The parting of the (cardboard box) sea

Hello from our (town)house! 

We're slowly tiptoeing towards being fully settled in and unpacked -- it'll be a bit yet, but I can say with confidence that we are more unpacked now than we ever were in Seattle. Which is exciting and sad all at once. There've been a few broken things but not too many (and one mug that I'm secretly glad to see go), and then the exploded green food coloring that I'm so glad I double bagged. I've seen quite a lot of family already, with plans to see more of them soon, and we even made it down the shore one weekend in September. We've found a couple farm markets, including one that's part of the local ag school and promises to have fresh produce all winter (no small thing here in Pennsylvania). And I've had oh so much delicious scrapple. 

We're getting to know our kitchen - storage quirks, oven that runs closer to true than any of the ovens I've worked with thus far, fridge door that is prone to swinging back open if you aren't paying attention...that sort of thing. A nice feature of this kitchen is that the design elements were clearly thought through by a cook - the long skinny cookie sheet cabinet in just the right spot, the sliding shelves for easy loading, the deep pantry for...everything. And a big island, which is AWESOME for cooking - consistently clear counterspace is my friend. So far I haven't had any dramatic cooking episodes to report on here - there's been red sauce, coq au vin, carnitas, a pork roast that I sadly overcooked, your basic baked chicken thighs. All tasty, but nothing to write home(page) about. Plus EPH has been traveling quite a bit, and I'm much more likely to do something simple and pasta based when it's just me. 

I'm cooking a double birthday dinner for my parents this weekend, though -- trying to find that menu that is interesting and festive, but without committing the cardinal sin of dinner parties: the slippery slope of overambitious experimentation. I'll keep you posted, friends. 

Autumn! One of the two top cooking seasons...so much comfort food and baking to do. (Late spring, with fresh produce coming from every which way, is the second best)

Autumn: when I get it together, usually

You've all been pretty patient with me this past month as I've veered way off topic - nothing food or plant related in the nomadic life! Today, though, a recipe.

We are currently living in my parents' home. Our movers haven't arrived and won't till next week, so while we have keys then new home stands empty for now. Such is life. I have run out of patience with take out, restaurants, other people cooking for me. Last night, I made dinner. My mother happened upon a lot of eggplant at the farm stand last week, so I asked her to leave one and last night I made the eggplant parmesan I have mentioned in a couple early posts but never actually shared. This is a fairly simple recipe and not wildly unhealthy, and fast enough that it could be a weeknight meal (plus you probably have most of the ingredients on hand, save the eggplant). As we get back into the fall, with the busier schedules and cooler weather, it seems like as good a time as any!

Easy Baked Eggplant Parmesan
(adapted from Whole Foods)

Ingredients:

1 large eggplant, sliced lengthwise into 1/2-inch-thick pieces (about eight) [I do the more traditional crosswise slicing - makes it tidier]
2 eggs, beaten with a fork
1 1/2 cup panko bread crumbs (sundried tomato or plain) [I suppose you could use regular bread crumbs, but the panko gives it that nice crunch that you would normally get from frying the slices]
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 (25-ounce) jar pasta sauce (roasted vegetable or any variety) [I make my own tomato sauce, and know many people who do, but jarred is actually good for this recipe. I don't use sugar when I make my sauce and the extra sweetness that the jarred stuff has actually balances the salt of the cheese nicely.]
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese

Preheat oven with a baking sheet inside to 375°F. Coat eggplant slices with beaten egg, then bread with panko crumbs. Spread oil on hot baking sheet and place eggplant slices on it in a single layer. Bake 15 minutes, flip and bake another 10 minutes.

Increase oven temperature to 475°F. In an 8x10-inch ovenproof dish, layer pasta sauce, then eggplant, and top with cheeses. Repeat, finishing with cheese. [It's almost like an eggplant napoleon when you're done...using a bigger baking dish will help you have less density in the end result if this seems like an issue for you.] Bake until the cheese melts and turns golden in spots, about 15 minutes.

