Dirt, Fire, Meat

We had a cowboy cookout on Saturday, St. Patrick's Day, don't ask me why. It just seemed like it would be fun to cook a bunch of stuff outside, even though it turned cold and windy, like it was fall. Our meal was not really cowboy-authentic, but it sure was good.

Mr. Chalmers smoked huge, thick chuck roasts he rubbed with his special combination of salt, salt, salt, cayenne, dried oregano, and sliced garlic. I think he cooked them with hickory for about three and a half hours, and they were nice and tender, juicy, spicy, meaty. Chuck really is an excellent cut of meat for smoking, and I'm surprised more people don't use it instead of the more expensive brisket. The only trick is slicing it across the grain, which tends to go every which way. We've even smoked thinner chuck "steaks" with great results.

Here they are, about an inch and a half thick, maybe an hour after they went into the smoker.

In the oven, in a (cowboy?) bain marie, we baked a simple corn pudding with roasted poblano peppers: corn, peppers, milk, heavy cream, melted butter, fresh eggs from the lady down the road, et cetera.

The night before, I soaked two pounds of Great Northern beans in water. Early the next morning, I simmered the beans in fresh water for about an hour, drained them, and added new water, some molasses, dry mustard, a little ketchup, a lot of bacon, and one and a half chopped onions. I dug a hole and started a big fire in it, and let it burn down to embers. It was cold outside, and had just begun to get light. With the Mister's help I set the Dutch oven full of beans, along with a few potatoes brushed with butter, seasoned with fresh herbs, and wrapped in foil, down in the coals and we shoveled some of the coals on top, then covered the whole thing with dirt until we couldn't see any smoke rising from the ground. I think the fire probably died when we covered it with dirt, because when we dug the pot up five hours later it was barely warm. So I put the pot on the stovetop and finished up the beans the regular way. These were New England–style beans, not Southern or Texas beans, but they were pretty rustic anyway. We put the potatoes and sweet potatoes in the coals in the smoker while the meat was cooking.

This is the covered-up hole for the beans; we checked it every now and then to make sure we hadn't started an underground fire, though I suppose there could be one raging out there as I write and we wouldn't know about it.

Digging up the lukewarm beans.

More successful was the cobbler, which we made in an eight-quart Dutch oven ("Made in China for Texsport, Houston") with a flat, rimmed lid and three legs. Apples, pears, lemon juice, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and tapioca. I precooked the fruit a bit because I wasn't sure how it would work on an open fire, but as it turns out I didn't need to do that: the hardwood fire Mr. Chalmers and our friend built in the old goat-cooking pit was extremely hot, and the fruit juices were boiling in no time. As soon as it was all bubbly, Mr. Chalmers mixed up a biscuit-y topping (flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, half butter and half nonhydrogenated shortening, then milk) and dolloped it on, trying not to singe his arm. We put the lid on and piled coals on top. We let it cook like that for about twenty minutes, then I said it was time, and we pushed the coals off the pot and lifted the lid and it was perfect. A little blackened on the side closest to the center of the fire, but otherwise just right. It may well be the best cobbler I've ever had a hand in making. The apples and pears were all dark and caramelized, and somehow the topping was both fluffy and crisp, and tasted as if it had been baked, then fried, then drizzled with caramel. And there was just a touch of smoke flavor, or maybe that was burnt flavor—in any case, I liked it. A lot.

I used about eight apples (mostly Granny Smiths, and a few Galas) and three pears.

It's hotter than it looks. I think those are motorcycle fenders around the edge there.

We took it right off the coals after this, because it was bubbling furiously and the fruit looked like it was going to burn onto the bottom of the pot.

Plates in a tree.

Add Miller Lite and Bailey's Irish Cream (brought by our friends from town) and it was a fine way to celebrate our Irish cowboy heritage.

Bug's First Live Music

This was at the Saving Grace Café in Comer on Friday night. We had a nice dinner there after the chicken auction in Royston. Lovely place, fun time, even though the food wasn't very good. It was the first time I've heard a server offer half-and-half to put in the espresso and water to put in the wine (because it's so strong). The bug ate a big slice of lemon and watched the guitar player, and was a little confused every time the applause started up.

Loose Ends

I finally got around to making the Bittman-Lahey no-knead bread this weekend, and I'm pretty happy with the results. I only wish there were more bread to show for the nineteen-hour first rise and two-hour second rise. The crust is crackly, chewy, and thin. I doubled the amount of salt in the recipe, and it could've used even a bit more. I also took some liberties with water and flour amounts because the dough looked like it was going to be too stiff. Otherwise I pretty much tried to follow the recipe, using a seven-quart round cast-iron Dutch oven. Instead of putting the dough on top of a floured towel, I used a Silpat and put the floured towel just on top—no sticking problems at all. I'll definitely make it again.

And while I was in New York I finished the brown Fetching mittens. Very happy with them, too, although the picot bind off edge is a little loose around the knuckles—it was fine on the pink pair, where I did the bind-off wrong; this time I did it right and it's not as snug.

The Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran is already pilling like crazy.

My mom made several pretty outfits for the bug: a "romper" (whatever that is) for summer, a couple of breezy blouses, and some pants, the latter two based on Burda 9645. Here she is out in the yard the other day in one of the blouses.

