Holy Mole Pasole

Yes, I CAN think of more things that would rhyme, but that would make me even sillier than I am (or than you know) and I shall leave it at that.

One thing I learned from Sally Fallon is she's a bit wacky. The second thing I learned was that 'peas porridge in the pot, nine days old' might have had some good sense to it. No, I'm not ready to have 9-day old peas, per se, but I will put a chicken in my crockpot for 24 hours before using it. Oh yes. If you have not done this, then you don't know what you're missing. The broth is closer to elixer. Thick, healthy, dark. So good.

So, I took a local chicken, put it in my large, very basic crockpot, covered it with water, set it on the 10 hour setting last night while making dinner. It went to the warm setting some time this morning and I didn't touch it until 6:30 pm tonight. What happens is, yes, the chicken meat may get a bit of an over-cooked texture, but all the tendons, cartlidge and connective tissues melt and you have a broth that is so rich and good for you that it will cure your ancestors of what ailed them right in their graves! Ok, maybe not, but it sure makes me feel that way. So, I strain the broth through your basic wire-screen colander into a large stock pot. I put the crumbling chicken carcass on a large cutting board and separate the meat pieces from the bone pieces. It's so easy - it's just crumbling apart because there's literally nothing holding the meat to the bones or holding the bones togther. The meat still holds together in large chunks - I take a knife and cut up the meat into little soup pieces, then through it in the pot with the broth. Then add: 4 garlic cloves via the crusher; 1 can or jar or what-have-you of enchilada sauce or salsa verde or something of that sort to give you a nice color and background flavor; some canned or fresh mild green chilies, a large can of hominy, some salt, ancho chile powder, epazote and/or oregano and 3-4 cups water. Now, you won't see me use canned stuff much, but wait for it - it's amazing. Really. That, and if I could make hominy, I'd be spending all my time doing that. Bring your broth back up to a serious simmer/light boil and add some chopped carrots - ours were a nice purple varity fresh from the garden today, and some shredded cabbage if you have it. Let that all mingle and the carrots get soft to your liking. Turn off the heat and today we through on some sugar snap peas from the garden to soften in the remaining heat.



Spoon into bowls. Top with any combination of fresh tomatoes, lime juice, cilantro, sliced radishes, shredded cabbage, onions, chives....as you like. Enjoy on your back deck with your family with some fresh machine bread with butter and homemade jam. BTW, this is the vanilla bean and cinnamon strawberry jam from this past weekend and it's amazing! I mean, AMAZING. oh, yes, I'll say it again, AMAZING!!!

All-In-One Man making it to his liking:



My spread:



Hazel sipping (omitted 1/2 broth when dishing and diluted with tepid water to both cool down and chill out the spice):

Jammers

Remember those pants from the '80s? I'm not referring to those, but it sure would have been funny.

Anyhoo, my pal, Emily, and I made jam on Sunday. 85 jars of jam. Some small, but 85 jars processed all the same. About 8 hours of work packed in before we freshened up and went to a birthday party. No problem!

This was my first time canning and Emily's 2nd time canning - and a jam first for both. My mom and mother-in-law were not available, so we were flying by our seats, taking the advice from books and packages of pectin the best we were able with such naivite. We liked the idea of using honey instead of sugar in some recipes I have in Preserving Summer's Bounty, but wanted the firmer jam that pectin would supply. We didn't have homemade pectin, nor did we succeed in understanding before we started that different pectins react with different sugars. This coupled with the fact that we had no idea that the jam wasn't going to 'gel up' until the next day lead to some serious over-cooking, adding in more and more and more pecting all in a vain attempt to try to get it to gel before we jarred it. Jeez.

Lesson: Learn WAY more before hand and/or make sure a seasoned pro is on hand. In fact, this would have been helpful: http://www.pickyourown.org/pectin.htm - but I'm sure I would have ignored it if I would have read it previously anyhow.

