tea berry-blue

So, not being really capable of posting all weekend means I have a glut of silly photos and things to post to all of you lovely people!

1) Bee time!

My mama gave me a chocolate bee:

Chocolate bees are not as cute as regular bees and do not land adorably on your finger:

I have a consultation for my new tattoo today! Eeeeeee. I am getting bees on my shoulder, probably. I brought my laptop and I’m gonna print out all kinds of photos of bees to take to Joy, who happens to be shinyredtype‘s tattoo lady! So excited!

Here are some of the photos I took in preparation. Also, if you have ever wondered what bees look like at work, you can see them in the second photo, inside the hive doin’ bee things.

I was explaining to my psychologist about the misperceptions people have about bees, because a lot of people are afraid that bees will sting them when in fact they are actually quite cuddly. I can actually walk up to the hive and pet them. They’re pretty awesome.

Sunday I tried to cook dinner for my mother, since she was injured, but she kept getting up and doing stuff herself anyway. Frequently, she as doing stuff WITHOUT her leg splint on. What a bad patient!

Anyway, collaboration?! Here’s what we made:

That’s polenta with venison, fava beans, asparagus, leek scapes and pancetta.

Arugula with beets, goat cheese, and balsamic-marinated figs.

Yum! I also made this freaking amazing garlic scape-lemon-vermouth sauce on Saturday. Which is what the drink in my last post, the Citizen Charlotte, was made to mimic. And amazing turnips. But I forgot to take pictures of those.

Finally, last but not least, I was not the only one who ate well this weekend. Alas, the mosquitoes did, too:

I didn’t realize quite how many bites I had, or how horrible they were, until yesterday when I put on my sandals to go to work. I have seven on my right foot alone! And then three on my left, and three on my left ankle. I have one on the BOTTOM of each foot, which is just really kind of ridiculous. Curse you, mosquitoes!

Oh, gosh! And I keep forgetting to say, BIRTHDAY PLANS HAVE BEEN MADE, Y’ALL. I will be in Austin from August 4 to August 7. So technically I will be on an airplane on the day-of day, but god I will be having so much fun the three days before that.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Oh my goodness, so the most exciting thing this week!

First off, chickie update! Look at how big! They are this big!

Secondly, and this is, admittedly, not the biggest surprise, but still terribly exciting and magical and wonderful every time it happens, WE HAVE EGGS.

That egg? That egg is ten minutes old. Ten minutes! This is the freshest egg I have ever had in my whole life!

By the end of today, we had nine eggs over the course of seven days, so it looks like both of our big hens are laying.

We had eggs on Saturday morning:

And then this morning, a little after I got up, my dad came down from the hen house with the egg in the picture above. One perfect brown egg! So we cooked it right away and ate it right away and it was pretty much incredible. We split it in three, so I had a third of an egg, and I didn’t eat another thing until two pm because it was so awesome.

EGGS. EGGS EVERY DAY. SO EXCITED.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

We’ve been growing strawberries for a couple of years now, but somehow, some way, this year, they have completely outgrown our expectations!

Here’s our nifty little strawberry patch:

They are covered, as you can see, with a little tent of netting that is high enough for people to go inside to pick the berries, and also high enough to keep birds away from all but the berries very, very close to the outer perimeter. We still get some slugs this way, but it is the best way to keep your berries from being eaten before you get to do the eating! Notice also that the wide netting means that bees can get in to pollinate! They are good at that.

When the strawberries are ripe, you go under the netting and pick them. Here’s a ripe strawberry along with some not-yet-ripe ones!

So pretty and red!

So far, we are getting tons of strawberries this year:

We got about 3-4 quarts the first week of strawberry picking, and 4-5 quarts the second. And they are big and ripe and juicy. We’ve had strawberries for a couple years now, and each week, we’re getting as many strawberries as we’ve ever gotten in a year before, which is pretty exciting!

We made a whole lot of things with strawberries in them! For two weekends!

Let’s start with a cocktail. I’m going to give you three variations on a similar recipe. I made one for my dad, who pretty much only drinks highballs and punchy drinks with a very little liquor in them, and then I’ll show you how to make a stronger and more sophisticated drink in two ways– one sweeter, one less sweet.