The recipe suggests a side dish of sautéed broccoli rabe. I agree that this sounds delicious, but two things -- that's something you can't put on and then walk away from, which makes it somewhat less weeknight-friendly. Also we don't happen to have any right now, but we do have whole grain thin spaghetti, which I like. I made a small amount of that with some garlic oil, added a salad, and felt fine about it. As, apparently, did everyone else.

Life in the west

Wenatchee, WA yesterday morning

Good morning from Butte, Montana. I've stayed in Montana before, but not in Butte. It's...interesting. We checked out the hotel-attached dive bar late last night (seems to be a trucker hotel here so I guess there's a clientele). We learned that the front desk manager doubles as the barkeep ("beer and wine only, folks"), that he has lots of opinions on the US Postal Service, and also on Anna Nicole Smith. We also learned that coming through his bar three, four times a year qualifies as a regular. 

It seems there is a pretty big Irish and Chinese population and culture out here. I guessed at railroad workers being the immigration trend, but a little research by EPH turned up the fact that it was actually mining work.

Today: Yellowstone, then the booming metropolis of Miles City, MT!

Catching my breath: a photo album

The movers came. The movers left. We ran all the heck over South Seattle saying goodbye to people and having adventures. Our extended stay in Tukwila was...functional, if not exactly luxurious. But it was definitely efficient and convenient, so it's hard to complain. Now, we're on Vashon Island in a guest cabin and it is basically paradise. 

We had a little more stuff than the mover expected....awkward. 

"Where IS ALL MY STUFF!" says Homer 

Visiting my friend V up on the coast near Bellingham

Hotel room birthdays!

Pink Martini on the lawn

5:45am, eastbound from Vashon to West Seattle aboard the WSDOT ferry Issaquah

Our current "backyard". Island living sure is rough. 

The eyes are burning...the eyes are burning

It's Saturday morning. We're at T-2 hours for the movers. We're in zombie state and I've accomplished a major fail already -- instead of cooking the remaining pieces of salmon last night, I gave up and we ordered...pizza. So we have even more leftovers now. But at least all the plants are adopted and the stuff is pretty much dealt with....

Here we go.

Lessons learned!

It's been a morning of small discoveries. Small in that they are inconsequential, but also in that they are probably obvious to others.

First, that herb harvest. I was puzzling over how I was going to dry them all quickly enough to get them moved somewhere -- there's just no way I can use all that up that quickly -- and it occurred to me I could probably do it in the oven. A little googling and 45 minutes later, and voila! Not only are they all perfectly dried, but they even kept more color then the traditional hang-dry - and my main floor is beyond fragrant with herbal aromas. Here's the deal: wash and fully dry the fresh herbs. Spread them out on a cookie sheet (or tin foil in my case, as the cookie sheets didn't fit and are now packed anyway). Heat the oven to as low as it will go, which was 170 degrees in my case, and slide those sheets in. KEEP THE OVEN DOOR OPEN A TINY BIT! I used the dough hook for my not-yet-packed KitchenAid so I wouldn't have to be paranoid about a wooden spoon or mitt (recommended on various sites) catching fire. The air movement seems to be key to the drying as opposed to scorching. If you have a convection oven, perhaps that will do the trick, but I don't know. Different herbs seem to take different times - seems to be based on the amount of oils in them - but start with 30 minutes. Mine were close at that point, so I turned them around and did another 15 minutes, and they are now cooling and ready to bag. Very exciting.

Second, which I haven't actually tried yet -- I packed up my toaster the other day (or it was packed, by my helpful friend). It didn't occur to me till hours later that this is something I use for breakfast every morning. (It's been a long week, okay?) I thought about oven toasting, but previous efforts have led to one large crouton. So back to the google and it dawned on me: I have a grill pan, one of two stovetop items that I set aside for leftover consumption use before packing. Tomorrow, I'm pan toasting bread. Cross your fingers!