We used both Pomona Pectin for most of it, but added in regular Sure-Jell pectin. Afterwards noticed that the Sure-Jell brand mentions that it does not work without sugar. Good old white sugar - which we were trying to avoid. Organic strawberries, rhubarb organically grown in my garden and previously frozen, and ginger slices made up a few batches, Org. strawberries, cinnamon sticks and 2 vanilla beans made up another, then just a lot of plain ol' organic strawberry jam.

here are some prep photos:


.

They all look pretty nice now. The plain strawberry/honey jam is the most over-cooked and looks dark - not as bright and fresh looking as I'd like, but it firmed up very well overnight. The rhubarb/strawberry/ginger is looking a bit liquid-y, and the cinnamon/vanilla bean/strawberry looks fabulous (last batch cooked, I'll note).

Here's a photo of the cinnamon/vanilla bean/strawberry cooking:



And more cooking:



Measuring out calcium:



And done:



I'll make some bread tonight and update as to the success/failure rate!

climb up a tree and act like a nut

We have a large double lot in the city of Portland - about 1/2 land with our house fairly centered from front to back, and placed on the left side of the lot. In the back are large Douglas Fir trees, approx. 70-80 years old, and a large big leaf maple or 2. The neighbors backing this have similiar, so it's quiet, shaded and full of wildlife. My husband, the perfect all-in-one man, planted Oregon native plants in the backyard. So obsessive. Anyway, this early spring we noticed a squirrel nest going in. Now, there are these 2 maverick squirrels running amuck and biting off the tops of various new natives in the back, like our prized native trilliums, oxalis, etc. AIO-man is not impressed by their cute antics. I haven't even mentioned the mole.

spoon fed

oh jeez. I've been reading this thread "how to make oatmeal more palatable". lordy - I had to come here to my own little world to keep from lashing out. There was one poster on there, 'grainlady', that wrote in amazing info, but was kind to keep her tongue while others posted crap.

Seriously. Why do people not ask why? Why is it okay to be spoon fed by commercials, packaging, advertising....I used to be in advertising. I still think that way when I want something or I'm working for someone's benefit. An ad does not tell the whole truth for the express purpose of influencing a decision for the advertiser's benefit. ok, horrible sentence structure, but...Seriously. Yes, oatmeal is good for you in the right way. Oatmeal that has been heated, half cooked, cut up and has artificial colors/flavors and tablespoons of sugar so that you can heat it in a microwave and add ultra-pasteurized fat free milk will kill you. One poor man on there was just told he has high cholesterol via a letter in the mail (!!!) from his doctor's office. Besides the obviously inhumane/feedlot aspect of that, he says he needs to cut out butter because it's bad for his cholesterol and he picked up some statins. Could someone just please shoot him now so that he doesn't drag out this miserable death? OK, so I take that back - I don't wish death/murder/shooting on anyone. Butter isn't going to kill him. Those statins just might. argh.

Yes, I know I have an unpopular opinion and no, I'm not a doctor. Just another nutrition freak out here on the web spouting my discontent to the ether. and no, I'm not a nazi. I don't ferment every grain or even cook every item in this house. I just want people to quit eating crap because the package says it's good for them. I want people to question their doctor's opinions and expect service because regardless of schooling and pay, it is a service industry. Expect your doctor to ask you in, talk to you and tell you options. OPTIONS!!! Too many options in food, not enough options in health.

see this photo:



That's my grandma crouse. Raised before all this processed food nonsense. Before orthodontics. Before convenience foods. She was raised POOR. She had to send her first to children out to family farms after her first divorce. She looked this good after having her 3rd baby.

Her children, my aunts and uncles, were raised on government surplus tinned food, powdered milk when the cow was dry and processed foods. Before flouridated water. Note the mouth - the perfect teeth and the slight over-bite. That mouth shape runs in our family. I have it, my mom has it, my brother has it...my mom has had bad teeth for as long as I can remember. I faired slightly better but not for much longer. At least mine have always been pretty straight - my brother Joel's teeth are really crooked, but he's so adorable no one notices.

