Edible/Usable

Light Wheat Bread

I've always liked making bread.  But I never had the focus or time to develop a practice or method to making bread that would assure some level of consistency.  There always seemed like there was an element of chance and risk.  Will it rise?  Will it taste good?  Will the crust be crispy and crunchy or will it be blah and chewy?  I figured it was just a matter of time (that I didn't have) and practice, as well as finding a method that was easy enough that multiple variables wouldn't make a huge difference.   Most bread baking doesn't generally take a lot of consolidated time, but it does take maintenance time and involvement over a long period of time.  When you work 40+ hours a week, it's difficult to find ways to have blocks of time to make bread at home.  I'd never tried a bread machine - that seemed a little to mechanical and hands off to me.

So when I saw the book "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day"  I was intrigued.   Could you really make great artisan style bread in 5 minutes a day?  Well... it depends on how you define "5 minutes a day."  If it means that you can do it all in just 5 minutes, no, you can't.  But, I did find the method described in this book to be both convenient and a time saver.  The key time savers and convenience in the method described in this book are a) you don't knead this bread, ever - you barely touch it and b) you make larger batches of dough which are kept in the refrigerator for up to two weeks (more on that later) and use when it's convenient for you to bake bread.  The general theory is that rather than developing flavor and texture of the bread by kneading it, you let time do the work.  Mark Bittman wrote about a similar method back in 2006 in the NYT  in his recipe for no-knead bread which he adapted from Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery in NYC.  The main difference with the recipe below is that you make a larger batch of dough and use it over a period of time. 

I started by making the master recipe and got mixed results initially.  It did take some tinkering to get it right.  My first few loaves didn't rise enough - an issue I figured out was with the temperature in my winter-cold kitchen.  The crust has always turned out really well - crispy and crunchy and the right thickness, but sometimes the interior of the bread wasn't right - an issue I solved by making my dough even wetter than the recipe recommends (I've been baking bread at almost 2000 feet elevation, so rather than increasing liquid, I reduced the amount of flour), and baking it for 5-10 minuts longer than the original recipe recommended.  But once I got a recipe working, I've found this method to be very easy, convenient and something I can easily do in the amount of time I have every weekend to make bread.  I make a batch of Saturday morning, let it do the initial rise, then stick it in the fridge overnight.  I make one or two loaves on Sunday, then the next weekend, I'll make the remaining 3rd loaf.  It sounds like a lot of steps below, but once you get into the flow of things, it doesn't take a lot of time: work time is 5-10 minutes to mix the dough, 5 minutes to shape the dough, 5 minutes to prepare the oven and the dough ready to go in.  Elapsed time after removing the dough from the refrigerator, about 2 hours.

Once I got this method working for me, I started wondering if making bread and easy process was maybe not the same as making GOOD bread.  So I got a copy of what some consider to be the  home bread-makers bible, Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice to compare not only the method, but the end results.   My next blog post will be a comparison of the two methods and a comparison of the results.  I'm also planning on trying more whole grain recipes from Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads book. 

Note:  This recipe makes up to three one pound loaves.  If you don't want to start with that much dough, decrease this recipe by a half or a 3rd.  Also, it states in the book that for the un-enriched recipes, you can leave this bread in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.  I've found that after 1 week, or even 5 or 6 days, I get much less rise and oven spring from the dough, so I try to use it all within a week.  I've thought about mixing the old dough in with a new batch, but haven't tested this yet.

Equipment you'll need:

• 5-6 quart plastic container with lid
• Pizza peel
• Square baking stone
• broiler or other metal pan

Ingredients

• 3 cups lukewarm water
• 1 1/2 T yeast (2 packages) - I use Fleischmann's active dry yeast
• 1 1/2 T kosher salt
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 4 1/2 cups white flour
• 1/4 cup flax meal - available from Bob's Red Mill
• 1/4 cup wheat germ

• Finely ground cornmeal
• 1 to 2 cups of hot water

Mix yeast and water and stir to make sure yeast is dissolved.  Add flour and salt and mix until incorporated, 2-3 minutes (I do this in a stand mixer with either a dough hook or a paddle). Put in covered but not airtight container and leave at room temp for approx 2 hours til it rises and begins to collapse.   Either use the dough immediately or put in fridge for up to one week.   I recommend putting it in the fridge for at least 12 hours or overnight.

