I Found My Thrill on Blueberry Hill

On Friday, my mother fed Fat Baby his first blackberry. He gobbled it down and peered into her bowl to see what else was there. Then she gave him his first blueberry and he was hooked, shoving whole handfuls into his mouth.

Saturday morning, The Carnivore and I tossed Fat Baby into his wagon and we took a walk down the long driveway to pick up the newspapers. Along the way, The Carnivore would pick a blackberry every few feet out of the bushes growing in the ditch. He would pop them into Fat Baby's mouth and earn a smile each time. When we got back to the house, I remembered the invitation our next-door property owner had issued two summers back, when we first moved out here, to come pick from his blueberry bushes. With Fat Baby still in his wagon, we hiked through the weeds and came upon 25 or so of the BIGGEST, most fruit-laden, bushes I've seen in years. The Carnivore and I piled handfuls into the wagon with Fat Baby and filled up a large mixing bowl with fruit without even making a dent in the harvest. For a while I contemplated some of the blueberry recipes that I've been sitting on, but I just couldn't bear to alter the fresh berries' natural state.

I have special memories of picking berries when I was a kid, spending time in the woods with my mom, sweltering in the heat. I was born obsessive and I remember watching mom eat off the bushes, not thinking to pick any for later. Even if she did fill a bowl, she would inevitably empty it by the time we were home. I, however, would plan ahead, rationing the berries so they would last as long as possible. Many a time, I bought my way off of restrictions by hoarding my berries until mom's stash was long gone. As long as I held out long enough, I could occasionally bargain my way off of future restrictions. It is memories like that one that make me glad I have a son instead of a manipulative teenage daughter.

Fat Baby and I spent most of the weekend subsisting on the fat, warm berries (the diapers have been doozies!). If the bushes still look this good by next weekend, maybe I'll get up the gumption to try making a blueberry coffee cake.

Farm 255 (or how to eat local)

The Carnivore did, in fact, take Fat Baby and I out to eat on Friday evening. This was quite an event for all of us as it was the first time all three of us have gone together to a restaurant, and Fat Baby and I got dressed up for the occasion. We dined downtown, where The Carnivore and I used to spend all of our Going Out Time, though it was the first time we were there for any social reason in two years. We ended up running into an old friend who was a bit surprised to see us with a baby.

Farm 255 is all its cracked up to be. Picking an appetizer was easy, as was dessert, but settling on an entree proved to be most difficult. It could be months before we eat out again, so I wanted to choose wisely. The menu is simple, with only five or six choices each for appetizers and entrees. The chef serves what is in season at their farm, and the menu changes daily. The ambience is eclectic enough to be definitive Athens. The restaurant is located in the back of an old warehouse, behind Flicker and Clocked, with a view overlooking the courtyard of The Caledonia Lounge. The walls are brick with large, old windows on two sides. The ceilings are high and the ductwork is exposed. The floors are a gorgeous stained concrete. The bar is along one side, a beautiful custom-built wooden structure that goes nicely with the matching tables & chairs. The kitchen is open to the dining area. The food is plated very elegantly, with West Coast sized servings (unlike the usual gut-busting, obesity-inspired serving sizes handed out at chain restaurants).

For starters, we were served fresh peasant bread with olive oil. We ordered fried green tomatoes for an appetizer and were brought three perfect tomatoes, fried in grits and served over a bed of wilted kale.

The chef brought us a lemon cucumber salad that Fat Baby fought me for. The cucumber was sliced so thinly as to be transparent and tossed with basil and lemon. Where so many restaurants season their dishes to within an inch of their life, to the point where the flavor of the herbs and spices overpowers the taste of the dish itself, at Farm 255, the vegetables are the stars of the show.

The Carnivore ordered a skewered shrimp dish for his entree, but I paid scant attention to it. I waffled between ordering the Vegetables Perfect (what a great name!) and a savory mushroom crepe. I asked the waitress for a recommendation between the two and she leaned toward the vegetables. Her description was enough to convince me, when she beamed and called it a "big, beautiful bowl of vegetables." She was right.

The Vegetables Perfect was, indeed, beautiful. It was a mixture of sauteed and roasted cherry tomatoes, onions, leeks, and green beans; served with smashed potatoes and a shot glass of the freshest pesto I've had to date. The dish was so simple, yet everything was cooked to the perfect consistency and was seasoned just enough to enhance the natural flavors. The tomatoes had the biggest effect on me, since I am normally not at all impressed with the flavor or the texture. They were cut in half, marinated in some sort of nectar from on high, and roasted ever so slightly; just enough that they burst in my mouth with the most exsquisite gush of tartness.

I didn't even bother trying The Carnivore's dish, so enamored was I with my own entree, and I had to threaten him with the mean end of my fork to keep him out of my own plate.

For dessert, we had a blueberry, blackberry, and goat cheese crepe that all three of us polished off in a mere minute. The sweet-tartness of the berries contrasted fabulously with the texture of the cheese, and the freshness of the fruits was more than obvious.

If nothing else, eating at Farm 255 will convince anyone to eat organic, to eat fresh, and to snub the trucked-in, over-fertilized, hybrid fruits and vegetables that are now imported from Chile.

I was hoping Hurricane Dennis would force Fabulous Uncle to evacuate himself from Tallahassee to Athens, because I knew he would LOVE Farm, but alas, he chose to ride out the storm in the panhandle, and here I am wishing I had him to use as my excuse to go back and try the savory mushroom crepe.

Anticipation

Last night, The Carnivore said he would knock off work early on Friday so that we could GO OUT TO EAT. He has been working at Farm 255 for the past few weeks, a new restaurant in Athens being opened by the owners of Full Moon Coop, a local organic farming cooperative. I first read about this restaurant months ago, and I have been positively quivering with anticipation. We rarely go out to eat. As a matter of fact, the last time The Carnivore and I ate out at a restaurant was October 14 (our anniversary). Sad, but true.

If I were completely honest though, I would mention that I rarely want to eat out. Fat Baby goes to bed rather early, so eating out can be a logistical nightmare to begin with, and as a vegetarian, there are usually only one or two dishes on any given menu that appeal to me. Since I have lived in this town almost all of my life, I have, as a general rule, already tried both vegetarian dishes at just about every restaurant in town. But when a new restaurant opens up, I start to get the hankering.

Then, of course, there is the expense of eating out. I find it absurd, as an accountant who does a lot of cost-benefit analyses, to spend exorbitant amounts of money at a restaurant when I can usually cook the same dishes myself for a tiny proportion of the cost. Eating out regularly and often is a pastime for childless people who are either too lazy to cook or are too short-sighted to be planning for retirement. Luckily, I have no problems giving my opinion.

All that aside, since this will be my first time this year eating out (and paying the tab), I refuse to focus on the cost. The real issue is what to order. I want to be able to plan ahead, but I haven't seen Farm 255's menu yet. The Carnivore is working there today though, so I have asked him to call me with a list of menu items so that I can start thinking about what I will have. I heard a rumor that fried green tomatoes are on the menu (love those!).

Now if he would just call...

Parsley Soup & Dental Floss

I bought a pound of asparagus a week and a half ago, fully intending to make a Cheese & Asparagus Souffle, a recipe I have only made once to date. However, every afternoon while planning that night's dinner, I would gaze balefully at the asparagus and dread working on the complicated dish. This afternoon I noticed the asparagus was looking a bit peevish, so it was cook it or toss it. Rather than doing anything complex though, I remembered a recipe I had cut out from the AJC Food Section months ago for Julie's Asparagus. I'm sure the original article explained who Julie is, but I don't recall any details. I usually steam asparagus when I want it as a side dish, so I was interested in a new but still-simple way to get it on the table. I am pleased to announce that Julie knows her asparagus.

