Ramping up the Delight

For all you locavores out there, this post is a bit embarrassing...

For me, that is.

Yes, those are ramps up there. Ramps, as in the trend-du-moment harbinger of spring ending and summer beginning. Since we had an awfully long, drawn-out spring (who's complaining? not me), and a peek-a-boo summer, things may have been a little mixed up. And they were. But it's still a bit late to talk about ramps.

But that's ok, I'm not giving a recipe. I'm actually highlighting a delightful observation I made at the time of cutting up the expensive, farmer's-market, little darlings:

I matched my food!

As I looked down and the penny dropped, I felt happily content to be so in tune with the season that I had on a purple top and green shorts- ha!
The ramps went into a lazy-man-scramble with some early tomatoes, and were paired with those all-stars of the sustainability world: anchovies. More specifically, marinated white anchovies, a specialty which the Spanish call boquerones, and the Greeks call gavros. I first met their ilk at Estadio, and later bought these at Vace, an Italian deli-and-pizza stronghold in the Cleveland Park neighborhood.

It was a simple, filling, and nutritious meal. Eggs and anchovies = good proteins and fats; tomatoes, ramps, and herbs = 2 fruit and vegetable servings for the day. And that's pretty much how I do my food accounting. It's not overly complex.

Moments when you match what you're chopping... now THAT's ENTERTAINMENT!

I'd love to hear how you all entertain yourselves with your own passions. These types of stories sustain us as we follow our dreams. So do be a peach and tell us a story, eh?

I am currently trawling for students for my next cooking class, possibly next week. The armchair travel theme is Southern Italy (oh, aren't you dying to see where I went? Soon!), and the menu will be different from the last one- modified to include Pizza, as only southern Italians can make it. (And those who have learned from southern Italians, of course!) Send me a message if you or someone you know may be interested!

**Sincere thanks to all who have like the new Taste Life Twice Facebook page! I'm delighted to have another way to connect with people, and look forward to enjoying the recipes, stories, and opportunities to be shared.

Glazed Oxtail Meets Amazing Brown Rice Bowl

As with the beans, so with the oxtail...

Who makes anything with oxtail these days? Wizened Italian grandmothers, that's who. Am I aspiring to be a wizened Italian grandmother?
No.

But again, there's that yearning to live 'close to the ground,' if you know what I mean. If you can't be in harmony with nature due to your society's dependence on oil, then at least you can understand better how to be grateful for what you have. Enter the oxtail, sturdy, hearty, hard-to-get-at-unless-you-take-the-time protein.

Simply Recipes (such a great site, btw) put up this recipe for Glazed Oxtails a few weeks ago, coincidentally right after I had taken the leap at the farmers market to purchase some oxtail joints. Ding! That would be the universe calling.

It took a while, edging around other plans, but I finally made it this week, staying amazingly faithful to Elise's recipe (for me), which included very helpful pictures at all steps along the way.

One of the ways I did depart from her recipe was volume: being a one-person household, I didn't want to either buy or store the 4 pounds of meat, so I bought one vacuum-packed bundle, coming in at 1.3 lbs. I halved most of the other ingredients, which was fine (except then the boiling-off took forever...).

However, after a time, it too was done. But ya can't just eat meat.

Then this eye candy from Vanessa Barrington showed up in my Twitter feed, and I had my idea: Glazed Oxtail meets Amazing Brown Rice Bowl. Done!

I went the easy way for the rice bowl part, already feeling virtuous from the multi-step, multi-hour process that the oxtail required. Brown rice from Trader Joe's went into the micro, spring onions (from the farmers market- it IS spring!) got chopped into the pan with a dollop each of lemonaise and tahini. I added a swish of olive oil to coat, then half of the rice until warmed through, then half of the oxtail (which I had prewarmed to deliquify the gelatin).

In went the rest of the rice (for 3 cups total). I topped a serving for my dinner with the greens of the two spring onions and a splinkling of dashi for crunch and salt.

