State Fair 08!

Sorry I have fallen behind on my posting, I blame my computer and the internet for being rude to me. Also... State Fair!! Thank you to the 2-4 people who have continued to look at my blog daily. I seriously doubt it is on purpose. Allow me to return to business with a gastronomical summary of my two (2!) trips to the Minnesota State Fair. Beautiful. Let us begin with day one with Steve and Nell...bring on the unflattering photos

Steve was immediately drawn to the "Big Fat Bacon" stand...rightfully so. The bacon is large, is on a stick and is glazed with maple. Yes.

Mini Donuts...The world's most perfect breakfast food.

Sausage by The Sausage Sisters. Chunks of Sausage wrapped in some kind of breadiness, smothered in spicy peanut sauce.

Lemonade in a classic State Fair cup.

Cheese Curds. This picture will make everyone who has moved away from Minnesota insanely jealous and everyone else insanely nauseated.

I call this one the Bluth Banana. Chocolate-covered frozen banana with sprinkles (or jimmies, depending on how you roll). Sorry about the suggestive nature of this photo.

Sno-cone. Steve asked the vendor what the best flavor is, and without hesitation he replied, "Blue raspberry and lime." He was right.

Nell noms on some french fries.

Day Two with Amanda and Margaret!

Pronto pup. They use a paint brush to apply the ketchup and mustard.

The best damn ear of corn you will ever eat. I am not really sure how they do it. And they have compost bins for the ears. My personal trainer inexplicably called me at this point in my day at the fair, asked me what I was eating, and congratulated me on how well I was doing so far. Glad she didn't call me on day one.

Sweet Martha's Cookies and All-You-Can-Drink Milk. This is a feat, considering you have to jog half way across the fairgrounds from the cookie stand to the milk booth while carrying a teetering pile of piping hot cookies. It is truly a tragedy to see how many cookies fall to the ground and are stomped on my humans and animals alike. Milk and cookies go really well together, it turns out.

Best deal of the day! You buy a pitcher of really crappy beer and get a basket of fries for free! A total steal at 18.75. Not joking.

This was a new one for me: Walleye cakes from this place called Giggles. I guess it was the best new food at the fair in 2002 and I was still all caught up with getting my cheese curds and seeing the butter heads. These babies have walleye, salmon, wild rice and panko flakes in them...ohhhh so delicious. Excellent while watching the lumberjack show.

Aaaand finally, Australian battered potatoes by moonlight. I only ate a few bites of these but are adorable because they come with an Australian flag in them, and are smothered in ranch dressing. When I tried them, I thought of when Aunt Selma tries smoking a cigar for the first time and said, "That's like smoking five cigarettes at once!" Well, think of french fries x5. And smothered in ranch dressing.

Two Takes on Pickles. (easy)

I love making pickles because when you feed them to your friends everyone is super-impressed and the general response is, "You MADE these?!" It feels great because it only takes, like, 15 minutes to make these and as with all meals containing mostly vinegar and sugar, they are delicious. So here it is ... Dill Pickles versus Asian Pickles, both recipes from Everyday Food Magazine. (Free Martha.)

Dill Pickles:
4-6 Cucumbers (the little Kirby ones are best), quartered lengthwise
1 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons coarse salt
1 teaspoon dill seed
2 garlic cloves, smashed

Put the quartered cukes in a pan that is big enough to lay them all flat and be able to cover them with liquid. I used a 9 x13 Pyrex pan. In a medium saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar, salt, dill seed, garlic, and 2 cups water. Bring to a boil and stir until salt and sugar are dissolved. Once they've dissolved, pour liquid over cukes, making sure the seed side of the spears is submerged, for better absorption.
Put that pan in the fridge for at least 2 hours, then transfer to Tupperware of some variety. Keep them in liquid until ready to serve. The flavor gets stronger the longer they stew. The recipe says good for 2 weeks, but I don't see what could go wrong with all that vinegar.

Take 2! Super Fun Happy Times Asian Pickles!!

This recipe starts the same as the dill pickles, with the quartered cuke spears in a Pyrex pan. THEN!

Cut 1-2 carrots in half lengthwise and then 1/2 inch diagonal slices.
In saucepan, combine:
1 cup rice vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons coarse salt
1 2-inch piece ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 garlic cloves, smashed
2 cups water

And then as above ... Bring these items to a boil, simmer and stir until sugar and salt are dissolved. Pour over cukes. Refrigerate for 2+ hours. The ginger flavor grows as they sit. Deee-lish!

Pesto (aka the taste of summer)

My dad makes the best pesto and I have tried to replicate it several times, to no avail. Today was no exception. I called Dad today and tried to get him to reveal his source, which he claims is The Silver Palate Cookbook. Here is the recipe he gave me:
2 cups basil ("You're going to need a lot")
4 medium garlic cloves ("Easy on the garlic though, that can get pretty strong")
1 cup nuts ("You can use any kind of nuts")
1 cup olive oil
1 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup Romano cheese

Combine basil, garlic, and nuts in food processor until well chopped. Add olive oil in a thin stream while food processor running. Add a liberal amount of fresh ground pepper. Add cheeses.