When you are ready to bake the bread, sprinkle the top of the dough with flour, then cut off a one pound piece of dough.  The dough will be pretty sticky, so flour your hands before you start.  Quickly shape the dough into a ball, tucking the top edges into the bottom center of the ball.  Don't spend a lot of time working the dough, just make it round, then place it on a pizza peel that has a small amount of the corn meal spread in a circle slightly bigger than the size of your ball of dough. 

If you haven't refrigerated the dough, let it rest for 10-20 minutes.  If you have refrigerated the dough, let it sit at room temperature for 20 - 60 minutes - depending on how warm your room is.  This is important - if your kitchen is colder than 70 degrees, give it at least 60 minutes to get to room temperature.  The bread will NOT rise a lot at this stage.  It will grow slightly, but it won't double in size.  If you do need to leave the bread for 40 - 60 minutes, it helps to jiggle it around lightly on the pizza peel to un-stick it from the peel about halfway through the resting period.

15-20 minutes before your bread is ready to go into the oven, place the bread stone in the oven, along with the broiler pan on a different shelf that won't interfere with the rising of the bread, then preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Also at this point, sprinkle flour on top of your loaf, gently spread it all over the top to cover it.  Then with a sharp knife, cut 2 or 3 diagonal slices through the top of the bread.

When your oven is hot, slide the loaf gently onto the hot baking stone in the oven, then poor the hot water into the hot broiler pan to create a burst of steam.  Close the oven quickly.  Bake the bread for 30-40 minutes.  If you use more than one pound of dough you definitely need to bake it longer.  The crust should be dark brown and it should sound hollow when you thump it at the bottom.  I've started using an instant read thermometer to check the interior temperature to make sure it is between 200 and 205 degrees. 

When you take it out of the oven, immediately place it on a cooling rack.  A few minutes after you remove it from the oven, you should hear the bread 'sing' - little crackling noises as the crust cools.

Definitely check out the tips and tricks on the book's blog.  And consider buying the book - there are many other recipes for different types of bread.

Crabapple Jelly

Wow.  It's actually been more than a year since I posted anything here.  Shocking.  I do have good reasons, but really, do you need to hear them.  Let's just say I have had other goings on that have kept me from writing.  I have been cooking though!  The main reason I haven't been writing is because we got a house (!) upstate in the spring, and we've been spending lots of time doing homeowner type fixes and work.  One of the many, many great things about the house, is that there are many mature plantings on the property, including lilacs, rhodedenrons and most fantastically, apple trees.  Apple sauce and apple pie has already been made.

One thing about me is that I like to make strange things - or rather, make food with strange things.  Where I grew up in Colorado, I was able to find wild raspberries, wild rhubarb and wild chokecherries.  Of course I made jelly with the chokecherries.  It wasn't very tasty, but it was an amazing color.   Around our house, I found a lot of wild blackberries - with which I made jam - and some wild chokecherries.   Unfortunately, a bear (or another forager) got to the chokecherries before I could.  But in our yard, we have two amazing crabapple trees.  Crabapple jelly, I had to make it.

Jelly, in general, is easy to make, it's just a little more time consuming than jam.  For those of you who don't know, the difference between Jam and Jelly is that jam includes the whole fruit, while jelly is made only from the juice of the fruit.  So jelly requires the extra steps of boiling the fruit in water on it's own to extract the juice and straining the juice.  Then you add sugar to actually make the jelly.  Since you are using only the juice, jelly more often requires added pectin to get it to actually gel, unless you are using fruit that is naturally high in pectin.  The great thing about crabapples is that they have a lot of natural pectin as do regular apples, so you don't have to add store bought pectin.  I made (or tried to make) rhubarb jam early in the summer.  For the first time EVER, I used store bought pectin, and I still ended up with rhubarb syrup rather than rhubarb jam.  Lesson #1 from this: don't use store bought pectin.  Lesson #2, add apples to any jam that you make.

ANYWAY, in all of my cookbooks, including several books specifically about preserving food, I couldn't find a recipe for crabapple jelly (more later on why I was ONLY looking in cookbooks, not on the internet...)  But of course the good old Joy of Cooking had a basic crabapple or quince jelly recipe, so I used it as a basis. 

I have to say that the results are pretty spectacular:  amazing color, it gelled perfectly (truthfully, it's more like Jello than jelly) and it has a really nice, floral and fruity flavor.  I only made one small batch, but I like it so much I may try to make another - if I can actually get more tiny crabapples from the tree (definitely the hardest part of the whole process).  One note - crabapples are very tart and tannic, so don't eat any straight from the tree. 

Crabapple Jelly
1 1/2 lbs of crabapples
3 star anise
2 sticks cinnamon
1 teaspoon whole peppercorns
3 cups of sugar

Wash crabapples and remove stems and any bruises or bad spots.  You don't need to cut or peel them.  Put them in a pot and just cover them with water.  Add anise, cinnamon and pepper. Boil for 20-30 minutes until they are soft and break up easily when you mash them.   Let cool slightly, then strain through a jelly strainer for 1 to 2 hours.  You can press the jelly bag lightly to get all of the juice, but you may get cloudier jelly if you press too much.   You should have about 4 cups of juice.   Combine the juice and the sugar and bring to a boil, skimming off any foam.  Boil to 220 degrees (less if you are at high altitude - approximately 2 degrees less for every 1,000 feet you are above sea level).  You can also do the spoon or sheet test, but I find using a thermometer gives better results.

Have half pint or jelly jars and lids prepared - washed and sterilized.  Immediately pour jelly into jars and process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.  Yield approximately 6 half pints.

Zucchini & Bacon Pancakes

Zucchini is another one of those much maligned vegetables (along with beets and brussel sprouts), often hated even by people who live in the country and grow or have grown them in their gardens.  I might feel this way when I have the luxury of a bumper crop of zucchini, but for now, when my only source is the local farmers market, I covet all I can get. 

I'm a regular subscriber to several cooking blog mailing lists.  Some of them I've found annoying enough to unsubscribe from, some I glance at briefly and maybe save for later, others I delete immediately and never read.  But I generally almost always read the emails from Serious Eats.  They generally have a good mix of New York restaurant reviews, decent recipes and odd cooking techniques (I recently used their technique for cooking homemade pizza on the BBQ which was easy and successful).  Earlier this week I found the "Crisper Whisper" recipe for zucchini pancakes that looked really good.   I love vegetable pancakes (my favorites from last year were zucchini and fresh corn pancakes).  I had some zucchini in the 'fridge, but I didn't have any fresh herbs or even a lemon lying around that the recipe called for.  But when I found that I did had a few slices of cooked bacon left over from the weekend, the light bulb went off.

Seriously, vegetable pancakes (or fritters, if you prefer) are one of the easiest and tastiest summer treats.  Yes, they do require you to stand in front of a hot stove, but for me the end result is worth it.  They are super versatile - make them for breakfast, lunch or dinner.  Serve them with savory sauces (marinara, pesto, etc) or with sweet (apple sauce or maple syrup).

Zucchini & Bacon Pancakes

2 medium zucchini
1 medium yellow onion
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 eggs
3 T parmesan cheese
3 slices bacon, cooked and chopped
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
6 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
+/- 2 tablespoons olive oil

Shred the zucchini and onion, either in a box grater or food processor.  Place in a colander in the sink, and sprinkle the kosher salt.  Mix the salt through the vegetables, and let sit for 20-30 minutes.  In another bowl, beat the eggs and set aside.  Squeeze the liquid out of the vegetables in the colander, then add to the beaten eggs.  Add the flour, cheese, bacon pepper and baking powder and mix until just blended.

In a heavy bottomed pan or cast iron pan, heat olive oil.  Place approximately 1 1/2 tablespoons of batter in the pan and press slightly to flatten.  Add as many pancakes to your pan as you can that will still allow you to flip each of them easily.    Cook each pancake until browned, then flip and cook until browned (approx 5-8 mins total).Remove from pan and place on a paper towel lined plate.

Serve with greek yogurt and maple syrup (pictured) or sour cream and apple sauce (or any and all of the above).

Cold Borscht

I love beets.  I know many people hate them, but really, I love them in pretty much any incarnation.  They are good sweet as in my favorite Beet Pie  (or Ruby Tart as it is otherwise known) sour as in my favorite pickled beets.  Roasted, baked, boiled or steamed, or raw as juice or in salads, beets are good pretty much any way.  And they are also really good for you - raw beets are full of antioxidants including vitamin C and are great source of fiber, folates and vitamin A (especially if eaten raw).  And the color of beets is one of my favorite in the world.  I wish I had lipstick that color...

