Pancake Fare

There is something deliciously indulgent about pancakes. First off, they are that top-heavy dose of carbohydrates and sweetness that accompany traditional American breakfasts. Second, early Saturday or Sunday mornings end up being those quiet reflective moments in the week when the sun streams through my kitchen window and I have the time to enjoy while slowly mixing the pancake batter and scooping it out onto a hot sizzling griddle pan.

This pancake recipe is adapted from La Tartine Gourmande: Recipes for an Inspired Life. I didn't quite follow it exactly: I swapped some flours for others, omitted the poppy seeds and added thin slices of ripened banana. So the final product is not something the author intended, but it was still very tasty, especially with the ghostly wisps of melted butter and a heavy-handed drizzle of maple syrup.

And I'm loving blood oranges lately. Their slightly bitter, surprisingly mellow sweetness has me smitten.

I just finished Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton, food writer and owner of Prune in New York. One excerpt of the book really resonated and I appreciated her putting into words this visceral feeling that has manifested from my struggle to enjoy the process of cooking but to also not constantly feel obligated or a chore to feed. For lack of giving the story away (and I won't, because this is an entertaining read) she's having this struggle while in the kitchen of her in-law's family's home in Puglia, Italy. "I want to do the cooking. It is what grounds me, gives me pleasure, and is the best way for me to communicate with the Italian-speaking family and to make a contribution. But it can also make me feel like the hired help." Do you ever feel the push and pull between culinary passion vs. the monotonous chore that it can be?

Question of the Day: What's your favorite breakfast food?

PS - Tim and I are STILL in the running as GRAND FINALISTS in the Green Wedding Giveaway Contest and we could use your votes! Please vote for Jess and Tim at www.greenweddinggiveaway.com!

I Don't Usually Bake, But When I Do, I prefer...

I returned from the grocery store this afternoon only to have been bit by the baking bug. You know that one? The one that makes you reach for the flour, sugar and stand mixer while listening to your favorite pandora station.

The quote from The Most Interesting Man in the World kept running through my head while I was baking. See, I don't bake that often. I've resided to the fact that when I do bake, I absolutely have to follow the recipe. There's been too many batches of doctored chocolate chip cookies that tasted like chalk, cakes that fell apart as they were taken out of the oven for lack of an essential ingredient, and brownies that could pass for hockey pucks. So when I do bake, I prefer using recipes that I know will work and need to follow exactly.

Enter this cookbook. For Valentine's Day I received Beatrice Peltre's new cookbook entitled "La Tartine Gourmande: Recipes for an Inspired Life."

(source)

I've been following her blog for years now and couldn't wait to see her cookbook. What I love is the unusual ingredients that appear in her traditional French dishes. And her food photography is absolutely inspiring. Of course, the two recipes I chose to bake today are not really traditional French dishes at all. In fact, they are probably the least traditional of all in the book (cookies? cranberry cake? What's wrong with me. Seriously, I get a cookbook written by a French woman and make the first cookie recipe I find. Ack.)

Moving on. Today's adventure was the first time I made an upside down cake. It was also the first time I have baked with flour other than wheat. Her recipes focus on using a variety of flours. Today I used millet flour, brown rice flour, and almond meal. You can imagine that my lack of baking success has always led me away from the upside down cake. Anything that requires the baker to invert the dish is fraught with disaster in my house. So I followed the recipe exactly (minus the saffron, which I did not have on hand and they do not sell at my local grocer). I'm so proud of it's upside down-ness.

Riding the upside down cake train, I tried the chocolate tahini cookies next. I never would have thought to put tahini in my cookies, but it works! These are delicious. I almost followed the recipe exactly, except for the addition of chopped golden raisins and toasted pecans. Delightful.

I'm excited to try some of the soups, tartines, the watercress and orange salad, and the buttermilk-lemon-quinoa pancakes!

I would highly recommend this cookbook; not only for the recipes, but also for the story it tells and the striking photography done by Beatrice herself.

10 Easy Green Ideas Everyone Can Do

In case you haven't heard, Tim and I were selected as the Grand Finalists in the Clay Hill Farm Green Wedding Giveaway Contest (VOTE for us HERE)!

The Clay Hill Farm contest rules indicated that we had to submit an essay describing our shade of green. If you watch our video, you'll quickly understand that our shade of green has to do with food + community. Let me disclose that we are not 100% green in any way. I'm not even sure what that would look like (perhaps very Thoreau-esque) but that there are shades and tones of being environmentally responsible. We attempt to do our part every day, but we know there is always more we can do.

We made a video of the 10 ways that we try to be environmentally responsible each day.

