2010 Garden

In my hustle to wrap up any lingering tasks or responsibilities, the garden was one of my priorities. Kate will shoulder the burden of watering, weeding, and watching this year. I cleared a bit more area and expanded the plot slightly. The dimensions are 12'x6' for the larger and 5'x3' for the smaller. The increased space allowed us to distribute the tomato plants better so that we do not encounter the bedlam of last year's close proximity growing. My indoor beet seeds were a miserable flop and we may sow beets, kale, and spinach seeds mid- to late-summer. For now, the garden consists of the following starters we purchased from City Floral:
Basil (2)
Cauliflower (6)
Mint
Rosemary
Tomatoes (1 Abraham Lincoln, 1 Big Beef, 4 Cherokee Purple - all heirlooms)

We also planted two rows of beans and we plan on a large yield if past performance is a guide. Here are some photos of the process from start to finish.

Clearing and trimming back vines and weeds

To everything turn, turn, turn (what a wretched song)

We spread four total cubic feet of compost, one of which was a mix of cow and compost

The plants

Compost added and graded for planting

Planting

Top shot

Cauliflower

Oklahoma Joe's BBQ and the Best Ribs I've Eaten

My appreciation for bbq often borders on obsession. That's why a trip to the Middle West was rerouted and replanned to meet my fix. We dined at what is considered one of Kansas City's best bbq restaurants, Oklahoma Joe's. Anthony Bourdain numbered OK Joe's number thirteen on his list of 13 Places to Eat Before You Die, which is an awfully strong compliment or burden to prove. (Of note, Hot Doug's also appears on this list.) They are closed on Sundays and in an already crazy trip to see family, what's wrong with supplementing the jaunt with a stop at a place with such lofty reviews? Turns out, nothing wrong at all.

OK Joe's original KC location is housed in a BP gas station. The unassuming front reveals an inside that is largely occupied by the immensely popular eatery. We waited in line and a nice woman answered Kate's questions about the menu. Kate selected an order of ribs (approximately six total), pulled pork, and an order of onion rings. I went for the brisket, pulled pork, and slaw. Add two drinks and you have a total of thirty dollars and high expectations. I'll start with the most disappointing: the brisket. When you have a plate of amazing bbq, not everything can be perfect and the mind easily settles into a comparison of relative quality. The meat was dry and seemed overcooked. It was well seasoned and wasn't insipid. From my eyes and taste buds, it missed a rather crucial element to brisket in general, fat. With that being said, my life would be better--and my waist line wider--if I could locate similar brisket in Denver.

Now on to the stunning. We loved the pulled pork and it was the best I've eaten, bar none. The ribs were the jewel of the plate and the menu. Along with the pork, these are the best ribs I've tasted in my life. The meat is tender without falling off the bone (aka a mess and a half), not drenched with sauce (aka sauce masks bland or absent flavor), and an even blend of smoke and seasoning (aka perfect). They are not to be missed and any deviation from our trip was worth the side trek. Anyone who disparages bbq does not comprehend the time, care, and attention to flavor that the folks at OK Joe's (and many other restaurants) expend on cooking these specimens of beauty. Despite entering with empty stomachs, we could not finish all of our pork, brisket, and onion rings.

By the time we left, the line was approximately thirty people deep of families and singles patiently waiting for some of the best bbq I've had the fortune of eating. On the table, they offer two basic sweet and spicy sauces and a third vinegar, Carolina sauce, sits nearby. Locals flock to OK Joe's and, as we learned, highly recommend the Z Man sandwich. A healthy pile of brisket (which is probably better on a sandwich than as an isolated entree) is topped by provolone and onion rings on a kaiser bun. If I'm fortunate enough to return, I will enter the restaurant famished and proceed to order the Z Man and some ribs to share.

Kate and I forgot to bring our cameras, so, alas, no photo evidence.

Pizzas with Chipotle Sauce

Recently, my cooking preoccupations have reoriented toward pizzas. I love pizza and it is, by far, one of my favorite meals. I've eaten fabulous sorts and some pretty disastrous pizza. For example, the disgusting specimen I was served in Abilene, Kansas was the worst pizza I've consumed--worse than the insipid pie sold from a rural Illinois gas station. If pizza is an option, no matter where I'm at in the world, I often try it if the situation permits. So there's little surprise that I enjoy whipping up a dough and firing the oven up to 500. Peaches and a few other ingredients appeared on my forays into grilled pizzas and, in actuality, my first dabbles with the dish.

