Memorial Day Weekend

I really enjoyed the long weekend. I got in a lot of my favorite things: gardening, Fen and time with friends. Saturday we did a fair bit of work around the yard. On Sunday, we went out to the Fen. It was hazy, but otherwise beautiful. The oak leaves are just expanding and still a fairly yellowish green. I wanted to take a picture of a columbine. Walt posted a picture of a garden columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) on his blog recently and I wanted to post our wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) as a comparison.

Wild Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)

The six-spotted tiger beetles are having a very good year this year. They are everywhere (no complaints here).

Six-spotted Tiger Beetle (Cicindela sexguttata)

Each spring, we see Sulphur-winged Arphia grasshoppers on our hill prairies. These belong to the band-winged grasshoppers, a group that is more common out west. Members of this family typically have brightly-colored wings that flash when they fly up. True to it's name, the Sulphur-winged Arphia flashes vivid yellow when it flies. I have never been able to get a good photo. On Sunday, one posed for me.

Sulphur-winged Arphia (Arphia sulphurea)

On Monday, Elgin hosted the annual Fox-Trot Race. Part of the race is along the banks of the Fox Rive. Leon ran again this year, and I had my traditional brunch.

Go Leon!

I made fontina-bacon foccaccia, sour cream coffee cake, and jam cake. The jam cake is a new recipe acquired from Ur-Spo. I used home made Blackberry jam in mine. I have a lot of jam at the moment , this is a great way to use it up.

Ur-Spo's Blackberry Jan Cake

Serving suggestion from Ur-Spo: "Frost with jam, whiped cream, or fluffy frosting. Or have it withoug any topping like my men."

I prefer mine lightly dusted with powdered sugar.

The Morel of the Story

There's this place I know. No, I'm not going to tell you where it is. In May something amazing happens there- at least the amazing thing begins there. It ends in my kitchen. This year, I harvested a half dozen morels.


Aren't they gorgeous? They have been soaking for a while- morels tend to harbor a lot of bugs and this is a good way to minimize them. I strain the soaking liquid and reduce it over gentle heat. It makes an excellent mushroom stock.


Morels have a very delicate flavor that I don't want to overpower. Quiche is perfect. I find that the mushroom flavor stands out better if I use Fontina cheese instead of Swiss or Gruyere. This cheese also gives the quiche an incredibly velvety texture. There are also lots of eggs and heavy cream in this. It's really bad for you- but then I only make one each year. Next year I may also harvest wild ramps, which are abundant around here, and use them instead of onions.

Rice Pilaf

Kathie asked me for this recipe in a comment the other day. This, like so many of my recipes, is from my Mom. I've altered it pretty extensively- Mom certainly would not have put garlic in it.

Ingredients

1/2 stick butter (health food!)
1 can low sodium chicken stock
1/2 cup white wine (I usually use Pinot Grigio)
about 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup white rice
1 tsp salt
1 handful of golden raisins

Sautée onion and garlic in butter, just until the onion becomes translucent. Add the rice and continue to sautée while stirring gently until the butter begins to foam up between the grains of rice. Measure the chicken stock into a measuring cup and add enough water to bring the volume to 2 cups. Add the stock, the wine, the salt and the raisins. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is tender. Last time I made it, I chopped up a couple of dried apricots and added them with the raisins. It came out very nice. Although I have not tried it, I'll bet that you could make a very nice vegetarian version by substituting vegetable stock for the chicken stock.

Snowy Bear Weekend with Ham and Crocus

It's been a fun weekend. Saturday, we hosted four bears for dinner. I served baked ham with prickly pear glaze, rice pilaf with golden raisins and apricots, steamed asparagus and sun-dried tomato foccacia. Michael L. brought squash and John brought the makings of banana splits for dessert.

John with a mystery bear. Any guesses who's behind the mask?
The mask itself is a bear tea cozy. How gay is that?

Last night it snowed. We got about 5 inches of very heavy, wet snow- apparently this year March has decided to go out like a lion.


Pretty, isn't it? Bu early afternoon, the sun was out. This late in the season, the melting was rapid. There's still plenty of snow on the ground, but it won't last long. By late afternoon, signs of spring were again becoming visible.

John the Baptist Bread

Bug Girl is in a pickle. She can't find her copy of Entertaining with Insects, and needs to do just that over the weekend. Mark and Rodger gave me my very own copy for Christmas last year. As I am always eager to help a damselfly in distress, here is the recipe she wants. It's named for John the Baptist's reported diet of locusts and wild honey (though I'm at least partly persuaded by the camp that believes that he was eating carob, the pods of a type of locust tree).

