Turkey Day

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and like most people when I think of Thanksgiving I think of food.  In the past few years I have developed a borderline insane obsession with making Thanksgiving dinner.  While many people try to stick others with the responsibility (“We can’t host this year, our kitchen is infested with mutated rabid flying squirrels.  Too bad!  Maybe next year…”) I dream of the day when I get to tackle the big meal all by myself.  I know…I told you it was insane!  Because I've always been single and living in a tiny apartment I've never had the opportunity to host.  So I channel my culinary frustration into compulsively watching Thanksgiving specials on the Food Network.

Which brings me to my main topic of concern…food network hosts.  Why are food network hosts so polarizing?  It seems like for everyone who loves Rachel Ray and thinks she’s revolutionized dinner prep there are an equal number of people who think she is a shrill harpy who seriously needs to take a chill pill.   Personally, I can’t stand the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond.  I know she has a huge following on her blog, but for some reason I never connected with her.  And then I read her autobiography and learned that she ran over her own dog and then still went on a date with her boyfriend.  Nope, no can do.  Or what about Paula Deen?  My mom absolutely can’t stand her and gets annoyed whenever her show comes on.  She even can’t stand people who remind her of Paula Deen.  But there are tons of people who adore Paula and can’t get enough of her homespun country cooking.

I could take or leave Paula myself, but weirdly I’ve developed a fascination with her two sons, Bobby and Jaime.  Not like I think they are cute or I want to date them or anything.  I save my chef crushes for Alton Brown.  What?  He’s really smart!  Instead I’ve dreamed up an elaborate fantasy where the brothers are constantly competing for Paula’s love and approval.  I have all sorts of evidence that Jaime is the favorite son.  Like for example, he’s the one who stayed in Savannah with his wife and adorable children while younger son Bobby left home for the big apple.  And Paula probably doesn’t like apples unless they are in pie form.  Also, both Jaime and Bobby had cooking shows that debuted around the same time.  While Bobby’s healthy cooking show airs on the lesser known and watched Cooking Channel, Jaime’s family cooking show plays on the Food Network.  Interesting, no?  Although now that Paula has announced that she has diabetes Bobby might gain some ground.

I indulged my conspiracy theories last week while watching the Deen brothers Thanksgiving special.  The show was actually a charming program about the brothers making Thanksgiving dinner for their mom, but I envisioned it as a cage match between Bobby and Jaime.  A food fight to the death where each son attempted to win his mother’s love through strategically implemented calories.  For the record, I’m Team Bobby.

So hopefully your Thanksgiving finds you surrounded by good food, friends and family.  I know mine will.  But as the rest of the family is settling down to watch football or parades, I’ll be sneaking off to watch Food Network and dreaming of all the elaborate recipes I can make in my imagination.  And dreaming of Alton Brown…obviously!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Is it Rick Bayless Week?

Have you ever noticed that whenever you learn a new word all of a sudden it seems like that word is everywhere?  Or you hear a song for the first time and then it seems like every radio station in the world is playing it all the time?  Well, that happened to me last week.  Only it wasn't a word or a song...it was Rick Bayless.


For those of you who don't live in the Chicago-land area and might not have heard of him, Rick Bayless is a celebrity chef with several restaurants in Chicago.  He specializes in Mexican cooking and while I haven't eaten at any of his restaurants myself (yet) I've heard they are incredible.


My inadvertent Rick Bayless week started at Lit Fest.  There is a food stage where cookbook authors show off their stuff and he was presenting.  My friend and I were planning on going to another event at the same time so I didn't get to see him cook, but I did walk right next to him on the street.  Unlike when we saw Rachael Ray who was carefully guarded by security, he was just walking down the street by himself.  I could have reached out and touched him if I wanted to.  I didn't though of course.  That would be creepy.


Then on Wednesday night I was channel surfing and came across a really old episode of Iron Chef.  It was Rick Bayless vs. Bobby Flay.  Bobby Flay won unfortunately which was a bummer for me because I've always found him a bit smug.


All this lead up to the main event on Thursday...a garden tour of Rick Bayless' garden!  A lot of the salad greens and herbs for the restaurants are grown on this property which spans 3 lots in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood.  This tour was already planned prior to the rest of all my sightings so its funny how things work out.  The tour itself was amazing and really interesting.  It was given by the man who designed and manages the garden so he was incredibly knowledgeable.  


