Minnesota

Tired of the Eggroll Post Yet?

April 29, 2011

What an amazing discovery. All these amazingly cool and nice people read the stupid stuff I write. They actually cook some of the recipes I post. It’s utterly baffling.

And wonderfully flattering.

And very guilt provoking when I’m not timely at updating.

And terribly frightening. What horrible things have I written about again? Good thing I can’t remember pretty much everthing or I wouldn’t even be able to look people in the eyes anymore. Poor Dave.

(for new readers, we like to work “Poor Dave” into the occasional post as a celebration and honor to my husband who, in his ever loving and constant devotion, has to put up with me). Hopefully new readers will also know where to place my witty sarcasm.

Anyway, I so wish I could just cut and paste some soccer emails here just so you could see the inanity that I deal with this time of year. Hundreds of mind-numing emails a day:

Filled with mind numbing questions… and helpless people… and….

I digress. I digress. I digress.

What I really wanted to talk about was my annual post about mud.

And rain.

And snow.

And my car.

…which is filthy. But not nearly as filthy as it could be, given our recent weather.

And that thing hanging off the bottom?

…I’m pretty sure is a worm.

And my driveway.

… that the FedEx truck got stuck in a few days ago.

And the reason

…that we had to drag the garbage all the way to the top of the God-forsakken very long and muddy driveway.

Which is responsible for

…this extra stash of mud I like to carry around on my running boards.

That is, no doubt, the source

… of the worm.

Think Spring!

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

November 17, 2010

This is Minnesota, folks.

…Despite those 70 degree October temperatures that somehow, unbelievably, made it in to early November.

We reveled in it. We wore flip-flops in November! The decadence. The sheer thrill!

It’s basically what every other state in the nation gets to do on a regular basis, except us. I bet they wear flip-flops (which I call thongs, but get harassed by the younger set for calling footwear by the now ubiquitous term for a g-string) in Kansas.

Well, no more. We got about 10″ of heavy wet snow on Saturday that is still sticking around on Monday. […and Tuesday, and now Wednesday]

So this post is an ode to Fall. I never got around to posting some of my favorite pictures of late fall. And now the snow went and wrecked it all. It smashed my beautiful Miscanthus grass and the pretty asparagus fronds. It covered up all my shovels in the garden that I was lulled into thinking I would use again. It dashed my hopes for a Christmas photo (no, I still don’t have one yet) in the golden light of a daylight savings savings sunset (at about 3 pm).

If I could embed music, I would choose something sad from The Mission.

None of these have been edited in Photoshop. They are straight out of the camera. Not a credit to me as a photographer, but to God’s majesty and the beautiful colors of fall!

I suppose that could be in focus better, but isn’t it pretty? The color?

I’m a spaz with the focus. It’s true. But this one is better.

This is the perfect picture to show the season: Peegee Hydrangeas caught between Fall and Winter.

Another lesson on how not to focus, but pretty none-the-less. This is the asparagus fronds in the dewy rain of late October.

And then I looked up from my tendency to go “macro” all the time and saw this one lone birch tree.

So pretty.

And now it’s all gone. Including — again! — my sweet meat squash that got froze-to-death and turned to mush. I’ll probably never get to taste one of them.

I do love snow. But I hate the mess. The mud before it really freezes. The cold. The heating bills. The grey skies.

Snow is the only bonus prize of winter.

Meatless Monday 40

October 21, 2010

Normally this stuff just flows from my fingers without pause. But it is confirmed. I officially dread writing about Meatless Mondays.

This post has been half-finished for over a week now. And I won’t let myself post anything new until I get it done. The agony… of bad pictures and uninspired writing.

But you have to give me kudos for trying. And trying I am still. The past two weeks we have had two — actually three — meatless dishes. But remember, oh yee of actual vegetarianism: I consider fish and shellfish to be meatless. So I know that negates at least one of the dishes for the truly hardcore.

And, as usual, I lack photos. The days are getting shorter here in Minnesota. A lot shorter. And we eat late. I mean really late. I’m not all that concerned about photography when I’m frantically trying to get dinner on the table before 9 pm.

I’m also not a writer dedicated to showcasing my photography to the point of making meals in the middle of the day in order to style the dish and photograph it on a sublime background in the pleasing light of the setting sun. Do you know how many people actually do that? It is truly mind boggling. You can go ooh and ahh over their posts. Here’s a funny irony: my friends shake their heads at me and say “Where do you find the time…” and I shake my head at all those beautiful photos on those beautiful blogs and say “Where do they find the time…”

No, I grab the closest camera and snap. Flash and all.