Here’s the Daddy Version:

Daddy Version Ingredients:

1.5 oz vodka
.5 oz limoncello
6 strawberries
Lemonade or Pink Lemonade to top

Daddy Version Instructions:

1) Put vodka in glass with strawberries cut into chunks and muddle well until strawberries are thoroughly pulped.
2) Add ice, limoncello, and lemonade

Here’s the Lady Version:

Lady Version #1 Ingredients:

2.5 oz Dogfish Head Brown Honey Rum
.5 oz limoncello
.5 oz cognac
4 fresh strawberries, plus one for garnish
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon thyme

Lady Version #1 Ingredients:

2 oz Dogfish Head Brown Honey Rum
.5 oz limoncello
1 oz cognac
2 fresh strawberries, plus one for garnish
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon thyme

Lady Version Instructions

1) Add rum, thyme and strawberries (cut into chunks) to shaker with ice
2) Muddle well until strawberries are fully pulped.
3) Add cognac and limoncello
4) Shake!
5) strain into chilled cocktail glasses and serve with a whole strawberry.

But that is only Strawberry Cocktail #1!

Fraise

Ingredients
2.5 oz Rogue Pink Spruce Gin
.5 oz Ramazzotti
.5 oz Domaine de Canton
3 ripe strawberries plus one for garnish
2 dashes Fee Bros Whiskey Barrel Bitters

Instructions
1) Add gin and strawberries (cut into chunks) to shaker with ice
2) Muddle well until strawberries are fully pulped.
3) Add Ramazzotti and Domaine de Canton
4) Shake!
5) strain into chilled cocktail glasses, add two dashes bitters, and serve with a whole strawberry.

This past week, I had the sublime pleasure of having quizzicalsphinx in the house. The thing is, when it comes to our imbibement habits, we could not be more dissimilar. In that I drink copious amounts of excellent liquor and she drinks non-alcoholic beverages only.

So I made her her own very special strawberry drink:

Red Beer

Ingredients
6 strawberries, cut into chunks
3 oz GUS grapefruit soda
.5 oz grenadine
.5 oz pomegranate molasses
Newman’s Own Pomegranate Lemonade to top.

Instructions
Put strawberries in glass with ice and crush with muddler.
Add all other ingredients and stir!

And finally, the last drink, which is a more negroni-style one.

Fragola

Ingredients
2 oz Comb 9 gin
1 oz Carpano Antica Formula
.5 oz Fernet Branca
4 strawberries, cut into chunks
2 dashes Bitter Truth Grapefruit Bitters

Instructions
1) Add gin, ice and strawberries to shaker.
2) Muddle until strawberries are fully pulped.
3) Add Carpano and Fernet Branca, shake.
4) Strain into short glasses, add bitters!

But that isn’t all the strawberry things we made!

My mama also made strawberry shortcake. Let’s talk about strawberry shortcake a little. This is one of my favorite foods. When I was a little kid, there were a couple years when I asked for this instead of for a cake-cake on my birthday. Excellent, huh?

It doesn’t really need a recipe, because all you need to do is whip some cream, make a batch of your favorite biscuits, slice open the biscuits and there you go. Beautiful and delicious!

I also made strawberry ice cream. I’m not as good at fruit ice creams as I am at chocolatey and herbal and caramely type ice creams, but this one came out really well!

Ingredients
2 3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup half & half
1/3 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
2 cups chopped strawberries

Instructions
Whisk the egg yolks and the sugar together until frothy and pasty.
Mix 3/4 cups of the cream and the half & half together in a saucepan, cook just until boiling, remove from heat, wait until it stops bubbling.
Add 1 Tb of the hot cream to the sugar and egg mixture, whisk quickly to keep the eggs from cooking.
Keep adding the hot milk to the sugar and eggs in small increments, whisking and pausing between additions, until 3/4 of the hot milk has been added.
Pour the milk/egg/sugar mixture back into the saucepan, heat over medium heat, stirring frequently until mixture thickens.
Remove from heat and chill for at least four hours.
Once chilled, add heavy cream and stir until well mixed. Stir in strawberries.
Put entire mixture in ice cream mixer and follow instructions for your ice cream mixer until frozen. Put finished ice cream in freezer.
Chill for at least two hours in freezer.
Serve with strawberries, whipped cream, or just plain!

That is the end of the strawberry adventure! FOR NOW!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

In order:

By Monday, the chickens were much fluffier and were developing more adult feathers!