Here are some highlights:

These raised beds grow about 500 lbs of greens in a season!  I was amazed at how neat and clean they look and how closely they plants were packed together.  They were definitely designed for maximum efficiency.  

They are constructed of metal to make the most of the space since the thin metal takes up less space than brick or wood.  And it makes it really easy to clip the bird netting to the frame.

One thing I was really interested in that I think I'm going to try myself is how they grow butternut squash.  They grow them vertically in cages (for support) so they don't sprawl out all over the garden and take over.  We have a spare tomato cage at my parents' garden that isn't being used for anything right now so I might try to convince them to let me grow a squash plant or two.

 Overall, I was surprised at how pretty the garden was.  I knew it was a working garden that was supplying the restaurants with food, so I wasn't expecting any space to be dedicated to landscaping and non-edible plants.  It was really lovely though and truly still looked like someone's home garden.  

According to the garden manager, this beehive is a new addition this year.  

Since most of the plants wouldn't survive the cold Chicago winters, there is also a greenhouse built on the second floor deck of the house.

 Here are a few more pictures I took of various things around the garden.

Seedlings, microgreens and compost pile in the back

Potting bench

The grill and outdoor kitchen.  Amazing!

An Accidental Rachael Ray Sighting

This past Saturday I attended the Printer's Row Lit Fest in Chicago with a friend.  Lit Fest is a really cool yearly event where tons of authors from all kinds of different genres give talks or demos (in the case of cookbook authors).  And its free!  So anyway, my friend and I were planning on seeing some Young Adult and Children's authors because that's her field.  In between events she suggested that we go into the library to use bathrooms that weren't port-a-potties.  This turned out to be a really smart idea because as we were headed downstairs to the bathrooms, a Lit Fest volunteer handed us tickets to the supposedly sold out Rachael Ray event.  It was less than 5 minutes before the talk was supposed to start and the only seats left were in the first and second rows so we got to sit nice and close to the action.  We were definitely in the right place at the right time!


As for the talk itself, it was pretty interesting.  Rachael was there to promote her new book The Book of Burger which is a really fun concept for a cookbook.  One thing I can take away from her talk is how she feels about food photography.  She thinks that food pictures should look a little bit messy and like you could dive right in and eat them.  Now that I've had a chance to page through her book, I totally agree.  Those burgers look delicious!  Its really great that she embraces the idea of home cooked food even down to the food actually looking like it was prepared at home.  I read a lot of cookbooks and I really admire how her food always looks like something I could do myself.


On a non-food note...she also looks amazing!  I can only hope to look as good as she does when I'm in my 40's.  If that is what cooking with so much EVOO will do for you, I'll start buying it by the gallon.


So in honor of my unexpected encounter with Rachael Ray and her burger book, I'm sharing my recipe for Jerk Chicken Burgers.  These use lettuce and flat leaf parsley from my garden.

Jerk Chicken Burgers

This recipe makes about 3 medium sized burgers.  


1 lb ground chicken
2 tablespoons jerk seasoning
1 tablespoon chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
Pepperjack cheese
Sliced pineapple rings
Sliced tomato
Any variety soft lettuce (I used butter crunch because that's what I was growing)
Sandwich sized Hawaiian buns


Mix chicken with jerk seasoning and chopped parsley and shape into patties.  Grill or fry patties until thoroughly cooked.  Meanwhile, throw the buns on the grill too to toast them lightly.  You can grill the pineapple rings too if you like.  Top burgers with a slice or two of cheese and lettuce, pineapple and tomato.

Thank You Martha Stewart

I invented 'It's a good thing' before you were even born.

~Martha Stewart

I want to give a big ‘thank you’ to Martha Stewart.  Not the real Martha, not exactly.  The version of Martha who lives in my head.  You know how in the movie 'Julie and Julia’ (based on the book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously) the Julie Powell character takes inspiration and occasional guidance from an imaginary, idealized version of Julia Child?  And this image that she has in her head of Julia Child helps motivate her to not only cook her way through a gigantic cookbook, but also to change her life in other positive ways and essentially grow up?  Well picture that same thing in my head, only its Martha Stewart and not Julia Child.  But while Julia Child’s influence in Julie Powell’s life was gentle and lovely (and likely full of wine) the interactions I have with Martha in my head are more of the ‘F-you’ variety.