Did you know that flash photography is the horror of all horrors? Seriously. Another little known fact for all you non-food-blogging types. Which, I hope for my sake, are most of you reading this.

But I have two Meatless Monday winners that I haven’t posted before, so I should at least share the basics. The first, Meatless Monday 40, is a dish I tried to replicate from the old Sidney’s Restaurants here in the Twin Cities. They made this spicy sausage with peppers in tomato cream sauce which I just loved. I came up with a recipe that I thought came fairly close. Of course it wasn’t quite as good, because I could never knowingly use as much cream as they did and still enjoy eating it.

That’s probably why we all like to eat out so much. Because ignorance is bliss. Well, I guess I can’t slap that generalization on The Pioneer Woman who starts every recipe with a pint of cream and a stick of butter, but she is a CATTLE RANCHER, for goodness sake. I sit on my butt all day doing graphic design for free. I have to live by different rules.

Anyway, I recently made this for Meatless Monday, sans the italian sausage. The sausage was sadly missed but the dish was still surprisingly good.

Spicy Penne with Tomato Cream and Sweet Red Peppers*

* The photo shown above does not show this incarnation of the recipe. It shows Meatless Monday 36, when I made it with sage and yellow peppers and lots of oregano. It wasn’t nearly as good, though I did love those big pasta tubes! I recommend the following version of the dish. While the recipe is not precise, the herbs are more subtle and the red peppers more plentiful.

1 lb Penne or Rigatoni pasta, cooked al dente in salted water
1 small onion diced
1 clove fresh garlic minced or 3 cloves Garlic Confit mashed
1-2 cups of diced or pureed tomato — canned or fresh or combo — amount depending on your love of tomatoes
~ 1/2 cup half and half or cream — amount and type depending on your love of a flat stomach
1 t red pepper flakes
1-2 t sugar
1 sweet red pepper sliced into skinny strips– green works if it is winter and red peppers cost as much as truffles.
1 t dried thyme (or 1T fresh)
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup fresh pecorino shreds — or parmigiano if you are rich

Obviously there is no rocket science here. Saute the onion in a bit of olive oil over low to medium heat until translucent. Add the garlic and saute another minute, then add the tomatoes, thyme, salt, pepper and sugar and cook on low for a bit — maybe 10 minutes or so. About 5 minutes before serving add the peppers and cream. I like my peppers to stay firm and not be mushy. If you like them soft, add them earlier. Don’t let the cream boil.

Toss the half pasta with the sauce, adding pasta until you get the consistency you like. (I use about 3/4 of the pasta usually and save the rest for eating with butter. mmm). Sprinkle pecorino over and serve hot!

*******

Something I discovered that you probably already know: heat your pasta bowl in a very low oven (250 or so) for 10 minutes before tossing your pasta in it. I was always afraid to do this with my big, pretty bowls. But as I get older, I don’t care as much. Maybe it’s because I have more bowls. Anyway, IT MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE and keeps the pasts SO FRICKEN HOT for so much LONGER. It makes me feel like I’m eating it in a restaurant where I never fail to marvel, “How the heck do they get the pasta this hot?” Now I know.

It Smells Like Worms

September 23, 2010

It’s raining (again). It’s been raining for day upon endless day in Minnesota. Well, except for last weekend. We had a nice weekend.

Before today I was at 6+ inches for the month. I emptied about 1″ out of my rain gauge this morning and there is no end in sight

So, is it my imagination, or can I really smell the worms? Even when I walk outside, there is this humid wormlike smell to the air. I swear to Heaven above that I am accurate in my olfactory. It is the worms I smell.

To further prove my point, I have driven my car two times today. I try to avoid the thousands of outstretched bodies on the road. I swerve like a maniac trying to avoid their helplessness, all the while thinking of that movie where Brad Pitt is in some Buddhist village trying to build a shrine (or something) and the workers can’t do the work because they can’t kill any worms.

What in Buddha’s name would a Buddhist do on a day like today? Driving in a car? Driving over thousands of worms?

It would truly be a moral dilemma.

After all, it’s a dilemma even for me. And I’m just a gardener.

And then I park my car in my garage and go inside.

Then I go back in my garage to get in my car and I almost keel over. It’s that same smell as outside, only ten times stronger:

Worms!

And I imagine I am smelling all the worm guts in the tire treads and thrown up on the undercarriage and spewn all over the exterior of the car. (I know that’s gross, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?)

It’s worms I smell.

Road Warriors 2010!

