Monthly Archives: February 2013

Unlikely Friendships

Posted on February 19, 2013 by AnnieRie

Animals that don’t normally get along, getting along quite well. Jennifer Holland, author of the NYT bestseller

Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom

and a contributing writer for National Geographic magazine, is coming to the Howard County Conservancy this Sunday the 24th to give a program for families and those young at heart who love animals.

A cat and a bird. A mare and a fawn. An elephant and a sheep. A snake and a hamster. Pictures and stories, behind the scenes tales of her adventures as well. Here is the link to the flier for the event.

The cost is $10 a family and the admission supports the conservancy’s education programs held all year long. What unlikely friendships do you know? Do you have any pictures? Bring them to add to the fun and the discussion.

Are my blue jay and squirrel unlikely dining companions?

They probably are just tolerating one another.

Besides this event on Sunday, next week the volunteer training begins for us for the spring school programs. If training and hiking begins, can spring be far behind?

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Dishes and Laundry

Posted on February 18, 2013 by AnnieRie

Sometimes I think it’s all I ever do. They told us in financial planning courses that we would be spending more time in our cars and more time traveling and eating out after we retired. Funny, that isn’t what we are doing. I swear I spend way more time with the laundry and the dishwasher.

Why? Eating in the house way more than we did when we worked. Cooking from scratch.

All those freezer containers. And, breakfast and lunch all week in the house. We may eat out a few times a week now, but those 10 extra meals, plus all the cooking, means more dishes to wash. I really hadn’t thought of that. Add to that, the laundry. We live in Tee shirts, jeans, shorts and sweaters. No more dry cleaning or taking shirts to the laundry. We are wearing things that we throw in the washer and dryer.

In the summer, those sweaty items after gardening, or yard work. In the fall, after leaf raking. No more fancy work clothes taken to the cleaners to be done. I wonder if we need to have the septic tanks cleaned more often than we used to, now that we are home most days.

Retirement is definitely changing what we do, and when. For example, today I started to run a few errands. Including my emissions test. Until I realized it was a holiday and they weren’t open. So, I bagged the trip to Costco, Trader Joe’s and the emissions station until later this week. When the working people went back to their jobs and left the stores relatively crowd free.

After almost three years, I really feel retired. Doing what we want when we want. Not constrained to the weekends. Besides doing errands, I need to use that last red envelope at Iron Bridge. Maybe lunch sometime this week. Beating those dinner crowds.

Ah, retirement. Loving it. Glad we decided to do it. It’s way more fun counting juncos for the bird count, than commuting in snow or ice.

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Garlic. Scape. Pesto.

Posted on February 17, 2013 by AnnieRie

Wonderful stuff. Even when it was frozen. It screams springtime. Makes me anticipate the coming of spring in just a few weeks.

I defrosted this pesto to have with dinner tonight. Six cubes of it from one of the freezer containers. Half was for dinner tonight and the other half for some pasta tomorrow. I have one more plastic container full of this pesto, still in the freezer. Come on springtime, so I can make some more.

I made the pesto, poured it into ice cube trays, froze it, then stored it in plastic. But now that I have those vacuum sealers I may do something different next year. I love garlic scapes. Never knew what they were until I got into the CSA, and until I saw them at the Howard County Farmers Markets. Next year I will be buying more, harvesting a few dozen of my own, and getting them from the CSA. All will go into making this lovely pesto.

These are garlic scapes. You cut them off so the garlic puts more energy into the heads of garlic than into the flower. They are more delicate than garlic cloves. Mix a cup of scapes with half a cup of parmesan and half a cup of pine nuts. Add olive oil, salt and pepper to the blender or processor until you get the right consistency. Use as soon as you can, or freeze, or put in a mason jar with a coating of olive oil, in the fridge for a week, no more. If you can keep it that long.

I use it on all sorts of stuff. Flatbread. Pizza. Pasta. Crostini. Veggies. Potatoes. Tonight it went on veggies and potatoes, served with England Acres petit filet mignons.

