Summer in Vermont

We’re back on the east coast now, Dylan is in CT visiting his parents while I am in Dorset, VT in the attic room of my mother’s house. This is where Dylan and I will be calling home for the next few months before we head off to Portland, ME, our final destination. Things could not be more different from the last time I last posted from our cabin in Hawaii where my friend baby gecko nipped at the mosquitoes buzzing around my computer. It has been a strange two weeks, to say the least. We left Hawaii with only one day left in May and headed for Seattle where we visited as many friends and bars as we possibly could, walked all over Fremont-Ballard and tried desperately to hang onto our Hawaiian calm as we faced big city life for the first time in a long time. It was great to see everyone and we had a wonderful time, but being back around so many cars, buildings, people, and the daily stress and grime of city life left us feeling grateful that we decided to get away from it all. City living just isn’t for us, and I am OK with that.

We walked into a pretty nice set up, my mom has a knack for blending function and art, her gardens are always so pretty.

While Dylan is taking a week to spend time with his family and work on some yard projects for his mom, I am here trying to unpack, settle in, and make our space at my mom’s house feel like home for a little while. Although we landed in VT on Thursday, I am only now (Monday) getting to work after taking a few days to catch up with family, watch my sister graduate high school (wahoo Anna!), and visit with my brother Willy and his awesome girlfriend Tessa who were also in town from California. We haven’t done much cooking since we’ve been here but within an hour of our arrival a few days ago, Dylan was out in the garden planting the tomato seedlings my mom raised while we were away. We are here in Vermont for the summer to continue our hiatus from traditional employment to practice eating off the land, working on our self-selected projects, and developing a healthier (simpler) lifestyle together.

Check out all the spinach and radishes to the left of the tomato bed, yum!

Leaving Seattle was the first step, we freed ourselves from many material constraints and got out of the city to reconnect with our friends and family back east. In Hawaii we learned the importance of a deeper connection to nature and the outdoors while we developed farming/homesteading skills. Now here we are in Vermont to continue to make progress on our goals and prepare for our future in Maine. Who knows exactly what we’ll learn and how our time here will shape us, but we are excited and ready to find out. Although we’ve been here less than a week, I think we are off to a great start, especially where food is concerned. I know I said we haven’t done much cooking yet, but we have begun our summer challenge of feeding ourselves without the assistance of a traditional grocery store, hence all the tomatoes we planted.

We made it home just in time to see the irises and peonies

My mom has always been an avid hobby gardener and I remember working with her in the garden when I was a kid, planting the carrots, shelling fresh peas for dinner, and spraying down the plants with the hose on hot summer days. This year, we all decided to see if we could make the garden more than just a hobby and use it as our primary source of nourishment, with only the local farmers markets and natural food stores to supplement what we grow. This means not only eating in a more self-sufficient manner, but we’ll need to be making all those other items that are typically bought at the supermarket, such as cleaning supplies, body care products, etc which we’ll attempt to make ourselves as well as try out different natural versions when we can find them. Luckily, my mom, my sister and I are pretty crafty and have a strong interest in DIY because otherwise this challenge would feel more overwhelming than exciting. Dylan and I have been interested in cultivating a more self-sufficient lifestyle basically since we moved in together five years ago and have slowly been building up our skills and developing our habits in this area but we are using this year to fully walk the walk we’ve been talking about all this time.

My sister is heading off to Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, VT, a small alternative school focused on agriculture, ecology, outdoor education, and sustainability, so she’s psyched to have our support in developing the habits that will help her find success and happiness in her future. So to kick off the summer together, the three of us Berger women went to the farmers market to load up on goodies for the week while Dylan was away. I was quite pleasantly surprised by the bounty we found at this rapidly growing market that included Filthy Farmgirl soap, all natural bug spray, delicious fresh bread, dirt cheap free-range chicken eggs (a dozen jumbo eggs for only $3!), kale, potatoes, herb starts, high quality local and sustainably raised pork and beef products, granola, and so much more. We walked away with a great collection of goodies to complement the massive amounts of spinach, mixed lettuces, and radishes that we harvested earlier from the garden. 