Easy! My mistake today was not thinking about the quantity of nuts. He may have been lying about that. Typically pine nuts are used, which I love. However, the last batch of pesto made by my dad he accidentally used some Macadamia nuts that Nora brought home from Tanzania. He thought they were peanuts. Incidentally, it was really freaking good pesto, not to mention extremely valuable. Since I had some Macadamias that Nora gave me as a gift a while back, I thought, why not? Fortunately my error was not so grave that it destroyed the valuable pesto--it turns out 1 cup of Macadamia nuts is enough to take over the flavor of the pesto. I added more basil and things seemed to have turned out OK. Good but not as good as my Dad's.

I could eat pesto on everything. Today I had it on really good rustic bread that had olives in it. I will probably eat it on some pasta for dinner. Yum, and yes, I have terrible garlic breath.

Salsa Shark

Ahh, summer. In addition to my CSA basket arriving every Friday, I love going to the St Paul Farmers' Market and loading up on veggies. Steve is really pumped about veggies, too. I am not sure he knows it yet. This week I bought a, how do you say, salsa kit? It was a cute little basket full of everything you need to make fresh salsa: tomatillos, jalapenos, onions, a green pepper and a tomato. All for 5 bucks!

I bought another little bunch of regular tomatoes because I like them in salsa. I had a few baby ones from the CSA, so I threw those in too. I did a little research on how I should be making fresh salsa and most recipes involved things like roasting, stewing, or other varieties of standing over a fiery stove, so I decided to make up my own recipe. Basically I wanted to use the food processor and the internet was not giving me the recipe I wanted.

Here's how it went down:
1. Quarter 5-6 tomatoes and pulse in the food processor a few times until the chunks are the size that you want them. Pour this stuff in a bowl and set aside. Think about how juicy you want your salsa because you will probably have to dispose of some of the tomato juice.

2. Chop the onions (probably 1 big one or 2 mediums) by hand and set aside.

3. Cut off the stems of the 1 green pepper and 2 jalapeno peppers. Clean the seeds and ribs out of the green pepper. I kept the seeds and ribs of the jalapenos for extra heat, which I anticipate will get stronger the longer the salsa sits. Yes.
Pulse those bad boys in the food processor to the size of your liking, paying particular attention to the size of the jalapenos. I ended up realizing that my jalapenos were still big enough to burn a hole in your face and then had to kind of pulverize more of the chunks than I had originally intended.
Dump peppers in bowl with onions.

4. Clean and quarter tomatillos. Again, pulse in food processor to chunk size of your liking. Mix in with peppers and onions.

5. Toss a handful of cilantro in processor with 2 garlic cloves. This one you can process to a paste. Add to peppers, onions, and tomatillos.

6. Revisit those tomatoes. Dispose of any unwanted juice (probably most of it--you will be adding salt, which will pull out more juices). Mix it all together, salt and pepper to taste.

Hooray! You made salsa! It is a good thing this makes a big batch, because I could eat this stuff for like, 2 hours straight.

Embroidery: An Apron for Amy

I embroidered this apron for my friend Amy for her birthday (I finished it only 3 months late). I used a plain old white dish towel and sewed a ribbon across the top as the tie (thanks to my mom for sewing machine help). Once again, iron-on patterns are from Sublime Stitching.

The campfire is my favorite. I used thread for the fire that changes colors as it goes, which worked out really nicely. The marshmallows look really yummy too.

Gibson approves.

Dill-er Potato Salad

Another CSA item that I have been loving is dill weed (tee hee). I have been putting sprigs of it in salads and eating it plain. I have big plans for next week's bunch already. But this week's dill weed award goes to potato salad. I adapted this one from a recipe from a television network that specializes in food. I forget what it is called.

Start with 3 lbs red potatoes. Leave the skin on and quarter them, boil until tender (about 25 minutes). Let cool to room temperature.


The dressing goes like this:

-1 cup Mayonaise (I used half regular and half low-fat)
-1 small onion (another CSA item)
-1/2 cup dill weed, chopped
-1 tablespoon vinegar
-1 tablespoon grainy dijon mustard (I used the last of the fancy french dijon we bought in Paris)
-2 tablespoons lemon juice
Mix these items together. Pour it over the potatoes and gently mix it all together (don't smash the potatoes!)

Refrigerate promptly. I don't want anyone getting food poisoning from potato salad that's been sitting out in the sun all day.






And here is a picture of the fabulous summer meal we had at Nell's new house, including the beets, delicious asian slaw by Nell and summer-approved BLTs by Dad:

Drop a Beet!

I bought into a CSA this summer, and have been picking up a basket full of homegrown goodies weekly. One of the veggies I never knew I liked before is beets. I was pretty unsure of what I should be doing with these ruby beauties, but my sister suggested a recipe with balsamic vinegar and sugar. I was able to round up this one:

Peel and quarter 7-9 beets
Combine in a pan (preferably a super cute heart-shaped Le Creuset) with
-1 1/2 cups water
-3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
-2 tablespoons butter

Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer uncovered for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Simmer down until most of the liquid is gone.
This stuff is good! And I've heard beets are pretty much the best veggie you can feed yourself.

But be careful! These things will stain anything they touch. And I have also heard that they turn your pee red. So watch out. Nell has a funny story about this.



Also, I am watching Purple Rain right now and I reaaaaally wish I could have been at First Ave when Prince was singing "Baby I'm A Star" in a pirate outfit. Awesome.