I first began my antagonistic mental relationship with Martha Stewart two Decembers ago.  I was off work the week between Christmas and New Years and had no plans.  Feeling domestic, I decided to try my hand at baking bread.  I used the recipe from Entertaining by Martha Stewart because I happened to have it checked out from the library.  I saw that it said it would make a lot of bread dough, but it didn’t occur to me the sort of havoc it would bring down on me in my tiny, non KitchenAid stand mixer having kitchen.  The shear amount of dough this produced was so large and unwieldy that I felt a bit like Martha was trying to break me.  My life wasn’t going so great at this particular point in time.  My (now ex) boyfriend had just cancelled a much anticipated vacation with me (which turned out to be symptomatic of greater troubles in our relationship) and I was feeling a bit adrift and lonely. Suddenly this dough had become the one thing in my life that I had to conquer and I started getting mad.  All my suppressed disappointment and aggression centered itself on this poor defenseless bread dough.

Then, out of nowhere I started trash talking Martha Stewart.  “Oh yeah Martha?” I thought.  “I bet you think I can’t do this.  I bet you think I can’t bake these effing baguettes.  Well screw you Martha.  Look at me…kneading dough.  Bet you didn’t think I could knead all this stupid dough by hand, did you Martha?”  Weirdly, this seemed to help.  I continued my imaginary conversation beyond kneading the dough, through shaping the loaves and even misting them with water while they were baking to help form a better crust.  “What Martha?  You didn’t think my bread would have a good crust?  Oh I will show you a crust…”  Before I knew it, I had 6 perfect baguettes cooling on a rack and I was feeling a lot more in control of my life.

The baguettes, by the way, were delicious.

I just want to point out here that I actually have no particular animosity towards the real Martha Stewart.  Yes, some of her recipes and crafts are a little out there and at times she seems absurdly out of touch with the kinds of things that ‘real’ people are willing to do in the name of domesticity.  But overall, I feel like she has done a lot of good and inspired a lot of people to take pride in making a nice home for themselves.  And I do buy her magazine every month.  However, all of this does not stop me from pulling out my imaginary ‘mean’ Martha to help me conquer tough recipes or crafts.  In the past couple years , she’s seen me through pie crusts and candied nuts.  Handmade Halloween décor and dyed Easter eggs.  This summer I’m planning to attempt jam making for the first time and I’m sure Martha will be there for me telling me that I can’t possibly handle boiling all those jars and I’m sure to get salmonella.  I’m looking forward to it.

So thank you Martha Stewart for helping me to challenge myself and prove that I am a creative and capable person.  It’s a good thing.

Gardening Lessons from TV

Jess: Don't you want to know why he wants to plant tomatoes?
Winston: Is it because he wants... tomatoes?
Nick: This is my feeble attempt at a new beginning.

~New Girl, air date 4/24/12

Since starting this blog I’ve been hyper aware of all things garden related so I was excited to see a garden themed plot on one of my favorite shows, New Girl.  Basically lovable loser Nick decides to grow a tomato plant to deal with the fact that all his roommates are in happy relationships of some sort.  While his methods of tomato growing are slightly unorthodox (he spits water onto the plant and builds a super creepy scarecrow to deter the rooftop birds), it’s clear that he does care about this little plant doing well.  This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Nick base at least some of his self esteem on his ability to keep a plant alive.  Any fellow New Girl fans remember the whole Julia/cactus debacle?  I find it very interesting the level of importance he puts on this plant and how he is substituting its success for any other success in his own life.

I think a lot of us backyard gardeners also can get overly invested in the health and success of our plants.  There is something so satisfying about watching a huge plant grow from a tiny seed.  But conversely, if our garden is less than successful, we can get extremely disappointed.  Last summer the tomatoes at my parents' house got blossom end rot (just as gross as it sounds) and at least half of the tomatoes were ruined.  I was so bummed by this setback that I couldn’t really focus on all the other things in the garden that were growing so well.  I think farmers must be used to this kind of thing since they work on such a large scale, but for me it always feels personal. 

This year I’m going to try to be a little more Zen about how things are growing.  We will see how that goes!