St. Michaels Winery: 30 Before 30

I took the last week of July off. It has been a while since I had a vacation of more than a long weekend, so it was overdue.

I did some fun stuff- painted the front door, started work on an end table, and bummed around town.

And on Friday, Carol had the day off too, and we headed down the road to St. Michaels, MD.

There's a lot of stuff in St. Michaels- some cute shops, a delicious ice cream parlor, a maritime museum and a marina. But the reason we went is because there's a winery in town.

The Bright Side of the CSA

CSA= Community Supported Agriculture

That's locally grown beats in a sweet & sour glaze, beat greens made spicy with red pepper and olive oil, and egg fried rice with chorizo and local onion diced in. Ain't it colorful?

Yeah, you should be jealous.

One of my 30 before 30 goals is to lose 30 pounds, and my strategy is to eat a little healthier: second helpings of veggies instead of starch, a little less meat, a little less beer, plus more exercise. I'm actually pretty sure I won't make it, since I'm unwilling to go on a stricter diet. But I've lost some weight, and I'm in better shape than ever.

And I'm pretty happy with that.

Lamb Ragu

Best Buddy Adam

For February, I've been working on a blog challenge to improve the site.

Most of this has been behind the scenes, but one of the out front things I've worked on is emptying out my queue of post ideas that I'm really going to get to soon if I just have the time.

And so, I'll conclude the month with the post I've been holding onto the longest.

Best Buddy Adam is a fantastic cook. No, really, check him out.

When he came to visit a few months ago, he cooked a lamb ragu made almost entirely with ingredients from our local Farmer's Market. Adam loves his vegetables, and with several local farms around, he was (understandably) excited.

Making Pasta

Goal #4 for my 30 Before 30 project was to use the pasta maker attachment that Carol and I received from my Uncle David and his family for our wedding. A big tradition in my family is making ravioli at holiday time, and while I've helped my mother a couple times, I've never been in charge of the project.

So last Tuesday, since Carol had the day off from work, I took the day off too. It was a fun way to replace some of the Saturdays and weekday evenings we don't get to spend together because of our work schedule.

The first step was to make the dough, divide it into balls and let it sit for an hour.

 We basically just followed the recipe from The Joy of Cooking, but we mixed in some semolina in with the regular flour.

Next we flattened the dough balls by hand and ran them through the KitchenAid over and over, each time making the opening on the roller a little smaller.

Sometimes Carol likes to surprise me with the camera. I do not, generally, find this amusing.

Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato

Did I just have a delicious BLT for lunch with my lovely wife, featuring tomatoes we grew in our ridiculously overgrown garden?

Oh yes.

How awesome is my life?

Memorial Day Mojito Recipe

Illustration 1: Mojito mint grown on the back porch

Rockin' Mojito Recipe

Crush 5 friends with 1 spouse on the back porch

Fill glasses with equal parts light rum, club soda and simple syrup, mint to taste with homegrown mint plucked from the aforementioned porch (see illustration 1)

Load 1 grill with bbq curry chicken and hot dogs

Makes 1 holiday weekend afternoon

Enjoy responsibly.

Book Review of Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz

Hi, and a little wine readers! I’m Aundra and I blog at Fit for Life. Mostly, I blog about suburban homesteading, fitness, local food, and daily adventures, but today I’m presenting a review for one of my new favorite books!

The book is Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Katz. I had the opportunity to meet Sandor Katz during his visit to Chestertown this spring for the Locavore Lit Fest.

Let me start by stating that I knew very little about fermentation before opening this book. In preparation for Sandor’s visit to Chestertown, I purchased the book last fall and let it sit on my bedside table until a week before the event (typical).

Local Food Day at the Dining Hall

Asparagus from here

One of the downsides of working at a college is that there is always more to do. I often feel rushed, and being a slight workaholic, I'll come early or stay late. One of the things I always try to do, though, is to keep the middle of my day clear so I can take my lunch hour.

One of the perks of working at a college is that there's a dining hall, so on days like this I can grab a quick bite to eat there.

My co-worker and I went to lunch together today; we sat on the open air patio with our meals and basked in the sunshine. That was wonderful.

What made it doubly wonderful was that today is (surprise!) local food day at Hodson Dining Hall. So as we savored this beautiful April day, we did it over burgers of local grass fed beef topped with locally produced pepper jack cheese and topped by locally grown portabello mushrooms, with sides of local asparagus and a delicious oyster stew (the oysters were from Virginia, which while not quite local, is close enough).

Best part: the meal cost under 5 bucks. Best 5 bucks I'll spend this year? Tummy says yes!

Happy Friday!

This dizzy life of mine...

Dover for dinner? Elkton and Philadelphia tomorrow? Sleep in Sunday or conquer the world?
And who knows what Monday will bring...
Well, I know what Monday will bring, but I'm not allowed to say yet.

Happy Friday!

Staff Breakfast and the Nature of Wednesday

One of my favorite events of each month is our all staff meeting/ breakfast. I don't know why I enjoy it so much, beyond the fact that I enjoy a free breakfast as much as (or more than) the next guy.

I think all important work discussions should occur over pancakes, with a hard-boiled egg on the side if it can be arranged. As a bonus, this month I will remember to bring my travel mug so I can get my coffee fix for the day.

Wednesday is a tough day for me (Tuesday is rough, too, for the same reasons): Monday is a "get back to it" day, Thursday is downhill and usually includes the completion of one or more of my major projects for the week, and Friday is Friday. But Wednesday is a grind it out day, it's a put your head down and really march toward your goals day.