Here's grandma's youngest, living with schizophrenia (and one of my favorite uncles):



still has that mouth shape, but the teeth are crooked. He's about...28 or so here, I believe. oh, how I misss him and I doubt I'll ever see him again. But that's another story.

My point is, it's your food that is doing this. Really.

See these photos:

understand what your food is doing to you. research. don't be spoon fed.

yogurt, cheese and other things

 
 
Five or six years ago, while still living at the Alberta house, my to-be or had just-become mother in law gave me the yogurt maker that she used as a stay at home mom when my husband was little. I don't know why I put off using it for so long - it seemed it would be complicated, yet I knew I'd want to try it some day so I took the gift. Fast forward to 2008.

I've been making cheese. I took a short cheese making lecture at the farm where I get my raw goat milk and I've been hooked. I've successfully made fromage blanc 2x and chevre 1x. I cried as I poured milk down the drain at a failed attempt at a hard goat cheese. I watched the instructor make this same cheese with cow milk but failed to comprehend the differences between goat and cow. Anywhoo, more on that later.

Making something more difficult, I suppose, gave me the gumption to take on yogurt. Now, the farm I go to makes yogurt. Chrissie makes yogurt so expertly that it makes me cry. It's still raw, NO stabilizers and multiple cultures. Amazing. I wasn't ready for that. So, I took Organic Valley whole milk, a starter from some Nancy's plain and added some organic powdered milk as a stablizer (YES, I'm that much of a chicken - pouring that milk down the drain from the failed cheese has really scarred me!). It actually spent 12 hours instead of the recommended 10 in the yogurt maker, but turned out beautifully. I used the recipe from the cheese book I've been using: Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll. It's a great book.

Doernbechers is the new black

OK, found the notes I had on the other Doernbechers visits. It's a wonderful place and I hope you never have to go other than to ride Portland's ridiculous sky tram. I will digress here long enough to admit that on a clear day it's an amazing view from OHSU and cheaper than Portland City Grill.

Monday, March 24, 2008
doernbechers - again
ok, just to preface, it’s not my kids this time. but, I got home this morning from Doernbechers PICU at 5 am. Adam is still there with his niece. not going in to details today, but please hug all the children you know. hug them extra today because you can. xo

Sunday, January 13, 2008
doernbeckers, the new black
so, I just want to say, that Hazel and Alex's good friend Petey is at Doernbeckers for an extended romantic stay with mr. staph and auntie biotics. wish them well if you know the Vidito clan and send them e-ice cream. it seems that Hazel will have to share the name of the new ward with them. looking for ideas. post below. I've got: Burke-Vidito Ward; Hazey Ward; Petel Ward, etc. Please also send all suggestions to OHSU; they would appreciate that.