This was my Sunday night Eat Local Winter Dinner. Local beef. Potatoes from EA as well. Veggies from the freezer. The last from almost 10 months ago, in our winter CSA. I found them in the bottom. They, luckily, were still good. My pesto. The only nonlocal items were the spices, balsamic and the olive oil they were cooked in. Pan seared the steaks, then added oil and balsamic and finished in the oven. Steamed the veggies. Defrosted the pesto. Microwaved the potatoes, then added them to the steak pan to brown up in the oven.

Easy and good. Really easy. How hard is it to steam veggies, nuke a few potatoes, sear a steak and pop it in the oven. Dinner in less than 30 minutes.

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Shopping at the Farms

Posted on February 16, 2013 by AnnieRie

Last winter I had a CSA and we did Silver Spring, Dupont Circle and Tacoma Park markets to get my local items for my winter challenge. I thought nothing of driving into DC or the suburbs to get fresh foods locally grown. At the time, I was unaware of the year round farm stores that are actually closer to me, and are now where I get my meats, produce and locally produced items like bread, milk, eggs and honey.

Every other week I head out to England Acres to get dairy, meat, winter veggies and fresh greens. Also, apples and sometimes citrus. Judy gets high tunnel microgreens and winter greens from a farm in Damascus, East Rivendell Farm.

I will be heading over to check them out some day probably a Friday when they are open. For me to add a farm to my local resources list, I like to visit and see what they have. I love the greens from East Rivendell. Today I picked up some winter salad mix, and a bag of red chard at England Acres. I believe both of them were brought in from East Rivendell. Like these greens a few weeks back.

The mix I got today includes some lovely baby dinosaur kale. I also picked up the Baby Bellas again today. And, some carrots that Judy orders from Lancaster Farm Fresh, the coop that supplies my summer CSA. The carrots are so sweet in the winter. My favorite time to buy them.

This week I made lots of soups and the lasagna, so we are eating leftovers until tomorrow night. Then, I will be making my winter weekly Eat Local Dinner, using two little 5 oz. filets I got from Judy today. We were talking out at the farm about whether I should order a side of lamb. She will be selling sides and whole lamb packages. In March and in May. After that, no fresh lamb until the fall.

I find it interesting to get meat from the local farmers. Chickens available only from May until late fall. Lamb available winter and early spring. Seasonal influences based on when the animals are ready to process. If you have never bought or cooked with locally raised, farm fresh meats, you don’t know what you are missing. Just like local eggs and local produce, that freshness and taste are unmistakable.

Only three weeks to go until my Breezy Willow Early Bird CSA starts. Still happily eating from the freezer, the pantry and a couple of trips a month to the farmstands. Can’t believe how little I get from grocery stores these days. I asked my husband last week to stop at the store for the few items I can’t get at markets, like coffee creamer, extra light olive oil for cooking and dishwasher detergent. When your total gasoline points for the month are 39 from Giant Food, you know you have changed your buying habits.

As for CSAs, the local ones are filling up quickly. Look over at localharvest.org if you want to get the freshest produce and fruit weekly. There are all sorts of sizes and types now being delivered to pick up spots all over Howard County.

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Posted in Commentary, CSA, Farmer's Markets, Food, Howard County, Local Businesses, Locavore, West HoCo, Winter Eat Local and tagged CSA, farmer's markets, Food, foodie, Howard County, Locavore, real food, value of CSA, West HoCo. Bookmark the permalink.

Grandma’s Tomato Soup

Posted on February 15, 2013 by AnnieRie

Nope, none of that canned stuff your mom might have served. The kind of soup my grandma made. Fifty years ago. Made with tomatoes, broth and slow cooked until everything came together.

Tomato rice soup. Made with tomatoes I grew last summer. Amish paste tomatoes. About two pounds of them. Put in the crock pot with some chicken broth and almond milk. Two tablespoons of tomato paste. A couple of cubes of my garlic scape pesto. Allowed to cook all day, until about an hour before serving when I pureed the tomatoes and added a cup of riso.

Served with crumbled rosemary crackers and a side salad of baby spinach, cranberries and goat cheese. The wine?

Tablas Creek syrah. 2003 vintage. Hard to believe it is ten years old. Big, balanced, with a hint of berries in the nose. It went well with the soup and the salad. A simple soup and salad dinner elevated to the next level with a great wine and completely made from scratch. Including the berry vinaigrette on the salad.