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup honey
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 Tblsp vegetable oil
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1 cup dry roasted crickets

Grease and flour a loaf pan (9 x 5 x 3 inches). Add all ingredients except crckets in a large mixing bowl. Beat on medium speed for about 1/2 minute or until smooth. Add crickets and stir until well mixed. , then pour into the pan. Bake at 350° 40-55 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the bread. Slice while hot. Serve with sweet butter a l'orange.

Sweet Butter a l'orange

1/2 lb. sweet butter, softened
2 Tblsp. grated orange rind (For an added touch, soak the rind in your favorite cordial)

Mix with fork, place in serving dish and refrigerate.

Dry Roasted Crickets

Spread fresh, frozen and cleaned crickets on paper towels on a cookie sheet. Bake at 200° for 1-2 hours until desired state of dryness is reached. Check state of dryness by attempting to crush the crickets with a spoon.

Soup for a Dreary Weekend

I have been very busy this past week, hence my very light blogging. Yesterday was the butterfly monitoring workshop. More about that in another post. The whole weekend has been dreary. It's been very dark and gray with lots of rain. We're having a thunderstorm right now. At least it sn't snowing. It's perfect soup weather. Let's make cream of mushroom and roasted red peper soup.


I've found that it's much easier to get the skin off of roasted red peppers if you char them until the skins are really, really black. This doesn't harm the flesh underneath, and gives it a nce flavor. Once the skins are blackened, I put the peppers in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let them sit for 10 minutes. Then I take the skins off under cold running water.


Next I sautée a coarsly chopped onion and some diced garlic in olive oil. The soup gets a better flavor and color if I do the onions first, and let them get nice and browned.When the onions are almost done, I add the garlic and continue just until it's nice and fragrant. Then I quench it with some dry white wine. I bring the wine to a gentle boil, stirring to bring up the browned bits off of the bottom of the pot. I add chicken stock. This time around I used turkey stock that was still in the freezer after Thanksgiving. A very tasty vegetarian version of this soup uses vegetable stock instead of chicken stock.


A couple of Portobello mushrooms and the chopped roasted red peppers go into the soup. It gets covered and sits on a low simmer. I let this one putter along for most of the afternoon.


I don't have a photo of me using my new toy. I puree the entire soup with the new hand-held blender that I got for Chirstmas. The entire puree then gets put through a sieve. The result is a beautiful rich brown soup stock. The residue that gets left behind is a great base for mushroom pâté. If you stop at this point, this soup freezes very well. I next add a couple of chopped mushrooms and a chopped roasted red pepper. The next time I make this soup, I'd also like to add a handful of pearl barley at this point. This soup is so full of great vegetables that it's really good for you.


Or not. I suppose it would make a fine soup without the heavy cream, but it wouldn't taste nearly as good. It's a great way to warm up during cold, dismal weather.

Holiday Recap

First things first. Happy birthday, Chilmark Girl!


We took the tree down this afternoon. For me, that’s always meant that the holiday season is officially over. It was a nice season this year. I was more on top of things than I often am. The shopping and wrapping got done with time to spare. I was able to do my share of the baking without feeling rushed (this didn’t allow me to avoid a slightly overdone Sally Lunn bread, however).

Arrgh! Overdone

Christmas was a lot of fun. We did Christmas Eve at Dad’s. The homemade Camembert and homemade Gouda made an appearance. The Camembert was too ripe (and very runny). The Gouda was still too hard and crumbly- though later I had it out much longer before serving it and it both sliced and tasted better. It would be wonderful if all I need to do is let it come closer to room temperature before serving it in order to get a better cheese.

Homage to our grandmother. Photo- David Kinney.

Christmas dinner was at Chilmark Girl’s place. We had rack of lamb (not the most traditional, but when it’s that awesome, who cares). I provided the tangerine sorbet that was part of a recently revived tradition (from my grandmother) of starting the meal with fruit compote. My nephew got Rock Band II as a gift. We spent much of the afternoon playing. That’s my Dad on vocals doing Eye of the Tiger. So wrong on so many levels.


The fun continued after Christmas. Leon and I visited Will and Fritz in New Hampshire. It’s always great to see them. They are wonderful people and very gracious hosts. Who else would come out to greet us wearing red light-up reindeer noses? My niece arrived just before I returned to Chicago.