If you're interested in the proportions, that was ~.75 lbs oxtail to begin, and  3 cups brown rice (for 2 servings, one dinner and one work lunch!). As you can see, it made for a dish that was suffused with good beef flavor and stock without being dominated by the protein itself. Just what I was aiming for at this point in my eating life.

Now if only I can do that for some of the other aims in my working life...

where she admits Spring is here

What a disappointing winter...

The height of DC's snow: Shaw Recreation Center on Feb. 12th

I repeatedly humored the so-called winter weather, preferring to think that all the mild December and January temperatures presaged a violent dumping of snow to occur in mid-March or *gasp* end-of-April (birthday). But the climate appears not to have heard me. I think I can finally declare to myself that Spring (and temps in the 80s) are here to stay. Cue groaning about DC humidity here...

Unfortunately this gives me a good excuse to gripe about my running schedule as well. Progress in training this week has been irregular, and I am comparing myself to the early-peaking cherry blossoms in reproach. It's not ME! It's the CLIMATE!

That's okay, though. If I've learned one thing from my mature years, it is that one dip does not mean the end of the streak. No, we shall just go bumping along, like many other fearless creatives who are risking it all for their happiness.

Well, folks, it's been a tough week, with the runs falling a bit short, and having to face several goals that are not being met (pages written, healing accomplished, enlightenment achieved). One morning, I woke up decidedly against running. Daylight savings had it completely dark outside during my usual run time, and I was tired from the time change. I didn't want to run, so I decided...

To Bake.

That makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Maybe not. Well, it's like this: my body didn't feel like running, but my mind craved the satisfaction, the sense of accomplishment, that come from putting in the effort toward a worthy goal. So I made these cookies, from the blog, Coconut & Lime. They were pretty good. And I got to conduct a science experiment.

Ingredients:
6 oz semisweet chips

3/4 cup dark brown sugar
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats
4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoon five spice powder
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, at room temperature*

Preheat oven to 350. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg, beat until fluffy. Add the flour, baking powder, salt, the spices and oatmeal. Mix until well combined. Fold in chips. Place tablespoon-sized blobs of dough on the lined cookie sheet about 1/2 inch apart and bake for 12-14 minutes or until they look "set" and the bottoms are just golden. Carefully remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

The experiment was this: you know how some cooks recommend you squash down the tops of drop cookies before baking? What's that about? Instead of Googling it, I did half spheres and half smooshed spheres of cookie dough and observed their behavior in their natural habitat.

Squished on the left, Round on the right

The smooshed spheres of cookie dough burned on the bottom faster than the regular spheres, which even got an extra minute in the oven. After combing the Googels extensively for 20 minutes, I found this article that stresses the amount of baking soda as key in how much a drop cookie will spread when baking (more soda, more spread). However, I'm having difficulty finding the cause of the tradition of flattening the drops of dough. Does anyone out there in Blog Land have an idea? Please let us know in the comments- your help would be much appreciated!

The cookies were gobbled up to general satisfaction, but it will be good to get back to running.

Local Flora, Part II: QUIZ

Yay! I hope you enjoyed the flower-fest of mobile uploads in the previous post.

For this second piece of the 2-part series, I thought I'd try to provoke some interactive response.

Since I don't carry an Eastern US Flower Book with me at all times, when I catch these appealing flower cameos, I often don't know what I am taking a picture of. Since today is Mother's Day, I will dedicate this post to my Mom- the original flower picture-taker- and probably the one who will come up with the most answers to the Quiz! ;-)

Please leave comments with answers for the numbers you know. Let's see how many I can get labeled and posted to the wall with a stick-pin.

1

2

These things are so cool and alien-looking!

3

These ones I actually know, from asking the house-owner on my block.

4

This one I think I know, but always thought they were something else... haven't tried the wikipedia approach to fact-checking yet on this one...

5

6

Pretty detailing on this one...

7

This red bloom looked like it cute have been stuck on a headband or hair clip, it was that prettily blousy.

