Wednesday, August 23, 2006



Toni's delicious German pancakes.

Chris was the only one tough enough to take on this Green River watermelon. After he carved the melon patiently and with great care, he posed for this picture.

Chris even coined a phrase to describe how good the melon was. "Melonicious!"

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Check out this vegan twinkie recipe

http://shmooedfood.blogspot.com

Friday, August 18, 2006



Loveable goat at Drake Family Farm

Last night I watched my Uncle Craig herding his chickens around his backyard and getting the little rascals to jump up to take a grape out of his hand. I hunted for eggs in the hen house and learned that brown chickens lay brown eggs and white chickens lay white eggs. . and that if you talk sweet to a chicken, you might get it to eat out of your hand.

This morning I woke at 6 a.m. to drive down a dirt road off Redwood in West Jordan to videotape Farmer Drake milking his goats at the Drake family farm.

Toni suggested we join the Epic Summmer amatuer film fest sponsored by a guy she knows. Our videoing skills are pathetic, but we'll try it to chronicle a few Slow Food nights-- the dinners we make, the places we go to find the food and the interesting people (and animals) we meet along the way.

Of note this morn was Essence the goat, a hornless female with a real "goatee" beard standing contentedly in the milking station while farmer Ron Drake milked she and her lactating sisters. Her utters were attached to rubber piping and her face was towards Drake and us and she had fun wildly licking Toni's hand all the way up to her elbow. (This is a trailer to our film.)

We bought some fresh milk, yogurt and cheese.


More stories to come... hope to see you at the brunch tomorrow.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006



My great Aunt Louise, gives her blessings to our Slow Food group. She's been cooking slow food for at least 60 years (in those days, all food was SLOW food, good and slow, and "fast food" hadn't been invented.) Louise left me with instructions on making applesauce from the apples I picked down the lane by her home in Hailey, Idaho.


August 15-- BREAKFAST IS COMING

COME ALL to our next slow food get-together, a brunch at 11:00 a.m. Sat 19th. E-mail me and I'll give you directions to Toni's house.

Bring your favorite breakfast food- something you can tell a story about.

On the Menu- breakfast foods, scrambled eggs from Uncle Craig's capitol hill chickens and Toni's German pancakes topped with applesauce made by fresh apples - a recipe from my great auntie Louise. Yesterday I picked the apples from a tree next to the home of a famous poet, Ezra Pound. My auntie lives by place where Ezra was born. He's dead of course, but those apples in the tree beside his yard are still living and we're going to eat them on Saturday. . . that is if I can get the hang of saucing them.


Oh and I can't forget, for those herbal tea drinkers, this tea is the best, mint, rooibus with a hint of cocoa bean.

Tastes like mint, chocolate, spices.

Fell in love with the tea when I had a cup of it at this cool coffee shop/art gallery build in an old church in Eagle, Idaho. Yum, yum, you'll love it.


Check out some of Ezra's poems in the prior post.

I'll add more details about who is bringing what when I get them.

What do you want to bring???

Jen
Poems by Ezra Pound:

About walking with a friend:

The Garret

Come, let us pity those who are better off than we are.
Come, my friend, and remember
that the rich have butlers and no friends,
And we have friends and no butlers.
Come, let us pity the married and the unmarried.

Dawn enters with little feet
like a gilded Pavlova
And I am near my desire.
Nor has life in it aught better
Than this hour of clear coolness
the hour of waking together.

Ezra Pound


Salutation


O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.

Ezra Pound



About War (sorry this one is a little serious for a food blog, but it's Ezra Pound at his best!)

And I liked this next poem especially because it reminded me of the war in Iraq, of our soldiers who have suffered, my brother being one of them, the soldiers who are still in that place and the ones who have come back and still suffer.

These Fought in Any Case


These fought in any case,
and some believing
pro domo, in any case .....

Died some, pro patria,
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.

Ezra Pound

Friday, August 04, 2006

July 21, 2006- Slow Food Night #1
On the Menu
SALAD, by Jen--Ingredients: Lettuce and green onions from my sister's garden, organic tomatoes, carmelized walnuts (Paul showed me how to carmelize them) and a sprinkle of huckleberries.


(This photo is my niece pulling up an onion.)

For the salad dressing, I used raw maple syrup mixed with Mayo. I forgot the vinegar, but Toni suggested a squeeze of fresh lemon would add some zest to the sweetness of the syrup.

The Huckleberries came from Libery Heights Fresh- http://www.libertyheightsfresh.com/
If only it had been Huckleberry season, I would have picked them fresh. Whenever I taste huckleberries, it reminds me of my childhood in Idaho. We usually went out every year with old Schwann man icecream buckets into the woods and plucked the sweet purple berries from the bushes. We were like the bears, loved to pick and eat, pick and eat, filling us with purple and leaving our hands and lips purple. My sister usually came back with the fullest bucket. I came home with only half a bucket- the other half being in my belly. We would freeze the berries and my Dad would make homemade huckleberry icecream.

I stopped at a local Italian shop, Tony Caputos,http://www.caputosdeli.com/ for some fresh pasta and visited my Aunt Marilyn's down the road to pick some herbs from her obliging garden. Toni was going to make the spaghetti sauce and I thought adding some fresh olives would be a nice touch. So I sampled about 10 different olives at Caputos and decided on a sweet variety that grows in Southern Italy- "around the tip of the heel," said the guy at the counter.



Toni was in charge of the spaghetti, but we all ended up helping cook. It had fresh herbs, garden tomatoes, Walla Walla sweet onions, sugar, olive oil, butter, garlic and organic beef. (See Toni's post for more details) And it was delicious.



I also made carrot apple juice.


A friend from Montana, Heidi Burnett, made fresh carrot apple juice for me while I was a student at Utah State. I remember how surprisingly sweet it was. I used fresh ginger and a variety of apple, fuji, Red D, Golden D. (See picture)

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

FOR ALL WHO:

*Can taste the difference between tomatoes from the garden vs. supermarket

*Enjoy gardening- pulling or digging bunches of green leafy things from the soil

One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race. -Wendell Berry

*View a forest of ripe berries as one of the Wonders of the World (you love to take home buckets but wind-up cramming most of it in your mouth while on the spot)

*Feel slighted when you cook from a package
*Don't like to eat alone (unless you are a parent and need a break from your kids)
*Love to cook, or would like to learn to cook from scratch
*Have inherited a dozen or more recipes that your Mom, Dad, grandparents or great-grandparents used to cook and have handed down

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.- Calvin Trillin.

*Love to hear stories and tell stories about the food you are eating
*Like to know where your food comes from
*Care about farmers who care about the land
*Possess a distain for dieting and commercial "diet" food

American consumers have no problem with carcinogens, but they will not purchase any product, including floor wax, that has fat in it. -Dave Barry

*Aren’t afraid of indulging in delicious food

Just think of all those women on the Titanic who said, "No, thank you," to dessert that night. And for what! -Erma Bombeck


Every month we will hold a Slow Food Night. Follow ours on this Blog, or start your own.
If you join us, we require only three things:

1. Bring a dish you make from scratch, or that you know where it comes from (local food, farm food, organic whole food.)
2. Be able to tell a story about your food, where the ingredients come from or how you learned to cook it like that (it can be a way of sharing your family's treasured recipes with each other.)
3. Attach a link of your Slow Food Night Blog to our Slow Food Waltz Blog.

More about SLOW FOOD and the slow food movement- http://www.slowfood.com/. "Created to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food."

Every month we will share our food stories along with photos on this Blog- stories that connect us with our food and with each other.