I am cooking several pizzas in five weeks for a baby shower hosted at our apartment for close friends who are marrying in two and a half weeks. The exact number of guests for the baby shower is unclear, as is the total of pies and varieties. I'll run the grill and oven and will call upon Mark Bittman's easy pizza dough recipe in How to Cook Everything. In a matter of a couple of hours, the recipe produces a reliably tasty crust and base. The question is what to choose for toppings, and the suggestion window is open.

Recently, I added chipotle peppers to the sauce and boosted the tomato paste by a 1/4 of a cup, or so by eye, to boost the volume and consistency. The result has been a spicy sauce that works quite well with chicken chorizo as long as I balance the proportion of sauce and cheese. We topped the pizza with sauteed spinach last night and I was not blown away, to my disappointment. We learned, however, the longer the chipotle sits, a week in this case, the hotter the sauce. In the past, I eschewed a rolled up crust in favor of a standard flat pizza. I opted to alter my approach as the pictures demonstrate, and we've been impressed with the initial returns. I don't have a fool-proof formula and, as you can imagine, we'll experiment mightily in preparation for the baby shower parade of pizzas.

Brandon Eats a Double Down. Diarrhea Ensues.

Sometimes, to my dismay, I allow a joke to advance from flights of fancy and humor to the realm of possibility. Being snarky has its limits and then there's a time to be silly. That is the case with KFC's new sandwich, the Double Down. For those unfamiliar with this fried behemoth, the add wizards at KFC replaced a sandwich's traditional buns with fillets of original recipe fried chicken. In other words, they opted to forgo bread for maximum cholesterol. In between those golden, grease clogged slabs of chicken one finds the colonel's sauce, two slices of bacon, and slices of monterey jack and pepper jack cheese. I sipped on my A&W root beer while I waited for my name to be called and to peer at the recent darling of dietitians everywhere. The Double Down arrived hot and wrapped in paper to protect the eater from directly handling the greasy, gooey sandwich--a futile pursuit. The predominant flavor, as one would guess, is the fried chicken with hints of bacon mingled with the cheeses. All in all, as long as I neglected the nutrition facts, it was not as deplorable as I...well, envisioned. I can sum it up as anticlimactic.

Official photo

A Double Down's innards (thanks to treehugger for the image)

My brother-in-law, Dylan, visited this week and we snorted about the disgustingly tasty nature of this example of fast food run amok. I worked at a McDonalds and I still have an odd fascination with every unhealthy piece of "food" they and others advertise. For example, after watching Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, I left the theater thinking "I really want a McDonalds' cheeseburger." (No, I didn't have the same reaction after completing Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation). My family was no stranger to fast food and I partake in it when I'm at an airport from time to time. I fondly remember driving to Casey, Illinois, with my grandfather to a Kentucky Fried Chicken to feed myself and cousins. Stated another way, I don't turn my nose up at eating fast food once in a while on a lark or for expediency's sake. Some people have a knee jerk aversion toward fast food--for health and I would argue class reasons--and I won't take issue with that sentiment. From a public health stand point, I do not doubt that it is a blight in a country battling an obesity epidemic. I recognize fast food for what it is, and I don't think that a double cheese burger and coke is a gateway drug to a diet comprised solely of unidentifiable fried chicken parts laden with mysterious sauces that run down my chin as I watch re-runs of Hee Haw. Nor will it lead to a stroke tomorrow considering my diet and exercise. Regardless, Kate humored this excursion and my self-punishing side won't offer up expiation on the cheap. And, frankly, neither did my digestive track, which was not a shock.

Slow Cooker Chronicles v. 2 Chicken with Tarragon

For a couple of years, we kept a Real Simple recipe tacked to a cork backsplash with the good intentions of making this piece of paper a reality in our stomachs. The ingredients are straight-forward: chicken (we used thighs that I cleaned), tarragon, white wine, leeks, a bit of garlic, baby new potatoes, peas, and cream. And when your instructions entail throwing it all in a crock pot, with the exclusion of the cream and peas, it's a hassle free meal.

Failure might be feared but there's no fear of admitting failure here at the Raptor Space. The goods: the chicken tasted better than expected and the house was bathed in the delicious smell of leeks and chicken. The bads: it was an uninspired meal and the left-overs were equally disappointing. I mashed the potatoes with the cream in the stoneware, and it never warmed. Transferring it to a sauce pan was the only way to heat the mixture to an acceptable serving temperature, and the peas never cooked thoroughly. I will break out the crock pot for corned beef soon, other than that, there won't be future offerings of the slow cooker chronicles.

So here are some pictures. I return to my otherwise mundane life after the Praxis on Saturday.

Maybe I didn't give the potatoes the credit they deserved.

