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I find the tumblr format easier to update on the fly.. hope you like it to!

the cure

Surprise it's me! I've decided in 2011 among other things, I'm going to make more of an effort keeping up with this blog. Since lately I've been experimenting more and more in the kitchen, the content will be dedicated more to that subject. Sorry if you were looking for something else but hopefully I can keep it exciting. So let's start this off with something fun. The Cure! You love Robert Smith? Fantastic. Me too! You love olives? Even better. Me too!

Curing olives is surprisingly easy. The hardest part may in fact be finding uncured raw olives to start. As it turns out there is an abundance of olive trees bearing fruit in our neighborhood but alas I didn't find them until it was past (what I thought) was olive season. As I understood olives ripen around mid to late October but lucky me this week at the farmer's market one of the vendors was selling olives for a mere $1.20lb! I bought right around 3lbs which in hind sight wasn't that much, probably 4 mason jars full.

From what I understand there are two main types of curing, dry or wet. The dry cure, essentially leaving the olives out in the sun, results in the super wrinkly black olives of which I'm not a fan. Thus I decided to go with a wet cure. With a wet cure you have 3 options, water, brine or lye. LYE! Yeah I'm scared of it too because did you see fight club? Lye is however the preferred method because it has the ability to produce the best tasting olive. Lye keeps the olives green and renders a better flavor. You do however need firm green olives with lye or otherwise they have the potential to get mushy. I separated mine out into green and not-so-green and have saved the best for lye. I've ordered some food grade lye and I'll be updating next week on that. Wish me luck.

Now what you see above are the not-so-green olives in a water bath. I read to speed the process you could smash the olives which I have done with the jar on the right. The water is already more murky than the olives on the left which I just sliced with a knife. T hey will stay in this bath for 1 week to 1 month depending on the olive and our patience, after which they will go in a brine with herbs and spices of my choosing. Excitement!

Up next, cleansing and why Dave and I love to punish ourselves in the month of January.

Heather #2

It seems the bees didn't waste much time raising a new queen. We opened them up today to see how things were going and low and behold there was a new gal in charge. Above is a photo of her. She's different from their others in her long torso which helps her lay the eggs down at the bottom of the cell. You can also see all the brood (larvae) around her... she's been busy.

Speaking of busy, while we were inspecting the bees someone else was busy making a mess of the string...

queen me.

Apparently raising bees is not as easy as one thought...and by one, I mean we. As is turns out our bees have been very busy. Busy making honey and busy doing other things, like raising queens. We were told that bees make queen cells when they are feeling cramped or when the queen is past her prime. Since our bees were neither of these things we thought we had nothing to worry about. Our bees had new digs with 20 new frames to work in! They had only built out a little under half of those twenty so they were in a small 2 bedroom working up to a mansion estate. Also they were with a new queen. They had only swarmed to our place with the newbie (who we call(ed) Heather) two months ago so again, no worries here. Oh how wrong we were. Today when we opened up the hive to inspect we found 7! opened queen cells and one capped. Also a hive that was around half the size of its former self. Ughs. Our bees as it turns our are just a wee bit needy. We've called the professionals in the area to try and figure out what went wrong, but in the meantime I've posted some photos. How many queen cells can you spot? Try not to be distracted by the full frames of tasty dripping honey.

Canucked.

Tonight via skype..

D: Did you watch Glee tonight?
Me: David (exasperated).. there is no Glee in Canada.

honey do

It was last Saturday morning that I walked out onto the porch and heard a faint buzzing sound. There were at most 3 or 4 bees buzzing around the north column of our porch. I asked Dave if he'd noticed them to which he said no, so I moved on. We were working on filling our new raised bed that day and by noon the 3 or 4 bees had turned into more and they were clearing moving in and out of the post.

We had a hive, or a swarm or both. We didn't know what to call it, but neither of us were thinking about exterminating. I googled "live capture" bees and got a handfull of companies. I called 3. All of them seemed more interested in taking our money than our bees. That night the bees appeared to be gone. I even knocked, loudly, on the post with no sign of life. Sunday though saw a return of the bees and more of them. I should probably at this point deviate slightly from this story to explain that Dave and I have discussed keeping bees before. Why? Because we are clearly bonkers. This is what growing up in small towns will get you. The belief that you can 'raise' anything, including bees. We've even gone to a bee class hosted by Kirk Anderson, the backwards bee keeper, where we learned that keeping bees was not all that difficult. Thus Monday arrived with a new plan. We'd keep the bees, somehow. We just needed to find someone to get them out of the post for us, but in general no sense of urgency. Then Tuesday the bees began to build and gather outside the post. I called a few people who referred me to Kirk. Why I didn't think of him earlier, who knows? Probably because my mind was clouded with visions of pints of honey. Kirk, after doing a quick review of the situation agreed to come Sat. (yesterday) and remove the bees and set us up with our very own bee box. To say I was excited was a severe understatement.