JULIE'S ASPARAGUS

• 1 pound fresh asparagus
• 2 Tbs butter
• Salt & black pepper to taste

1. Rinse & drain the asparagus, and snap off the tough ends where they break naturally (This was news to me - until now, I had always arbitrarily picked a place to trim asparagus ends with a knife. I always worried that I was tossing out perfectly good asparagus parts, and I inevitably bit into some pieces and realized I had left the tough part still on. This "breaking" tactic worked smashingly).
2. Arrange the spears in a glass casserole dish in 1 or 2 layers.
3. Melt the butter and drizzle over the asparagus.
4. Season with salt & pepper to taste (For me, this meant about 1/2 tsp of kosher salt and a very generous downpour of freshly coarse-ground black pepper).
5. Cover the dish snugly with aluminum foil.
6. Bake at 450 degrees for about 15 minutes.

For our main dish, because The Carnivore cannot live on asparagus alone, I made Yankee Corn Chowder, another great recipe from my America's Bounty cookbook, one of Big Mama's best yard-sale finds yet.

YANKEE CORN CHOWDER

• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup chopped onion (I used red onion)
• 1/2 cup russet potato, peeled and diced (I used new red potatoes and I vehemently disagree with the whole peeling thing - I left the peels on and didn't regret it)
• 1/2 cup chopped celery, with some leaves (whatever! I didn't leave any leaves on, and I'm glad of it - for what will seem to be a very obvious reason when you find out what I did with the parsley)
• 1/4 cup parsley, chopped (This is a very important step. I got so hung up on the odd proportions of this dish - after all, the recipe called for half as much parsely as it did onion or potato - that I got completely distracted by the mounting PILE of parsley as I measured it out. Luckily, of course, I had plenty of fresh parsley due to the whole mistaken cilantro debacle from last weekend, but this still seemed ridiculous. Regardless, I ended up omitting the "chopped" instruction and threw the parsley into the stockpot without first doing the obvious. Suffice to say The Carnivore and I both needed dental floss after dinner.)
• 2 cups milk
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 15-0z can corn, drained

1. In a medium saucepan, bring water to a boil.
2. Cook onion, potato, celery, and CHOPPED parsley for 15 minutes or until tender.
3. Add milk and salt and heat just to boiling.
4. Stir in corn and heat again, stirring.

Even with the large grass-like clumps of parsley, the soup was still very tasty for something with such simple flavors. I will definately make this again, especially since it is such a quick dish to put together and uses ingredients I keep on hand anyway, but next time I will use more onion, and I will pummel the parsley into submission before tossing it into the pot.

Clean-Out-The-Fridge Pizza

There are times when I dig in the produce bin(s) of my refrigerator and realize that some of the veggies buried at the bottom are nearing their last days. It is at those times that I either make spaghetti sauce or pizza. I recently saw a recipe in an issue of Vegetarian Times for Clean-Out-The-Fridge stew, but I mistakenly took that magazine to the pool where it got drenched and therefore became quite unreadable. I guess I'll never know how to make that stew now, but I have no qualms about commandeering that name for my pizza.

I keep store-bought pizza crusts in the freezer (I prefer Mamma Mary's brand), but I have clipped out a recipe for whole wheat pizza crust, and I intend to use that recipe to get over my fear of making Things That Need To Rise. I'm not there yet though. I do despise the refrigerated pizza crusts in a can that can be bought in the biscuit section of the supermarket. Nasty, awful things.

Last night, I defrosted two pizza crusts, brushed them with olive oil, sprinkled them with garlic powder, dusted them with Italian seasoning, spread them with tomato sauce and covered them with mozzarella (though I have been known to use monterey jack). Then I cleaned out the fridge and topped them with the following:

• Green olives
• Scallions
• Red onions
• Fresh parsley (out of my garden)
• Mushrooms
• Red bell peppers
• Green bell peppers
• Poblanos
• Marinated artichoke hearts
• Grated parmesan
• Grated romano
• Crumbled feta
• Cracked black pepper
• Crushed red pepper

Bake on a pizza stone dusted with cornmeal at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes. YUMMY!

