Plant Babies - an update

It has come to my attention that my blogs' "about me" / supplemental pages are a little outdated, give or take 3 years...

Well, I started the blog after moving to Boston and having a nice little potted garden in Somerville and 2 roommates.  A year later I moved to a 425 sq ft flat in the middle of the city in anticipation of our December wedding.

My blog has thus had its context transformed:
I don't really do the cooking anymore, and
No yard.

Me not doing the cooking anymore has a simple explanation: I married an Italian.  Well, 1/4 Italian.  Close enough.

I will now speak more to my lack of gardening...

When I moved into the city I moved my herbs that survived the winter indoors to the window by my desk at work.  They survived fairly well until suffering a drought of care when I took a week off at Thanksgiving to visit Mike and family in Utah.  I brought them back to surviving status, but my three-week long absence to marry and honeymoon was enough to do them in.  There wasn't much hope for the herb babies.

Mike got me an orchid for Valentine's day.  It hasn't bloomed again yet (hey, come on sista!), but it's still looking pretty healthy!  One of these days we will re-pot it...

The next summer (2012), Mike and I went to home depot to find me some house plants more suited to indoor survival (aka as low maintenance as possible), and we left with a polka dot plant, an umbrella plant, and a jade plant.  A coworker asked me to name them so they became Pinky, Rihanna, and Jade.  A word to the wise: polka dot plants are only cute when you first buy them.  They grow in a very unattractive way and are a little more needy.  Also, we had serious gnat problems at home and work -- I was so embarrassed!  But we discovered an easy and effective solution: put a 0.5-1" layer of black sand on top of the soil and the moths will die out and will no longer be able to lay eggs in the soil.  Other than that, the plants are doing pretty well for just needing 1 thorough watering per week (1-2 for the polka dot).

We also got a new planter and some herbs: basil, oregano, and thyme.  They lasted for a good while until finally kicking the bucket in November.  The planter and petrified remains are currently cozying up the empty fireplace.

Finally, Mike is the best.  I had hinted probably every couple of months how awesome I thought it would be if we had an Amaryllis plant around every year for our Anniversary.

(My wedding bouquet was Amaryllis because it was in season, cheap, and high-impact :).  I liked how unique it was, of course.)

Well, Mike is pretty good at taking 500 hints and he had a ginormous amaryllis plant ready at our Anniversary trip to a cute B&B in Kentucky.  Luckily it survived the trip back to Boston after finishing its bloom.  Since cutting off the bloom and leaf, a new leaf has grown.  We let the leaf anchor itself through the window blinds and thought how cute that it looks so healthy until one day we opened the blinds and discovered... it had grown almost to the height of the window!!!  We are anxious to see how it changes as the year goes on.

So there is the current story of my Plant Babies.  We are looking forward to moving a little further outside the city this summer and getting a plot in an Urban Garden nearby!!  Then we will have some great stories!

Lamb Valentino

My hubby amazed me tonight. You would think I would be used to this by now...

Starter salad: arugula with cranberries, walnuts, tomatoes, and a homemade glaze of mustard, apple cider vinegar, honey, and anchovies. Inspired? Yes.

Main course: grilled lamb chops marinated and topped by mint gremolata (garlic, mint, olive oil, salt, lemon zest) and sautéed asparagus with feta cheese and a homemade plum sauce (plums, sugar, water).

DELICIOUS. When I say homemade, I mean home inspired, original recipe. Only thing Mike looked up was the lamb marinade recipe. We grilled the lamb on our iron-clad oven skillet.

Desert: homemade yogurt with plum sauce.

Happy Valentine's Day :)

Steamed pork buns and Wakame salad!

Wakame with carrots and radishes, in a sauce of vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar. Next time we will look for toasted sesame seeds and glass noodles to vary the texture a bit. It tastes good and settles well in the stomach, but it is just funny to eat a pile of soggy seaweed :).

Steamed pork buns from a recipe called jinpangmanndu.

Wish I had learned how to make these earlier in my life! Thank goodness for a fearless husband who starts the food projects :).

Italian kale supremely pizza

Thanks to our unexpected chance to view a potential next apartment today, we decided to turn today's loaf into pizza dough! It is so convenient being married to an Italian - fresh dough, frozen aliquots of homemade red sauce, Italian sausage from famed Savenor's market, red bell peppers, crimini mushrooms, caramelized onions, and crisped kale made an excellent mozzarella pizza tonight. We caramelized the onions, turned off the heat, and added ripped up kale pieces to the warm pan before tossing onto the pizza (440def for 10 min then added the onion and kale to the pizza on the counter). It was perfect. Pizza stones and peels are awesome at getting that crispy perfect crust!

Pasta Carbonara

Deliciousness. Mike's first foray into adding wheat flour to semolina flour in pasta. Crispy bacon, scrambled eggs, grated Parmesan and fresh picked basil from our window garden = nursery fatigue gone :)

Spinach, Feta, and Sun-Dried Tomato Biscuits

HOLY COW!!!  We found these gems in a Ward cookbook from Cincinnati.  They are incredibly delicious cold or warm.  Fresh baked with a little bit of homemade butter on top?  Increible.  Fantastico.  Period.

Ingredients:
2C. bleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt (we skipped this)
6T unsalted butter, frozen solid (we only had salted)
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
2 T. minced sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, plus 2 tsp of the oil (we only had dry sun-dried tomatoes, so I added olive oil to the skillet for the garlic and threw the tomatoes in for the last minute)
1/2 C. frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry (we have a couple bags of different green leafy vegetables we can no longer tell apart, guessing this time it was rainbow chard)
1 C. cold buttermilk (YUM)

Adjust oven rack to middle position and preheat oven to 450 degrees.  With a fork, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt in a medium bowl.  Using the large holes on a box grater (or a food processor), coarsely grate butter into the dry ingredients; mix quickly with fingertips to blend evenly.  Briefly saute garlic in tomato oil in a small skillet.  Scrape garlic into spinach; add tomatoes and feta, and mix with fingertips.  Mix into the above dry ingredients.

Stir in buttermilk with fork and mix until dough just comes together.  If necessary, add extra droplets of buttermilk over any dry patches.  Turn dough onto floured work surface and pat into ta thick disk about 6" across.  Cut in half with a knife (or a dough scraper), then cut each half into five parts.  Pick up each piece and gently, without overhandling the dough, shape into a round.  

 Spray a 9" cake pan (or 2 8" rounds, or a cookie sheet...) with cooking spray and arrange biscuits in pan.  Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes (we did 22).  Serve immediately.  Makes 10 biscuits.

Stinkin Delicious.  Let me know what you discover to eat these with!  So far... they taste great for breakfast and with red sauce and pasta.

THE Sandwich

Ingredients:
homemade 1/2 wheat 1/2 white bread
mayonnaise
dijon mustard
green bell pepper
avocado
zucchini
yellow heirloom tomato
lettuce
honey turkey deli meat
sliced colby jack cheese

Observe...