New York

Better than expected. Taking the bug on the Metro-North to Grand Central, then on a train to Fort Greene for brunch with my friends, high-powered Cookie and Style and Google (don't tell me you need a link) types, and back again was just not as difficult as I'd imagined it would be. She was a brilliant, sweet little bug the whole time, even when we sat down for mushroom-shallot-thyme quiche, spicy pan-fried potatoes, and sweet potato biscuits and she had to make do on a little mat on the floor with a container of Cheerios and freeze-dried corn. (I'm going to try to make a similar quiche tonight; if it works out I'll post a recipe.) The trains ran the way they were supposed to.

The bug slept in her carrier all the way from Rye to the main concourse at GCT, where she woke up and found herself in the middle of the typical Grand Central throng (well, the Sunday version).

She was not as freaked out by the 4 train or the people on it as this picture would suggest.

At brunch in Brooklyn, she crawled over to the coffeetable, grabbed a cookie, and shoved the whole thing in her mouth before I even knew what she was doing. Turned out it had a big hunk of chocolate in it.

One day Mr. Chalmers and I left the bug with her grandma and aunt and went into the city on our own. We took the Garment District by storm—ducking in and out of fabric shops, walking fast, and bargaining like we were pros. I have the most amazing husband ever: he actually seemed to enjoy our whirlwind hunt for curtain material. (Although, come to think of it, he might not have used such words as "whirlwind" or "fast" or "ducking in and out" to describe the experience. I used to live a five-minute walk from those stores, and my fabric-shopping outings were always almost painfully slow, to the point where I wouldn't even buy anything because I could just tell myself I'll think about it, shop around, and come back the next day, or even later in the day. I have a problem making decisions, which is a small part of why Mr. Chalmers's participation was so refreshing.) Luxuriously, we shipped our purchases home right from 39th Street and skipped downtown unencumbered for a beautiful lunch at Lupa: octopus in chickpea puree, roasted sweet-and-sour parsnips, duck agrodolce, buridda, and a red wine from the Alto Adige that was really great. All of it was great.

The elder Chalmerses even got to go to a movie!

Accessories

It's always nice to send off a bunch of work, whether you're freelance or not. I've taken several days off since I finished two of the three jobs I've been working on lately, and was able to finally finish the larger knit bonnet for the bug—I figured she might need it where we're going tomorrow: New York City!

Note the new, larger, more powerful radio collar on Wagnerford. It works, but I had to put up still more traditional fencing (so, okay, maybe it doesn't work so well).

I also got her some fleece-lined jeans and a pair of little shoes for the trip north, and I'm trying to finish up a second pair of Fetching mittens for myself in time to wear them this weekend (the first pair got lost on our last plane trip); these are in dark chocolate brown. Mr. Chalmers went up to the city ahead of us, and if all went well (telephonic communication between Carlton and Manhattan has not been the greatest) he saw the Arcade Fire show last night.

Overall I'm looking forward to being back in New York for a few days, seeing a couple friends for Sunday brunch in Brooklyn, going nuts in the Garment District, and maybe having a nice dinner someplace cramped and crowded (Lupa?) with Mr. Chalmers while the bug plays with her grandma and two dogs in the suburbs. Still, I'm prepared for much of it to be tiring and in no small part annoying. There was a New York couple on House Hunters last night, and as horrifying as they were I couldn't stop watching: this blinking, unhappy man and his sneering fiancée were looking for a loft space and it had to be within a ten-block radius of where they already lived, on Gramercy Park (because they liked the "energy" of the neighborhood and also wanted to be "close to work, yoga, and the gym"), it had to have two full bathrooms ("for the sake of their relationship"), it had to be large enough for their two very large dogs (they're thoughtful dog owners), and they had to close the deal on it before their wedding in Tuscany two months hence (cue blinking). They "couldn't imagine" living anywhere else. For maybe four or five years I couldn't imagine it either, but once I realized I could live somewhere besides New York, the whole mystique of the place crumbled and a cinderblock ranch house with a carport and a yard in Florida started to look like just one of many possible versions of heaven on earth. Our kitchen here in Georgia is another:

For my mom, a picture showing the two top teeth. She now has two on the bottom, too!

In the Dining Room with Dogs

The guy in downtown Carlton, as he refers to the sorry stretch of unleased commercial space along Highway 72 between Comer and Elberton, Georgia, has not yet finished the dining room table he's allegedly been making for us since late August, so there's still plenty of open space in the dining room for playing. I've been working in there too, opening up the curtains and letting the sun in during the cold daytimes, and turning a low lamp on in the early mornings and evenings. The bug and the dogs usually stay close by while I copyedit and drink a lot of cappuccinos and espressos out of a fancy china coffee cup. The coffee makes the workload seem more civilized.

And it's sure nice to have dogs around. The bug just spent the last half hour gnawing on a very stale taralli, and Wagner sat next to her, patiently watching her, and didn't try to take it away even though she would frequently hold it out to him and bang it against his food bowl. (I know, I know: not the cleanest thing in the world for a baby to be doing, but I try to keep her clean in the major ways and not worry too much about all the minor ways she contaminates herself.) When she finished up and crawled away happy, Wagner stood up and licked every last crumb up off the floor where she'd been, saving me even this trouble.

The bug and Wagner.

Resting with Cooper in the fireplace. Fireplace dirt is considered minor unless she gets black soot on her hands, in which case I'll wash them off right away. Lost socks are minor too, unless we're in a store and old people start tsking.

And this is pretty much what the days are like around here lately. (The blur is Wags.) The picture would be more representative if there were a manuscript getting trampled in the foreground.

Speaking of Wagner, over the weekend Mr. Chalmers and I put up this cool Radio Fence wire along one side of the yard where Wagner is jumping over the existing fence. So he gets a shock—sorry: "static correction"—through his special collar when he gets within a foot or so. He still goes over (hence "is" above). We need to train him more or try a more powerful collar. I think it'll work, and I'm convinced that soon we'll have full containment capabilities. And a table, even if it's not Made in Carlton.

Ribs

Last weekend we smoked a slab of ribs and a bunch of chicken wings out in the backyard. Saturday it was warm and balmy, and we heard from friends that they'd be coming through the next day on their way from New York to New Orleans, so we started marinating and thawing. Sunday it turned cold and it was hard to keep the temperature in the smoker up high enough for ribs (I like to do them at about 225; we could only keep it a little over 150)—still, they were pretty great. A bit too spicy, though, because more cayenne came out of the container than I'd meant to use. We also had apple cream pie and beer. And molasses crinkles.

Ribs: Trim pork spareribs and rub with a mixture of 1 cup brown sugar, lots of cayenne, black pepper, and salt, and a little granulated garlic. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Smoke with hickory (we actually used pecan deadfall from the yard) until the meat pulls back from the ends of the bones, basting occasionally with a mixture of 1 part vegetable oil to 1 part cider vinegar. Boil the basting liquid for a few minutes, then add a bit of brown sugar and some mustard and use this to glaze the ribs in the last 10 minutes of cooking.

I'm still in the throes of a spate of freelance jobs. Last week I dropped the bug off with a friend in town for three hours during the day while I went down the street and worked at Jittery Joe's—I got more done in those three hours than in any three hours of my professional "career." If the bug hadn't come down with a raging cold—her first—soon afterward I'd have wanted to do it again, if only to jump-start the next job on the docket. I think she had a good time playing in a new place with a new friend.

She now has two teeth—the one on bottom and one on top, both in front. She can stand on her own without holding on to anything for about ten seconds at a time before gently sitting back down. She likes to play peekaboo, as she always has, except that now she's the one lifting the blanket or sweater over her face and then pulling it down quickly. She's almost said "balloon" several times—balloons are her favorite things other than dogs. We still have the ones from her dad's birthday several weeks ago, but they're so deflated by now that he brought some new ones home for her the other night. We've been starting to teach her a few words in sign language: light (on and off), ceiling fan, dog, cat, bird, tree, balloon, and train. (The useful words—hungry, cold, sleepy—are not as fun, so we tend to not do them as much.) One morning a couple weeks ago, she woke up with a completely new way of babbling. Apparently overnight she'd figured out how to use her tongue differently, so she suddenly had all these new syllables at her disposal. It took some getting used to on our part, because she didn't sound like herself.

Cold Food

That is, hot food for when you're fighting off a cold, as I think I am now. My first attempt at congee, a New York Chinatown staple, is pretty good. Untraditional, but good.

My congee: Roast a duck carcass and neckbone at 500 degrees until well browned; put them in a 6-quart slow cooker with 1 cup long-grain rice and fill the pot with water. Add a cheesecloth bag of spices—star anise, black peppercorns, fennel seeds, and cloves—and sprinkle in some ground cinnamon (this to approximate five-spice, which uses Szechuan peppercorns; mine were too old and too lost in the back of the cupboard). Cook on low or high until the duck carcass seems to be pretty much done giving up its flavor, but before the rice has started to expand; remove and discard the duck (pull off any bits of meat and return them to the cooker) and the bag of spices. Continue to cook on low or high until the rice disintegrates and "blooms." Season with soy sauce before or after ladling it into a bowl. Garnish with cilantro, chile-garlic sauce, and sliced scallions. I kept the congee unsoy-sauced so I can give some to the bug for supper. I think she'll like the funny texture and meaty flavor of it.

I probably won't be able to post anything for a little while, as I'm completely logjammed with work and I need to just buckle down and do it. One or two frozen pizzas (and warmed-up congee, and maybe some duck prosciutto) are in the Chalmerses' near future, I'm afraid.

The Larder

Mr. Chalmers and I made five pounds of jagerwurst on Sunday. Next time we break out the meat grinder we really should make ten pounds. We pretty much followed the recipe in Charcuterie: 5 pounds cubed Boston butt pork with all its fat, mixed with salt, 1 teaspoon sodium nitrite (pink salt), black pepper, ground ginger, toasted crushed coriander seeds, toasted whole mustard seeds (we used black), nutmeg, minced fresh garlic, and nonfat dry milk powder. We put it through the grinder with the coarse plate, then put half of it through the fine plate, then the stronger of the two of us beat the heck out of it to mix it up really well. Stuffed it into hog casings we'd brought with us from Florida—those things last forever in brine or coated with coarse salt. Hung them from hooks under the shelf I put up in the cool pantry for a few hours to let the surface dry. Smoked them with hickory at 180 degrees, or as close to that temperature as we could maintain, for an indeterminate time (four hours?), until the internal temperature of the sausage was about 150 degrees. Plunged the sausages into ice water to chill and prevent shrinkage. They were good hot out of the smoker, but better cold and thinly sliced. The texture is nice: smooth and firm, but studded with larger bits. The casing is a little bit tough, though, and I'm not sure how to prevent that next time.

The next day, we got a whole duckling at Whole Foods in Buckhead (I'd been unable to find just duck breasts), and yesterday I broke it down into parts. Leg/thigh quarters are in the freezer to be made into confit later. I rendered all the extra fat, which came to about two cups—I'll cut this with schmaltz and maybe good lard when I make confit. I took the breasts off and packed them in a mixture of kosher salt, crushed juniper berries and bay leaves, and a little black pepper. Today I rinsed them off, dusted them with a touch of finely ground black pepper all over (I don't like white pepper at all), tied them in cheesecloth, and hung them in the pantry, where they'll dry for about seven days (the temperature in there right now is about, oh, 51.8 degrees, which according to R&P is just right), becoming duck "prosciutto," which I gather you slice very thinly and eat just as you would the real thing. I don't know, it sounds good. I've never had it before. These might take less than a week to dry-cure, because they're flatter than the average duck breast.

Right now it's looking like the duck wings and carcass will end up as a base for congee (or jook), a bland version of which I think would make an excellent baby food. I guess I'll roast them, then toss them in the slow cooker with rice and lots of water, plus, maybe, star anise? For now they're in the freezer.

Laurel

I have what's known in the knitting blogosphere as an FO. It's so rare that I have one to show for my days that I'm posting three pictures of it. A baby sweater of my own design (let's call it Laurel), made with beautiful, soft Briar Rose Fibers Fourth of July merino. I sure hope it gets cold again in Georgia so the bug can wear it a few times. It's awkwardly made, but it's warm and it fits (that is, it's too large) and it looks like a sweater from the outside.

1885 House

Last night it rained so hard our roof leaked right next to our bed. I'm going to pretend it was a dream, because it will likely never rain that hard again. I sometimes feel like I'm living in a PBS reality series, though. The other day I received huge boxes from my folks containing all the old enamelware I said I'd take off their hands, along with a glass butter churn, a butter-washing bowl and paddle, and a large (maybe one-pound-size) butter mold. We already live like dairy farmers (or bakers); we might as well be milking a cow and making butter . . .

Yesterday we had the usual roast chicken on lemon slices. I was eager to use the new poultry shears I got for eight dollars at Publix.

Laid out flat, seasoned with salt and dried thyme, on top of lemon.

After it had roasted awhile at 425 degrees I added some cubed, parboiled boniato in what I guess was a sort of mojo—fresh tangelo juice and zest, cumin, cayenne, garlic, and salt.

The bug suggested I add some shallots to the mojo, so I did.

The bug rejected, in no uncertain terms, the plain mashed boniato I tried to feed her. But then she couldn't get enough of it after it had roasted in chicken juices and spicy, tangy sauce and been scooped onto my plate. She very much liked the gravlax yesterday, and the grapes I put in her clever feed bag. Her dad gave her a taste of the frosting on the cupcake he had for breakfast this morning and it didn't even spoil her appetite for oatmeal and bananas.

Birthday Salmon

Last week was Mr. Chalmers's birthday, but as he does every year he spent it at a conference. When he comes home today we'll have chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting—I think he asked for that wacky combination a couple months ago, and anyway he's right that I never make chocolate desserts, so I thought this was a good excuse. (It's all fruit and spice around here.) I don't know much about chocolate cake or frosting, so I posted a query on Chowhound asking for the best chocolate frosting recipes ever. It paid off: this is the chocolate frosting I'll use till my dying day (although I have enough left over to last that long in the freezer, assuming it freezes okay—or, rather, thaws okay). It's very chocolatey, not too sweet, not grainy, not greasy or fatty-tasting like a buttercream can be, and not as dense as a ganache. It spreads easily, and stiffens as it cools on the cake but does not become crusty like a lot of frostings do. In short, it's perfect. I used a random combination of Ghirardelli milk and semisweet chocolates, plus a little over half a pound of good bittersweet. Here's a shortened version of the recipe:

Chocolate sour cream frosting: Melt about 2 pounds chocolate in a double boiler. Remove from the heat and stir in about 3 cups sour cream and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract. Frost cake immediately. Makes about 4 cups.

The cake recipe I used happened to be very good too. Very rich and moist, but light and tender. I used that crazy "Special Dark" Dutch-process Hershey's cocoa powder, and the cakes are pitch black. (Other things I've made with that stuff look too weird and dark, not like other Dutch-process cocoa powder I've used, so I'm glad to have been able to use up 3/4 cup of it this morning.) This recipe made twenty-four cupcakes.

A lot of my pictures these days are taken when it's still dark out; hence the bad lighting.

The gravlax is ready! Following (sort of) Ruhlman and Polcyn in Charcuterie, I cured a pretty piece of wild king salmon from Your Dekalb Farmer's Market in brown sugar, salt, a little black pepper, and lots of dill—wrapped in plastic and weighted down—for a little over two days. I know approximately as much about gravlax as I do about chocolate cake, but the little schnibbley I took from the thin end seemed a bit too hard and maybe too sweet. It's probably just that I expect it to taste like smoked salmon—lox—a completely different thing altogether. (The Chalmerses will make lox as soon as we have the smokehouse built. I've bookmarked something called KountryLife.com, so you know I'm serious. I did not, however, bookmark EndTimesReport.com.) I think it'll be nice with the mustard sauce I threw together this morning, and thin slices of pumpernickel, topped with strips of the skin that have been crisped and blackened in a hot skillet.

Layer of brown sugar, salt, and pepper mixture, then the salmon fillet skin side down, then more sugar mixture, then dill.

Salmon wrapped tightly in plastic. The juices will run out into the pan, in effect becoming a brine.

Weighted down with cans in the fridge, where the salmon spent about two days.

Salmon unwrapped, rinsed off, and patted dry.

Mustard sauce for gravlax: Whisk together about 1/3 cup crème fraîche, 1 tablespoon grainy mustard, and a touch of honey to taste. Stir in about 1 tablespoon snipped fresh dill.

Yes, I'd had breakfast and made cupcakes and mustard sauce and finished the gravlax before it was time to feed the dogs at 6 this morning. The bug is up and ready to play by 3:30 lately, whether she goes to bed at 4:30 or 7 the night before. These last few dark mornings have given me time to think about how to re-broach the subject of the floodlight the neighbors have decided to point directly at our house and leave on twenty-four hours a day. When I asked about it last week, the guy said it was for security purposes. Is there any specific threat that he's concerned about? Yes, he said, as a matter of fact there are black people who live in trailers and small houses down the road, and they deal drugs on the corner, and sometimes they ride by on four-wheelers.

Happy birthday, sweetheart, and welcome home.

Back in Ghee

I've been holding off on cooking Indian food lately because I didn't have any ghee in the pantry, but now I'm good to go. The other day I made a good-sized batch of my own in the old slow cooker. This may be my one great contribution to the world of food: slow-cooker ghee. It's in the little book I wrote, but basically all you do is

Ghee: Put 3 to 4 pounds unsalted butter (frozen is fine) in a 6-quart slow cooker, turn it on low or high (it really doesn't matter, I've found), cover with the lid slightly askew, and don't touch it or jostle the pot for many hours, until the foam on the top is a bit crusty and browned around the edges and it smells good. Skim the foam off and save it for spreading on fresh bread. Gently pour the clear ghee into a jar, leaving the solids on the bottom behind (discard those solids). This makes whatever this jar is—1 quart, I guess.

Don't imagine that melted or even clarified butter is the same as ghee. It's not even close. Ghee has a distinctive flavor that can only come from long, slow cooking. Usually this is done in a low oven or on the stovetop, which is so tedious and, frankly, wasteful. It's much easier in the slow cooker. Just buy a bunch of butter when it's on sale, and freeze it until you want to make ghee. For some of the really delicious Indian sweets you need a lot of ghee, so it's nice to have a lot on hand without having to buy expensive ready-made ghee.

Eat Poor

Happy 2007! We had the usual Southern New Year's Day food around here, if only because Ingles was pushing the collards and black-eyed peas so hard. (Unfortunately, the collards I tried to grow in the fall were too stunted and scrawny to bother picking; turns out that our soil's nitrogen content, on a scale of zero to 6, is zero. Will try again next year.)

How do you make hoppin' john? This is how I've been making it since I lived in Queens and ate poor all year round, but other peoples' versions are different. Mine is much more flavorful than others I've tasted, but it looks kind of awful.

Cornbread muffin, hoppin' john, and collard greens. Vinegary hot sauce.

Hoppin' john: Sorry these measurements are so vague; this is just for technique, and for comparison's sake if anybody cares. Rinse and pick through 1/2 pound dried black-eyed peas. Put in a pot with water to cover by several inches; bring to a boil, cover, and let soak for 1 hour. Drain and rinse again. In a large pot, cook about 6 strips bacon until crisp; remove the bacon from the pot, set aside, and pour off all but 1 tablespoon of the fat. Add 1/2 chopped onion to the fat and cook over medium heat until softened. Add the black-eyed peas and enough water to cover by about 2 inches. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to maintain a simmer and cook until almost tender. Dump several handfuls of long-grain white rice into the pot with the black-eyed peas. Stir in several good pinches of salt and lots of black pepper. If there's enough water left to cook the rice, just bring it to a boil, then cover the pot and lower the heat to low; cook until the rice is done and all the water is absorbed. If not, pour in a little more water before adding the rice. Fluff everything up, taste for seasonings, then crumble the bacon into the pot and gently fold it into the black-eyed peas and rice. It reheats really well in the microwave (see photo above), or you can mold it, cold, into patties and pan-fry them. I think most people cook the peas and rice separately, which would result in a prettier, fluffier dish. But this is how I like it, sticking together in clumps.

I used smoked pork neckbone in the greens instead of hocks, and I don't know why more people don't do this—the neckbone is so much meatier, the meat is easier to get off the bone, it's less fatty, and it's usually cheaper than hocks. You can use just a couple small pieces of the neckbone if you want.

The bug appears to have a bit of a cold, and her dad definitely has one, despite all the potlikker. I blame the plane ride from hell.

Select Northwest Fruit; or, Snowed In

We spent the last week at my folks' house in Washington. It snowed and snowed, and the bug's first Christmas was white. My dad tied an apple box to a toboggan and pulled her up and down the driveway.

It made her sleepy and maybe a little bit worried.

Her grandma and her dad held her while my dad and I tobogganed down the steepest hill I've ever gone down, complete with bumps and terrible dropoffs. On one run I yelled out as I went over the worst of the bumps and apparently the bug got concerned and I had to call up to her from the bottom of the hill so she'd know everything was alright. Mr. Chalmers came partway down the hill each time to help me drag the sled back up.


Food
When the roads haven't been plowed and you live in a no-man's-land, as my parents do, there's not much else to do but cook and eat, so that's what we did all week. My mom had made a ton of cookies, so there were always jars and crocks of them on the counter: raisin spice cookies, poppyseed hamantaschen, Norwegian nut cookies (nöttgifflar, I think they're called), some kind of sesame-seed cookies, and, my all-time favorites, springerle and anise pizzelles. She and I made two pies with lard-butter crusts and great sour cherries my uncle and his wife had picked at the WSU orchard. There was also a lemon meringue pie.

Mr. Chalmers smoked a buffalo brisket one day on the Weber out in the snow. (My parents tend to buy meat by the animal or half-animal: the brisket was from a half buffalo they bought from a rancher up the road a while back.) It was beautifully smoky and flavorful. Buffalo's an unforgiving meat, but Mr. Chalmers did it right. That night he sliced up the rest of it and we threw it in a Crock-Pot with some canned tomatoes (my parents had gone down to Pasco to load up on vegetables at the truck farms at the end of the summer), chopped onion, minced pickled serranos, and some of the pickle juice. It was ready to have with eggs and toast for breakfast the next morning when we got up with the bug at her usual two-thirty, five-thirty EST. Breakfasts were eggs, waffles, steel-cut oats, venison fish (Dad got two bucks a few weeks ago and saved the tenderoins for us), pann haas, ham, sausage, etc.

My dad made a big pot of okra gumbo with andouille he'd made, wild turkey he'd shot this fall on the hill behind the house, and filé from sassafrass Mom had collected, dried, and ground in Virginia.

The highlight of the visit, foodwise, was the ham from the hog my parents butchered this fall. They'd brined the two hams for six weeks, then smoked them in their Little Chief, one at a time, at about 100 degrees, for 48 hours each. Which meant they were feeding hickory onto the fire every couple hours for four days and nights, during which it rained, sleeted, and snowed. I think they agree that it was worth it. The ham is absolutely amazing.

The Fredleys and the Chalmerses exchanged copies of Fergus Henderson's The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, and the Chalmerses were also given the excellent Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. At my mom's request, I made a caraway mustard from the latter to go with the pork loin roast that came out of the freezer for Christmas Day. It was really good with the pork, with the brisket, and on ham sandwiches we brought for the long, long trip home. I know at least one of my eleven occasional readers made mustards recently, so I'll post the recipe here.

Caraway-beer mustard: In a double boiler, combine 2 tablespoons Colman's dry mustard, 6 tablespoons beer, 1 1/2 teaspoons Worchestershire sauce, 1 tablespoon toasted crushed caraway seeds, 5 tablespoons malt vinegar, 2 tablespoons honey, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 3 large egg yolks, and 1/2 teaspoon sugar. Cook over simmering water, stirring constantly but gently with a whisk, until thick. (This will take a lifetime, but just keep going; it's worth it, I think.) Cover and chill.

When I wasn't eating, I was reading the Ruhlman-Polcyn book; if nitrites were safer to eat on a daily basis I'd seriously consider doing with this book this year what, for example, Minnesotan Marie Wolf did with Rose Levy Berenbaum's The Bread Bible last year. I think I'll start with the duck "proscuitto," and when my pink salt arrives from Butcher and Packer I'll move on to a fun new sausage, perhaps jagerwurst.

Knitting
I still haven't finished the bug's sweater, but I'm getting there. At the meeting of knitters the other week, Carrie was kind enough to take a close look at the sleeve and body, and she thinks it should fit just right as it is, so I'll try the seaming yet again. She suggested starting at the shoulder and seaming down instead of starting at the bottom and going up.

Bug
She's nine months old and making all sorts of progress in her quest to become less like a dog and more like a person. With almost no hesitation, she climbed the flight of fourteen stairs in the grandparents' house (we don't have stairs here for her to practice on), and did so at every opportunity. (This is more than we can say for Cooper, who once had to be carried up and down a steep flight of stairs in Brooklyn.) Up was no problem, but she hadn't figured out down by the time we left: she was still trying to do it head first. She had her first pork chop bone. (Are babies allowed to gnaw on pork bones? She sure liked it, anyway.) Somewhere over North Dakota on the way out, her dad noticed that her first tooth had come in, her lower right front. She played with sniffling, coughing cousins for a day and seems to have come away from it healthy. First, second, third, and fourth snowstorms. First real Christmas tree, a fourteen-footer my dad poached from someone else's property up the hill.


Other
I guess you can't always just cook and eat and read cookbooks. My dad, who may have been a little stir crazy, blowtorched his finger to demonstrate the effectiveness of Barricade fire-blocking gel, the product he's selling as president of Northwest Barricade.

It's a nontoxic, environmentally sound alternative to the other fire gel on the market, and more effective than the red stuff they drop out of planes. You basically just spray it on your house or property before a fire, and get the heck out of the way of the fire. It completely protects whatever it's sprayed on, and washes away afterwards with plain water. Firefighters trapped in a forest fire could spray it on their truck, get in the truck, and wait until the danger passed. It also puts out super-hot magnesium fires in about a hundredth of the time it would take with water. We heard a lot about Barricade over the holidays.

It's great to be home with Cooper and Wagner, and we're all especially happy that the final, nightmarish leg of our plane ride and the Atlanta-area traffic jam are receding farther and farther into the past. Happy New Year, everyone.

Set-in Sleeve "Issues"

I've been knitting away on a bug-sized sweater (well, it'll be slightly too big for her, so she'll be able to wear it for more than a couple weeks), and have hit a snag with the sleeves.

When I sew up the seam, the body pieces buckle unattractively—I think this means that the sleeve caps aren't wide and/or tall enough, but as this is the first time I've knit anything with a set-in sleeve I don't know how it's supposed to work. Of course I'm not using a pattern, which would have helped with matching the armhole to the sleeve, and the basic sweater percentages didn't seem to work in this case (although it's not like I got out the calculator, and even eyeballing it now in the picture I can see I'm pretty far off the mark). Are there any experts out there who can tell me what I should do?
Back and front are the same, and there's no shoulder shaping because I wanted to overlap the tops at the shoulders to make a sort of boat neck accented with decorative buttons. I know the seam will be a little weird there because of all the layers and because I don't know how to sew those kinds of seams in the best of circumstances, but it shouldn't be this weird. There's 1 X 1 ribbing up the sides; it doesn't make for a nice smooth underarm seam, but I don't think the bug will mind.

Cold Snap

It's in the mid-teens here this morning—okay, fine: 14.9 degrees; I'm a nerd and I have thermometers—which makes the package I received from the amazingly talented Heidi in Michigan, who is certainly the most generous and thoughtful person I've never met, all the more welcome. She sent an oversized hank of hand-dyed Briar Rose Fibers Fourth of July (100% merino)—I'm not sure what the colorway is, but it's deep, rich reds and rusts, and this picture doesn't capture it very well at all. The bug needs a good warm wool sweater, so I'm going to start working on that right away, copyediting be damned.

Also in the package were these two pretty sachets of fragrant lavender to put in with clothes or linens in the dryer, and some tonal, peppermint-scented lip balm.

For Thalia the bug, there was a super-soft cotton T-shirt Heidi dyed and embellished with embroidery. Thalls really seems to like the texture of the embroidery nubbins, and I think the bright periwinkle (much cheerier than in this picture; I don't know why I can't get colors right with this camera today) will look beautiful on her.

And finally, just in time for wintry weekend breakfasts, Michigan maple syrup! In the absence of pann haas, I think I'll splurge on some good bacon, and make pancakes and/or waffles.

And now I need to see about fixing these drafty windows, or at least moving farther away from them, because it's only 53.1 degrees in this kitchen.

How to Use Two Chickens

Of course, you could break them down into quarters or eighths, or debone them, and use the pieces in three or four completely different dishes, braised or grilled or whatever, or freeze them for later—that might be the really smart thing to do if, like me the other day, you happen to come across nice-looking chickens on sale at the grocery store. (And no, Mom and Mr. Chalmers, they were not expired.) What I'd like to convey here, though, is an easy way to make the most of a couple birds without spending a lot of time cooking or putting a lot of thought into the matter, and using as few fresh ingredients as possible. Sorry there are no pictures, but you've all seen roast chicken, chicken stock, pot pie, and chicken salad before, right?

What you'll need (not in order): 2 chickens (natch), 1 lemon, 1 1/2 onions, 1 bunch of celery, 3 parsnips, handful of frozen peas, 2 cloves garlic, bit of parsley, 1 tablespoon olive oil, flour, about 2 teaspoons dried thyme, salt and pepper, mayonnaise, and capers and fresh herbs (optional).

If you know you're going to make all of what follows, start out by dicing 1 of the onions, all of the celery, and the parsnips, and chopping some parsley; you can put everything in a couple of bowls in the fridge and save yourself a little cleanup time later.

So here we go. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Thinly slice 1 lemon and put half of the slices in each of two baking dishes or roasting pans. Pull the fat and extra skin off from around the cavity of each chicken; set it aside. Set the livers aside. Put the hearts and gizzards in a freezer bag to use later, when you have enough to grind and put in Cajun rice (or if freezer space is too precious, give them to the dogs). Chop off the tips of the wings and put them in a separate freezer bag to collect for stock; put the necks in the bag too.

Rinse the chickens. Spatchcock them: Stand one upright, breast side facing away from you, and use a heavy knife to cut down one side of the backbone, then cut down the other side and pull out the backbone (put the backbone in the bag for stock). (Cutting out the backbone would probably be easier with poultry shears; use 'em if you've got 'em.) Lay the chicken out flat on the cutting board and press down with your palm on the breastbone to crack it and flatten it further. Pat dry with paper towels, then season all over with salt, pepper, and a little dried thyme. Place the chicken breast-meat side up on top of the lemon slices. Do the other chicken the same way. While the knife and board and your hands are all poultried up, finely dice the fat and extra skin, and chop the livers; set aside.

Roast the chickens for, oh, 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the skin is dark golden, crisp, and puffed up and the juices from the thigh run clear. Have one of the chickens for supper. Put the other in the fridge.

Render the fat with 1/2 onion, 2 cloves garlic, and a pinch of salt to make schmaltz and gribbenes (you'll get about 2/3 cup schmaltz; put it in the fridge to solidify), and cook the livers with the gribbenes to make a spread for bread or toasts (add a few capers, maybe a minced anchovy, maybe some sage or parsley or tarragon if you like).

A day or so later, use the second roasted chicken: Take all the meat off the bones and set the meat aside; discard the smaller bones, skin, and excess fat. Put the larger bones in a stock pot with 1/2 onion (unpeeled is fine), some parsley stems, celery trimmings, a bay leaf, and some peppercorns (and whatever else you like to put in stock). Cover with water and simmer for 1 or 2 hours, skimming the foam from the top if there is any; strain the stock and discard the solids.

Make pot pie (I didn't have carrots or potatoes, so I used parsnips this last time to cover the sweet and starchy bases, and it worked just fine; also, in the crust I used the schmaltz instead of shortening or butter—it was a little harder to roll out, but it tasted really good and made the pot pie even more chicken-y): Combine 1 1/2 cups flour and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a bowl. Cut in the solidified schmaltz. Sprinkle with 1/2 tablespoon cider vinegar and 3 to 5 tablespoons ice water and gather the dough into a ball. Wrap it, flatten it into a thick disk, and freeze it until firm. Roll it out between two sheets of plastic wrap into a circle or rectangle to fit your pot-pie baking dish. Place on a plate or baking sheet and freeze again.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a skillet over medium heat, cook about 1 cup diced celery and celery leaves, 1/2 diced onion, 3 diced parsnips in about 1 tablespoon olive oil. When the onion is soft, sprinkle about 2 tablespoons flour over the vegetables and cook, stirring constantly, for about 3 minutes. Pour in enough of the stock to cover the vegetables, then add about 1/2 cup half-and-half or milk, a handful of chopped parsley, all of the dark meat from the chicken and a little of the breast meat, and a handful of frozen peas. Transfer to a baking dish or a deep ceramic soufflé dish, cover with the almost-frozen dough, crimp the edge, and cut a few slits in the top to allow steam to escape. Bake until the filling is bubbling over and the crust is nicely browned on top. That's your second chicken supper.

If you can bear to eat more chicken, celery, and onions, make chicken salad: Dice the remaining chicken breast meat, add diced celery and leaves, a little diced onion, and mayonnaise, salt, and pepper to taste (I add my pepper after it's on the sandwich). Obviously, fresh herbs are good here, as is a squeeze of lemon juice or a few capers.

God, it's only Wednesday and I'm so sick of chicken I could die happily without taking another bite of it.

Ten for Twelve

Of the last twelve nights, the bug has slept all the way through ten—or, at least, she hasn't awakened for long enough for me or Mr. Chalmers to have to go help her get back to sleep. Last night I got up with her once, to rock her a little; the night before was probably a fluke: she cried a lot, and I had to sleep with her on the floor for a couple hours before putting her back to bed. This was almost certainly because she'd slept with us in a big motel bed the two previous nights—she might've missed having our hair to grab onto whenever she felt like it. So the nights have been great. Napping she doesn't do so much anymore, but that's okay.



At a restaurant Saturday night, she sat in a booster chair for the first time. Usually she sits in her car seat or our lap. It was past her bedtime and she was a little cranky until she stole the pickle off my plate and spent the rest of the meal sucking on it. When it had gotten too mangled we gave her Mr. Chalmers's fresh one. Pickles probably aren't the best thing for a baby to eat, but she sure seems to like them.

As part of our plan to raise the bug in the Jewish tradition (not really), I made schmaltz and gribbenes yesterday with the fat from the two chickens I roasted for the week. (I suppose I should post about the very best way to roast a chicken, but they'd be more persuasive with a picture, so I'll wait till I have one.)

Schmaltz and gribbenes: I chopped the fat into fine dice, rendered it a little over low heat, added some onion, garlic, and salt, and cooked over higher heat until the gribbenes were crunchy and the onion had given off most of its liquid. Strained the schmaltz into a cup and continued to cook the onion, garlic, and gribbenes with the two livers. Added some parsley and capers, and this we put on bread.

Speaking of bread, four loaves of it I made yesterday. I'm trying to make more efficient use of my time and the oven.

I thought I'd save the fat to spread on pumpernickel if I ever get around to making some, but now I'm thinking I'll try using it in a pot pie tonight. I'm working on editing (well, in this case rewriting) a book about great old-school gilded-age-type desserts, and all the talk about chiffon cakes with four flavors of buttercream and flaming meringues is making me want a simple pot pie. Also it's in the low twenties here in Carlton—pot pie weather.

Edit: It might be nine for twelve, actually. I seem to remember being up with the bug one night last week. Anyway . . . she's sleeping well, is the point.