10 Ways We Incorporate Green (from video)

1. Turn off the water while you brush teeth. Can save 4-5 gallons per brushing session!
2. Wash clothes in cold water and save $249 in electrical costs each year.
3. Let clothes air-dry instead of using the dryer.
4. Drink tap water in reusable bottles and make your own seltzer.
5. Exercise outside!
6. Change your bill preferences to receive paperless statements.
7. Take the Meatless Monday challenge!
8. Use an e-reader. Here's an interesting infographic about whether e-readers or paper books are more eco-conscious.
9. We run our errands on foot.
10. Use a programmable thermostat and set it to go down during the night and when no one's home.

Question of the Day: What's one thing you do already that's environmentally responsible?

The Split Pea Soup Mistake

The fact that it has been fair and mild and dry in New England warrants jumping for joy. I cannot remember a winter like this before. The pessimist in all of us yankees in the Northeast is saying that we'll get walloped in March. So be it. For now I'm enjoying morning jogs without the peril of icy sidewalks and not having to shovel the stairs.

But it hasn't been balmy by any means, and my yearning for a warm, hearty, rib-sticking soup still exists. I haven't eaten a tomato in months, and fresh and light green salads exist only in memory.

So here comes Elizabeth's mom's recipe for split pea soup. I really couldn't recall if I'd ever eaten split pea soup before. I made the mistake of assuming that split pea soup was one of those things that everyone loved to hate, until I was telling a couple friends and family members that I made it and each of them said they loved split pea soup and could I save them some.

This recipe for split pea soup is so easy and makes enough for you, your family, your entire block of neighbors and all of the coworkers in your building. The only changes I made were to omit the parsnips (didn't have any), add kale (big surprise here), and add diced leftover turkey bacon. This no longer makes it vegan but it did add a nice dimension of flavor. 

Split pea soup is one of those foods that is misunderstood. Ugly on the outside but inside, has a heart-warming and belly-filling effect.

Question of the Day: Do you like split pea soup?

Also, please vote for Jess & Tim in the Clay Hill Farm Green Wedding Giveaway! www.greenweddinggiveaway.com. If you leave a comment on this post by clicking here, you'll be entered in a drawing to crash our wedding and win a CSA share for 2012!

Green Wedding Giveaway: Feb 5 Update

Hey everyone! We wanted to share where we're at with the contest. Enjoy!

VOTE JESS & TIM at www.greenweddinggiveaway.com and let us know that you did by following this link and leaving a comment so we can let you come crash our wedding: GIVEAWAY: #CRASHOURGREENWEDDING

Thanks!

GIVEAWAY: #CRASH OUR GREEN WEDDING

Okay people. This is big.

And when I say big, I mean I've-never-hoped-to-win-something-so-much-in-my-life BIG. We are Grand Finalists in the 2012 Clay Hill Farm Green Wedding Giveaway!

But let's review first: Tim and I were engaged last November and have started planning our wedding. As we researched wedding venues, florists, invitations, gowns, locations, dates, color schemes, attire and on and on, what we came the conclusion of quickly were two things: 1) weddings are expensive and 2) weddings are wasteful.

After receiving the Everything Green Wedding Book for Christmas, we realized that we needed to take steps to be as eco-conscious with this wedding as possible. The other roadblock that we kept running into was the issue of sub-par wedding food choices. Conjured to mind is a plate of anemic chicken smothered in a brown mystery sauce aside some wilted green beans the shape of sad faces and a scoop of gummy potatoes that taste like the inside of a steam table. No wonder people drink wildly at weddings.

For us, we decided that our priority for this wedding would be the food. When you are tied to a budget with a magic number that, when exceeded, will send your credit score plummeting, we decided that we had to make concessions on some of the wedding to-do list items. But food was one we could not see suffer.

Slightly deflated as the idea of my childhood image of my wedding slowly fading to black, I decided to do some research on the web. Was there any place that offered green weddings? How about free weddings? Any place that made nature and food and community the priority to their couples? Any way I could save some dough on this big ol' shindig?

And then I found it.

The Clay Hill Farm Green Wedding Giveaway

A wedding on a wildlife preserve and bird sanctuary? A farm with a restaurant that took local food seriously? Within driving distance to Maine? FREE?!?

This contest invites couples to submit an entry that showcases their shade of green: "stories of real people making a difference in the world and an every day commitment to the Earth and to each other."

Clay Hill Farm is giving away an all-inclusive summer Maine wedding to two lucky people. Everything from ceremony, reception, photography, videography, florals, cake, accommodations, transportation, formalwear, music, invitations, hair and makeup and more. But best of all? The staff at Clay Hill Farm will work with the grand prize winner to design a menu that works just for them.  I'm envisioning an all-Maine local menu featuring summer's peak harvest, sustainable fish, local beef (and tofu!)... really endless possibilities.