LEEKS

My shoulder is in focus as I scrape excess fat of the thighs.

Let's roll.

The final stop in an uneventful meal.

Slow Cooker Chronicles: Southwestern Brisket and '77

I love stumbling across a recipe for my slow cooker/crock pot. And when Smitten Kitchen posted a southwestern pulled beef brisket, I couldn't resist. I had also been waiting for an opportunity to stop in Oliver's Meat and Seafood Market on 6th, and I can't complain about a friendly, jovial butcher who is open at 8 on a Thursday morning. The brisket and Oliver's receive definite seals of approval.

SK's instructions are straight-forward, so I won't bother recapitulating them. Instead, I offer a brief photo journal of the experience from unwrapping to plating. I started the process around 9 and we ate at 7:30. We served the brisket on soft buns with a side of cranberry pecan sweet potatoes. The brisket cooked on low for around ten hours, and pulled apart with ease. The chipotle and molasses layered the beef and sauce with smokey, sweet flavors that merged well with the soft texture of the beef. In other words, it was a winner. I can add the brisket to the pork shoulder recipe as go to crock pot recipes that result in delicious meals. The Talking Heads' '77 played in the background for my soundtrack from the browning until I started the crock pot.

As some of you know, my last experience with the slow cooker was marred by two strong doses of food poisoning. I determined that the pork shoulder was not the culprit, and I didn't have any apprehension of reusing the crock pot. In March, we'll make a chicken tarragon meal and corned beef in the crock pot. Regarding the latter, St. Pat's is one of the few times where I can convince myself to participate in holiday mirth by consuming heaping portions of unhealthy meat.

I decided to strain and reduce the sauce this morning, as per SK's suggestion, while I typed this entry. I will certainly reduce in the future. The volume decreased by half and transformed into a smooth sauce that is neither too syrupy nor watery. She mentioned seasoning the sauce, but I found no need for additions. I can't wait for sandwiches tonight.

Unwrapping the brisket to Weymouth's fat bass of Psycho Killer seemed appropriate

Browning after a generous seasoning of salt and pepper.

Onions, garlic, coriander, cumin, chili pepper sauteing until fragrant.

Molasses, bay leaves, tomatoes, and chipotle peppers en adobo before adding to the mix.

Breaking up the tomatoes by hand. I'm pulled, I'm pulled up.

The brisket with all of the ingredients at the onset of the approximately ten hours in the crock pot.

Final product fresh out of the crock pot.


I posted two photos of the plating as each one showcases the meat in different lights (literally with and without flash) and the sandwiches' composition.

Final Harvest

Before we departed, the weather indicated a likely freeze was on its way for Denver, so I opted to collect all of the green tomatoes of decent size for indoor ripening. I collected them in a fabric grocery bag. The bulk were green with a few ones with bits of color dotting the bottoms of a few. Since pulling them, several ripened and we will slice them for grilled pizzas on Wednesday.

I placed the bag unevenly on a scale and it registered thirty pounds. After picking it up several times, we concluded that the bag weighed more than thirty, and closer to forty. Our total produce, then, totaled to approximately fifty-five pounds, with the obvious bulk from the green machines on the left. My goal this week is to pull the remaining vines and clear the area now that crisp fall days are here and my allergies are less likely to bother me. All told, we are happy with our garden, with clear improvements for next year if we're around.

Tomato Line Up

Here are photos of all of our tomatoes except the Black From Tula, which we ate earlier and are back in green.

Left to Right: Green Zebra, Brandywine (x2), Cherokee Purple (x3)

Green Zebra: with few seeds and robust meat, they are packed with flavor and it's fun to eat a ripe green fruit. This is the second Zebra that was snipped from the vine and the jury's still out with ten to fifteen on the vine.

Brandywine: these are the first two, and the right one will reach its peak on the window sill. We've been battling bug and slugs and I chose to pull it rather than risk losing one of our only two Brandywines.

Cherokee Purple: our favorite. Bursting with tomato goodness, the Purples reach decent- to large-size with purple hues and dark reds. Their fragrant smell is everything you want from a ripe tomato that defines how a tomato should taste, feel, and smell. In other words, it's a sensual experience. And, admittedly, one that I'm romanticizing, but with good reason.