8

This isn't a trick- it's the tree! Smells so wonderful! (that's a hint)

9

Now this one is all over, and hard to get a good picture of. It comes in white, pinks, corals, and blooms at the same time as cherry blossoms, but I haven't gotten a name... obviously not a fruit tree with that slender base...

10

Another alien species one, but beautiful butterfly-like coloring.

11

12

Well that's all I have for now, so may the competitive school spirit set your inquisitive hearts afire with curiosity! :-)

Local Flora In Season, Part I

I was doing pretty well monitoring blog post frequency on here this week. Getting into a rhythm of downloading photos one morning, writing some text the next, and publishing at work (shhh!). But yesterday I plugged my camera in to download and it only had 3 measly pictures! Weird... So then I remembered I had the camera phone to worry about. One hundred and eleven (or eleventy-one) pictures.

Many of them are the shots of flora and fauna and sky that I capture in a moment of being present to the world I'm walking through. Aren't camera phones great? If you use them this way, I certainly think so. The photo above isn't the greatest light-wise, but I was trying to capture the moment when the fuzzy-wuzzy pussywillow-type nub started busting out into bright yellow spore-like bristles. Amazing how Nature works.

 Daniel Webster at Thomas Circle looking cool among the cherry (?) blossom trees.

 A better up close shot of the "Poof!" that occurs on these trees, at the end of March it was, this year.

This is the view walking out of my apartment building: now that's what I call "Spring Green!"

These are actually blossoms on a beautiful old crooked tree I walk past, also in Thomas Circle. It is a great one for Fall of the House of Usher type shots during winter because it is in front of several churches, which you can capture in the frame if you tilt up... it may appear later on the blog...

Because these are phone camera pictures, it's basically a walk along M St., my route to work. THis is looking straight up through blossoms; how can you get better than that? And can you see the clear blue sky? Several of the photos were shot in gray, the product of gray rainy spring days (DC has some schizophrenic weather this spring- jeez louise!).

This is the Jefferson Hotel, and it has a beautiful line of small trees- not sure what kind they are except that they blossom along with the cherry trees, so...? Any help, Readers? (There will be a more intensive quiz later.)

I told you there would be another feature of this one! There's that Spring Green again! And I don't know if you can really see, but those are some unique blossoms. Now the tree is all in leaf, much more normal-looking.

Oh wait! It's like time lapse- now we're on to a later stage of the Jefferson trees- the stage where POOF into blooms. This picture was funny because it made it look like a pompom-cheerleader tree

This was going up 15th St. to Whole Foods- what a pink!

This one's near the Convention Center- so amazing, right? This year, I felt like I appreciated every sighting of color popping on the trees. And maybe I did, ya know, because this is a lot of photos...

And here we are, the alternating pink and green of the Baroque period...

 

And one more spectacular rose shot, even though it doesn't fit into the color scheme. This one was the most recent, since I think roses are more summer blooms, and we're just getting around to thinking about summer (thank goodness we've had such a long and schizo spring, I say- who needs summer??)

The Infamous...

My party, as promised :-)

So. I floated along in a glow-haze for the whole week, but I guess it's time for documentation. Proof that so much fun could, in fact, be had. Well, here it is, folks. My very own pinata party, out on the green.

(This is me being cheeky and pointing out over right field where my homerun would go, hehe.)

Here's Rachel, giving it a go (left). So what else did we do, besides swing away? You're right, it wasn't all violence; we don't roll like that. Since it was actually a dual celebration for my friend April (born 4/19/someyear) and me, we had two mostly-not-overlapping groups of friends, so people got to meet and talk and bascially just loll about in the perfect California-weather day. It was awesome- felt very Chosen People-ish (but more on that below with the bowling).

There was also a fair amount of food. It was hard to stand it, but I managed to sample a few things here and there. I brought Nora's red pepper spread recipe, Molly's Banana Bread, and some cranberry bread with no chocolate, since it was not yet Easter and I knew at least one person would be abstaining from chocolate for Lent (that is one old habit that should die a fabulous death).