We're really hoping those two lucky people are us. Can you guess what our shade of green was?

Kale green! Tim coined that hue of green, and I kind of like it. We do eat a lot of kale, so the color was appropriate.

We've submitted our video for the world to see. Yes, it's cheesy and we hold a bouquet of kale at the end like fools, but we hope our message of our commitment to each other and the Earth is clear.

In order for us to have any chance of winning, we are asking for your votes from now until mid-March.

So here it goes: The #CRASH OUR GREEN WEDDING GIVEAWAY

There are two ways to vote:

• Visit www.greenweddinggiveaway.com and vote for Jess & Tim's video.
• You can vote through a mobile app! Download the Cardagin app for your smartphone and vote away!

And as a thanks for your time and vote, we have a special giveaway we'd like to share with you.

If Tim and I end up winning the 2012 Clay Hill Farm Green Wedding Giveaway Grand Prize (read green wedding giveaway contest rules here), we'd like to offer anyone who votes for us two things to thank you with:

• An invitation for you and a guest to attend our wedding. Yep, that's right. You'll be CRASHING OUR WEDDING.
• A one-year subscription to a CSA farm share of your choosing (up to $350, but you choose which farmer and where). We'd like to give one lucky winner a jumpstart on the 2012 growing and eating season of local food, and encourage a green shade of eating in someone else's life!

Here's how to enter for your chance to be eligible for this blog contest. And it all hinges on the fact that we win, so vote early and vote often!

1. Go to www.greenweddinggiveaway.com and vote for Jess & Tim's video. Leave a comment on this post with "I VOTED!" and your FIRST AND LAST name so we know who to talk to when you win. We'd also love you to share one thing that you do that shows your commitment to the Earth, but totally optional if you're the shy type.
2. For an EXTRA ENTRY, tweet out "Vote for Jess & Tim in @ClayHillFarm's #green #wedding #giveaway www.greenweddinggiveaway.com #crashourgreenwedding. Leave a comment on this post with "I TWEETED!" and your name and twitter handle.
3. For a THIRD EXTRA ENTRY, share on your Facebook page "Vote for Jess & Tim in Clay Hill Farm's Green Wedding Giveaway! They'll let one winner crash their wedding!". Leave a comment on this post with "I FACEBOOKED IT!" and your name.

This opportunity allows us to truly have the wedding of our dreams, and we thank all of you who are helping us realize our dream!

Love, Jess and Tim

DISCLAIMER: This prize of 1) an invitation to crash our wedding and 2) a CSA subscription that we'll give out if we win the 2012 Clay Hill Farm Green Wedding Giveaway Grand Prize is in no way affiliated with Clay Hill Farm or the Green Wedding Giveaway. Tim and I decided we wanted to nudge you with a little of our shade of green. This prize package is solely our idea and is not being sponsored or endorsed by Clay Hill Farm. We are paying for it and are doing so as our contribution to encourage a greener shade of eating in someone else's life.

CRASH OUR GREEN WEDDING GIVEAWAY CONTEST RULES: No purchase necessary, and while we encourage you to vote on www.greenweddinggiveaway.com it is not required (and we wouldn't know anyway). The blog contest is intended for one winner only and s/he will receive an invitation to our wedding for him/her and one guest if we win the Grand Prize for a wedding on July 8, 2012. Travel and any other expenses are not included. The winner will also receive a 2012 CSA farm share of the winner's choice, up to $350.00, paid for by the hosts of this blog contest. Winner must inform the hosts of this contest within 30 days of being notified with the name of the farm, location and contact information. After 30 days the offer is null and void. The contest will close March 3, 2012 at 11:59pm EST. Once Clay Hill Farm announces the winner (presumably March 4), the blog contest hosts will choose a winner via random number generator within 7 days of the Clay Hill Farm Grand Prize announcement and will be posted on this blog. The winner will have 5 days to respond to contest host confirming their name and providing full name, email address, and mailing address. All entries must be identifiable and able to confirm, i.e. including first and last name, link to your blogger profile, inclusion of email address, etc. Spam comments will be deleted. If after 5 days the winner has not contacted the blog contest hosts the prizes will be forfeited and another winner will be chosen. The blog contest host is not responsible for contacting the winner. S/he must check on this blog on or around the date of March 4-11 for contest results. This contest is contingent upon Jessica Maillet and Timothy Caouette winning the Grand Prize 2012 Green Wedding Giveaway from Clay Hill Farm.