Sugar Cookies

Max and Benny's in Northbrook is baking cookies with famous faces from Chicago and nationally that taste quite good. My mom sent us to these but she reported that Sarah Palin, Ozzie Guillen, and a few Bears personalities grace the popular cookies. If I'm choosing cookies, sugar is one of the last options I select unless they're fresh. Haunting memories of dry, insipid Jewel sugar cookies with disgusting frosting still linger as I age. Fresh sugar cookies are a delight, but hard to come by unless you're present at the creation. The Obama and Lou Piniella were phenomenal and survived the thousand mile trip in immaculate shape and retained their flavor. I don't know if this is some form of a product endorsement--since no one I know will drive to Northbrook for cookies unless you're already there--but I felt like sharing since I can't scare up other ideas to keep the Raptor Space from devolving into the internet representation of a super-market sugar cookie.

Michael Pollan on the Whole Foods Boycott

Author and foodie extraordinaire Michael Pollan weighed in on the Whole Foods boycott over CEO and Libertarian/Free Market enthusiast John Mackey's opposition to a public option or health care reform. Mackey also opposes labor reform, which will be an issue next year if labor has any shot of improving the ability of American workers to organize. Pollan's judgment on this whole brouhaha? Bunch of hooey hooey:

So Mackey is wrong on health care, but Whole Foods is often right about food, and their support for the farmers matters more to me than the political views of their founder. I haven’t examined the political views of all the retailers who feed me, but I can imagine having a lot of eating problems if I make them a litmus test.


ETA: I stumbled across this blog Obama Foodorama with recipes (including a Kennedy family lobster stew) and analysis of food politics under the Obama administration.

Grilled Pizza Diaries

Tonight was peach, prosciutto, goat cheese, and rosemary pizzas, recipe courtesy of epicurious. They turned out well and certainly didn't disappoint after a stressful day of obsessing over insurance for the missus. There is, however, always room for improvement:

1. I tend to use too much flour on the bottom when rolling out the dough and then transferring it to a baking sheet. In essence, it gets floured twice and a slightly gritty bottom develops. The taste of grilled flour isn't my favorite. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't inhibit the meal. I need to work on that misstep and it seems rather easy to remedy for the future.

2. The pizzas needed more ingredients. I brushed the pizzas with olive oil before applying the toppings in the following order: rosemary, prosciutto, peaches, and goat cheese. The result was a sparser pizza than I preferred, and more of everything would round out the pizza as a meal.

3. Possibly adding pepper and a dash of salt when coating the tops with olive oil could've brought out some further flavor. Maybe, maybe not. Uncertain on this one.

In Defense of Root Beer Floats and Simple, Unsophisticated Pleasures

I'm fond of sophisticated cooking, even though it's not something that I'm talented at executing close to professional or, frankly, novice levels. You can spare me a description of the proper employment of six types of sea salts, which has happened in the past. I don't know anyone who has the palette to distinguish between Hawaiian Black or India Tree Coarse sea salts, and I'd doubt the veracity of claims to the otherwise. Simple cooking without a front loaded list of spices and convoluted preparation techniques suits me, and can illustrate someone's technique without relying on frivolity to dazzle diners. That's not to say that I don't feel like Thai basil and plain, sweet basil offer the same flavors and don't have specific utilities, nor that pairing ingredients and a cheese can't change a dish. I simply find pretentious cooking to be a waste of time unless the cook can nail it without producing a good, yet not superior meal. To be honest, I think I have fallen victim to this silly pursuit a time or six, so I shouldn't be too preachy.

Nevertheless, I enjoy summer and the opportunity to savor a refreshing root beer float for dessert. Root beer floats are often a product that is relegated to people's childhoods, or the idea of a treat that is tailored for children. On the contrary, I find them playful and a touch light hearted and ideal for a hot summer's evening after grilling. We aren't swilling floats all summer long, don't get me wrong. I admit that a root beer float, unfortunately, isn't the healthiest option. However, they break up the monotony of ice cream and other standard summer desserts. If the idea of a root beer float invokes a feeling of comfortable nostalgia, why not give an oldy a second go around with all of your adult eating?

In the above photoed floats, you'll notice the absence of ice cream. Katers and I had a heavy meal and decided to go easy on the ice cream. I touched up the photo's contrast and hue to bring out the best in the floats' swirling browns and frothy head. (Notice the clever product placement. Who needs google generated ads?)

Arthur Bryant's BBQ and KC

At my insistence, I managed the nine hour drive from Denver to Kansas City. When we arrived, I was tired and in need of some down time. Doug's friend Tony met us at his home and we left almost immediately for one of my favorite barbecue joints in the country, Arthur Bryant's. Once we arrived, I was in better spirits and excited to eat. AB is the BBQ mecca in KC that attracts politicians, tourists, and fond lovers of BBQ such as myself to a city that is one of the country's homes for barbecue.