Enough left for a couple of lunches. Soup and salad is on the table many days for lunch. Thanks to another hocoblog food blogger for posting about tomato rice soup with basil. Although she used brown rice, the inspiration was there.

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Posted in Food, Locavore, Real Food, Wine, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, crockpot soups, Food, foodie, heirloom tomatoes, Locavore, real food, tomatoes, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

I Love Lamb

Posted on February 14, 2013 by AnnieRie

Valentine’s Day. What could be more romantic than dinner shaped like a heart?

Not only did the lamb end up in the shape of a heart, there was also a heart in the cheese.

Boarman’s lamb rack. Cherry Glen Monocacy Ash goat cheese. The local contributions to our Valentine’s Day dinner. Most of the rest was organic, but the lamb and the cheese were locally sourced.

The wine. From deep in the cellar where there is a box of wine that we won at the Taste for Life auction a few years back. A local charitable event to raise money for cancer research. It has now moved to Baltimore but for years it was held at the Ten Oaks Ballroom. We bought some lovely wine there at the auction and have been opening one every year for a special occasion. This was the year to open the 1996.

Besides the lamb and the wine, I also served a salad with the goat cheese and my homemade fruit vinaigrette. I made this vinaigrette using St. Helena Olive Oil Co. balsamic and extra virgin olive oil. Plus juice from my strawberries and blackberries. I defrosted some of them this week to use to make dressing.

Keep adding berries to the bowl and smash them up to release the juice. Strain them through a fine sieve and add a three to one ratio of oil to vinegar. I added some dried mint and dried basil plus salt and pepper to the dressing.

Mixed greens. Cranberries. Monocacy Ash cheese. Dress with the vinaigrette. Grate a little sea salt and pepper over it.

Later tonight a little sea salt caramel gelato. A nice homemade Valentine meal.

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Tackle Six Rightsizing Projects

Posted on February 13, 2013 by AnnieRie

Part of my Sixty@Sixty list. Back on my 60th birthday, I made a list. Ten different categories. Six things in each one. The last one. Rightsizing projects.

I finally culled down the list of all that needs to be done around here and came up with these items. Here is the list. And, below, the progress made in each one of them.

1. Books
2. Clothes
3. XMAS decorations
4. Pantry and Kitchen
5. Pictures and collectibles
6. Travel Souvenirs

Big items. Not something easily achieved, but after moving 42 years of things out of my MIL’s house when she went to a retirement apartment I know these are things we need to address. I mean, how many T shirts from other places do we really need in this house?

I have made some progress in each category, but there is a long way to go. Highlights.

Books — I have way too many cookbooks and magazines. I haven’t tackled that puppy yet, but I will get there. I mean, Great Dinners from Life? I don’t want to know how old that book is.

I did put together three grocery bags full of work reference books, old fiction, paperbacks and hiking books. They went off to the book bin. There used to be one at Glenwood but it is gone. My husband found another one, and it got a hefty deposit. Besides the donation to the bin, I gave my mom all sorts of old paperbacks, mostly Patricia Cornwell and Tom Clancy. She took them to her friends at church. They pass around books to read.

Clothes — this one started last fall and is still a priority. I put together two huge plastic bags full of work clothes and other things after Hurricane Sandy. Gave them to HoCoRising’s SO to take to Jersey on her trip to help hurricane victims.

After that great beginning, I have donated to the boxes at Kendall’s, four more bags of work clothes. After all, I now live in blue jeans or shorts and only need a few nice items in my wardrobe. Besides, getting rid of all my larger sized clothes is my incentive to keep losing weight. I am almost finished with my stuff. Time to tackle my better half’s closet full of things he won’t be wearing much anymore. Does he still need five suits? All those management suits and ties. Really. He could keep two, one summer weight and one winter. The rest. Need a good home for someone new to the workforce.

XMAS decorations — this was one royal pain to do. We really need to throw away things we no longer use. Since no charities want them, they go in the trash. I dumped quite a few tree decorations, and we went through all the lights and the wreaths and deer to only have good strings of lights left.