I can't wait to experiment with homemade apple cider from the apple trees in our backyard!

Before heading up to visit family we set out a fantastic lunch platter with all of our bounty, toasting with fresh apple cider to a summer of family, fresh food, and fun. After a week of traveling and eating who knows what at who remembers where, this plate of entirely VT-made food was exactly what the doctor ordered. I can’t wait to see what else we come up with as the growing season progresses and I promise to document our culinary (and other) adventures with lots of pictures. I’d show you the delicious chocolate rhubarb cake my mom made to welcome everyone home but like yesterday’s lunch platter, by the time I remembered there were only crumbs left to pose... stay tuned for stories of soap-making, beer brewing, bread baking, homemade crackers and pop-tarts, and Dylan’s transformation of my mother’s kitchen!

Catching Up

I have been slacking a bit keeping you all updated on our adventures here, and for that, I apologize. I have been so consumed with curriculum development and working on my other blog, Searching for Sparks, that I've neglected this one. So here are a few random photos to fill you in, I hope you enjoy!

Dylan made eggplant parm, it was beautiful. Recently, Dylan has had the opportunity to make food as part of his work-trade to help stock the farm freezer. In addition to the parm, he jarred a few batches of radish relish with the last of the crop along with some beet and pepper pickles.

I went to an essential oils workshop at the most beautiful farm overlooking the ocean and Kealakekua Bay. I finally learned a bit about the many uses of essential oils, which ones are good for what, and when/where their use is most effective. I have been curious about this stuff for a while so it was great to listen to someone who is knowledgeable and well practiced with the use of oils for health purposes. Once we lift ourselves from self-imposed financial hibernation I am investing in these five oils from DoTerra. This stuff is super amazing, I would definitely recommend doing a little research about what oils can do.

Check out the sunset we caught after trying out a perfect blend of peppermint and orange oils...

The Plumeria trees came into bloom and they are so beautiful and smell amazing, apparently their sap is pretty poisonus though and can make you go blind? I'm not quite sure of the details. I still love them though, and I am glad I they are part of my everyday life, for the next week anyway...

Recently, I discovered a flower that smells like a chocolate-vanilla twisted soft-serve. I have made a point to have a vase of of them on the table at all times. I wish they were edible, they smell so good.

I made friends with a baby gecko who enjoys eating the mosquitoes that keep trying to bite me as I work at my computer. I love the geckos, they are so fun to watch and they keep the bug population down. I wish I could bring one back to Vermont with us but alas, they would not enjoy the cold.

A lizard-gecko showdown happened on the fence enclosing our outdoor shower and I was lucky enough to watch the drama unfold. This particular gecko is a good friend of ours named Scar-face gecko because of a little scar above his eye. When Dylan and Daniel were putting up the new roof on the cabin after our last one ripped during a particularly windy evening, Scar-face gecko got spooked when Dylan lay the roofing down next to him and he shed his tail and ran. That's what geckos do when they fear for their lives, leave their tails wiggling behind them and run away to start growing their new one. It takes at least a month for the tail to fully grow back and we have dubbed them "stumpy" when they are in the process of regeneration. Geckos are seriously cool little reptiles.

I have successfully gotten myself in the habit of making a weekly batch of sandwich wraps. I have always wanted to incorporate regular bread-making into my routine but have always had excuses for not doing it. All it took was a little creativity and motivation and even without the use of an oven I managed to organically sneak these bread-like sandwich features into our lives. This batch helped us get rid of a jar of arugula pesto that was a bit too bitter on it's own but made for perfect, tasty wraps.

The Chinese cabbages all reached their peak at the very same moment, which led to a massive production of Kimchi, 3 gallons in total. We have been eating this fermented, and super-healthy condiment with fried rice, scrambled eggs, and our Hawaiian twist on our favorite Asian soup, Pho.