I stopped at AB once before and was stunned by the meat and sauces. When a return to KC materialized on the drive to St. Louis, I insisted on AB. I read about another BBQ joint, Oklahoma Joe's, and would have liked to try Gates BBQ, but with little time I didn't think it was the right time for a pleasure eating cruise around KC's best BBQ restaurants. I ordered the brisket and burnt ends, the latter of which is the famous AB selection. (Pork is no slouch when it comes to barbecue, but I usually prefer beef when it comes to eating.) The burnt ends were soaked in sauce with an even amount of carbon that exploded with flavor. As you can guess, the richly smoked and evenly fatty brisket, when combined with the rich and sweet sauce (one of three table sauces), was the perfect compliment to the burnt ends. We drank a Boulevard Brewing Company Pale Ale. After finishing a mug I didn't feel like beer so I grabbed a refreshing, yet not too sacchrine, sweet tea. I left with a full stomach and a content body after driving for so long. Doug wasn't too impressed with his ribs (too tough) and Kate wasn't blown away by her pulled pork (flavor wise). Our host Tony gratefully shared some of his pork that I loved.


For the record, I loved KC, and Doug's friend Tony deserves repeated thanks. Tony--who was a wonderful host on so many levels and is due heaps of praise and plaudits--took us on a driving tour of KC that ended with a stop at the Flying Saucer beer bar (a must for any beer nerd) in the the bar choked Power and Light District. Tony's intricately planned route brought us past through the Missouri side's architecture, campus areas, fantastic art museum (or at least from the outside), and glitzy downtown that is benefiting from urban renewal. We saw the ins and outs of KC that we never would have had the fortune to discover, and Kate and I were duly impressed. If you have an opportunity, take the chance and visit KC, if only for Arthur Bryant's and KC's charm.

Grilled pizzas.

Last night, Kate and I grilled pizzas. I whipped up the dough on Thursday night following a recipe, "Grill, Baby, Grill," on Mark Bittman's blog Bitten. Originally written by Ann Marie Conte, it maintained Bitten's philosophy of minimalism and simplicity in approach and cooking. For the sauce, we used an easy sauce recipe. We rolled the dough out for three small ovular pizzas with a diameter of eight inches or so. They took on a rather irregular shape and were far from perfect ovals. We slathered an even amount of sauce on and topped it with a layer of shaved mozzarella. Our basil hasn't produced as much as we want, but we trimmed a few leaves. We ripped them into small ribbons and placed them on the mozzarella.

We use a gas grill and opted to for foil on the grates. Within five minutes, the crust was browning nicely and turning crispy. A few minutes later, the center was hot and the crust evenly cooked. The end product surprised both of us with its flavor and wonderful texture. We had some concerns about the dough after we accidentally poured an extra tablespoon or so of olive oil into the mix. We rolled out half the dough, so three more pizzas await us. We've though of ways to improve them with various toppings, and we're excited to have a new recipe to experiment with over the course of the summer.

Food

Today's NYT provides readers with two quality pieces on food in the US, and the shifting conceptions of what constitutes "food." Mark Bittman's "Eating Food that's Better For You, Organic Or Not" and the Sunday Business section's "Is A Food Revolution Now in Season?" tap into the consensus that the traditional American industrial food chain--the one that I grew up with--is bankrupt, in a nutritional and qualitative sense. Bittman's point is realistic, an argument that Michael Pollan hedges in his praise of everything organic: it's more important to consume conventional fruits and vegetables to live healthy. He also comments on the lofty ambitions emanating from the "food movement": "With all due respect to people in the 'food movement,' the food need not be 'slow,' either."

In the 60 Minutes segment with Alice Waters posted below, Waters praises slow food as the correspondent noted the absence of a microwave. Then she whips up a scrumptious breakfast in what seems like no time at all, thus revealing how easy it is to participate in crafting and eating slow food. Give me a break. Most average Americans are lucky if they have the time and energy to whip up a homemade meal five out of seven nights, and I think that estimate could be too high. The simplicity and accessibility of slow food is illusory.

The Sunday Business piece is a bit more insight into how foodies are attempting to work with Obama, Sec of Ag Vilsack, and members of Congress to reverse the course of industrial food. It's not bad insight into the status of the food movement and the business side, which has forced Wal-Mart, Heinz, and a long list of producers to bend to new consumer consciousness on food.

Finally, on-line NYT round table "Food, Glorious Food Myths" with six authors, pundits, nutritionists attempting to dispel widely held conceptions of eating, such as the lack of nutrition in fruit drinks, misplaced praise of kosher foods, the tasteless nature of grass-fed beef, and other pertinent topics.