Chicken Soup & The Great Fruit Kerfufle

Last week.

Last week was hell. Emmy had cramps and tummy-gurglings all week and then, about halfway through, so did I. It got bad for a while. Apparently your body will tell you when it's had enough pizza. Emmy even had to be sick a couple times. Poor dear.

So this week we said, "NO MORE PIZZA!" (cried the peoples of the revolution)

Enter "Ultimate Chicken Soup", stage right.

This is a recipe I acquired sometime in 2010. I was rather new to this whole concept of "cooking" at the time and Dad took pity on me and told me how to put together a good chicken soup. I tried it. It was awesome. The recipe follows below:

--Ultimate Chicken Soup--
~3 carrots Not seasonal (Carol's larder ran out so no more until next year), replaced w/ 2 lbs frozen sweet corn.
~3 celery Also not seasonal, replaced w/ 2 small celeriac, chopped.
~2 small onions
~1 clove garlic, chopped
~enough potatoes to fill a small sauce pan, peeled & chopped
~enough water w/ bullion OR enough stock to cover final amount of veggies&chicken
~salt & pepper to taste
~meat off 1 chicken
~oil/butter for frying veggies
~white cooking wine
~rosemary & other Italian seasonings, added to taste

We got a whole, 3-4lb pasture-raised chicken & roasted it slowly at 375degreesF for 1/2hour per pound of chicken. Cleaned it, patted it dry, & rubbed it all over w/ a rub that contained:
salt
pepper
garlic powder
sumac powder
& some thyme.
Every half hour we took the chicken out of the oven, turned it, & basted across the skin w/ a stick of butter. Then the chicken was de-boned & the meat set aside for the soup.
Boil chopped potatoes until easily pierced w/ a knife, reserve WITHOUT draining. Sautee the rest of the veggies in a large soup pot until cooked down/sweated to personal taste. Just as onions are starting to brown, add a splash of white wine. This brings up anything that has cooked onto the bottom of the pan. Scrape w/ a wooden spoon to bring up the cooked-on bits. Add potatoes & chopped chicken meat. Add enough water w/ bullion OR stock to cover. Season to taste. Remove when done.

~~~

Fruit.

I looked at Emmy sometime very early this week, before the chicken was ready, and spoke thusly, "If I don't have some fruit I'm going to fucking kill someone." She nodded seriously. "Yeah. Let's go to the Co-op."

Being extremely cramped-up and throwing up due to too much wheat in our diet was not fun. We sped down to Willy Street and picked up a bag of Pink Lady apples from Washington, raspberry-strawberry smoothies, and two serving-sized fruit salads. At sometime this summer I will probably be sick of fruit. I will probably have the runs so bad that I'll get in trouble from getting up from my desk so much at work.
I. Don't. Care.
Our mantra this week has been "If only we had some preserves. IF ONLY WE HAD SOME PRESERVES." "I KNOW."
It reached a two-day interval over the weekend where I could barely eat because even thinking about wheat made me want to park myself in front of the toilet and be sick until strawberry season. We know greens are coming, we know it sugaring season is only a few weeks away, but we couldn't go any longer without fruit.
As I took that last of the leftover pasta in hand to work on Monday with a look of terror and dread (it was all we had) Emmy said to me, "This is why canning was invented." I groaned, and somehow made it through the rest of the day on a few ziti, a smoothie, and the Hope Of Fruit.
We are sorry we broke our local promise, but at least we didn't break our organic one. One more month to go in the First Quarter, and then we buckle down for real.

Canning... yes, canning will have to happen.

Happy eating!
xoxoxo
Kim & Emmy

Let Them Eat Pizza

So last week I must admit I had an attack of the Lazy. We did cook but unfortunately I didn't think the results were very stellar.

(Not-So) Vegetarian Chili from "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver:
http://animalvegetablemiracle.com/recipes-winter-vegetarian-chili.htm

We substituted the beans (since they are not in season and nobody has any at the market) for two pounds of local ground beef. I'm sad to say that I wasn't impressed. I need to do more hunting for a better chili recipe because I'm certain I'll be making chili again before the winter is out.

But this week we had pizza!

Now I always wait to post until I've cooked, because otherwise how will I know whether I liked something or not? But WHOA. This sauce recipe (and thank goodness someone has canned tomatoes or I'd be going stir-crazy right about now) is out of this world! I can't, literally, rave about it enough. You might remember my October post when we did Jamie Oliver's "Deep-Pan Pizza"? No? That's okay, I'll re-post the sauce recipe.

~A swig of white wine vinegar