Besides fixing the lights, I also made a vow. No more Christmas card buying. There are more than enough all over the study. I consolidated everything this year and will not succumb to those post Christmas sales anymore. I have at least ten years worth of cards around here.

Travel Souvenirs — Besides the dozens of T shirts I have given away, there are the other things. How about volksmarching medals? We used to do volksmarching and collect medals. I donated them to the Conservancy for a geocaching event. There is another one in March and the rest of the medals will go there. The children loved getting medals when they finished the challenge. They also loved the foreign coins in one of the boxes on the trail. Both came from our souvenir stashes. In March, I am also contemplating donating all our postcards collected on travels. The children really have fun finding treasures in the boxes at the geocache sites.

Pantry and Kitchen — I have cleaned out the spice containers and made rubs, herb mixes and spice mixes. Some I gave away at Christmas. The rest I am plowing through in my cooking. No more industrial spice and herb purchases. Except for garlic powder, salt and oregano, which I use quite a bit.

Getting a cleaned up pantry is a priority, and I am nowhere near completion on this one.

As for my last item, pictures and collectibles, I haven’t done much other than organize. Now comes the hard part. Downsizing it. We have stamps from my husband’s dad. Dolls and pictures from his mom. Pictures from my mom. Depression glass. Doilies! Yes, a blanket sized plastic zip bag full of hand crocheted items from his mom. My grandmother’s china. All these things. Never used anymore. What to do with them. They have no real monetary value, just sentiment.

Beyond the fun things on my Sixty@sixty list, these are the hard ones.

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Lasagna vs Lasagne

Posted on February 12, 2013 by AnnieRie

So, what is it? Do you use the Italian spelling when not using traditional Italian ingredients? I have been working on perfecting my lasagna recipe. Lasagna because my recipe uses ricotta and mozzarella, not traditional Italian bechamel and ragu lasagne.

I made a lasagna today, to use the meat sauce I made on Sunday. It just jumped up and said, I need to be in lasagna. It was right. The sauce was made with local sausage, my tomato sauce from the freezer, some onions, mushrooms and garlic and all slow cooked in the crock pot.

I served a small portion of the sauce over penne on Sunday night. The rest really needed to be used as the star in a recipe. Lasagne immediately came to mind. But, now I know that the Americanization of the dish substituted ricotta, mozzarella and egg for the bechamel sauce. I like our version, so at The Common Market yesterday I picked up ricotta, mozzarella and some durum semolina pasta.

There you go! Lasagna from scratch. Ready to go in the oven.

To make this lasagna, you need:

a pound of sausage, browned with an onion and half a dozen mushrooms
at least a quart of tomato sauce, I made mine with tomatoes I blanched and froze
Italian herbs to taste, with salt and pepper

This is the sauce base.

You then need to make the white part. 15 oz. ricotta, 8 oz. mozzarella, 1 egg, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and 4 oz. milk.

I used 8 sheets of lasagne noodles. Layer sauce, cheese, noodles, sauce, cheese, noodles, sauce, cheese. Sprinkle with Parmesan. Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes. It comes out looking like this.

Yes, it did get a little crispy around the edges. Foil would have stopped that, but I like mine crispy. We will get three meals out of this. We served it with a Breaux cellar selection Barbera/Nebbiolo blend, called Six Degrees.

And, a salad of grapefruit, fennel, red onion over baby greens, with olive oil and grapefruit juice as the dressing. Mostly local, all organic. Absolutely lovely for a Tuesday night.

Who cares how you spell it?

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Posted in Food, Local Businesses, Locavore, Real Food, Wine, Winter Eat Local and tagged cooking, Food, foodie, local businesses, Locavore, real food, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Lovin’ Mondays

Posted on February 11, 2013 by AnnieRie

Back before we retired, Mondays were definitely not our favorite day of the week. Back to work. Back to the commute. The early mornings. No matter the weather. We had to get up early and return to DC or northern VA on the bus or the van.

Today was just another reminder of how we love being retired. Errands. Can be done on Mondays. No weekend rush. No Saturday lines. Need to go to Lowe’s to find extra long heavy duty cable ties. Well, let’s combine that errand with a leisurely private lunch while picking up our cellar club wines at Breaux.