So staff breakfast is a great way to start Wednesday.

Pot Roast Over Pasta

Inspired by a friend, and confounded by the mounting price of ground beef and my more usual cooking meats at the grocery story, I decided to make a Pot Roast. Being me, I didn't make this decision in a way that allowed me to plan ahead, buy the things I would need for a pot roast, and serve it to my lovely wife as a meal.

I stood in the kitchen with a hunk of beef sitting on the kitchen counter, and I thought to myself, "I think I can do this."

I remembered Aundra's pot roast post, and consulting with The Joy of Cooking, determined that I did not have carrots, celery or any of the vegetables suggested for pot roast (other than onion, always plenty of onion and garlic in my kitchen). Those absent same vegetables feature prominently in the "Italian Style Pot Roast" on the next page.

But that recipe sparked a memory of a meal Carol and I had at one of our favorite Morristown restaurants: wild boar over pasta. I can do that, I figured.

So I followed the bones of the recipe: slit and stuffed the beef with garlic, olive oil and sage, then browned it on all sides in my biggest pot before setting it a side; sauteed my onion in the pot, then boiled away half a cup of red wine (should have added tomato paste, but reached this point in the recipe to realize I'm out- did I mention I didn't plan this meal very well?); reduced another cup of red wine and a cup chicken stock; put the meat back into the pot with another cup of red wine and another cup of chicken stock; finally, I let it simmer for about three hours, turning it every half an hour.

Maybe I was just fantastically hungry by the time I got to eat, or maybe it came out as well as I think it did... We boiled some pasta and sliced the meat thinly, against the grain, so that it came apart into thick strings. A little Parmesan cheese (one of the few things I can depend on my kitchen to have) and voila!

The best thing about it: there's plenty of left overs. (Those of you who do not appreciate the joy of leftovers should not make this meal unless you're feeding an army. Also, you make no sense. Who doesn't love leftovers?).

Opposite Ends of the Kitchen

I made pork chops last night (pretty good ones, if I do say so myself).

Baked over slices of apple at 350 for 45 minutes. While the pork chops cooked I made a sauce: sauteed onions and garlic, 2 shakes of BBQ sauce, 3 shakes of sherry, some apple butter and some honey; bring it to a boil then simmer for 20 minutes. I don't have a recipe, it just sounded good. It was tangy and sweet, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

Two nights ago Carol made a layered chocolate cupcake. She saw a recipe on Pinterest with a lot of complaints from people who couldn't make it work. Carol took a look at the recipe and figured out she knew what needed to be different to fix it.

For years we've used the joke that I cook and she bakes. But as I was deciding what to add to my sauce, I was thinking about how I could never tweak a baking recipe that way. In the oven things have to rise, the oven temperature and the thickness of the pan have to align, before the oven door closes everything has to already been put together properly so no time to adjust.

That's why I cook; there's plenty of time to play with the flavor. But I admire everyone brave enough to play with their kitchen counter like a chemistry set.

Accidental Sushi

This is not the sushi I ate, but it looks yummy, too!

We didn't mean to have sushi for lunch yesterday, although it was quite good.

We stopped at Ichiban, just on the Eastern Shore side of the Bay Bridge. I have loved sushi ever since a friend introduced me to it (in Scranton PA, of all the landlocked places in the world). We don't have a sushi restaurant closer than 45 minutes from us here, and that's the farthest I've lived from a decent sushi place since I moved to Scranton 5 years ago.

So, here's how I went from Electric City to Ichiban:

1) I learned to love sushi through my love of a deal and love of a meal, and, since the nice sushi place in Scranton offered half price rolls on Sundays, it quickly became my favorite meal deal.

2) I moved all over the place (seriously, 4 times in 5 years, each time moving no less than 150 miles). I kept trying more kinds of sushi; I kept liking it in restaurant after restaurant and town after town.

3) I agreed to go to Baltimore for a friend's birthday, for ice skating and a wine bar, for joy.

4) It snowed.

I suppose the correct term for what happened between Friday night and Saturday morning would be 'wintery mix,' but it's not at all satisfying to say "4) It wintery mixed."

Baltimore didn't happen because traffic did, snarling the Bay Bridge. We didn't make it to the rink or the wine bar. But I did get a fantastic $9.99 lunch special, 4 rolls, and Carol got a bento box. I had tuna and salmon, spicy red snapper, and eel and avocado.

Not the day I expected, but a yummy one nonetheless.

Cookie Party Photo Gallery

So Blogger was giving me trouble earlier when I tried to load all of my pictures from last weekend's cookie party into a single post. Let's see if it's more co-operative today (cooperative always looks weird without the hyphen, don't you think?).

Cookies and Cocktails

 Saturday marked our second annual cookie decorating party, and it was our most successful cookie decorating party yet, if I do say so myself (and I do, I do!).

A slew of all the coolest kids in the neighborhood and the surrounding region made the trip down to Greenwood for the festivities. We made Zombies (an icky cocktail with rum, apricot brand and pineapple juice; I hate pineapple), Midori Sour, and Wassail (I made the wassail in the slow cooker, but next year I'll start it much earlier; I had some the next day and it had picked up a lot more apple flavor from marinading overnight).

 I think I like theme parties best. I'm awkward at parties, never know what to say or how much to say or (often just as important) when to just shut up. I get restless without something to do, some goal that needs achieving (I suppose, now that I think about it, that's part of why I'm often willing to be the grill man at cook-outs: it keeps me busy.

But theme parties are definitely the best. And the parties at Greenwood have prizes. Which means we have pictures of the winners: