I look out my office window right now and I see the first light of spring. You know, that soft light quality of sunset that spreads a mantle of warmth over the land instead of a mere retraction of brittle winter light for yet another evening.
Frigging yay.. I'm just dying for spring. Not dying for the presumed storms and power outages, but I'll take it.
I think this week I will start up some of my parsley seed. Had to buy a little jar of the stuff the other day because I ran out, and gack a buck for a measly .5 oz jar. Seriously, I got the seed and I really need to grow some up- a buck for a packet of seed that I can probably harvest a pound off of. I use flat leaf for growing, I think it tastes better. Also thinking of starting up some moonflower seed for my loves office garden. That takes a while to grow up to my understanding.
Still a tad too early to start kicking off other seed for now.. hurry up and wait for a week or two. Still a bit low for overnight temps in the solarium, and I'm chomping at the bit!!
The water garden: The two coco noirs have been dropped into the adult tubes and are thriving, hooray!! The totem toms.. Not too sure about those, they are such tiny sprouts we aren't sure about them surviving in the baby tank. We put one in to see how it goes. The eggplant seed, nada. They ain't doing anything yet. I'm not sure, but they may end up seeing a second test run for sprouting.
I did get confirmation today that using recycled soup cans are good for blanching leeks, yay!
Enough drooling for spring and the gardening.. Haven't done anything on Food in a while so...
Making a stroganoff tonight. Picked up some almost gone mushrooms on sale yesterday, and yeah, by today all three packs of them are going into the pot. I knew I should have dehydrated some yesterday, but I tweaked my back loading stuff into the car at the store and ended up in bed instead. I also picked up three big bags of almost gone mixed greens (the braising kind, not the salad kind) that I'm going to be braising up individually and packing away into the freezer.
So.. pound of ground beef, a couple packs of fresh mushrooms, a medium onion, few cloves of garlic. Cup of water, a bouillon cube, some salt and pepper, parsley, sour cream. A carb to serve it on, my favorite for this is egg noodles.
Brown up the beef with the onion of garlic. Toss in the mushrooms and stir them in with a little salt and generous pepper. Cover and allow to burble up to heat. Stir and repeat. Once you got some decent liquid rendered in the pan, pour in a cup of water with a beef bouillon cube dissolved into it and a palmfull of parsley. Cover, reduce heat and just let burble away for a while till the mushrooms are all cooked up nicely. Take the cover off, and bring the heat up again to cook off most of the liquid. Stir in the sour cream and adjust the seasoning if needed. Serve over the egg noodles- I like to butter them just a tad.
And the greens I'm braising up? Maybe they will end up making a batch of beans and greens, or get added to a soup or skillet.. Perhaps just seasoned and used as a side dish. I have found that we like pot herbs just as much as spinach when it comes to greens.
And as a cooking shout out.. Hell yeah to my friend Lanie!! She never fails to be a source of cooking inspiration to me. And Hell yeah to my sister Stacy!! That woman is a constant source of awesome sweet creations.
Future food yumminess... The cook and bitch is this weekend, and I am sooo looking forward to it. Looking forward to the food and the company, some of my favorite people are going to be here. My agreed on dish is chicken Parmesan, and I am seriously thinking about making mozzarella for it. To my understanding it's basically the recipe I use for making ricotta, just heating up the curd a bit and kneading it to mozzarella standard.
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