extending my visa...

cousin jesse once told me that i was in the south on a temporary visa. being a northerner i suppose i have yet to fully integrate myself in the culture or marry into it.

today that will all change. this evening the garden is having an open house. for my part i will be making fried okra. my only previous experience with this southern delicacy has been at the K&W... so i have high expectations.

woman at work

"Ain't nothing gonna break my stride
Nobody's gonna slow me down
Oh no, I've got to keep on moving"

in the past week i have moved from spartanburg,sc (aka poot city, aka sparkle city) to my new home in greensboro, nc. this should not surprise the reader since, chances are we have met and spoken in the past 6 months.

in moving i left my full size oven behind for the smaller model i'm currently working with. so this weekend i put it to the test. i tried a recipe from peter reinharts book of whole wheat recipes to start with. i had been previously advised to lower the required temp in certain recipes to compensate for the size of the oven- and when i did this my ciabatta turned out quite well. no burning- nothing. how wonderful!

workin' it

at my count i have 15 calendar days, 9 working days and 2 hot-rocksana classes left in sparkle-city.

i'm going to try the Babka again for a potluck. and luckily enough i got a direct response to the lack of flaky-ness. by direct i mean direct from peter reinhart himself! so here we go with peter's suggestion:

before I forget, you are right about the babka and here's the reason why
: there was a typo and they forgot to add to the ingredient list for the
dough 1 oz. (2 tablespoons) of vegetable oil, any kind,
(this is in addition to the butter).

i'll try the recipe again with the vegetable oil and we'll see how it goes. 

Thanks Peter!

summer heat

it's pretty dang hot here in poot city. the other day i was in the final 15 minutes of my ciabatta prep and i discovered my oven wasn't working! imagine my shock and panic, i called a neighbor whose tiny oven promptly burnt the underside of my loaves.

in other news:

i had been posting things on the farmers website. but oops i posted a poem with a curse word in it and now since we had sooooo many complaints i have to pass my entries to be edited by heir director which means any post i send never see's the light of day! my bad. looking through the underbelly of the blog template i did find out people posted lovely comments about my other posts (which she declined to share with me) so it wasn't a total loss.

i'll survive (on summer squash and garlic) with ease and joy.

back to the books

i made the Babka from peter reinhart's new book this past weekend. it came out slightly less flaky then i would have liked but the result was chocolaty and enjoyable none the less. i also made the lean bread, most all of his recipes all for cold ferments that last over night.

most of the bread i bake calls for overnight cold fermenting, this works well for my schedule allowing me to stretch out the work over a few days. this new book explains the delights of the cold ferment technique as well alternative methods for people who like me don't own standing mixers.

my second amazon purchase was "the bread builders", i've heard good things about this text and after pouring over the library copy i ordered one for myself. its pretty good reading for anyone who plans to build a masonry oven or bake bread in one.

My Extended Time Away

i recently returned from excursions to w.palm beach, detroit, and reidsville. this was my first visit to detroit- as i have extensive experience in both w.palm and reidsville i'll spare the details.

i attended the first FoodCorps summit, and i dare say it was the most fun i've ever had at a food/ag conference. first of all rather then the normal smattering of foodsystems folks one runs across at CFSA for example this event was FULL of folks who like to talk about, thinking about, grow and cook food. sheer joy.

almost everyone there seemed to have experience working with or participating with the AmeriCorps VISTA program. there were other current VISTA's there working with extension agencies, community gardens in maine and iowa among other places.

during the summit participants presented their agencies work to the group, many of them addressed issues/barriers they encountered in their work and i found that many of them (or actually ALL of them) i had experienced here in sparkle city. these issues ranged from isolation to the lack of communication and exposure to community members who are doing work in similar or related fields. this experience has helped me to identify these issues as systemic and not completely personal... it's good to know that others face the same issues.

sea of broken dreams

so things aren't that bad, but some days i feel like i may have sold myself down the river.

weekend back up:

saturday i managed a pie. it was a chocolate number with a deep chocolate ganache buried inside. the strawberries i topped it with were the inspiration for this culinary adventure, the berries themselves were bland and not very palatable, they needed the chocolate.

sunday i was treated to bunch by "nat" a friend of a friend. his black bean cakes were better then anything i've made for myself in weeks. he inspired my to pick up Judith Jones book "the pleasure of cooking for one". i'd like to devote sometime to making some of these meals.

and:

i've given up reading anna karenina for now. not for any good reason. instead im reading "it must've been something i ate" the follow up text to "the man who ate everything" by jeffery steingarten, a true culinary adventurer.