carefully. Then blitz once more to combine salt & pepper. Season to taste & repeat until seasoning is to your liking. I will be using just this tomato sauce recipie again, especially if Emmy & I do the Eat Local Challenge next summer for putting on pasta. This recipie makes about 2.5 cups.

As for the pizza my only note of advice is that Jamie's recipe makes 2 pizzas. If you don't eat alot, you can get away with halving the recipie easily (just not the amount of yeast needed since those are pre-packaged anyway). You can also omit the fresh chilies if you like, though the dried chilies needed in the sausages are not very spicy when all it said and done.

See you next week for dun-dun-dun Fondue!
xoxoxo
~Kim

 

Dad's Apple Pie

As Hungry Girls we're about more than just eating out and tasting cheese. We make all our own food as much as we can and we're even tossing around the idea of a Local Food Challenge for next summer. Every week I make Southern Sausage Stew, a recipie I picked up from the Naked Chef's American cookbook. Brats, peppers, and stock, what could be better? Barely anything, as it turns out. I've been making that same recipie every week for almost 5-6 months combined, some in the spring, some this fall. But I'm the sort of person who doesn't need to switch around their food often.

So, seeing as how apple season was about to pass us by (Most of WI's apple crop didn't do so well this year, thanks to the drought), we saddled on up to the grocer's to gather some apple pie ingredients! My Dad taught me how to bake, and a great deal was learned from mistakes made in college. I never spent as much time in the kitchen with my Dad as I ought to have, but it turns out I've got the hidden Baking Gene from Dad's side of the family, so it all evens out in the end. Bread rises for me, pie crusts don't tear, and I've got the Sense for when dough is ready (pastry of bread). The following is the recipie Dad recieved from his mother, Nana.

Any changes or additions that I've made since will be in red, while everything copied from Dad's document will be in green. Here goes:

One double pie crust for a 10” pie top and bottom   Preparation Time: 15 minutes, one hour overall

FROM THE KITCHEN OF ROGER SIMMONS

Double Pie Crust

 INGREDIENTS:

 

ITEM	QTY	MEASURE
Water (or skim milk)	5	Tablespoons
Butter (or lard, Crisco, margarine)	1/2	Cup
Salt	1/2	Teaspoon
Flour	1-1/2	Cups

 

DIRECTIONS:

 

1.  Mix flour and salt together.

 

2.  Cut in the fat.  There are several ways to do this.  The easiest is to mix this in a food processor with the steel knives after you have sliced the butter into pats and distributed it throughout the flour salt mix.  Alternatively you can use a pastry cutter.  Or if you have neither of these you can use two sharp knives working against each other.  At the end of the cutting in process the flour/fat mixture should have the consistency of corn meal. I do this with my hands.

 

3.  Add the liquid to the flour/fat mixture.  If mixing by hand make a well in the flour and add exactly the amount of liquid and mix well with a fork.  If using a food processor switch to the mixing knives (usually a blunter plastic set) and add the liquid and then pulse just enough to combine. A fork works just as well.

4.  Divide the amount of dough in half.  Shape each half into a disk and then refrigerate the dough, covered in plastic wrap for one to two hours until chilled and firm.  You can then:

 

            a.  Proceed to the appropriate recipe.

 

            b.  Freeze.

2-5 hours is best, that way you can get the dough literally paper-thin and it won't tear. It may crack around the edges as it gets dry, though, so don't leave it too long. I wrap them in plastic while I go out & run errands. The dough is good to nibble on, too.

 

SOURCE:  My mother gave me this recipe in the mid-80’s as the base for apple pie or a quiche.  I believe that this recipe came out of a Betty Crocker cookbook from the 1950’s.

Easy, right? Of course, now on to the pie part! Tasting is encouraged!

One 10’ double crust Apple Pie   Preparation Time: 30 minutes, 90 minutes overall

FROM THE KITCHEN OF ROGER SIMMONS

 Apple Pie

 

INGREDIENTS:

 

ITEM	QTY	MEASURE
Pie Crust (double)	1
Apples (Large) (Cored, peeled and sliced)	7 - 8
Salt	1	Dash
Flour	1	Tablespoon
Sugar	1	Cup
Cinnamon	1	Teaspoon
Nutmeg	¼	Teaspoon

 DIRECTIONS:

 

1.  Rinse apples and then peel, slice and core them into a large mixing bowl.  I traditionally use Cortland Apples for this recipe as they get soft but not totally mushy like Macintosh nor will they still be crunchy like a Granny Smith.  Feel free to experiment. My theory on this is the tart-to-sweet ratio/content. The more tart the apple, the more likely its chemistry will keep it stiff and crunchy, the more sweet the apple, the more likely the chemistry in it will turn it to sugary mush. I experienced the mushyness this year with the Braeburn (I think) apples we chose. It looks like Cortland are a New England-centric variety, so I encourage you to ask your grocer/local apple-picking stand how to get the perfect consistency. Of course, picking them yourself is always best, and fun outing while the dough is setting in the fridge. :)

 

2.  Remove one pie dough package from the refrigerator.  Using a well floured board, roller and hands roll out the pie dough to cover the well of a 10” pie plate with approximately 1” hanging over on all sides.  Set aside.

 

3.  Mix dry ingredients together and then dump over the apples.  Mix well with a large spoon.  Place the apple mix into the pie plan gently so as not to tear the pie dough.  Pile higher in the center.  Set aside. Taste this. Give everyone you know a taste. DO IT.

 

4.  Remove the other pie dough package from the refrigerator.  Using a well floured board, roller and hands roll out the pie dough to cover the pie plate and apples with approximately 1” hanging over on all sides.  Working carefully drape the pie dough over the pie plate and apples.

 

5.  Trim the pie dough even with the edge of the pie plate. Work around the edge of the pie plate pinching the edges together.  Cut several vents in the center of the pie crust.  Bake at 400 degree F for 50 minutes.  To prevent the juices from over flowing onto the bottom of the oven place a baking pan underneath the pie plate. My pinching technique still sucks. But if you manage to get a very thin crust by leaving your dough in 2-5 hours or longer, DO NOT leave your pie in for the 50 minutes, the crust will be too thin and it will BURN. Make sure that after 30 minutes you are checking the pie frequently.

 

SOURCE:  My mother gave me this recipe in the mid-80’s.  It is a plain and delicious recipe that has always been praised.  Using butter to make the crust gives it extra flavor.

And now you know how to make pie, have fun!
xoxoxo
~Kim