What will 2009 hold? I hope it will hold more of what 2008 did (at least if we don’t include the economy). There are already travel plans: I’ll be in Florida in about 4 weeks, doing my usual grand tour (the Keys, Naples and then up to Gainesville). I’m back in New England in June, and off for a jaunt to Malaysia in November. Expect to hear more about butterflies and tiger beetles. Happy 2009 to all.

Being of Good Cheer (Assisted)

It snowed today. We got about 4". Unfortunately, due to the economy and budget cutbacks, snow removal and salting have been drastically reduced everywhere. Perhaps it's a pay to play situation and the crooked and shameless scoundrel governor is getting payback after noticing that I didn't make a contribution to his last campaign. I left work at 2:00 to avoid the worst of the storm and ended up getting home at 7:00. During the entire FIVE HOURS that it took me to get home in a MEASLY FOUR INCHES of snow, I saw exactly ONE SNOWPLOW. If this sort of thing continues, I have two words for every pol in the state of Illinois who is even considering re-election: Michael Bilandic.

Imperial Tidbits
L-R: Tomatillo Salsa, Apple Ginger Marmalade, Raspberry Jam. Black and Blueberry Jam

In a case of great timing, something was waiting for me when I got home- a package from Mark and Rodger. It contained a variety of imperial tidbits- jams, salsa and the like. Mark and Rodger are excellent cooks and master canners. I'm especially looiking forward to trying the apple-ginger marmelade. I felt better instantly. Thanks Mark and Rodger!

Entertaining with Insects

Underneath all the canned goodies was another surprise- a book about how to entertain with insects. In this case, 'how to entertain' means how to cook with insects and then serve them to your hapless guests. I can't wait to try the honeybee souflée.

Another surefire method of coping with an afternoon like today's: purple ice cream.

Black Raspberry Ice Cream

Wet Weekend

Greetings from Portland, Oregon. It was a very wet weekend in the Chicago area. In Elgin, over 10" of rain fell on Friday and Saturday. I was trapped indoors, so I did lots of food prep. On Saturday, I made a Caraway Gouda. It should be ready by thanksgiving, though I may save it to be a Christmas cheese. I also made blueberry ice cream. On Sunday I made applesauce with Cox Orange Pippen apples from our trees.

Caraway Gouda

Because Sunday was Leon's birthday, I offered to bake him a cake. He wanted chocolate, a kiind of cake that I don't have much experience with. The recipe in my favorite cookbook looked really fussy and involved. What to do? Homer to the rescue! He recently posted about a chocolate mayonnaise cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting. He described it as both easy and tasty. He was right on both counts, though his turned out prettier than mine did.



Sunday, we woke up to a find that the roof was leaking into the dining room where a small section of ceiling was sitting in a puddle on the dining room table. A couple of books, my laptop, and my P&S camera were all wet. Fortunately, the laptop is fine. The books are probably ruined (but they're not expensive items). The P&S is damaged. It may be OK once it dries out, but I need something from my trip here to the Pacific Northwest. To resolve this problem, I got a new digital camera on Sunday. It's Nikon Coolpix P80. I'm looking forward to trying it.

Tomorrow, we're off to the Oregon Zoo to learn how they do conservation of an endangered Fritillary butterfly. I'll be learning how yurts are used in butterfly conservation. On Thursday, it's up to Seattle, to see thier operation working with the same butterfly. For the weekend, it's back to Portland where I'll (finally) be meeting Mark and Rodger in person.

Harvest Home

Woodstock (IL) Farmers' Market

I've been back from New England for a week now, and am just getting around to a new post. Late August around these parts means lots of produce to process. On Saturday, we went to the Woodstock farmers' market. We wanted to buy cucumbers for pickling, and a bunch of other stuff. I was a bit disappointed in the selection. The produce that they had was very nice, but lacking in variety. I don't really need sweet peppers right now- we're drowning in a torrent of Gypsy and Nardello peppers. It's much the same with tomatoes. Nobody had a lot of the things that I would have liked (berries, peaches, melons). Still, farmers' markets are always fun. Plus, I got something that could prove to be very valuable in the future: a line on a local source for raw cow's milk. This could be a fun fall for cheese making.

Music at the Market. Our friend Gary is the gentleman in the red suspenders.

We also got to spend some time with our friends Gary and Gary Lee. They are both musicians, and Gary, who plays with a lot of traditional music, was performing at the market. I'm not sure how traditional (at least in this country) a didgeridoo made from PVC pipe is.

