Wild Onions

One of the big items on my garden to-do lists is working horse manure into the soil as fertilizer and soil amendment.  The new garden beds that I'm double digging on the south lawn are sadly, quite sandy, which is something I hope a good dose of horse poo will fix.  I tested my soil ph levels today: a solid 6.5 and veggies need to be in the 6 to 6.8 range...yay!  As with many of adventures, the first step is finding the needed materials.
Serindepidously, I found a woman, M. on Craigslist who was giving away horse manure AND her horses happen to live less than one mile away AND she was gracious enough to help me both load and unload not one, but three loads of manure.  Three loads of manure in my front yard look like this:

Minnow (my Geo Metro hatchback) was an amazing trouper, and even though I put a big tarp down in the back of the car it got a bit messy.  This was nothing that a good vacuuming couldn't fix.  Most people think that manure smells like an outhouse.  But, this was fairly old, mostly composted manure.  If it smelled like anything, it had the rich musky smell of dirt.

Is that my poop, you're shoveling into the back of your car?

On our last trip unloading manure, M. met the chickens, and I gave her a dozen eggs for her kind help.
On our last trip to the pasture, M. pointed out that there were some suspiciously onion-like plants growing in the pasture that the horses wouldn't eat.  I took my trowel and dug them up: wild green onions!

Although they look just like a supermarket green onion, wild onions are incredibly spicy.  In fact, they are almost closer to garlic in taste than onion, yet they have undertones of leek and shallot as well.  Perhaps wild onions are the bastard children of the allium family.  Flavorwise, they are a bit rowdy.  But that makes them all the more fresh and cheeky, and for that, I love them.  The flavor is complex and exhilarating, but not overwhelming.  So for dinner tonight, I riffed on Heidi's asparagus with tobasco butter from 101 Cookbooks blog.  And here's the quick and staisfying dish I came up with.

Peas and Barley with Siracha Butter
Most people avoid cooking with whole grains and beans because of the long cooking times. While this is true, with a little advance planning, you can take the hands-on time out of the equation. For the barley, I simply brought 1 cup of barley and 2 cups of water to boil. I boiled it for 10 minutes, turned off the heat, covered the pan, and let the barley stand overnight. In the morning, I had steamed barley that just takes a quick 5-10 minute reheat with a splash of water before it's ready to serve.  And, if you don't want to cook it right away for a delicious alternative to oatmeal, refrigerate it for later.

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 t. siracha (or to taste)
2 t. dijon mustard
2t. lemon juice
1/4 t. salt
1 cup barley, cooked
5 oz. frozen peas (1/2 a bag)
15 oz. cannellini beans (1 can)
1/4 cup wild onions minced
1 cup toasted almond slivers


Using a food processor, blend together butter, siracha, dijon mustard, lemon juice, and salt. I do not reccoment using a stick blender here--as I tried to use my Cuisinart and the butter simply stuck and them molded to the blade in a melted mess.  Set aside.

Add about 1/2 cup of water to the pre-cooked barley and bring to a simmer.  Let simmer for about 5 mins and then add the peas.  Cover and cook over low heat for about 3 minutes until the peas are cooked.  Add beans and continue to cook until heated through.

Drain any excess water from the barley and peas and stir in 3 T. siracha butter until melted.  (There will be extra butter, which is fine becasue the leftover butter works great on fried or scrambled eggs.)

Stir in onions and top with almonds.

Serves 4.

Rabbit: Pet or Provision?

I ate a rabbit.  A whole rabbit.  All by myself.  Granted, it took me four days to accomplish this feat, but I did it because it turns out, in my household, I am the only rabbit eater.  Well, the cats eat rabbit too but again, Kent tells me I have to question their judgment because they also eat spiders.  Even though I logged time researching how on earth to breakdown a rabbit, (you don't cut it apart anything like you would a chicken because it has a part called a saddle, which is sort of like rabbit tenderloin) and spent hours braising the thing and making a very French cream sauce, my companion, or rather my unwilling companion, would not eat it.  Not even a single bite. Now I know that I shouldn't be so hard on Kent. I've put the man through some trials--the whole hog's head soaking in our kitchen sink, the deep fried bull testicles, the sauteed chicken feet.  But I honestly thought rabbit was benign.  In fact, prepared rabbit looks and tastes quite a bit like chicken.

But, I guess it has to come down to a personal food philosophy to determine how you approach certain vittles outside the realm of the standard American diet.  Eating rabbit really riles some people up judging from the comments on a recent New York Times article.  But I'm not upset at my unwilling dining companion.  His position on the matter mirrors most Americans' view.  However, it's not just that eating rabbit goes beyond the normal dining conventions.  No, for Kent, it's personal.

In his defense, he cites that he could never eat rabbit because rabbits are cute and cuddly.  Then, he tells me sappy, sweet tales of HIS pet rabbit, Eight-Ball.  When Kent's high-school garage band practiced, Eight-Ball had a habit of sitting by the kick drum, and get this, would even thump his hind leg along with the beat.  Eight-Ball died a tragic death from a stomach tumor, apparently a side effect of eating ChemLawn grass.  Kent tells me this as I'm devouring a thick, juicy rabbit thigh which is surprisingly whiter than a chicken thigh, but still rich, and strikes me as an invigorating change from poultry.

I suppose Kent's story is a thinly-veiled guilt trip.  Our marriage is rife with such exchanges.  (Note exhibit A: You just spent how many hours rearranging your comic book collection?, I asked.)  And, now at the dinner table spread with braised rabbit in cream sauce, if I looked closely at Kent, I saw it, that withering glance that said I feel sad for you, look at how far you've stooped.

