Happy Harvest

Funky little cuke. Tasted awesome.






I've always loved yellow tomatoes but I learned just today that they are sweeter and more delicious because they are less acidic than their red counterparts.





Wyatt shows off the massive zucchini





Jesse and I pickled green tomatoes, cucumbers and shallots.

The Money Issue

Melanie recently asked me for my tips regarding how to live on the cheap. To address that, and in honor of Eddie Money playing in Boston tonight, this post is about saving money.

I just came across a neat article on Public Radio Kitchen called Food Policy Heresy: The Poors Can Eat Well Too. It has some good ideas for eating a slow food diet on the cheap and it includes a link to the New England Aquarium's sustainable seafood list. Overfishing is a big problem people. We're all focused on being green but they don't call it the blue planet for nothing.

Having a garden is a good way to save on food but if you can't do that, lentils and kale are your best friends. They're both super cheap, super good for you, and pretty versatile. I like to buy lentils dry, in huge bags, for less than $4. Other good things to have on hand include: tomato paste (Emily gets it in a tube which is awesome), canned tomatoes, chick peas, Slap Ya Mama cajun seasoning (I put it in everything), potatoes, garlic and onions. I've made some serious tastiness with just the ingredients I've talked about here.

Other things that seem to save money:

- oatmeal
- riding a bike
- turning lights and fans off
- only buying food that you'll know you'll eat
- not throwing stuff away until you really can't use it anymore (use a chicken carcass to make stock, keep a bag of veggie scraps in the freezer to make stock, mend your socks, etc.)
- use vinegar to clean. it's a lot cheaper than other cleaning products for your bathroom and kitchen.
- use your connections to get free food, cheap bike maintenance, tools, etc. Can you borrow something instead of buying it?
- not drinking
- automatic monthly transfers from my checking account into savings
- Mint.com - it allows you to set up budgets and texts you when you've exceeded or when your balances are low.

Woo hoo! Go forth and save.

Potato Fried Chicken and Nana's Pickled Eggs

After a short hiatus, I'm back to flexing my culinary muscle. For the last game of the World Cup, Wyatt and I made potato fried chicken and beet and goat cheese salad. Imagine chicken breasts tucked inside potato pancakes. It was awesome.

First Wyatt seasoned the chicken:


Then I beat eggs, garlic scapes, fresh onions and S and P in the food processor and mixed that with flour and shredded potatoes. Then we floured and coated each breast and deep fried it.








And Victory was ours (and Spain's).

Last week I made my grandmother's pickled eggs. They were way better than I expected them to be, having only ever seen eggs pickled in beet juice at crusty old dive bars.






Ingredients:
2 t mild mustard
2 cups cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
1 cup granulated sugar
1 t salt
1 t celery seed
1 t mustard seed
6 whole cloves
2 med onions sliced
12 hard boiled eggs

In a sauce pan blend mustard with a little vinegar, water and next 5 ingredients over medium heat. Then bring to boil and simmer 10 mins. Let cool then pour over onions and eggs. Cover, refrigerate overnight and serve.

And, speaking of poultry, the Allandale farm chicks are getting big.

Denitia Odigie at All Asia in Cambridge

The article below is re-posted from the Performer Mag Blog. Denitia is a fellow Vanderbilt alumna and was once my coworker at Grins, Nashville's only vegan, vegetarian and kosher cafe. July 5, 2010 Live Review: The Sessions Tour // All Asia // Cambridge, MA June 28, 2010 By: Noelle Janka
The Sessions Tour, a team of four-star singer-songwriters from Austin, came through Cambridge, MA last week as part of a 16-show gig through the South, Northeast and Canada. CJ Vinson, a acoustic country rocker who splits his time between New York and Austin, recruited artists Danny Malone, Aimee Bobruk, Denitia Odigie (and for this show, Waldo Wittenmeyer) to play a tour in the style of Los Angeles' Hotel Cafe. The venue, which also organizes showcase tours, is known for being one of the country's premier music hubs and a place where artists big and small play solo and communally, rehearsed and on the fly. At last week's show at All Asia Bar, each Sessions artist took turns playing two of their own songs before taking the stage all together. They took turns leading, with the others backing them up in a combination of vocals, percussion, guitar and keys. It was like an invite-only hootenanny or campfire sing-a-long, where only the most seasoned players and performers could join in. That's not to say they were pretentious, because they were anything but, laughing, making fun of each other and joking with the crowd the whole night. Of the five, Malone and Odigie stood out in particular. The former has a charming southern accent and a whiney but endearing voice reminiscent of The Mountain Goats or Built to Spill. His lyrics are odd: "My grandmother's dead and she's down in the basement. I'm keepin' her safe." But the delivery is cheerful, making the songs beautiful and the performance captivating. As soon as Odigie opened her mouth, the crowd went silent. She's a smiley, unassuming little lady who looks a lot like Lauryn Hill and laughs like a scheming five year old. But, when she's on stage, you can almost feel her squeezing your heart with her bare hands. Her voice is raw and haunting, and soars unpredictably to unimaginable heights. Between that and her slow electric guitar, Denitia's heart-wrenching love songs are of a dark, soulful ilk that would make Jeff Buckley fans weep. Odigie relocated in Austin after several solid years in Nashville. She played 5 shows at South by Southwest in March and just released her new album Vitality on Weston Boys Records.

Nina and Roasted Chickens

We're having a heatwave in New England and boy, is it a joy. This morning I tried to ignore the sting of sweat pouring down every part of my body, into the scratches made by raspberry brambles.

The good news is, while we've lost a few plants on the farm, the animals seem to be fairing well. Chickens, it turns out, are hilarious when they're hot. They pant like dogs, with their mouths open, and walk around with their wings lifted halfway up, as if airing out their little chicken arm pits.

I'm not doing much better myself. I spent an hour yesterday lying on the gorgeous parquet kitchen floor, in front of the fan, with a bag of frozen tater tots under my neck.

Things got better today with the arrival of Nina Simone's It Is Finished on vinyl in the mail. I couldn't be more pleased. It's out of print and difficult to find but I just found a cheap, brand new repress. I fell in love with the album while staying with my girl Laura after Green Corps in 2008. Thanks L - Dog. The whole album is rad. It's got both sad and happy, crazy Nina on it. And, with sitar, hand drums and Spanish guitar, it's got some neat instrumentation too. Highlights include "Funkier Than A Mosquito's Tweeter" and "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl."

Girlfriend don't give a f**k.


Both my garden plots are stayin' alive so far. Zucchini and summer squash is in, and the first tomatoes ripened this week.


Fourth of July was neat. This was my third year in a row watching fireworks from a city rooftop. New York, then D.C. and this time Boston. I'm a fan. This time we watched from a rooftop in the harbor and had a 360 degree view of approximately 10 million fireworks displays. AND, before that even happened, we were greeted by a happy little rainbow.


Does this photo make anyone else want to ride Falcor from Neverending Story off into the sunset?

Tractor!