And here is April of the 4/19 bday, in a great Action Shot (right)! Her mom was in town too, and so helped with the logistics- I think the older Filipina woman did a great job blending in and having fun with all us young'uns!

But the pinata party wasn't the only event. Nay, there were pre-party rumblings heard as early as Sunday. Rumblings that took the form of... a Korean Triple Play !

Lovely beef and noodle dish at Palace Restaurant

 Me, Nina, Nora at the Lanes

Jess, Nora, Marc focused on the 'pan-chan' (terrible anglicism)

The Korean Triple Play was born of my desire to continue field tripping into adulthood. If we're going to go into Virginia, we might as well make hay, right? Or something like that. So especially for people who couldn't make it to the pinata party, it was a nice outing. Consisting of:

1) 'Palacial' dinner at Palace Restaurant, a Korean BBQ/ Grill place of tasty food and wonderful service

2) Burning off a few of those calories at AMF Annandale Lanes, just down the road

3) Burning off some more (and losing our voices) as we choke through an hour of karaoke at a Korean private-room karaoke lounge

It was a great idea, let me tell you. PLUS, we had a great time bowling- we went Jews v. Gentiles; each team had an N, a J, and an M (isn't that crazy? natural selection or something?), and each team won once. That's all we had strength for!

Ahh, 30. I am embarking on this year with a powerful feeling of self-possession, balance, and drive. TOward what? Well, we'll see. ;-)

Last Best Bits

Here is the last post about the party the welcomed Jess back to DC. I hope breaking it up into 3 parts was easier for you all to digest. I could have just gone on and on (as the prep that day did in fact seem to go on and on...), but 1) that might have been boring to read and 2) I would have only been able to give myself credit for doing one post! This way, I get to pat myself on the back 3 times! haha... yes, folks, the secret to better stats is not strictly more work, but better and more crafty presentation. ;-)
In this post, I have the last few bits and the people (the best bits).

I made a beet hummus, which someone saw and cheekily suggested was made in honor of the Cherry Blossom Festival, which we were right in the middle of! Alas, no such planning had been in my head, but I wanted something fresh, healthy, and different (seems to be my M.O.) and saw this recipe on Simply Recipes which sounded great! It was pretty easy, since I started with the already cooked Trader Joe's beets (yes, I am a dyed-in-the-wool TJ's fan, try as I might to be objective).

Beet Hummus: the horror movie

It turned out rather well, as a sweet tangy pucker in a fresh earthy dip.

Second, I wanted a green dip, so I searched and found one by a friend that did not use mayonnaise- perfect! It used up artichokes in a jar that I had, spinach in a bag that I had, and included plenty of lemon and garlic, always a good indicator of quality.

No photographic evidence was obtained because, like the Baked Brie, it had to be in the oven until presentation, so ... I balked at showing the picked-over leftovers in a picture. Yes, yes, so there is definitely some natural selection on this blog; that's why the photos are so good! ;-)
But I can certainly say I had it for leftovers for several days and did not tire of it!

Third is the crowd pleaser: Chocolate Orange Pound Cake, from a mix my mom sent in a care package, and which I had been waiting to pull out for the right 'convenience-needed' moment: bingo!

It was delicious served at the end of the meal with mango, which we took turns slicing and dicing, since it is kinda hard to do. Any tips on this? They were champagne mangos from Mexico (via Whole Foods) and not as ripe as they could have been, but I tried the cool-looking scientific method, which wasn't perfect, but served the purpose. Purpose the mangos needed to be riper...

And finally, the friends that made the party such a joy to host: Jess, Dany, Steve, Suzanne, Figo, Mandy, Nora, Rajiv, and others that didn't get captured on celluloid. Thank you, Friends!

And now that I've presented all the high points of Welcome-Back-Jess party I hosted, which the Nina Post called "elegant and sophistocated... very adult," I will hopefully be back shortly to report on my birthday party of a couple days ago, which involved Candy, a Cookie Monster pinata, and what else? 

Good Food!