All that Kimchi led us to select Bibimbap as the theme for one of our recent and delicious Wednesday farm potluck dinner. We filled our plates and bellies with a selection of goodies including, fried farm eggs, Kimchi, Bulgogi style beef strips, leek coleslaw (Dylan's creation), brown rice, bean sprouts, matchstick carrots, sauteed shitakes, zucchini strips, and chili-soy date sauce (also Dylan's creation, and so, so good). It was so savory, with a perfect of sweet tanginess.

We've been trying to get ourselves to the beach as much as possible in our final days here and a week or two ago we were introduced to a great spot for diving into the ocean. The water is perfect and we had so much fun diving off the rocks into the enclosed pool of water tucked away among the lava rock ledges. I will never get over the captivatingly blue color of the ocean here...

This is the backdrop we enjoyed as we took turns jumping and diving off the rocks with the local kids until the sun dropped too low to keep swimming, showering us with a beautiful sunset to make peace:

Hawaii is such a beautiful place. I still can't believe this is the place we've been calling "home" these past few months. It will be hard to say goodbye to this place next week. At the same time though, it's really exciting to think that in just a week we will get to hug so many friends and family again and that makes leaving a whole lot easier... stay tuned for photos and stories of our trip to see Volcano National Park which I plan on posting as soon as I narrow it down to the best pictures of the bunch!

Desparately Seeking Sandwiches

“There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound.” 

~Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Our inspiration

Yesterday I was browsing Pinterest, as I often do, and I stumbled upon a beautiful egg salad and avocado wrap. It looked so tasty and comforting and sent me tumbling down the rabbit hole of sandwiches, one of my most favorite kinds of food. Since we arrived in Hawaii, we have had exactly one sandwich each, turkey pesto back when Island Naturals had a turkey sale the day after we made pesto. As I showed Dylan picture after picture of melty, greasy grilled cheese sandwiches, BLTs loaded with bacon and added avocado, and cranberry chicken salad sandwiches, we both found ourselves salivating and dreaming of cramming stuff between slices of bread. Dylan begged me to stop teasing him with pictures of tasty treats that we won’t be able to make for another two months at least.

When we found ourselves without easy (and affordable) access to basic things like fresh baked bread, healthy farm-raised local meats, and an excess of condiments, sandwiches end up being edged out of the weekly menu. Don’t get me wrong, I’m far from complaining about the food we’ve been eating here, no need to feel sorry for us or anything, but Dylan and I have a passionate love of sandwiches and the lack of good ones in Seattle left us craving sandwiches like no other. We sought out mouthwateringly savory Italian grinders while visiting Libby and Mike in Brooklyn in January, followed by tangy Ruebens at Rein’s Deli in Vernon, CT with his parents, and then my childhood favorite veggies and humus on a works bagel at Bagel Works when we were visiting my family in Vermont. We got our hands on as many sandwiches as we could in the month between Seattle and Hawaii in hopes that it would tide us over until our return. Of course it did not.

Dylan rolls out the dough for wraps

Until yesterday, we had managed to survive just fine without our hearts and stomachs yearning for a loaded sandwich. That turkey pesto beauty on farmer’s market fresh sourdough, along with Dylan’s epic kimchi burger and the veggie burgers that we made the other week (which we made again Sunday), and all the amazing food here served as adequate distraction from the lack of sandwiches in our lives. But then Pinterest had to interfere and remind us of our undying, unsatisfied love for sandwiches. Save for the one day we had access to Heather and Paul’s kitchen while they were out of town, we have been without an oven, meaning no bread baking for us. We do have a stovetop however, and we’ve put it to good use making pancakes, tortillas, English muffins, and various other bread-like items, but we’ve yet to make anything that would yield sandwiches (Dylan has a thing against English muffins with anything but butter and jam, I think he’s crazy but whatever, I love the guy anyway).

Today, everything changed. Back when we first started making tortillas, I kept saying that I wanted to try making wraps, but we never had anything to put in them so we didn’t bother. Then we made Mushu pancakes for a Chinese food themed farm potluck and again I pestered Dylan about making wraps. He hadn’t been in the mood, as bread making does require a bit of time and effort, until today when the reality set in that the egg salad and avocado wrap presented the perfect cure for our cravings. This sandwich is something we could actually make without needing anything more than what we already had on hand. We woke up already thinking about our sandwich-filled future, drooling and eager to start the day.