Third: gratuitous product placement. Here's the backstory: I brew my own iced coffee. I love iced coffee, and during the summer absolutely cannot drink hot coffee. Paying $2.50 a cup is insanity to me when I can buy a bag of coffee for $8 and brew many pots' worth. So, I brew and cool it. However, again with the kitchen -- packing up both the coffee maker and the cold pitcher. I was bracing myself for a long expensive three weeks of iced coffee when I saw in the grocery: Starbucks iced coffee, now in a half gallon jug and completely unsweetened. Now, I'm not a fan of Sbux coffee -- iced tea and espresso, yes, but their drip is like burnt battery acid and I just can't handle it. But every other supermarket option is half sugar and gross, and this was only $5 for the jug (still high but lower than the retail option), so I figured I'd try it and see. Well. I don't know what goes so wrong in those Sbux stores but this iced coffee is DELICIOUS. It's completely different - no burnt flavor at all, just a smooth nuttiness. It's SO good. It's way better than what I brew at home, too. Which will be a quandary for another day, but for now...yum. Try it. You'll thank me. (although, as my head buzzes...word to the wise: it ain't weak.)

** 8/14/14: UPDATE: the pan grilling of the bread - or in this case a bagel - worked out remarkably well. Another small win! 

Pruning and defrosting and sweltering

So I massacred my herb garden today. I know I can't keep them and they're just plants - and I harvested as much as possible, so it wouldn't go entirely to waste - but I still feel irrationally sad about it. It's not just move projection, either - I'm always sad when I have to kill a plant. This makes no sense. I KNOW it makes no sense. And yet there it is. I didn't harvest my basil - it's practically a bush, so I'm hoping it will be adopted. We'll see.

I also packed up much of the kitchen this evening. (Or, more accurately, a good friend came over and packed it up -- which was AMAZING, since a) I HATE packing kitchens and am awful at it, and b) it was 96 degrees here today, and - like most of Seattle - there's no a/c in this house. Three cheers for amazing friends.) Given how much time I spend in there, that was almost more bizarre...knowing I've cooked my last meal in that kitchen. I did keep out a couple pans to help use stuff up during the rest of the week, but it's really just leftovers at this point and cobbled-together smorgasbords at this point, which may or may not resemble meals.

The thing I'm probably struggling with the most is the volume of food I always end up wasting when I move. I've got a bag where I'm setting aside things for the food bank, but there are so many things that are opened and half eaten. Some I hope to pass off on friends, but there's only so much of that I can do. I absolutely hate wasting food. I always have -- being part of the food bank family has just exacerbated this.

So... anybody out there want some buttermilk, frozen in 1/4 cup increments??

This is not so bad...and I'm sure I just jinxed it

So, we've all heard the tale/recording at this point of the guy who tried desperately to cancel his Big Evil Cable service, right? Well...I just had the exact opposite experience. When the very chipper young woman inquired as to why they were losing me as "such a valued customer", I informed her we were going nomadic and would be off the grid for the foreseeable future. Granted that's a tiny exaggeration - three weeks is not the foreseeable future - but that is neither here not there. She was utterly bewildered, and after a moment of dead silence exclaimed "that is SO.COOL. I would never think of that!" And just like that, everything was canceled. No hassle, no harm, no foul. Compared to the other guy's experience I feel like a big winner right now.

On a more blog-related note...I've cultivated a bit of a container garden here, and have been trying to figure out what to do with it all without a) throwing everything into the compost and/or passing them on to people who I KNOW will kill them, b) having to part with all the planters. Turns out that what they say is true: people will take literally anything from the free section on Craigslist, even if it involves them digging up a plant and carting it off in a plastic bag. Two huge bamboo plants: rehomed! A friend from the neighborhood has agreed to adopt my cherry tomato plant (which is LOADED with little green tomatoes, sniff sniff), which is great. Now I only have herbs and house plants to address.