August 11, 2010

I seriously can’t believe people want to read about the hill-billy, road-trip travels of the Menke family, but there it is. They apparently do. It was a little weird keeping my journal this year, knowing I’d be retyping it here later, but it didn’t change things all that much. I might have left out all the talk of bodily functions (does anyone really want to know how many craps I take?), and certainly every time I pulled out my camera, I had Dave running away to hide, worrying beyond all reason that it would soon be posted here for all the world to see…

The trip this year was always meant to point us east toward Washington D.C., which Dave seems manically bent on dragging his family through for the ‘experience’. I say: go on the dang field trip with Charlie’s school next year if you want to go that bad. But that would leave Morgan (and me) out of the loop, so the discussion always ends there.

Anyway, I digress. Right up until two weeks before we were to leave on our trip, the plan was to go east. I had voiced my displeasure early and often throughout the planning, always ending with “But I’m sure it will be fun. Dave is totally in charge and I will make sure we eat good food. How bad can it be?”

Morgan was delighted with the plan, as she had it in her head we’d be making many stops to highly populated and urban areas rife with retail opportunities.

“This is a CAMPING trip,” I’d remind her.

Dave poured over maps and the internet, planning — no doubt — a fun filled adventure. I didn’t ask much: only to drive a northern route either coming or going to spend a day and night in Pictured Rocks Park for kayaking in the liquid green waters along rocks and caves of northern Lake Michigan. (It sounded cool when described in a recent Outside magazine.)

To my amazement, while in Hayward over the 4th of July, Dave said, “What do you think about going to Banff?”

Banff????

Am I dreaming?

I LOVE BANFF!

And so it was: I got my way by being totally easy going.

As usual, we made no plans or reservations, preferring to travel by the seats of our pants. Which I find always a good thing, since — how can anyone plan for disaster? At least when disaster strikes, you haven’t upset any plans or reservations.

It makes perfect and complete sense to me.

Banff is a long drive from Minnesota on even the most direct of routes. It’s an even longer drive when going by way of Wyoming. And no, not Wyoming Minnesota, as some of the people I told assumed I was referring to. The state of Wyoming. Specifically, the Wind River/Riverton area, where we would be picking up the young and traveled Charlie Menke from his stay with some good friends.

Also complicating the journey was the pain and suffering we’d feel at the separation from our beloved animals.

Not.

I did feel bad dropping Lola off at Bed and Bone Kennel, but that’s her own fault. If she wasn’t such a freakin’ Cujo, she could have had a lovely time playing with all the other dogs in their sofa-strewn “Big Dog Party Room.” No, Lola gets her own “special room” at the kennel. Which basically means solitary confinement.

I’m sure my parents reading this are cringing right now, expecting me to skewer them here for bailing out on taking Lola to the lovely locale of Round Lake for some one-on-one time with Granny and Gramps. I’m sure the dog they opted to care for in place of Lola (Holly, I believe her name is) was worth the devastation of our relationship.

Kidding. No hard feelings, guys. (Which they made-certain of with a timely cash payment for “the barn utilities.” Give it up. We all know it was guilt money.

Look at the time! And I haven’t even started the journal! Here we go!!

ROAD WARRIORS 2010, DAY 1

7/29/2010, 6:30pm

Dropped Chin (the chinchilla) at Scanlons and dropped Dave’s car off at the Buttenhoff’s, and we are OFF! Only 2.5 hours later than ‘tentatively planned’. We are getting so much better at this!

No one ate dinner and therefore we contemplated a stop in Waconia (only 10 minutes from home), like we did last year. We were discussing how we swiped a bunch of mayo packets for camping from Subway when… suddenly we are past Waconia and past all food opportunities. So I’ll give you one guess as to who was driving.

Two hours later — and only, I suspect because he had to pee — and we stopped in St. James, MN. It bears noting how things have changed in just a year or two of these road trips. (At least when there is a cell signal anyway). I grab the iPhone and choose an app: Bing or Where or iWant… tap “Local” and search restaurants. All the options pop up. You hit the map button and it opens the GPS and guides us there.

You’d think with all the technology we’d end up somewhere better than McDonalds.

It matters not. I love my iPhone!

Since Dave requested the “graveyard shift” (that would be the late-late driving shift 1 or 2am to whenever) versus the early-late shift (before the late-late), I took the wheel after McDonalds.

Morgan has the luxury of having the whole back seat to herself and it is piled high with crap.

I should mention, for the sake of history, should we ever forget, that Charlie is absent from this initial leg of the journey because he is out in Wyoming with Monchamps. We are “picking him up”, if such a thing is possible being that we are a thousand miles away and heading north to Banff.