Saturday, November 24, 2007

3rd installment of the Hazel Burke Wing of Doernbecker’s
Day after Thanksgiving has so many people rushing out for Black Friday or settling in for football and leftovers, we decided to go to our favorite hiking spot in Welches at the Wildwood Park. We decided to go through the Wetlands side first and view our native Oregon with iced over wetlands. It was very quiet and relatively people-free.
Hazel wanted to start marching along the trail, with moss in one hand and a stick in the other, so we started marching to the Elephants Brigade song from A Jungle Book. We didn't really know the words, so it was more humming and the occasional "in a military style" lyrics thrown in. I had her in her snow boots because earlier in the day she was in the back of our yard with her dad clearing out yard debris in the mud. She was very industrious. So, I just left them on when we went hiking. They're cumbersome boots, and I brought her tennis shoes to change in to, but just didn't get to it in the excitement of huckleberries and hiking.
Anyway, so, we're marching along and she trips. Luckily her face broke her fall on a rock. We saw the trip, we saw her head land on the rock, and when she looked up, we saw a split in her lip JUST LIKE you'd see in a Rocky boxing match. They really have that perfected in movies today – it's amazingly realistic, now that I know. One of her teeth was also shoved up a good 2-3 millimeters.
So, we run instead of march the rest of the trail back to the car, speed through the safety corridor down Highway 26 to Mt. Hood Legacy Hospital. I have been to this emergency room before years ago and never had the best impression of it. It doesn't help that it's a holiday weekend with plenty of car wrecks, shopping fights and turkey ingestion injuries (there were sooo many people in the waiting room holding their guts!). We walk in with our little blond angel looking like she got hit by the ball in Phantasm and everyone was instantly nice and appalled all at once. Hazel, again, was in great spirits and incredibly eloquent. "I was marching in the forest with the big trees and I fell on a rock." It was almost like I trained her to say it perfectly before we saw the authorities. We take a seat in the emergency room. Half an hour later, I go back up to the desk and ask how backed up they are. Then is when they tell me there are 8 people before we see a nurse. Not a doctor, but just the nurse. Great. So, I tell them we're going to leave and go to Doernbeckers and she cheerily responds, "Okay. They're probably backed up too," and smiles as we walk away. Argh.
More speeding down I-84.
Do you know how hard it is to find the right road up to OHSU when SW 5th street is closed due to construction? Do you think they might want to hustle a bit on that part of downtown? Just a side note.
We get to OHSU, and as we're in the child's section of the waiting room, there's a man in there watching Raymond while, surprise, holding his gut. In the children's play area. Whatever. Glorious, oh so glorious, Doernbeckers has us in our own room in less than 20 minutes. I love these people. We have the nicest nurses and 2 doctors, it was great. 2 hours of waiting, driving, waiting and I'm deciding on whether to have Hazel with an IV and completely put to sleep, or an injection of something related to PCP. I suspect she's had the latter drug before on a previous installment of the Hazel Burke Ward of OHSU, so I choose the latter.
It takes effect almost immediately, and she's in la-la land, breathing very, very strangely and the 2 doctors and 2 nurses are sewing her lip back up. This was all of 20 minutes. So great.
The next hour I spent at Hazel's side as she was coming off of this PCP-related drug. And I will note here that I think that it's very, very closely related. Like, they may have changed the name of the drug and used a clean needle. As I was sitting there, waiting for Hazel to come out of her latest IV drug use experience, I found out that she was turning in to Spongebob. She would look at her arm and look at me and tell me, "See, it's turning yellow. I'm turning in to Spongebob Squarepants." She was saying this in such a slur that only a mother could decipher what she was saying. As time went on, her speech got better as her hallucinogenic visions faded.
Hazel is now the proud owner of a supermodel upper lip that should be fairly well healed and back to normal person size in about 5 days. Her impacted tooth will either do nothing or something. Yes, that was the medical opinion. There's nothing proven that removing it or fussing with it will change the outcome of how it decides to heal, so we'll just wait and see. She may go into Kindergarten in a few years looking normal, or representing some of her West Virginia heritage and missing a tooth. Well, I say "normal" assuming we don't go into too much more debt to OHSU.
Hope you all had a less eventful holiday weekend and please enjoy Hazel's latest headshot.
Currently listening : Jungle Book By Richard M. Sherman Release date: 30 January, 2001

pick up where I left off

darn it. I wrote a big ol' catch up post and while messin' with the html, lost it. seriously? yes. sigh. le sigh. where does the auto save go? perhaps I can find it? unlikely.

so, here I go again. on my own. oh, no, not whitesnake, puleeze!

9 months ago was OHSU and packing. I'd like to tell you that was our last OHSU visit and that we're completely unpacked, but the truth is we've been back to Doernbecher's 2x and I just put together Alex's closet last week.

Anyhoo, I have a plethora of reasons/excuses/drama to explain away my lack of typing, and currently my knock-off tulip chair as computer chair is coming to mind as my tendinitis flares up from typing this little ditty. I even opened another tab to look at costco's computer chairs. I convince myself that if I had a chair, I'd finish all that free-lance work at night that I've been putting off.

so, I shall do that. and I'll be back.