Joe & Anna's Amazing Tomato Adventure

Joe and I had the brilliant idea of planting a garden in the corner of our yard this spring. Although we were ambitious in our planning and in our planting, we have been much LESS ambitious with the whole weeding/pruning aspect, and as our result our garden has grown to the point where we enter it with much fear and trepidation. Twice already we have found a furry creature darting in and out among what we used to consider "rows" of parsley, tomatoes, and cucumbers - now the tomatoes have grown into one amorphous mass, the cucumber vines have staged a successful escape from the garden, and the parsley completely dwarfs the rosemary beside it. On both occasions we cornered, and retrived, a baby rabbit that had managed to find its way through the rabbit-proof fence surrounding our garden, but either couldn't or didn't want to leave. Both times Joe considerately tossed the rabbit over the fence, out of reach of our rabbit-crazed beagle.

But all of this is merely a backdrop for the onslaught of tomatoes that is approaching. Today we made an attempt to cut back and pick what we considered to be a "few" of the ripe ones - we came inside with two dozen tomatoes, enough to make a marinara sauce with plenty leftover. While this is indeed exciting, we also feel unprepared for the hit we are about to receive. My Mennonite roots whisper, "Can, dammit, can, you lazy fool. Don't let them waste when you can have cans of stewed tomatoes and tomato sauce in your pantry all winter." My realistic self whimpers pitifully and dreads spending hours sweating over a huge pot of boiling water in our un-air-conditioned kitchen. My resourceful side is listing all of the people I know who might accept ripe tomatoes from my garden.

Tonight, however, marinara sauce was the weapon of choice, and we safely dispensed of a dozen tomatoes in a most tasty manner. Following is the recipe, with a few alterations we made.

4 T. olive oil
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion
5 lbs. fresh tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley
1/4 cup fresh chopped basil
2 t. dried oregano
salt, to taste

Heat olive oil in sauce pan and saute' the garlic and onion. Add tomatoes and tomato paste. Bring to boil. Add herbs and reduce heat to medium. Cook 20-30 minutes or longer, stirring occasionally.

Cinnamon Rolls

What could be more quintessentially Mennonite than hot, gooey, sweet, sticky, dripping with sugar cinnamon rolls? I have long been on the hunt for the Perfect Cinnamon Roll - but have yet to find it. Or at least make it. Not that I have devoted a lot of time and effort to the cause, but it seems like I ought to have a recipe on hand. So I decided, at the encouragement of a friend of mine, to try out the one in Mennonite Community Cookbook. She too grew up in Wayne County and has fond memories of the sweet rolls that women in the community made, and is looking for that elusive recipe (if anyone has one they're willing to share...I'll take it!)

I had been a little put off by the amount of time and effort they take to make, but I decided one morning around Mother's Day to go for it. They did take a decent time commitment, but it was worth it to see the dough rise and the spirals of cinnamon goodness gradually balloon into rolls. I used the butter frosting suggested in the recipe, also found in MCC:FFR.

When they came out of the oven and were spread with frosting, they were a sight to behold - but alas, they were not the Perfect Cinnamon Roll I'd been craving. And there were way too many of them for Joe to eat on our own. I divided them up and gave some away to my aunt and uncle and my parents and my neighbors, and the rest we took care of on our own.

Beer Can Chicken

Alright, so I didn't find this recipe in the Mennonite Community Cookbook. But it was my first experience cooking solo on the grill, and most deserving of a blog entry. Actually, Joe had been talking about grilling a beer can chicken for some time, but every time he brought it up, we ran out of time (it takes at least 2 hours on the grill).

For those of you who aren't familiar with the concept, beer can chicken consists of taking a whole roasting chicken and stuffing an open can of beer up its butt cavity, then cooking or grilling it standing up. The beer keeps the chicken moist and tender while cooking - as for flavor, I certainly couldn't detect any beer flavoring in the meat, so for those of you who aren't inclined to buy beer, you could probably use a can of Sprite or juice.

I was a little skeptical of using the grill - I'm quite inexperienced at it, and meat generally falls into Joe's area of cooking expertise. But I had the day off work and he strongly encouraged me to use the grill instead of the oven, giving me a few basic instructions about how to turn it on. I had also just recieved my first copy of Cooking Light (a belated birthday gift from cousin Kathleen) and it contained a recipe for a BBQ sauce to go with the chicken.