What a pro, huh?

After we finished up our farm work Dylan threw the simple dough together, just flour water and salt. I peeled the eggs we had hard-boiled earlier, just a few minutes after collecting them from the chicken coops. After the dough had a chance to rest for a while, he divided it into small rounds about the size of a golf ball and rolled them out using a Kombucha bottle since we don’t have a rolling pin. I headed out to the garden to collect some garlic greens for the salad and arugula to fill out the sandwiches. When I came back, also with a banana pepper that was begging to be picked, Dylan was tossing a thin round of dough like it was destined to become pizza while another one toasted up on the griddle. I forgot how much fun it is to watch Dylan throw dough. He is a true professional, making it look like the easiest thing in the world. I used to love going down to Ballard Pizza Co. to watch him work and sip on a cold pint of Spire Cider and chat with Dan and Brian. 

A few of the finished products

Anyway, while Dylan worked his magic transforming the doughy rounds into fresh, beautiful, handmade wraps right before my eyes, I set to work getting the salad ready. We didn’t have any mayonnaise and so I substituted some sour cream that we had left over from last night’s chili (thanks for the recommendation Libby!), which we brought to game night up at the Pole house with the rest of the farm families. Luckily, I had convinced Dylan to pick up some mustard last week, an essential ingredient in my egg salad recipe to add tang and cut down on the amount of mayo needed to keep the mixture moist. Because Dylan brought home mustard powder assuring me that it was cheaper and lacked all the weird chemical-sounding ingredients of the other mustards they had, I needed to add in some extra liquid and find a way to give this salad the tang it was lacking from all the substitutions. A tablespoon or three of white vinegar did just the trick.

The green stuff in the mix is chopped pepper for some crunch

I continued to mix the mustard and chopped garlic greens and banana pepper into the mashed hard-boiled eggs along with some salt and black pepper, while Dylan finished up the wraps, covering the steaming finished ones with a clean towel so they wouldn’t dry out. They needed a few minutes to cool so Dylan poured himself a club soda and cut up one of the limes we got for 25 cents a piece at the market this weekend to flavor it with. Six-packs of club soda have been on sale this week for $3.50 and so we stocked up on what we are considering a “luxury item” while we’re in financial hibernation. It’s amazing what you come to view as special when you’re trying to get by on as little money as possible. If you had asked me a few months ago when we were back in Seattle if I ever thought I could comfortably live off of so little, I’d have surely said no. But after almost two months of farm life, it hardly feels like a chore to stay within our budget and it certainly hasn’t lessened our quality of life in the least. Living with a chef though certainly makes eating at home every night just as appealing as going out to all the restaurants we used to frequent in Seattle.

It's not everyone's cup of tea but I love egg salad

While Dylan retreated into our cabin to have a sit, I made up our sandwiches. Dylan might be the chef in our little family but sandwiches are my territory. Sandwiches are about the only culinary task that I excel in but I take great pride in my abilities and so Dylan happily hands over this duty. I love being able to make food for him, since it happens so infrequently at dinnertime. I tend to be in charge of breakfast sometimes too, and I usually make us salads and snacks, but sandwiches are where I really shine. So Dylan relaxed with his soda and I scooped the egg salad onto the open wrap, carefully added a layer of sliced avocado sprinkled with salt and drizzled in our homemade hot sauce, put down a bed of shredded arugula and rolled up three dazzling wraps. Poor Dylan has been feeling under the weather lately and still worked out in the hot sun all morning and then went back out for another hour or two of planting starts and feeding the chickens, so he got an extra wrap. Plus he’s a guy and very hungry.

