kitchenmage

Stuffed Acorn Squash with sausage and two rices recipe

Just a couple of weeks ago, I wrote that there was a "distinct nip in the air and a slight crunch to the grass. Fall was creeping in on little cat feet."

Um yeah, whatever. What a difference a fortnight makes.

Can you say 129 mph winds, boys and girls? How about 3 inches of rain in six hours? I knew you could.

Seriously, in the last few weeks, we have gone from start of fall to first time they used the word hurricane to describe a northwest storm. The main interstate between Seattle and Portland is closed, probably for days,  (But remember, global climate change is a myth.)

Along with the overnight shift in seasons comes a shift in menus. Grills have been stored for the winter while tomatoes and basil have given way to winter squash and sage. Mmmmm! I love fall! It is all about warm comfort food around my house.

whb: Sausage-stuffed Lovage recipe

Lovage is one of those obscure, sort of old-world herbs, that few people seem to have heard of. You may even have some in your garden, like some friends of mine, who were nevertheless, unsure exactly what it was - it looks, smells and tastes like celery, after all, but it never actually grows any celery stalks. Confusing beast.

Weekend Herb Blogging
What started as a whimsical answer to weekend cat blogging is now a weekly excuse to play in the herb garden. Oh gee, how awful - not the herb garden! Kalyn has nurtured little whb, and now it's all grown up, with its very own set of rules, and Kalyn lets it escape the confines of her kitchen every other week to be guest hosted somewhere on the tubes of the 'net.
Weekend herb blogging is at Once Upon a Tart, the home of the Brownie Babes this week, so get yourself over there to check out the roundup.

My first recollection of lovage only goes back a decade, to one of those 9 course tasting menus at the Herbfarm, which included Columbia River sturgeon in a ragout of apples, leeks and lovage. While I liked it quite a bit, someoneElse announced then and there that he was going to have to figure out how to make it. I offered, "It's in his cookbook," and someoneElse has been offering me food with lovage ever since.

Most of the time, youngish leaves are used - they toughen as they get older, so save the mature stalks for soups and other dishes where you will remove them before serving - chopped up to lend a slightly more complex celery flavor to food.

The stalks, however, are hollow and lend themselves to all sorts of interesting uses. As a straw, for example, for a bloody mary or other vegetable juice based drink. Rumor has it that you can candy the stems like angelica, although I have never done it. You can even make them into decorative thingies by slicing them and tossing the cut pieces into ice water. Strange but true. What I wanted to try was a bit different: creating an appetizer by stuffing the fattest stems I could find with...something.

What I ate on my summer nonVacation ~ part 2

  Everywhere you look these days, there are lamentations of summer's demise. I know fall is coming, and darned quickly too - but it is still harvest time out there in the fields and the local farm market is still bursting with goodness. Some seasons are just starting - last week's CSA bag was heavy with the first of the Stockhouse's sweet, tender corn. Not the last, mind you, the first.

Besides, summer is eternal in the photo archives.

Herewith, I offer part two of What I ate while I was notBlogging this summer: the farmer's market edition.

What I ate on my summer nonVacation - part 1

All of this lovely food came from over in the next valley where a couple of my friends have spent the last six months toiling away from dusk to dawn, building an organic farm for a new bed and breakfast. How cool of a job is that?

While it is also really hard work, as Dubya might say, Sarah (yes, our lady of the Cookie Lavender) and Connor always seem to glow with the accomplishment of creating a thriving organic farm. And who can blame them, just look at this stuff!

I just know Alice would love these magical purple beans! What's not to love?

That iridescent purple that cloaks the mundane green bean is absolutely stunning. Yet by the time the bean is served, it has disappeared! It is a special treat just for the cooks, a tiny bit of backstage magic that makes it that much more fun to have a small person, like Alice, helping you in the kitchen and the garden.

climate convergence in skamokawa this week

In the midst of global climate change and with the lack of a sane energy policy at the front of many people in evenTinierTown's minds, there is a bit of hope on the horizon - or at least a great weekend.

The west coast Climate Convergence is slated for this week in Skamokawa, WA (yep, evenTinierTown is on the map!). During this event, a lot of crunchy granola folks will converge on evenTinierTown, talk climate change, party and listen to people like Starhawk speak. (hmmm, are there people 'like' Starhawk?)

There will be educational sessions during the day and keynote speeches followed by live music on multiple evenings. I am planning on hitting the sessions about how climate change is impacting the flora and fauna of the Pacific Northwest (and the rest of the world too) including the food supply, both purchased and homegrown.

Food related sessions include:

• Organic gardening in the pacific northwest
• Food systems and climate change
• Introduction to permaculture
• ABCs of guerilla kitchens

Also, if you have ever wanted to feed hundreds of ravenous folks they are still looking for volunteers of all sorts.

My friend, Robert Pyle (or Butterfly Bob, as we call him), will be speaking on butterflies, the region, and perhaps even slug sex. He's always an interesting guy to listen to. There are also several sessions on LNG and other regional energy concerns. Plus great people, activist training, live music...and people like Starhawk. Depending on your perspective, it could be educational, entertaining, or more likely both.

The convergence officially starts Thursday (they are fixing up the local fairgrounds and Grange today) and continues through the weekend to wrap up on Tuesday. If you decide to venture out this way, drop me a note and I can get you in touch with some great bed and breakfasts, point you at the Friday Farmer's market, or other such as you might need.

Featured presenter list
Full schedule grid (pdf)

Washington and Oregon wine and cheese pairings

One of the sweet things about living at the confluence of the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean is that I get to claim Tillamook Cheese as my local cheesemaker. The factory is close enough that I could drive down for the afternoon and still make it home for dinner. Since Tillamook cheddar is one of my all-time favorites, this is a real stroke of luck for me. It also means that when a local burger place needs a local cheese, they can go to the source of some very nice stuff indeed.

But the Tillamook folks aren't content to just promote their own fine cheeses. They have created a couple of wine and cheese pairing lists that highlight selections from local wineries, and even other cheese producers.

I have had a number of the listed cheeses and they are very nice indeed - Cougar Gold, for example, is a  longtime regional favorite and it was nice to see it on the list. A number of the wines were less familiar to me, but there are a few I am looking forward to checking out.

If you live in the area and want to expand your options for locally made sips and nibbles, you really should check these lists out!

White and Sparkling wines
Red wines

Stockhouse's Farm CSA

It is perhaps a paradox that it is easier to find a farm offering CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscriptions in the city than out here in evenTinierTown. Odd though that may be, I spent last summer watching sadly as friends of mine in Seattle got weekly boxes of farm-fresh produce, brimming with marvelous, and sometimes new to them, produce while I had to make do with going to a chain grocery store for far too much of what we ate. Sure, I have friends who felt took pity on my gardenless self and gifted me with the occasional overflow from their own gardens, but it's just not the same as having a plot of raised beds and a CSA.