But the guilt-trip is lost on me.  I, too, had a pet rabbit when I was a kid. Unlike black, lop-eared Eight-Ball, my rabbit, B.C. was a white New Zealand, bred to be a MEAT rabbit.  B.C. was short for Buttercup, a name that was lifted straight out of one of my picture books featuring a rabbit, who gets lost one spring afternoon and after a climatic twist of plot is rescued from under a bush.  B.C. was a fortuitous name.  B.C. was rescued prevented from living a posh life getting fattened up for slaughter, at my great aunt Corrine's farm.  My great aunt Corrine raised rabbits not as cute, cuddly pets, but as yummy provisions.  So instead of living peacefully at Aunt Corrine's, B.C. was terrorized by my 5-year-old-self who wanted to love, cuddle, and squeeze this fur ball.  B.C. had other ideas.  This imprisonment was just too much for him, and he soon escaped his hutch.  He was seen around the farm, as a brief flash of white running from one hiding spot to another.  A few reconnaissance missions determined that B.C. had taken up residence under the garden shed.  My uncle, Corwin, choreographed elaborate strategies for capturing B.C., which required lots of running and a large minnow net.  While a couple of these missions worked, it wasn't long before B.C. was successful in another jail break.  Eventually, the rabbit went completely feral.  After he disappeared completely, we assumed he had probably been eaten by coyotes.  I don't think the coyotes could have given B.C. as dignified a death or appreciate his meat as much as I would have.  Which, is why, ultimately, I have no problem eating rabbit.

Braised Rabbit adapted from Amanda Hesser's The Cook and the Gardener.

2 T. butter
1 rabbit, cut into pieces
1 onion
2 T. all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Prosecco (any white will work. That's what I happened to have on hand.)
3 cups chicken stock
2 bay leaves
4-5 springs thyme
16 pitted prunes
3 T. heavy cream

Melt butter in saute pan.  Season rabbit pieces with salt and pepper and saute in butter until rabbit is browned on all sides.  Remove the rabbit, and sprinkle the flour in the pan.  Stir into a paste, cooking until the mixture is a golden brown color.  Add the wine, stirring to incorporate into the flour mixture.  Then add the rabbit pieces, bay leaves, thyme, and stock.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat.  Cover and simmer gently over low heat for 1 hour.  Add the onion, and continue to cook for 30 to 40 more minutes or until the rabbit is tender.  Remove the lid from pan, add the prunes and cream and cook until heated through.

Mac from Scratch

I never did go out and buy that box of Kraft Mac and Cheese that I've been dreaming about because when I found the dregs of a bag of macaroni in my cupboard, I was perfectly content to make my own from scratch.

Incidentally, I just re-watched Food, Inc. last week, and I'm always struck by the brilliance of Micheal Pollan, who luckily, is given ample screen time in the documentary.  Pollan's been vocal about all the reasons Americans don't eat healthier, but rather than just lament the problem, he also gives reasonable, easy solutions.  I just finished reading Pollan's Food Rules: an eater's manifesto.  This slim pocket volume is a series of adages that are quippy, easy to remember, and incredible wise, which if followed, would improve the average American's diet by leaps and bounds.  Pollan divides these 64 rules into three categories: What should I eat? (Eat Food); What kind of food should I eat? (Mostly plants.); and How should I eat? (Not too much.)

These rules are easy to apply and remember, but for my mac and cheese musings, I just want to focus on the first category.  Eat food.  Sounds obvious, right? But so much of what is on supermarket shelves is what Pollan has described as "edible, food-like substances."  You can tell you have an edible food-like substance on your hands if you follow the rules.  For instance, rule 2 states, "Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food."  Would Nanna believe that Easy Mac is something you can eat after only adding water and nuking it in the microwave?  Or, consider Rule 3: "Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry."  I don't know about you, but I don't keep my kitchen stocked with phosphate, lactic acid, or yellow 5 and yellow 6, all of which are ingredients in Kraft Mac and Cheese.  And finally, if you're still in doubt about the food in question, refer to Rule 7: "Avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce." My guess is an average third grader would have problems with sodium tripolyphosphate, also found in commercial mac and cheese.

So, now that I know Kraft Mac and Cheese is an edible, food-like substance, the alternative is to make my own, from scratch.  One of the most common excuses people make for not eating better is that it's too time consuming and too complicated.  But I was able to whip up this from dish in about 15 minutes, and it took ten minutes just to cook the pasta--the same amount of time that it would have taken to cook macaroni from the box.  While this still isn't health food by any means, I do feel better about eating it, because I know exactly what's in it.

Scratch Mac

1 cup elbow macaroni
1/4 cup butter (preferably organic and from grass-fed cows)
2 T. flour
1 cup milk (preferably organic and from grass-fed cows)1 cup grated cheddar cheese (preferably organic and from grass-fed cows)
salt and pepper to taste

I cooked the pasta in a large pot of bowling water.  While it cooked, I grated the cheddar cheese.  When the macaroni was finished cooking, I drained it in a colander.  Then, I melted the butter in the empty pot, and added the flour--forming a thick paste.  I cooked it for a minute or two, over medium heat, stirring constantly, and then slowly whisked the milk in.  Once the milk was incorporated, I cooked it until it thickened nicely, another couple of minutes.  Then I dumped in the cheese, stirred it in until melted and added the drained pasta.  A quick shake of salt and pepper and that's it.  Easy!

(I also was inspired by the rosemary plant sitting on my kitchen table, and decided to add about a 1/2 t. of fresh, minced rosemary to the mac and cheese.  It was delicious, but completely optional.)