So how did they turn out? To say that they hit the spot doesn’t quite express how satisfying these soft little sandwiches actually were. This was my first time using the eggs from our chickens to make egg salad and despite all the substitutions these eggs once again reminded me of their superiority over any store-bought eggs I’ve ever eaten. Perhaps it’s because we are the ones feeding and overseeing the diet of these chickens, but I have never had eggs this delicious, not even the ones we used to get for 7$ a carton at the Ballard Farmer’s Market. The yolks are bright orange, creamy, and bursting with flavor and richness. It will be very difficult to go back to store-bought eggs after this, let’s hope I can find a farm near my mom’s house in southern VT this summer where we can get all of our egg needs met. As for Dylan’s flour wraps, they were thin, soft, chewy perfection, with just a touch of grilled goodness. Dylan might make fun of me often for my Pinterest addiction, and he might not be the only one, but this time even he will tell you he is thankful for it, the sandwiches were that good. 

ahh... delicious sandwiches at last

Pot O' Poi

Being that I am equal parts English, Polish, German, and Italian, I thought it would be best to allow the Irishman tell the tale of our Poi-filled St. Patty's day. We may be far from the Emerald Isle but we still managed to get our hands on a few bottles of Guinness and Dylan was more than happy to take on this post...

It was St. Patrick’s Day this weekend, and for once I was not awash in a sea of red-faced Caucasians. Sure there are some here, but they are mostly retirees with sunburns. Ireland is the only nation in the world to have a lower population than it did 200 years ago, we all left when the potatoes went bad so I am certain that there is a McHatley’s pub somewhere on the island. It’s harder to imagine the dark paneling and high windows, the old men at the bar’s corners drinking steadily and quietly. More likely it is open to the air, fresh and sunny, and there are two men at the bar with Bushmills talking about the breaks on the North shore. Even an Irish bar, a seemingly universal constant, must be turned Hawai’ian.

This is the taro root, only slightly improved by a washing

That’s OK. I’m all about diversity. I’m sure they don’t get it exactly right in China either. I don’t miss the crowds on cold evenings in March, or the marketers’ attempts to make us all look like leprechaun billboards. Green beer is a terrible idea and the reckless stupidity of amateur drinkers is enough to make me question us as a species. I don’t miss many of the trapping of this commercialized holiday, but there is one thing that I long for deeply this time of year—corned beef and cabbage.

The things that we do not have are often what we want the most. I’m sure I am stepping on some self-help guru’s toes by spouting this simple cliché, but it is obviously true. St. Patrick’s day was officially recognized as a Christian feast day in the early seventeenth century, to commemorate the death of Saint Patrick, the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, and more broadly as a celebration of Irish culture and heritage. I have never heard someone at a bar on St. Patrick’s Day toasting to the downfall of the druids or seen a drunk college student trying to explain the holy trinity to some pagans by waving a glow-in-the-dark shamrock. Rest assured these are both activities that I will try next year. So, like many American holidays, we have stripped St. Patrick’s Day of its historical connotations to make it palatable and appealing. It wasn’t always a day of booze and drunk sincerity… or maybe it was.

It’s March in Ireland in the early 1800’s. It is still cold and it seems as through you have been damp since September. Maybe you live in the country; the sun is struggling and failing to break through the clouds, you smell like 6 months of peat smoke and sheep shit and you are trapped inside with way too many people on those long nights. Maybe you live in the city; there is a dense haze of coal smoke, you work in a factory that is trying its best to maim you and after work you get to go home to big meal of tea and old bread. Whatever your locale there is one condition that makes it all seem like a cruel joke; it’s Lent. That’s right, you can’t drink alcohol or eat meat. All of a sudden March 17^th comes around and the whiskey is back and there is corned beef everywhere and maybe the sun comes out a bit and you feel like you are coming out of hibernation.

Kind of pretty like beets; the skin gets peeled off after boiling

Strict religious dictums don’t have much sway in mainstream America anymore, but a little revelry after a long winter is something we can all cozy up to. I know what you are saying, “Shut up, you’re in the tropics, you don’t get to talk about the brutality of a North Eastern winter.” Fair enough. There will not be any beach pictures in this post. In fact, I will tell you that you are the lucky ones this time, your reward for winter is whiskey, stout and corned beef and cabbage. I only eat it once a year, but it is one of my favorite dishes, and the rarity is what makes it so special. Since the real stuff isn’t an option, I decided I would try my best to recreate it with whatever we had at hand. Suffice it to say, the tropics is not the land of meat and potatoes.