Gary plays the didgeridoo

We did manage to score a bunch of cukes at the market, and we put up pickles yesterday. Our inspiration (as always) for this effort was Mark and Rodger, whose recipe we used. Thanks, guys. We always include grape leaves in the jars as a crisping agent. This year, it was a challenge getting some that were not damaged by Japanese beeltes. Note that we tried a couple of jars with habañeros this time.

Cucumbers about to fulfill their briny destiny

In the jars with grape leaves, garlic and hot peppers. Awaiting brine.


Finished pickles. They'll be ready to eat by Thanksgiving.

We've been doing a lot of food preservation this year. In addition to the pickes we've made pesto, dried tomatoes, and frozen corn and eggplant. Frozen beans (and more corn) to come! I hope that your harvest is also being bountiful.

Memorial Day Race Party

Each Memorial Day, Elgin sponsors the Fox Trot, a race that runs right past my house. I have a brunch each year and a few friends stop by to watch the race. I made bacon fontina pizza, bell pepper quiche and mimosas.

Bell pepper quiche. Inspiration by Homer.

Leon ran this year, and we all cheered him on as he ran by.

Go Leon!

Later in the afternoon, I grabbed my camera and went on a bug walk.

Hemipteran nymph subdues a small bee

Don't bother me. I'm busy pollinating the Solomon's plume.

Tiny hoppers about 1 mm long. I believe they're psyllids.


Hackberry butterfly caterpillar

Mondo Chocolate (and Apples)

Monday night I attended a fundraising dinner for Chicago Wilderness Magazine. As dinner was winding down, someone helping to run the function came over to the table with a huge basket. "Doug, you won the chocolate basket door prize." My God. This sucker's HUGE. There must be at least 5 lb of chocolate in that thing. I pulled out some items for us to keep and then brought the rest into work. I'm sure my department is up to the task of putting a dent in it.

Since I'm sure that everyone's waistline is expanding just looking at all that chocolate, I thought I'd also post a recipe for one of my favorite autumn treats. I made this over the weekend.

Nobby Apple Cake

1 cup sugar
1/4 cup Crisco
1 egg
3 cups apples, pared, cored, and diced
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 teaspoon each of baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg
1 cup flour

1. Cream shortening and sugar. Add beaten egg
2. Add apples, vanilla, and dry ingredients. Mix well.
3. Bake in a greased 8" square pan at 350° F for 45 minutes

The Garden That Would Not Die

Glorious Eggplants

I can’t believe the weather this autumn. I’d be thrilled if I wasn’t concerned that the heat might be a reflection of climate change kicking into much higher gear. It’s a week into October, and the vegetable garden continues to produce like it’s August. I spent much of Saturday afternoon freezing eggplant. I froze three pints. We have two varieties coming in at the moment- the Asian variety that I posted about last week (Pingtung), and a beautiful Italian strain called Rosa Bianca. We’re also still getting tomatoes including a big orange one called Nebraska Wedding, a smaller red one called Stupice and two not pictured here: the nearly black Cherokke Purple and a very prolific cherry tomato called Mexican Midget.

Still Life #2 with Eggplant

I’m still harvesting summer squash. This was another successful experiment this year. I usually lose all of my squashes and cukes to squash boreres. I have found that by planting late, I avoid that problem. Next year, I will refine the technique a bit and try more varieties. There’s a ton of basil that I need to turn into pesto. The cold season stuff is, of course, doing great. We have huge Swiss chard and it looks like I’ll get my first ever crop of autumn lettuce.

Swiss Chard - Fordhook Giant

With the exception of the basil, everything in this year’s garden was started from seed. That’s a first for us- I usually buy flats of eggplant and tomatoes.

In unrelated news, I'm making lemoncello. Here are the lemon peels steeping in vodka. They're sitting on the reoof just outside of the bathroom window. I hope the toilet spiders don't crawl under the jar.

Pickles & Butterflies

Lots of stuff happening up here in the stormy Midwest at the moment. Using a great recipe from Rodger and Mark, I made pickles over the weekend. It will be November before they can be tried, but the finished product came out looking very pretty. Per the recipe, I tucked a grape leaf into the bottom of each jar. The only real problem that I had with the recipe was difficulty with finding alum, which is used as a crisping agent. I made do with a package mix that contained salt, alum, and spices. I’m hoping that the grape leaves will provide most of the crisping anyway. I’ll pick up some alum in the canning section next time I’m in Farm and Fleet.