Also, our new hive was really seeing some activity. Hive #1 has so much honey we are going to be harvesting next weekend, hooray! It’s crazy, you can smell the honey in the air from like ten feet away. Our new hive is a hive of blonde bees, and they are very pretty and redder in color than our other bees. It’s neat because you can tell them apart by sight.

Yesterday, my mom made the most awesome nachos and salsa ever. I can take zero credit for any part of this meal except that I dumped some of my pickled hot peppers on the nachos, so good. Oh, and I picked the asparagus, but I’m going to post another post, probably tomorrow, about cultivating asparagus in your garden!

The nachos have steak, cheese, black olives and peppers on them, and the salsa is black beans, grilled corn and grilled onions, tomatoes, avocado, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, and a little cumin. Yum!

Anyway, here is the cocktail I made to go with the nachos and salsa:

Happy Accident

Ingredients
2.5 oz Depaz rum
.5 oz Elisir MP Roux
.25 oz cognac
about 6 sprigs of oregano
about 4 sprigs of chamomile, plus three chamomile blossoms for garnish

Instructions
Put rum, oregano, chamomile,in a shaker with ice and muddle well
Add MP Roux and shake
Coat chilled cocktail glass with cognac
Pour drink into glass, add blossoms

And here is the drink I made today. This is my first drink using Boyd & Blair, which is the vodka I’ve been waxing poetic about to everyone I speak to. And you can consider this my first entry into the “drinks that absolutely require the flavor of vodka” category :-P

Drink Me

Ingredients
2.5 oz Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka
1.5 Tbs chopped wood ear mushrooms, reconstituted if dry
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
.5 oz black pepper-wood ear syrup (basic simple syrup with 2 tbs wood ear mushrooms, 2 tsps black pepper added)
.25 oz Dolin Blanco vermouth
6 drops white truffle oil

Instructions
Crush peppercorns slightly
Leave vodka to sit with mushrooms and peppercorns steeping in it for about 5-10 minutes
Strain vodka into a shaker with ice, add syrup and shake
Coat glass with vermouth, add contents of shaker
Add of few of the vodka-soaked mushroom pieces back to the glass
Add truffle oil in little drizzles

The best thing about this drink is that not only is the drink yummy, but you end up with vodka-soaked mushrooms that are freaking amazing. I’m actually going to save them to use in other stuff.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

So, on Saturday, I went to my cousin Erin’s bridal shower. It was at this restaurant called Beatrice & Woodsley in Denver.

It’s this funny place, because you’re walking down the street and there’s nothing there. It’s like, a completely boring looking storefront.

Then you walk inside:

So pretty! They have this story about how Woodsley was a woodcutter who built a cabin in the mountains for Beatrice, his sweetheart who was the daughter of a vintner. I was a little disappointed when I found out the story wasn’t much more detailed than that. But the place was neato.

I don’t know really if the food stands up to it, because what we had was delicious, but it was all little finger sandwiches. The cocktails were good but mostly not really my style, apart from this one:

It was an earl grey infused gin with lemon. It was exciting for me because I have a bottle of early grey liqueur I made a couple months ago.

Anyway, the party was adorable and Erin wore this cutesy cutesy princess dress to go with the decor. I meant to get a picture but I forgot!

On Sunday morning, we went back over to Encore for brunch.

Artichoke!

The most epic hash ever! Pork belly hash!

Blueberry-lemon ricotta pancake!

Absolutely RIDICULOUS apricot french toast. I would eat this every day. Maybe twice, except that I was so full, I didn’t eat until lunch the next day.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

So I spent the night tonight at my friend Paul’s restaurant in Denver.

Paul and I were born four months apart. His mother is my godmother. We grew up together. I still remember when we were toddlers and he was so very proud to show me that he had learned how to take off and put on his pants by himself. Yeah. We go back that far.

There is one thing that Paul somehow inherited from my mother. And that is his amazing intuitive ability in the kitchen. Seriously, Paul is the first person who ever fed me bone marrow, which has got to be on the list of my top ten favorite foods. Paul is now the chef and owner of one of the top restaurants in Denver, Encore. His little sister, Aileen, who is also a dear friend of mine, is now the manager, and she’s really gotten the place completely and totally on the right track since the last time I was there. Freaking amazing.

I just spent seven hours there. Literally.