I’ve developed a process for converting recipes to Hawai’ian. Break all the component parts down as far as you need to go until you get to a point where you can substitute something you have on hand for whatever is missing. It is not an exact science, and often leaves big gaps, but I like a challenge and living here I try not to require ingredients that are too far flung. Right away, corned beef is out. It is a sad thing, and really how can I in good conscience cut out the main attraction? Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. Besides, there are some other things wrapped up in the dish that I can work with. I found a cabbage at the farmer’s market, real green boring cabbage. Perfect. Usually you have some other vegetables, often carrots. Easy, I have plenty of vegetables to work with. I make a culinary leap that would offend most purists and say that eggplant is kind of like corned beef. At the very least it is chewy.

Boiled taro blended into poi

So cabbage and eggplant and enough salt to compensate. Great. Next we need a starch. It is hard to compete with good mashed potatoes, but we dug up some taro last week and it was begging to be used. For those of you unfamiliar with taro, it is a tuber in the same family as peace lilies and skunk cabbage. Not the most appetizing of kin, and with good reason. Taro has an abundance calcium oxilate crystals, which look like glass daggers under the microscope. It is inedible raw and will rip up your throat and stomach if you try. If that wasn’t enough, calcium oxilate contributes to kidney stones. All this makes you wonder who the first brave souls were who tried this ugly root vegetable and liked it so much that, here in Hawai’i at least, it is a staple food. Traditionally, the Hawai’ians believe that the taro plant is the original ancestor of their people, and so eating it is a sacred act. Why anyone would consider an inedible tuber to be their spiritual forefather is an issue I will ignore out of cultural sensitivity.

 So I made poi. They used to make poi by boiling by boiling taro until it was soft and then pounding it out in a special dish with a special blunt instrument. I continued the boiling tradition, but traded the blender for brute force. Add a little water and you get a wonderful grey mush. Most cultures have their proteins gruels, grits, polenta, oatmeal, and some are certainly better than others. Poi is bland to the point of tasteless, apparently is custom to let people put their own spices in it so I didn’t add anything to it. Really it is just meant to be eaten with other dishes, so I can’t fault it too much. Anything tastes good with BBQ.

It was St. Patrick’s day in Hawai’i. We were sweating and eating sautéed cabbage and eggplant with generous spoonfuls of poi. You were wearing a wool sweater and eating corned beef and cabbage, braised in its own juices, with huge chunks of potatoes and carrots. You win this time mainland.

The Real Garden Burger

This week we brought some new life to the main garden. A bunch of the brassicas were taken over by aphids so we harvested and pulled all the broccoli and cauliflower plants and bunch of the kale so we could replenish the soil with nutrients. Because so many of the same family of veggies had been planted in the same beds they attracted too many of the same kinds of bugs. All the plants began to suffer save for a few very strong kale plants which we kept. So once all the old plants were ripped out we did a bit of soil repair. About two weeks ago we all got together and planted a bunch of starts, so once the soil was ready we added them to the ground along with some radishes and carrots which needed to be planted directly in the beds.

In a few short weeks we will have tons of delicious new veggies, and because we planted them in alternating bunches we can hopefully avoid the same infestation problem. Anyway, while this means new foods to cook with in the future (I am especially looking forward to the radishes which only have a three week growing period), this means that we will have a much more limited selection of produce to work with until the new plants come in. Since we rely on the garden for the majority of our food each week, this means we are going to have to get creative with what we do have. Luckily, our hosts provide us with a bunch of bulk staple ingredients, such as brown rice, oils and vinegars, salt and pepper, red lentils, dried black and red beans, flour, and some canned tomatoes and tuna, along with a few other items.