~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 point, this time around we used organic raspberry balsamic vinegar from the Willy St Co-op and dried basil bits from my spice cupboard. Local tomatoes, organic vinegar, local garlic, BAM! As soon as tomatoes actually do come around, I'm canning up a bunch of this sauce in bulk and hoarding it all next winter. I may even give some away as gifts.

So that was our sauce, and our pizza dough came from Mom's suggestion:

http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/easy_pizza_dough.aspx

So... local WI flour, too? And local mozzarella from Organic Valley? Whoa. Just. Whoa. Plus, it makes 4 little pizzas all told, so Pizzas 3 & 4 are in the freezer, Pizza 1 is almost gone, and Pizza 2 (with Blue Mont Dairy garlic-cheddar filled crust) is about to come out of the oven.

I'm in pizza heaven.

xoxoxo,
Kim & Emmy

Love is in the Air

I have no idea what Emmy got me for V-Day, but I got her three chocolate truffles made by a local chocolatier, Gail Ambrosius, who has a shop in Madison's East Side, nearby where I used to live a couple years ago.

You can find her at: http://gailambrosius.com/

I picked out the chocolates specially at Fromagination, of course. I was aided, as always, by the lovely Priscilla, who always helps me out in a pinch. I got Emmy a raspberry one, a chocolate ganache one, and one with cayenne in it.

That, along with a couple antique children's books (she loves those), made for a wonderful early Valentine's Day.

:)
Love,
Kim & Emmy

February Chills & Confessions

So, it's that time of year again. The time of year that we all stick our noses outside and yell, "Enough already!" I'm getting a bit stir-crazy myself. It must be the limited winter food options at the farmers market, which isn't really anybody's fault but Old Man Winter's. I'd kill for some fruit.

Another confession:
Emmy and I haven't been as pure as we would have liked. We are visiting restaurants much less frequently than we used to, once every two weeks instead of several times in a weekend. Feeding two people on one meal (and its leftovers) all week has taken some adjusting to. Therefore, we are baking more and buying (not always) organic mac&cheese to cover the gap between weekends. I am quite ashamed to say we visited a couple fast food places, too, a rare occurance in and of itself. But we have noticed that we are still steadily losing weight and we understood when we started out that the First Quarter of the year would be the most difficult, mostly because we are still adjusting, using up what's already in the pantry etc, but also because we have to break our old habits slowly. Not to mention the sight of those potatoes, squash, and carrrots aren't as exciting as they were at the beginning of January. I haven't really stretched myself, either, in cooking styles. After the kerfufle with the sweet potatoes I've been rather reluctant to try new vegetables, although I will say that Emmy and I have discovered and LOVE celeriac. We do try to be organic whenever possible and to support local businesses, even when they are not necessarily organic themselves.

Yet more confessions:
I have a caffiene addiction. A big one. I'm not talking about a coffee every morning, I mean Mountain Dew. I grew up drinking the stuff and it just eats at me when I don't have any, although not as bad as it used to. Emmy is trying to steer me towards fair-trade, locally-brewed coffee and fair-trade tea. Habit is really hard to break. Since we have vending machines at my work, whenever I pick up a roll of quarters for laundry about half of those go towards my soda intake for the week. But this time I told Emmy to hide the quarters from me, and not in the change jar. Seriously hidden away. Somewhere I won't even think to look. We'll try that next week and see how it goes. I hate, for lack of a better term, just pissing away my laundry money. Today I got down on my hands and knees and begged Emmy for permission to purchase a soda while I did some errands around town (it was her money). I promised her gold and jewels and chocolates and two scantily-clad servants to follow her around waving palm fronds and feeding her peeled grapes, but she still refused. And rightfully so.

Going forward:
I must conquer this addiction of mine. Somehow. At least get it to the point where coffee and tea will be sufficient. Emmy and I have a month and a half left until the end of the First Quarter of the year. At that time we should begin to see more greens appearing at the market AND! it will be sugar-snow time. Time for maple syrup! As the winter-based menu and all its limited options draws to a close, we will become more strict with our diet, staying local except for the essentials mentioned in the kick-off post.

Happy Valentine's Day!
xoxoxo
Kim & Emmy