I'm a big fan of pizza, but will rarely order it from any of the national chains anymore. My favorite pizza joint in Athens is Little Italy, but as the owner was just busted for being the ringleader of meth network, I have fears for the future of the restaurant. A friend of mine and I were jokingly discussing buying the restaurant if it ends up on the block, and now I can't stop thinking about how much I would enjoy running my very own commercial kitchen. Alas, this is only a pipedream for now. Maybe later...

The Carnivore loves my pizza, but Fat Baby had never had any before last night. I cut a slice for him and then cut it up into little-tiny itty-bitty baby pizza slices. Whereas most children pick off the vegetables and will only eat the cheese & crust, Fat Baby carefully picked off the vegetables and ate each one, and then hurled the crusts to the floor with utter disdain. Hmmm, maybe he only likes crusts made from scratch. Figures.

Snobby Grits and Biscuits That Can Fly

We had an Upside-Down Day yesterday and ate breakfast for dinner. A few months ago, in my favorite column from the AJC Food Section, "From The Menu Of...," in which recipes from local restaurants are printed, I found the recipe for Creamy-Dreamy White Cheddar Grits from The Flying Biscuit Cafe. I have, of course, adapted the recipe ever so slightly over the past couple of months, and I absolutely love it.

A few years ago, when I worked for a vintage clothing company, I spent about six months traveling quite a bit. Anytime I had a late night or early morning flight out of Atlanta, I would spend the night at a buddy's house in Little Five Points, only about 15 minutes from the airport. We always used these overnight visits to go eat somewhere, and Little Five has great places to choose from. The Flying Biscuit Cafe was only about two blocks from my buddy's house, and we walked there for brunch a time or two. I never tried the grits (what a shame!), but I ate lots of extremely large biscuits with vast amounts of apple butter, and I remember there being quite a lot of vegetarian selections to choose from. I just recently found out that The Flying Biscuit has put out a cookbook. Gonna HAVE to get me one of those.

CREAMY DREAMY WHITE CHEDDAR GRITS

• 3 cups water
• 1 cup half-and-half
• 1 and 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp white pepper
• 1 cup quick grits
• 1/2 cup grated white cheddar cheese
• 2 Tbs unsalted butter

1. In a saucepan, combine water, half-and-half, salt and white pepper and bring to a boil.
2. Slowly pour grits into boiling water while whisking the entire time.
3. Reduce to low heat and continue to whisk often, until thick and completely smooth, about 10 minutes.
4. Add cheese and stir gently until cheese melts. Whisk again to combine.
5. Turn heat off and allow grits to rest 5 minutes.
6. Add butter and stir until completely smooth, silky and shiny.

Last night, on a lark, I decided to use 1/2 extra-sharp cheddar cheese and 1/2 Danish Fontina cheese. It added considerable depth to the taste and I will continue to try different cheeses now, although I would hate for my grits to get above their raising. Fat Baby LOVES these grits; last night he ate them with his fingers and then cleaned his hands off in his hair. Normally, that might not be much of an issue, but we served the waffles with 100% pure maple syrup, and I now know that the following is true:

maple syrup + butter + grits + baby hair = super glue.

Even after a bath after dinner, I was still picking grits out of his hair this morning.

Feeling Very Thaimexinese Today

Saturdays are my favorite kitchen days. I often find the time to make a snack or dessert and I have more time than usual to work on dinner. Thus, the most intimidating or time-consuming recipes are saved for Saturdays.

For a mid-morning boost, I made a batch of Thai Iced Coffee for me and The Carnivore using a recipe I pulled from the June 2005 issue of Cooking Light magazine. I'm a big fan of iced coffee (actually of coffee in any form), and this is certainly the most interesting version of it that I've had yet. As a general rule, I just brew an extremely strong pot of coffee, usually using Cafe Bustelo espresso, and then stir in half-and-half and sugar to taste. This new recipe, however, will be my new standard.