Getting creative with food is a favorite activity of ours so naturally we welcomed the challenge. Like I so often do, I immediately turned to my Pinterest food board for ideas and stumbled upon a recipe for brown rice and black bean burgers. We have both of these things! I shouted, thrilled at the idea of anything burger-like, and tapped Dylan repeatedly on the arm until he turned to check out the recipe. After being with me for close to six years now, Dylan has become a fan of veggie burgers and right away he was on board with the recipe. We both agreed that this would make quite the nice addition to our weekly menu.

Dylan works the ingredients into a dough

From there we let our imaginations run wild at the thought of burgers and began to piece together Saturday’s adventure in the kitchen. With so many tomatillos on hand from the recent harvest (those also got torn out and replaced this week), we decided that we could turn some of them into ketchup to go with our burgers. Mayo goes great with veggie burgers too, and when we decided we wanted to treat ourselves Dylan shocked me by offering to make it since we have an unlimited supply of farm fresh eggs and olive oil from our hosts. Normally Dylan hates making emulsions, but since we’re trying not to spend any money and attempting to make everything from scratch with what we have, even he had a hard time justifying spending the almost 5$ it would cost us to buy a jar of the stuff.

We don’t have a working oven, just a two burner propane range until the oven gets repaired, so we had decided that we would buy the hamburger buns. Then our hosts decided to head out of town for the weekend and offered up their beautiful kitchen while they were away. We took full advantage. Dylan was so excited to test out some of the recipes we have been reading about in The River Cottage Bread Handbook and finally get some baking in. The stars were aligned this weekend we spent a marvelous day in the kitchen making the best veggie burger dinner we’ve had in a long time. Dylan got right to work when we returned from picking up some extra flour, yeast, and onions from the store. He started making English Muffin dough for Sunday morning (and the rest of the week’s) breakfast, along with another batch of dough for hamburger buns. Both doughs, the first simply water, salt, yeast, and flour, and the second requiring the same ingredients plus eggs and butter, were beautiful and we admired them as they proofed, rising at a visible rate in the humid Hawaiian heat.

With the doughs growing in the kitchen, we headed out to de-husk all the tomatillos so we could make our ketchup. Daniel, who lives in the other house on the property came down to dry the cocoa beans he had harvested at a friend’s farm and chat with us while we worked. It took close to an hour to husk many pounds of those purple and green things and Sasha the duck waddled over to see what we were up to just as we were finishing. While the tomatillos soaked in a vinegar water bath, Sasha followed us over to the chicken pen as she always does for the afternoon feeding. We got the ladies all fed in their coop, collected the day’s eleven eggs, and headed back to the kitchen to continue our work. The dough for the muffins, much lighter than without the egg and butter of the hamburger buns had more than doubled in size and was silky soft to the touch. Dylan rolled it out, cut it into squares, rounded the edges, and set them aside to proof again before being tossed onto the hot cast iron skillet just waiting to turn them into the beautiful and perfect treats they later became.

The hamburger buns were up next and went through the very same process. I rinsed off the tomatillos and loaded them up on a baking pan so we could roast them in the oven, the first step in our ketchup making endeavor. Dylan began chopping up the onions and roasted a few green chilies, also destined to join the tomatillos in a big pot to stew and become ketchup. Amidst all this, as if we didn’t already have our hands full, Dylan decided that one of the cauliflowers in the garden was so big that it needed to be picked right away. He headed out to grab it while I was instructed to research a marinated cauliflower recipe, so we could have it later in the week. I came up with this recipe courtesy of Martha Stewart and headed out to grab the parsley from the garden it required, along with an eggplant since we didn’t have the zucchini the veggie burger recipe called for. I also grabbed a few leaves of lettuce to go on our burgers and checked in on the black beans that we put in the crock pot that morning morning.

Bob Marley and the Wailers blasted from the speakers as we cooked away the afternoon. Dylan was quite busy with the ketchup and breads and my marinade was just waiting for the cauliflower to get a quick blanching, so I started wandering around the internet at the kitchen bar. Every time he bakes, Dylan gets this serious intensity about him, not in a “this is so stressful” kind of way, more of an “I am in the baking zone” and he remembers just how much he loves it. Back in Seattle when he was getting ready to leave the Confectional and was looking for a new job, we talked a lot about the idea of working for a bakery and though Dylan was all about it, there were no jobs available at the time. He did however end up at Ballard Pizza Co. which involved working with dough and this I think seemed to strengthen his interest in baking.