Exciting this year is the addition of a MIFI! For Dave’s sake I will once again try to explain the concept (he still doesn’t get it). A mifi is a portable wireless hotspot that uses a cellular data signal and broadcasts it to people nearby — me on my laptop, Charlie on the iPad and Morgan on the iPod.

Oh my gosh. We sound like such LOSERS!

Anyway, I got the VirginMobile unit as opposed to the Verizon unit because VM is cheaper all the way around. You don’t have a contract, only paying for data as you use it. That’s the upside. The downside is that Verizon has better coverage.

So far, not so good. My AT&T iphone coverage has been better than the wifi. Me thinks this Sprint network that VM is on does not “rock” like the Best Buy salesgirl said it did… Time will tell.

I settled into the seat with my current audible book “Girl in Translation”, while Dave pulled out his lime green inflatable neck pillow (which he professes to love just as much as I love my iphone) and instantly nodded off to sleep. Morgan is watching Moulin Rouge and I fear her recitations of the songs from it will rival that of last year’s Road Trip movie of her choice, Rent. At least Charlie isn’t here to complain about her singing…

How Not to Plant Shallots

March 20, 2010

Ignore that picture, as there is nothing wrong with it.

What I should have done is take a picture of the date next to the cute little rows off pointy-headed bulbs. Because that would be more appropriate with the title of this post.

You see, I am approximately 4.5 months late planting my shallots. I know that I have mentioned my ‘to-do list’ strategy, right? The one where I keep a running list of what I need to do in the next day or two? I’ll go a step further. This is the actual list:

Followed by excerpts from the next two months of lists:

…where you will note that an empty circle is an unfinished task. As we progress from October to December — when the ground is frozen solid — I finally gave up and scratched “Plant Shallots” out and off the list forever. Until I rediscovered the bag of bulbs in the garage yesterday…

Funny, though, as I look back on these lists, the other things I have forgotten to do… A client’s thing… My Mom’s photo mug… Another client thing… And that damn Greenhouse Motor. Which you will be happy to know that I finally figured out how to detach, pack up and send off for repair. I finally crossed it off my list.

Yesterday.

On 3/17/2010.

A full five months and ten days after it was first written down on 10/7/2009 (see above).

So anyway, the shallots. The truth is, I simply didn’t get them in the ground before it froze last fall. Then I rationalized that, since the directions that came on the package said, “Plant shallots in the ground immediately upon delivery in all but the coldest northern regions.”

That’s not that far of a stretch, is it? We’re pretty damn cold and pretty far north. Still, I think given that we plant garlic in the fall, the shallots should have gone into the ground with them.

So I planted them yesterday. Which is not the correct way, but I’m crossing my fingers that 1) the bulbs are still viable, and 2) the bulbs will grow. We shall wait and we shall see. They will be in for plenty of wild weather, but they would have gotten that if they went in the ground last fall, too.

Now: do you think I should gamble and plant these, since I decided not to cook them and serve them to Dave?

I think I should. Please chime in.

Tis the Season

March 15, 2010

…For Poop

Sorry for that sick photo, but you either a) get it, or b) don’t. If you don’t, then you obviously do not own a dog in a northern state that receives any appreciable snowfall.

I do.

And I am making my annual rounds on poop duty. It is a thankless job. If you miss the precious window of time where the poop is exposed from under the snow, yet still mostly frozen, all is lost. You will find yourself smearing and fighting waterlogged masses that you would far prefer not to ever have to even look at, much less try and pick up and dispose of.

So that’s what I did yesterday. That and pretty much take all my clothes off and run around in the Mid March Minnesota HEATWAVE! It was sunny, after five straight days of rain and dense fog, only to have the clouds vanish, the sun appear and the mercury soar to SIXTY! In the cities, I heard it got to 64 which was warmer than PHOENIX! Crazy talk.

I worked outside all day and felt my winter fat melt away.

I wish.

The fat. I wish the fat had melted away in one day. Wouldn’t that be awesome? I can’t be the only one who thinks things like that.

I cleaned the chicken coop out and let them outside for the first time since last December

I used the manure-laden shavings to fertilize the raspberries

And to feed the small rodent-chasing dog, known as Poopy. For not only does she like to poop in my house, but she clearly likes to eat it as well!

I spread the rest in the garden which is starting to emerge from under the snow and found these amazing living things!

Thyme and strawberry plants? Do strawberry plants typically look like this after a winter of subzero days and nights? I wouldn’t know because I just planted them last year…

And I found this mess staring at me. I know what I have to do soon and I don’t want to do it…. one of my most hated jobs of spring is cutting the old asparagus plants. In fact, it reminds me that this blog is a year old, because it was one of the first things I ever wrote about!