By the time Joe got home, the chicken looked and smelled like a masterpiece. Joe, in fact, was impressed and a little intimidated by my grilling prowess! But it tasted delicious - and there were lots of yummy leftovers, not to mention a few cans of beer that we were obligated to drink with dinner :)

Barbecued Beer Can Chicken
1 whole roasting chicken
BBQ Sauce
3 T. ketchup
3 T chili sauce (I used oriental sweet chili sauce)
2 t. worcestershire sauce
1 t. chili powder
1 t. cider vinegar
1/4 t. ground black pepper
1/8 t. salt
1 garlic clove, minced
BBQ Rub
1 T. salt
1 T. black pepper
1 T. sugar
1 T. paprika
Dispose or set aside giblets (I boil for our dog). Rinse and dab dry chicken, including the inside. Work the skin away from the meat of the chicken with your fingers and apply 1 T. BBQ rub directly on the meat of the chicken (but don't remove the skin). Also rub 1 T. on the outside of the chicken and 1 T. inside the cavity. Then spread sauce over and inside chicken. Reserve 1/4 cup of the sauce if you wish to have some leftover for serving w/ chicken (I used all mine). Turn on grill and set to medium heat. Pour out the top inch of the beer and add the remaining 1 T. BBQ rub to the can of beer. Insert beer into the chicken cavity and set chicken on the grill standing up, using legs and can as a tripod. Grill for 2 hours, checking occasionally and applying more BBQ sauce as needed.

From the rhubarb patch...

As a kid, the arrival of spring always meant lilacs, strawberry pie and one of mom's good rhubarb desserts. Now, though, we don't have a lilac bush, strawberry patch or rhubarb growing wild.

Instead, Ben and I enjoy Goshen's Mill Race Center Farmers Market and our CSA membership. (It has dual benefits: at the beginning of the year we feel all altruistic as we give a big chunk of change to local farmers and support small-scale, mostly organic agriculture. Then throughout the year as we pick up our basket and fill it each week with whatever we want from the different stands, we feel like we are getting everything for free.) Last week, with another opportunity to provide break for my co-workers, and rhubarb in full bloom, I headed over to the market 5 minutes before they closed and was able to get a couple of pounds of beautiful pink and green stalks from the only stand selling it. My mom had three or four rhubarb recipes that we just loved, but my favorite to make now is this easy Nutty Rhubarb Muffins recipe. No, it isn't from MCC:FFR, but it could be (there are no ingredients that one can't pronounce). And with my pounds of the vegetable (according to my internet research), I have now doubled the recipe twice and have eaten four muffins today alone. (This is as close as a Menno comes to confession.) I love it because it is a versatile food too - serving quite well as breakfast, snack or dessert. Ben, our resident quasi-health nut, is concerned about the large amount of sugar needed in rhubarb recipes to counteract its sourness. He claims he only ate two today.

Nutty Rhubarb Muffins

Makes 1 dozen
Bake at 375 degrees

3/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. buttermilk
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 c. diced rhubarb
1/2 c. chopped nuts

Topping:
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. chopped nuts
1/2 t. ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a small bowl mix sugar, egg, vanilla, oil and buttermilk. In a
medium-sized bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt. Stir sugar mixture into flour mixture and blend until
evenly moisteneed. Stir in rhubarb and nuts. Spoon into well-greased and floured muffin tins. Stir
together topping ingredients and springkle evenly over the top of each muffin. Bake about 20 minutes or until
center springs up when touched.

(Photo credit - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Rhubarb_01.jpg)

mmm... meatloaf

Golden Meat Loaf
1 1/2 lbs. ground beaf
2 t. salt
1 c. rolled oats
1/4 t. pepper
1 c. grated carrots
1 1/2 t. worcestershire sauce
1/2 minced onion
2 eggs, beaten
3 hardcooked eggs
Combine all ingredients except hard-cooked eggs and mix thoroughly. Place half of mix in a loaf pan 4X9 inches. Cut eggs in half lengthwise and arrange in a row through the center of the meat. Place remainder of the meat on top. Bake at 350 for 1 1/4 hours.