So as he worked with the dough we once again revisited the idea of Dylan as a baker. He handles the dough with such expert care and has just as much fun with the process as I have watching him work. So as we chatted, I did what I always do and began researching bakeries in our future home city after all of our travels and temporary housing is over this fall. I found a few interesting ones, including Big Sky Bread Company that grinds their own wheat, something that Dylan was super excited about, especially when I told him they use a stone grinder. Though I have no idea how that is different from whatever else is used to grind wheat, he seemed very impressed. We’ll definitely be practicing our bread making a lot more now and we will definitely be making a Portland trip or two to scope out the scene this summer while we’re living at my mom’s house in Vermont. It would be lovely to have Dylan home for dinner on a regular basis rather than at a restaurant most nights like in Seattle, so if any of you readers have baking connections in Portland, Maine keep us in mind!

Anyway, back to the kitchen. Where did I leave off? Oh yeah, blanching the cauliflower. At this point it was already six o’clock and the beans were not ready yet, the rice wasn’t even on the stove, and the ketchup had just begun to stew. We were starting to think we were never going to eat. At least the English Muffins were done and they were a work of art. I still cannot get over how perfectly they smelled, felt, and looked; just like the Thomas’s I’d always eaten when I was a kid, except better, of course, because Dylan made them. I immediately fell in love with these little round bready delights and my mouth watered at the thought of them tomorrow all grilled up and slathered with butter and the orange marmalade we made last week. When I finally did get to eat them for breakfast they were even better than expected. I had one with marmalade and one with maple butter and it tasted like the best maple doughnut I had ever had. We will certainly be making those again!

Back in the kitchen, our culinary adventure quickly kicked into high gear and in a matter of 30 minutes we had the rice simmering, another batch of onions diced and getting a quick saute along with the diced eggplant. I had the cauliflower dressed and packaged up, ready to chill in the fridge for the night, and was on to folding the laundry. Did I mention that we also were doing a few loads of laundry while all this was going on? I told you it was an epic day. So once the onions and eggplant had browned adequately, the black beans were added to the mix and the whole thing cooked some more. They needed a bit of salt and pepper but were otherwise turning out out to have quite a nice flavor already. We had high hopes for these veggie burgers.

While all this was happening on the stove-top, Dylan had the burger buns baking in the oven. They didn’t end up fluffing up as much as we had expected, perhaps they got a bit too much kneading or maybe the dough sat for too long, but either way it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The buns were perfectly light and fluffy but thin enough so we didn’t end up with over-sized burgers and strong enough so they didn’t fall apart at all. Yet another baking success added to Dylan’s tally and another recipe to keep in our regular repertoire. Once the beans, onions and eggplant mixture was finished cooking, 2/3s of it went into the blender to form the sticky binding that would hold the rest of the ingredients together enough to form patties out of it all. Once they went through that final process and were all round and veggie burger like, Dylan fried them up crispy and they were ready to be dressed and enjoyed.

At this point it was about 8:30, the latest we have eaten dinner since we got here as Dylan is usually ready to fall asleep by then. We gave up on the idea of making mayo, saving that project for later day, and the ketchup still needed more time on the stove followed by a trip through the food processor and then the strainer so we gave up on having that with our first batch of burgers out of sheer hunger. Luckily, our hosts happened to have some ketchup and mustard on hand in the fridge so we used those to dress our homemade burgers and buns, added a little green leaf lettuce from the garden and admired our beautiful dinner and a full day’s worth of work in the kitchen. It was well worth the effort though because the burgers, though they didn’t hold together quite as well as the pre-packaged kind, were absolutely delicious. We still have plenty of burgers and buns left over and eventually we will get to the mayo and finish the ketchup and further enjoy our handmade meal. 
 
Now what else can we do with rice and beans while the new veggies grow, anyone out there have any ideas?