This is the post after Kirk opened it up. First Whoa! That is a lot of bees. Second. Wait a second.. where is the post of the post? It was at this moment that Dave and I realized our porch was being held up by essentially 4 pieces of trim. As we discussed this alarming fact, Kirk pointed our that it had lasted this long, 80 years, and survived a few earthquakes, why were we worrying. While Kirk has a very good point, a voice kept screaming in my head NOT-A-POST. Kirk did distract us with several interesting bee facts. 1. Bees can't see in the dark. 2. Bees can't fly when their wings are wet, thus Kirk's trick of misting the hive with sugar water. Which leads to 3. Bees can't resist sugar. He also pointed out the the comb was very white and flexible which meant it was new. When asked how it gets darker, he noted that bees have dirty feet.

Kirk was awesome.

He also taught us how to build frames with string to put the new comb in after he removed it from the not-a post. Which is what he's doing in this photo. It should be noted that he put his gloves ON for this part but chose not to wear any for the majority of the time.

After all the bees found their way into the nuc box, either by brushing, scooping, or general pleading, we closed up the box. Cut a hole in the lid and taped it up on angles at the top of the not-a-post, so any bees out collecting pollen could easily find their new home. This is where the bees stayed until about 30 minutes ago. When I taped the hole closed and carried it to the back yard which will be their final home location. That's right, I carried a box full of bees, and I wasn't even scared.

Honey will do that to you.

the good, the bad, and the newly built

This weekend had its share of highs and lows. It started out high with another fine dinner joined by the swirlwsmellslurp crew at Lazy Ox Canteen, which is quickly becoming our favorite place in LA. Then we (or to be specific I) saw a few lows. First the kitchen aid mixer vibrated off the counter top and crashed onto the kitchen floor making a nice dent of course not before taking out a eames chair on its way down . I also broke a spoon rest with a orange and split the oven stone in two while baking bread. Looks like I'll be heading to sur la tabla next weekend. Lastly I managed to check my knee on the shower door getting in. After which I promptly crawled into bed in attempt to avoid breaking anything further. I can report that David woke up in one piece. But among all the lows we did build the second vegetable bed in the back yard. Although building a triangle is decidedly more complex than squares.

who kneads the gym when you have Peter Reinhart?

I come from a family of serious bread makers. I'm not really talking rustic breads that are all the rage now but sweet breads that beg for butter and make your mouth water just at the site. These are my Grandma Mary Lou's dinner rolls, or cinnamon rolls or sugar bread or anything else that she puts out with a little yeast in it. In the past year I've taken up the calling and have been baking bread around once a week. Mostly I've been experimenting with no-knead loafs because let's face it, a bread that requires no kneading is like Christmas everyday of the week. We've also taken to weekly pizza with homemade dough. Lately that includes a recipe from Mozza which is a show stopper. And speaking of Christmas, this year I acquired two Peter Reinhart bread cookbooks, The Bread Baker's Apprentice and Artisan Breads Everyday. These books have seriously broadened our weekly breads and often on the weekend I find myself making more than one recipe. Last week for Dave's birthday lobster boil I put out both the corn bread and the best biscuits ever. (that is the title of the recipe and they are!) Today it was a Ciabatta loaf (pictured) and cinnamon rolls (currently proofing). I'm hoping to work up to a true baguette by Summer and maybe by then my arms will be swimsuit ready.

the crowd goes wild

I would say that Cash definitely has selective hearing (and sniffing). When he's tired from playing or in general doesn't want to be bothered he will barely lift his head when a neighbor walks by the house. Other times he's all out crazed. DID YOU JUST DARE TO WALK BY MY HOUSE! So when I awoke to his serious barking in the middle of the night this week, I thought perhaps one of the cats had annoyed him or maybe a cat outside. After more barking and some hard elbows by me, Dave finally got up and went back to his room and told him to quiet down, in not so many words. Dave went back to sleep but Cash kept growling and I couldn't shake a feeling that something must be outside. So I got up and opened our bedroom door and looked down the hallway to the front yard. Standing there not a foot from the house was a coyote. A big coyote! I headed to the door (not to go outside!) to rattle it and hopefully scare him away. At least keep him from eating my blueberries....but he just stared at me. Then slowly he turned to start walking up the street to a roaring applause of dogs barking.

inverted and backwards

Now that my hair is a little longer, I regularly keep it out of my face by whatever means possible. I have a lot of hair plain and simple and so this usually means in a messy bun or ponytail, but sometimes I try to be fancy, emphasis on try. I have been known to attempt a braid or two and this is done with about a 20% success rate so when it does go well, I usually post a photo as record of such attempts. As it turns out people do look at photos on flickr and by people I mean more than just my family. In fact, a photo of my braided head resulted in a rather long discussion on a braid forum (yes! there is a forum for braiding! who knew! Maybe I should visit it more often!?). Apparently the people there believed I had stumbled upon a new type of braid. WHAT! (I may get my name in a crossword after all!) One person has affectionately dubbed it 'the mohawk effect' and even made a tutorial on youtube! So now when you bump into someone on the street with a crazy braided head like me, you'll now why.