This is pretty much standard for when we come out here. Encore has this amazing kitchen that turns out stuff you wouldn’t have anywhere else, but they also make kickass burgers and pizzas, and most of the clientele come for the burgers and pizzas. So we come, and Paul whips out the most amazing small dishes ever.

He’s also got a new bartender, Adam, who is freaking awesome. He just got into Root about the same time I did, and he’s mixing two cocktails with it now. He also made me one of the best Manhattans I’ve ever had in my life, and a really really fine martini for my mom with a local gin called Rob’s, which I’ve now been promised a bottle of.

Here’s all the foods I ate!

That’s the Discrepancy Theory, Adam’s twist on a Vieux Carre, which is Old Overholt Rye, Root, and Benedictine. And my mom’s martini in the background.

Crab with cherry tomatoes and pickled ramps. PICKLED RAMPS. I wouldn’t have needed anything else on this dish. Pickled ramps! Paul also has a giant jar of pickled fiddlehead ferns. Genius!

Oh my god. This ravioli. LAMB BELLY RAVIOLI.

Pork belly over homemade kimchi.

Cassoulet with wild mushrooms and duck liver sausage.

Softshell crab over polenta with broccoli greens

Yellow beet salad.

Duck leg confit. Oh my god. All I have to say is that I had one of the most perfect bites of duck fat I have ever eaten in my life. Everyone should have one before they die.

The duck breast had some awesome things with it, like some asparagus and goat cheese ravioli and some peaches, but honestly, I mostly remember the fat.

This is the gnocchi. They are cooked the traditional way and then sauteed which is why they are all crispy. Yum!

Donuts! Paul’s specialty from the very very beginning of his career have been donuts, and he usually has a donut on his menu. The donuts were really the first thing that got him noticed, when they were featured on the cover of a magazine a few years ago.

Okay, this? This is porn. When I told Paul about the perfect duck fat on my duck, his eyes lit up and he brought me out this. Do you see what it is? It’s POPCORN POPPED IN DUCK FAT. Covered in salted caramel and with hazelnuts mixed it. POPCORN. POPPED. IN. DUCK FAT. Holy crap. Who does that?!

Anyway, if any of you are from the Denver area, Paul is going to have that popcorn plus a gin punch Adam is making on Sunday at the Eat Denver event. Adam brought us a glass of the punch, it was very nice.

I also got to try two amazing local gins, Jackalope and Rob’s. Rob’s made one of the best martinis I have ever had. And I had some Avery’s Maharaja IPA, one of the hoppiest, most incredible IPAs I think I’ve ever had.

All in all, awesome night. So much food. A++ Would nom again. And I’m not only saying it because Paul is one of the most awesome people I know. Tomorrow, I get to meet his daughter, Gracie! Eeeeee.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

As many of you know, for the past four years (this being the fifth), I took off a full week of work to make Thanksgiving dinner for my parents, my grand parents, and liret. This is my thank you to the people I love.

( GET YOU READY FOR SOME MASSIVE FOODPORN )


Note: Everything here is homemade. The liver mousse is homemade. The crab salad is homemade. The soup is homemade. The syrups in the cocktails are homemade. The mayonnaise in the deviled eggs (which are home-pickled, like the onions) are homemade. The candied nuts and seeds are homemade. The sorbet is homemade. The beets, the carrots, the broccolini, the kale, and the brussels sprouts, along with most of the herbs, come from our garden so they're extra homemade. The only thing on the table that is not homemade are the peas, which are their own story. Their own very exciting story.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

(This is also counting as my Free Topic entry for therealljidol)

As many of you know, for the past four years (this being the fifth), I took off a full week of work to make Thanksgiving dinner for my parents, my grand parents, and liret. This is my thank you to the people I love.

( GET YOU READY FOR SOME MASSIVE FOODPORN )


Note: Everything here is homemade. The liver mousse is homemade. The crab salad is homemade. The soup is homemade. The syrups in the cocktails are homemade. The mayonnaise in the deviled eggs (which are home-pickled, like the onions) are homemade. The candied nuts and seeds are homemade. The sorbet is homemade. The beets, the carrots, the broccolini, the kale, and the brussels sprouts, along with most of the herbs, come from our garden so they're extra homemade. The only thing on the table that is not homemade are the peas, which are their own story. Their own very exciting story.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

(This is also counting as my Free Topic entry for therealljidol)