Since we moved back to the Midwest we have been eating alot more meat and potatoes. I'm not sure exactly what led us down this precarious path... in Portland we were so fond of grilling salmon and snarfing down sushi from the local grocery store. The five pound bag of potatoes we bought would rot in our garage while we ate rice pilaf. Now we go through a 5-lb bag of potatoes a month.

I'm sure a big part of it is the lack of availability of all the good seafood and other-than-meat-and-potatoes meals we enjoyed. But strangely, I crave those good midwestern foods - like, say, meatloaf - more than I did on the west coast. I wonder how much geography and appetite are interlinked?

The meatloaf I fixed from MCC:FFR was one of the best I've ever made (not that this says too much - as it's probably the third). But even Joe, the foody, was impressed. And I have to come clean and confess that I did consult other recipes and made alterations while making this one. I did not have carrots in my fridge, but these seemed odd in a meatloaf anyway, so I left them out. I used 2 lbs. ground beef, since that's what I had, and added a dash of dry mustard and garlic powder and 1/2 cup evaporated milk to the meat mix. Then I followed the egg-in-the-middle suggestion, which I thought sounded intriguing, but only 2 of mine fit well so I left out the 3rd. Lastly, I mixed the following topping and poured it over the loaf before baking. Very yummy!!
Topping:
6 T. brown sugar (I'd use less next time)
1/2 c. catsup
1/4 t. nutmeg
2 t. dry mustard

chewy chocolatey goodness

I've been making lots of desserts these days. Mostly to make the hubby happy, but also because I enjoy baking, and I haven't done much of it the past two months. I decided to try a brownie recipe from MCC:FFR and so I fixed Brownies, pg. 281, the other night, following the recipe exactly but omiting the nuts. Hubby always finds brownies from scratch to be a novelty - he said he never knew such a thing existed before me! And he is not a discriminate brownie consumer - he loves them all. These weren't hard to love - they were really moist and chewy. So much so that they pretty much fell apart in your hand. I'm not sure if that is how they were supposed to turn out, or if I didn't cook mine long enough (I turned the oven heat down a bit b/c our oven tends to run hot). But either way, I'm not complaining. They tasted delicious and didn't last more than two days.

meeting mary emma in d.c.

Earlier this spring Joe and I took a roadtrip to our nation's capital. For me it was an overdue return trip, but for Joe, a history major who had never been further east than ohio, our journey took on the epic nature of a pilgrimmage. He would be satisfied with nothing less than stopping at every monument and walking the entire length and width of the mall until we literally couldn't walk any more. Fortunately for both of us, we had impeccable weather and even got to see a few cherry trees in bloom.

During our time in D.C. we stayed with a friend, Tim Kennel, who was most hospitable in sharing his living quarters with us. Although space was somewhat limited, we made ourselves at home in the living room and enjoyed the short metro commute downtown (although NOT the rats burrowing in the front yard).

So where does Mary Emma fit into all this? you may be wondering. Well, it definitely wasn't the Ethiopian restaurant in Adams Morgan. Nor was it the mall where we spent $15 on a lunch of hotdogs and pizza. No, Mary Emma of course was waiting for us at home, where Tim had fixed a meal of mostly-Mennonite recipes (the exception being a Pad Thai dish which is something quite unlike what you will find in MCC:FFR) In addition to the Pad Thai, we enjoyed Potato soup with Bacon and Browned Bread Cubes, pg. 40, Banana Bread, pg. 12, Hot Slaw, pg. 146, and Fruit Salad I, pg. 187.

Talk about putting us to shame! I can't believe we find fixing one recipe a month such a trial when Tim Kennel, in one night, can fix four of them. Of the four, Hot Slaw was a surprising hit - in fact it proved to be a favorite of almost everyohne at the table. The other three were, following in the tradition of our recipe book, rather bland, but certainly not objectionable. The banana bread was the same recipe I used for my last entry, and it was quite tasty. Overall, I was impressed with the endeavor and thrilled to be participating in the project away from my own kitchen table. It is so nice to enjoy a taste of Mennonite hospitality - whatever the recipes, it makes the experience so much sweeter.