2 cats, 1 dog and...

3 lizards!
(if you are keeping track, yes we did at one time have a turtle but released him to a local pond where there was more room to swim and less cats to terrorize)

So. Today I'm in the back yard tending to the garden and I move a pot that's full of water. Under it I see two little worms squirm. Only these worms appear to have a blunt edge on one side. Hmm. I think that perhaps I've just chopped a mighty worm in half with the pot movement. Oh well, onto garden stuff. At which time I notice out of the corner of my eye one of the worms CRAWLING. When I look back down at them, one is looking back at me! EYES! I scream. LITTLE MOUTH MOVING! DAVID!! Yes of course this worm is the size of my pinky but it does have eyes and a mouth and upon closer inspection (by David) legs! It appears the lizard living in our rosemary (whom I will now call Rose) decided to grow her family, by two.

a decade of good eats

From the very start of our relationship Dave and I have enjoyed sharing a table of good food. I do mean the start, our first date was in the Plaza Oak Room (thanks Uncle Allan!) where we both tried our first foie gras. You might say we were hooked, and not just on each other. With that said, here's a list of our more memorable tables from the decade.

Oznots Dish - this jewel was a block from our apartment in NYC. We ate countless meals here and were seriously saddened to hear of its closing in 05.

Uknown restaurant in Chicago - Our friend David Burns set us up for dinner on our 3rd? anniversary. David ordered the skate, or as we now call it.. THE SKATE. It was like butter.

Crepevine Bistro - This was our go-to restaurant in Los Angeles until it was forced to close after a series of kitchen fires. A dessert crepe there, the Moulin, composed of bananas and caramel butter yumminess is easily our favorite sweet of the decade.

The Ledbury - Our anniversary dinner from last year in England. The entire meal was noteworthy, c-note worthy to be exact. It's also where we first found celeriac, which is now growing in our garden.

Deetjen's - We traveled to Big Sur for my birthday one year and on a recommendation went here. I had lamb chops which put all our other lamb chop experiences to shame.

The Hungry Cat - For our anniversary dinner this year, we decided to do a progressive and this was our last stop. It was a good choice as the Surf and Turf (lobster! and goat ragout!) was easily one of the best entrees we've ever tasted.

Izote - It was midnight on our first night in Mexico City and I was pretty sure we were going to be relegated to the vending machine in our hotel. Wrong. Izote is open late (like most places in the city) and is crazy delicious. We even had the ant eggs and loved them.

Starlight Theater - We stumbled onto this gem on the Texas - Mexico border when we drove out to California in 02. After stuffing our selves on meat and potatoes Dave convinced me we had room for desert. It was blueberry cobbler with ice cream and the portion was the size of a small baby. We ate it all AND licked the bowl.

us. in a decade

I've seen a few other lists floating around and thought it might be fun to do some here given that Dave and I have been together the majority of the decade. Hopefully you find it interesting... more to follow

A list of places we've been together (chronologically)
NY, NJ
Canada
MA, CT, MO
Costa Rica
NC, SC, TX
England
Netherlands
Belgium
Switzerland
France
Italy
KS, AZ, CA, LA, IL, NM
China
OR, WA, CO, MI, NV
Mexico
PA, DC, VA
Spain
UT
Barbados

barbods!

Finally got around to posting some of our photos to Barbados up to Flickr. First I want to say this.
Go. To. Barbados. Seriously.
It was amazing. The weather was perfect. The beaches were perfect. It was perfect. What else can I say? Check out the photos and then book your plane.

for the love of cheesiness!

Remember when we were in London and I fell in love with scones. Well there is one thing better then a scone, and that is a scone with cheese baked inside. Trust me. Now go make some.

because running a marathon wasn't enough..