An empty parking lot. The tasting room all to ourselves. Soup from a Thermos. A baguette and some peppered goat cheese. Four bottles of our cellar selections.

We picked up a few extra bottles, one of the Malbec and one newly released Cabernet Franc Reserve. Then, off to Frederick to stop at Lowe’s and, across Buckeystown Pike, my favorite coop, The Common Market. If you live in west county, a combined trip to the Frederick Costco and The Common Market can be done with less time getting there, than going to the east side of Columbia. A few extra miles, but less time in traffic.

The Common Market has better prices than MOM’s, and about the same as Roots, but their bulk food aisle is amazing. Three times the size of Roots. I picked up couscous, mixed nuts, cranberries and some artichoke pasta from the bulk aisle.

Plus, Monocacy Ash from Cherry Glen. A treat for our upcoming Valentine’s Day dinner. I will pair this cheese with whole strawberries from our freezer, which were picked at Larriland last spring.

Another special touch from the olive bar. To serve with the lamb on Thursday. Mixed marinated veggies, gigante beans and chickpeas.

I was supposed to be picking up items to make a local/organic lasagna with my meat sauce I slow cooked yesterday. As usual, too many other tempting goodies there. Then, home tonight to pop chicken pot pies from them into the oven, and watch one of the better sunsets of late. Looks like tomorrow will be warm and clear. Can’t beat this weather.

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Posted in Day Trips, Food, GGSAC, Local Businesses, Locavore, Retirement, West HoCo, Wine and tagged cooking, day trips, Food, GGSAC, local businesses, Locavore, retirement, West HoCo, wine. Bookmark the permalink.

Six Feeders No Waiting

Posted on February 10, 2013 by AnnieRie

Since today was lovely, I went out and did some feeder maintenance and filled everything before next week’s Great Backyard Bird Count.

If you want to do something fun with your family or friends, try and spend just a little time between the 15th and 18th counting the birds you see in your yard, or in a public area near you. It is simple to do, and you don’t need to be an experienced birder. The count had over 100,000 participants last year. Many from this area. In Maryland alone, there were over 2000 checklists submitted. Quite a few from Howard County. Ellicott City and Columbia led the county in participants with 83 lists from each area.

I watch right out my kitchen window for a few hours on one of the days and put in my totals. Since I have a habitat established with regular visitors, I know I will have certain times of the day with dozens of birds popping in to get food and water.

Today was no exception. I had three downy woodpeckers, all female, out there at the same time.

Don’t know where the males were today, but the females kept coming back. I also put peanuts in the shell out there today to check out the blue jays. I had at least six between those on the ground and in the trees. They are a riot to watch, as they go looking for the biggest and heaviest peanuts. Last year there were fewer blue jays reported. Including by me. This year they are back.

Of course, with peanuts out there, at some point the squirrel showed up and the blue jays had to go into overdrive to get the lion’s share of the peanuts.

Today also brought the return of the female red bellied woodpecker. We haven’t seen her around here much lately. Just the male, but out of nowhere she showed up to grab peanuts herself.

At one point, the nuthatch joined the party. Here a young downy and the nuthatch are enjoying the new food.

And, just to show that sometimes they do tolerate each other, I leave you with a photo worthy of submitting for the Conservancy program on unlikely friendships. Animal photos of unlikely pairings of animals. That event is on the 24th of February. Another family activity coming up in the next few weeks in the area.

Peaceful coexistence. Unusual for them. If you can, make time to count birds next weekend in Howard County. Let’s help Cornell and the Audubon Society keep tabs on where the birds are located by creating our own “census”.

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Posted in Birds, Community, Hobbies, Howard County, Nature and tagged birds, community, hobbies, Howard County, nature, photography. Bookmark the permalink.

AnnieRie Unplugged

Monthly Archives: February 2013

Unlikely Friendships

Dishes and Laundry

Garlic. Scape. Pesto.

Shopping at the Farms

Grandma’s Tomato Soup

I Love Lamb

Tackle Six Rightsizing Projects

Lasagna vs Lasagne

Lovin’ Mondays

Six Feeders No Waiting

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