THAI ICED COFFEE

• 1/2 cup hot espresso or very strong brewed coffee
• 10 tsps fat-free sweetened condensed milk (this stuff was a royal pain to measure out - the stuff is like molasses and it comes out of the measuring spoon about as fast as, well, molasses)
• 4 Tbs hot water
• Dash of cardamom (this was the first time I have used this spice - very cool/weird stuff)

1. Combine all ingredients, stir well and cool completely. Serve over ice.

I finally found The Right Salsa Recipe a few weeks ago, out of a cookbook my lovely mother found for me, America's Bounty. To date, my favorite restaurant salsa has been from Agua Linda, a wonderful Mexican restaurant in Athens, only about 5 blocks from where I used to live in Normaltown. In those days, I would often walk down to Agua Linda with a plastic container to purchase salsa to go. Inevitably, when I walked in and handed over my plastic container and asked that it be filled with salsa, no one ever knew what to charge me for it. This is a locally-owned place, and Plastic To Go Container of Salsa is not exactly a standard menu item. Usually everyone working at that moment at the restaurant would get in a huddle and eye me strangley while they conversed in Spanish about what to charge Weird White Lady Who Brings Her Own Tupperware.

The recipe from America's Bounty comes extremely close to the salsa from Agua Linda, and though I have tweaked it slightly, it was a good recipe to begin with. I made it for the first time a few weeks ago and The Carnivore and I devoured the entire batch in a single sitting. I had a hankering for it again today, so I made a double batch of the salsa along with a batch of Black Bean Dip.

SALSA

• 1 tomato, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup quartered tomatillos
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped red onion
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 3 Tbs chopped cilantro
• 1 jalapeno, seeded and coarsely chopped
• 1/2 tsp salt

1. Put all ingredients into food processor (LOVE! those things) and pulse until desired consistency is reached.

For dinner I made my first stir-fry, using the electric wok Big Mama found for me a yard sale last weekend. The recipe that I used, from the June 2004 issue of Vegetarian Times, and adapted from Rachel Ray's 30-Minute Veggie Meals (a cookbook I still don't have, yet want desperately), was an odd one, and it will need a lot of tweaking (if I don't just throw the whole thing out and search for an entirely new recipe). The seasonings are where everything went wrong. The recipe called for soy sauce, garlic, ginger, Chinese 5-spice Powder, the juice of a large navel orange, and apricot preserves. The vegetables were standard stir-fry fare: snow peas, napa cabbage, bell pepper, bean sprouts, scallions.

The Carnivore and I, as we are known to do any time a new recipe is tried, started to deconstruct the recipe as soon as we took our first bite. The dish obviously needed more soy sauce (of which I did not have enough); cashews would have been a nice addition; but the real kicker was that there was something Odd-tasting that we couldn't put our finger on. I was most suspicious of the Chinese 5-Spice Powder, a spice I had bought only yesterday which I had never heard of before. The Carnivore thought the orange juice and the apricot preserves were the most likely suspects of the Oddness. For a short while, I tried to lay the blame on the ginger.

After we were done eating, we decided to read the spice container to see which 5 spices were included. The only guess I had to offer was anise (something I'm not fond of to begin with). I was right, as it turned out, but the anise wasn't the bad egg. The spices contained cloves. Eureka! I knew what was wrong with this recipe. The Chinese 5-Spice Powder, which clearly was spawned from the depths of hell, made my stir-fry taste EXACTLY like a Poetry Slam in a Pretentious Bar smells.

I Married Him For His Cornbread

The Carnivore finally noticed how busy I've been, and he offered to cook dinner tonight while I sat at my desk with a pile of financial statements and pulled my hair out trying to do a... well, I ought not bore anyone with the tedium of the project I've been working on. Suffice to say, it involves restating past profit & loss statements to better reflect operating expenses for developing the valuation of a .... there I go again, thinking anyone else is interested in this.