As many of you know, we travelled to Utah last weekend so that Dave could compete in the St. George marathon. And many of know you know that Dave didn't just finish the marathon he ran it FAST. 3:26 fast! Given a time like that, you might think that we layed low for the rest of the weekend, but you'd be wrong. After the race (and a short nap), we decided to take in the local sites which amounted to a drive through Zion National Park and a stop in Hurricane (pronounced "hur ih kun" by the locals) for some fresh apple cider. We woke up Sunday with the long drive back to LA in front of us and decided on a quick detour through Snow Canyon because really it was too close to miss. Then after that we decided to take a two lane highway out of St. George looking for something interesting for lunch. We somehow ended up at Kayenta, a small community with some amazing blue corn waffles. Then we realized that we were (relatively) close to a land art piece, Double Negative. We knew vaguely how to get there as Dave had tried unsuccessfully to see it the year we met in a cross country land art tour with some friends. That year, he was in the civic (aka red devil) and the civic wasn't quite up to the road conditions, but we were in the Audi! oh wait.. not an off road vehicle either but we gave it a go.

And it made it!..well most of the way.. we walked the last 1.3 miles across the top of the mesa...for this.

and it's only Tuesday

Apparently misery loves company because not only are Dave and I enduring triple digit heats, smoke from the "fire of the century', but we've also put our oven to some back breaking tests this week thus raising the temperature INSIDE the house to a balmy 98 degrees. oof. Now some of you know that we've started taking our eating habits seriously this year, but we've also taken our cooking to new levels, sticking to from scratch recipes with fresh ingredients when possible. We recently instigated Suppers with the Freelands in an effort to socialize more often and share our new love of all things yummy. This week is the inaugural Supper (tomorrow night to be exact) and while I thought the menu for the week planned including the Supper was appealing yet not overly taxing. I think I misjudged. Below is a list of what's come out of the oven or off the stove top since Saturday.

Tomato Rosemary Foccacia which was quite tasty, Cash can attest as well since he helped himself to half.
Boiled chicken for arugula salad
Our weekly loaf of French Bread
Hake with clams, rice and green beans from Spain cookbook
15 cups of chicken stock
Braised 5lb chicken for Rilletes-Day 1 (Supper dinner)
Duck fried rice and miso soup with tofu.
Sauteed shredded chicken for Rilletes - Day 2 (Supper dinner)..this better be worth it.
Chicken enchiladas with Ancho chile sauce, black beans and spanish rice from Mexico cookbook
Lemon greek yogurt ice cream (Supper dinner) Yes it was baked and a slight variation on the recipe linked. We added 1/3c lemon juice and substituted some honey for sugar. As a custard it tastes amazing and can't wait to try it frozen.

pure country..kind of

Last weekend Dave's parents were in town for a quick visit. We subjected them to the usually routine and took them to our new favorite destination near Los Angeles, Brophy Bros. in Santa Barbara. This place has the freshest fish for miles (my dad even agrees)...and the weekend lunch scene is not to be missed. But we didn't stop there...nope we pulled out all the stops and scheduled a nights stay in nearby Santa Ynez valley which I'll have to agree with the website is 'in the heart of Santa Barbara wine country'. This area is truly the country...and not like Napa or Sonoma either. We had Cash with us (the dog, not the currency) and the wineries were so laid back most ASKED us to bring the dog inside. This is also where the majority of Sideways was filmed for the movie fanatics out there. On Saturday, post lunch we stopped at Foley Estates, Sanford, and Lafond. The latter of which keyed is into Demetria Estates for our single (and favorite) Sunday tasting. Saturday, Dave and I managed to nap/sleep through our dinner reservations (apparently we are older than we realize) but luckily Bradley Ogden's new restaurant, Root 246 had an opening. The restaurant has a full farm to table menu that seriously can not be beet. (ha). A few pictures from the weekend can be found over on the sidebar through the flickr link.

my father's daughter: a poem in four parts

My dad is a Tarkio, Missouri farmer.

I grow things in LA which is a bit warmer.
Last year he grew corn, but this year has beans
I must have inherited some of his genes.

eat your greens

Lately, waiting for the garden to be edible is like watching paint dry. In fact, David said to me the other day that "staring at it will not make it grow faster" Really? Because I thought my stern glare was definitely forcing that corn higher. Specifically I've been waiting for the rhubarb because I have some dishes planned, like pies, cakes, and ice cream, but for the longest time its just been green stalks with a bit of red at the bottom. Granted the stalks are getting very large but 98% still green. Thus when we were in Brooklyn this weekend wandering by a farmer's market and I saw GREEN rhubarb for sale, I was very inquisitive. So I asked the vender, what he clearly thought was a ridiculous question,"Does rhubarb ripen after you pick it?" Duh, No! Then i follow with..."Can you eat green rhubarb?", to which he replies "would I sell it if you couldn't" Okay, fair enough Mr. Farmer's market man. But given that it is Brooklyn, I did some research upon our arrival home and wouldn't you know, some rhubarb is green! Well rather it doesn't ever turn red do to the climate. And with that my friends, Dave and I are tonight enjoying some chx thighs with a nice rhubarb chutney. Yum!