Jars of pickles in the hot water bath

The butterfly restoration work is going better than ever. We currently have over 100 (112 at last count) chrysalides of silver-bordered fritillaries. The first adults have already begun emerging, and I anticipate having enough for a field release late next week or early the week after. I wonder if I’ll blog about that? We have enough going at the moment that we should be able to hold some back to do another generation in the lab. One thing that makes this species nice to work with is that they have at least three generations each year. In addition to opening the possibility of doing an additional generation in the lab, we will get to look for the offspring of the released butterflies in the field a mere month after we release them. Given that most of the species that I work with have but a single generation annually, this seems like instant gratification.

People have left questions about the butterfly restoration efforts, and I thought I’d answer them here.

Robin Andrea asks:

So what are you doing to make the lab particularly agreeable for the metalmark and fritillary?

The changes have mostly involved hygiene. We were given an entire room in the museum in which we do nothing but raise butterflies. Until recently, we were rearing large numbers of caterpillars communally in containers. No more. We now make individual cages out of paper cups. Each one holds no more than 2 caterpillars, at least in the more mature stages of caterpillar growth. We use lots of bleach and lots of hand sanitizer. Cages are cleaned every three days. The result has been excellent survival of our larvae.

Dave asks:

I hope your new transplants flourish! Is there a particular plant they prefer? Maybe you could deliver any "extras" to Cook County!

Thanks. The host plants are various species of violets, such as marsh violet, that grow in wet prairies and sedge meadows. This species turns out to be relatively easy to work with, and it is my hope that we can do additional sites. I am considering a second release this year in DuPage County. The main issue is having sites that are ready to receive the butterfly. Given that, I’d really enjoy trying a release on a Cook County site.

Thingfish23 asks:

Let me know when you're hiring.

Heh. You Florida boys would never survive a Chicago winter. Kidding aside, very similar work is going on much closer to your home (and virtually in FC’s back yard). The McGuire Center for Lepidoptera (out of UF Gainesville) is doing restoration work with a number of imperiled Florida species, including restoring the Miami Blue in the Florida Keys. Volunteer work is available through the Florida Butterfly Monitoring Network.

The Bounty of Summer

As the height of summer is upon us, the vegetable garden takes more attention- but at this time of year it’s producing in a big way. So far, I’ve had lots of radishes and lettuce. The radishes have been done for a while, but lettuce production continues well into the season this year. I’m currently growing 4 varieties of lettuce. You can see them in rows on the left and right sides of the garden. On the left side are (L-R) speckled, rouge d’hiver, and Amish deertongue. To the right is green oakleaf. The rouge d’hiver is from seed that I have been growing and saving for years now. It’s a very nice red romaine. The seed is good for a couple of years, and I got an excellent crop last year, so I’m going to allow the speckled to go to seed this year. In the back of my house, I’m growing a second bit of Amish deertongue with the intent of letting it bolt and set seed as well. The oakleaf was a bit of a disappointment- flabby and watery. There is no shortage of interesting varieties of lettuce to grow, so I don’t plan on replanting that one.



The green beans are starting to produce. In fact we’re being inundated with them at the moment. So in addition to eating them, I’m freezing a bunch. Yesterday I prepared 4 pints of beans for the freezer. It was a very hot day, so the most unpleasant task was going out into the garden and picking them. The green beans are the ones that are partly trellised in the photo. They were billed as a bush variety. Then it looked like they were actually going to turn out to be pole beans, so we erected the trellis. As it turns out, they’re floppy bush beans. The un-trellised beans are my first attempt to grow a shelling bean, and heirloom variety called bird’s egg. It’s cropping heavily, but won’t be ready for a while. I’m also growing eggplant (Italian and Asian varieties) and peppers (a red bell pepper and an Italian sweet pepper) from seed this year. Me inspiration for all of this growing from seed and heirloom varieties springs from an Ur-Spo (and Someone) Christmas gift certificate from Seed Savers Exchange. Thanks Sposki. If you look carefully next to the beans you will see that the Basil is just about ready to turn into the first batch of pesto for the year.




Behind the garden is part of my raspberry patch. After several years of going raspberry-less, we are getting a bumper crop this year. This pint has been macerated for making raspberry ice cream. Yesterday I whipped up a pie and discovered that Crisco has been reformulated to be trans fat free. So far the raspberry score for the year is 3 1/2 quarts of ice cream, 1 pie and 8 jars of jam. And they are still coming.


Since we’re on the topic of food, the Gouda that I made in early May was ready for testing last week. I think I’m finally getting the hang of making hard cheeses. This one tasted good, but also had a much better texture than previous efforts. It was softer and less crumbly that my previous attempts. An indication that it’s a better cheese than earlier ones: it’s gone already.