Tonight, The Carnivore served salmon patties on a bed of jasmine rice (apparently he couldn't find the brown rice and didn't want to disturb me) with hush puppies. I don't fry things, so I've always been appreciative of his abilities to do so. Fat Baby was served his own little tiny plate with specially made itty-bitty salmon patties and teeny-weeny hush puppies. It was all very cute. I believe that was his first fried dinner.

The Carnivore's hush puppy recipe (modified, of course) originally came from the 1982 Southern Living Annual Cookbook. My mother has been collecting these cookbooks for me at yard sales for many years now, and it is my life goal to have a complete set without ever paying full price for any of them. I'm still short a few years, mostly the nineties, but I have faith that people will get tired of dusting them and will throw them outside for a yard sale.

The Carnivore is a great cook, and it used to be his job to get dinner on the table. Its a long-running, yet slightly true, joke that I married The Carnivore for his cornbread. I can't remember what he served with the cornbread back when we first started dating, but I don't suppose it even mattered. To this day, I haven't tasted better cornbread. On special occasions around here (Mother's Day, my birthday), when The Carnivore asks what I want for dinner, cornbread is always my answer.

I've been waffling lately on the seafood issue. I haven't eaten red meat or chicken since I was 6 years old, but I've always eaten seafood. It was a difficult thing to explain when I was a kid, because anytime people heard 'vegetarian,' they automatically assumed I didn't eat anything except tofu & brussels sprouts. When I was pregnant, I limited seafood to no more than one serving per month (even though the guidelines say once a week is okay, my baby's brain development seemed more important than the craving for catfish). As a nursing mother, I followed the same schedule until I realized recently that I had gone months without eating any at all. For a while I've been toying with giving seafood up altogether, but I clearly haven't made the final leap there.

Monotony

Eating a cheese sandwich at my desk again.
If I had balls, I would give my left nut for a vegetable egg roll.

Woe Is Me

It has been quite a disappointing food week. The highlight so far has been the THREE Krispy Kreme doughnuts I had on Jack's birthday on Wednesday. Pregnant sister was in labor all day Thursday, so I made two trips to fast food joints to pick up food for the members of her support system. On one of the trips, I ordered sausage biscuits and I'm pretty certain that was the first time I've ever ordered meat in the drive-thru. Fat Baby was in his car seat practically moaning at the smell of food, so I went against my better judgement and got a greasy potato product for him. He seemed to understand that the drive-thru was something like the bank drive-thru, in which I hand paper to the person in the window, and they exchange that for food (to this point, he thought only lollipops came out of windows). Woe is me.

Last night there was no time to cook, so I ate a cheese sandwich at my desk while I attempted to get work done. My goal was to get enough work done so that I could take a three-day holiday weekend. Alas, my pile only continued to grow as more work continued to flow in via the fax machine and email. Woe is me.

In desperation on Wednesday night, I picked up new recipes to try next week and made my grocery list for Friday morning shopping. The desperation was borne partly out of the need to at least plan to cook some great dinners and partly out of jealousy. The Carnivore had to go back to town Wednesday night to fix problems with an air conditioning system at AN ORGANIC RESTAURANT HE HAS BEEN WORKING AT! There is clearly no justice in the world when soda-drinking, meat-eating, fast-food-craving, organic-scoffing husbands get to spend their time at new organic restaurants while the vegetarian foodie stays at home and eats cheese sandwiches at her desk. Woe is me.

Today, along with two of my sisters and two of my brothers, I am taking Fat Baby to the fire station in Five Points. The sneaky side of me is in ecstasy since that means I will be but one block away from the fancy hippie grocery store. I plan to stock up on all those items that my usual big-box grocery store doesn't even carry. If my work ever gets done, I'll be cooking to break the bank next week. Mom finally found me a wok at yard sales last week, so I intend to finally try my hand at stir-frys. To say I am excited is a gross understatement.

Things are definately looking up.