Since it's been so hot this summer, I haven't been doing much cooking at home (I know, excuses, excuses), so the other morning R and I went to Teresa's  - a Polish restaurant in Brooklyn Heights.  I generally think of Teresa's as a winter food place - perogies, blintz, stew - heavy Eastern European food.   But one thing stood out on the menu on this hot steamy day in Brooklyn:  Cold Borscht.   It was cold, refreshing - a revelation and an inspiration.  The next stop for me was the farmer's market at Boro Hall to get some beets to make my own.

But looking through my recipe archives, I realized I didn't really have a good recipe.  In my experience there are several different variations of Borscht:  My favorite hot borscht from B&H Dairy in the East Village (especially good if you ask them to do half borscht, half split pea) is chunky with, large lima beans.   Some recipes for cold borscht call for mixing in sour cream or yogurt so it is creamy and pink.   My favorite cold borscht is clear, with some pieces of beet, and has lots of dill with a vinegar finish.  That was the borscht that I set out to make.  Definitely take some time to adjust the vinegar/lemon juice level to your taste. 

Cold Borscht

6 medium beets, peeled and quartered
1 medium or two small red onions
1 small clove garlic
6 cups vegetable stock or 6 cups water and 2 vegetable bouillon cubes (11g each)*
(salt, if not using bouillon)
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/4 to 1/2 cup of a mix of rice vinegar and/or apple cider vinegar (I used both)
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Fresh dill, chopped
Hard boiled eggs

Chop the onions and garlic and in a large soup pot, saute briefly in the olive oil.  Add the peeled and quartered beets, the broth or water.  Cover and bring to a boil, skim the foam, then reduce heat to a simmer.  Simmer until beets are tender.  Remove from heat.   Remove the beets from the pot and let cool.  Grate the beets in a food processor or by hand, then add back to the broth (you may not end up using all of the beets in the soup.  Save the ones you don't use and add them to a salad or eat them on their own).  Add some chopped dill, then add the lemon juice or vinegar and salt to taste.  Cool completely then refrigerate. 

Before serving, add more vinegar/lemon juice (if necessary) and chopped dill.  Peel hard boiled eggs, cut in half.  Ladle some cold soup into a bowl and float half an egg on top.  Garnish with more dill and pepper.

*Generally I like to use homemade stock, but when I don't have any on hand, I really like Organic Gourmet Vegetable Bouillon.  It has great flavor and no MSG.  The regular ones are fairly salty (with sea salt), so you won't need to add extra salt to this recipe.

Pickled Sugar Snap Peas

 

I have 3 favorite early summer foods that I always try to stock up on before they are gone for the season, mainly because they are difficult or impossible to find except from local farmers markets when they are in season.  The three are rhubarb, sour cherries and sugar snap peas.  Rhubarb I generally get a bunch of and either make in to a compote and/or make rhubarb syrup for use in the few weeks after I make it.  I also get some to chop up and freeze for later use in a pie or crisp.  Sour cherries I usually get several pints and pit and freeze, also for later use in a pie or crisp or some other desert.  This year I meant to get some and make homemade Maraschino cherries, but because I was traveling often on weekends last month, I seemed to have missed the brief 2 week window that you can usually find them.  I'll have to try again next year.

The third, sugar snap peas are sweet crunchy and delicious, and since you eat them whole and raw, score high on the 'usability' scale.  I've noticed lately that they seem to be available for longer periods than they used to be.  Up until now I hadn't found a good way to preserve sugar snaps for later in the year.  I've never tried freezing them, but since I like them best raw, freezing doesn't really make sense.  Then I came across this recipe for pickled sugar snaps at Smitten Kitchen (still one of my favorite food blogs).   and immediately came up with my own version of these easy pickles.

I make these as simple refrigerator pickles, which means I don't process them in a hot water bath like I do other pickles, mainly because it would cook them more than I would like, and risk losing their crunch.  Also because I prefer to use rice vinegar which has a lower acid level than white vinegar and rice vinegar isn't really recommended for hot water bath processing.  I just keep the jars in the 'fridge where they will keep for several weeks.  If you make more jars than you think you will be able to eat on your own, bring some to friends as gifts.  But really, these are so tasty, it's really easy to eat a half-pint jar in one sitting with some nice cheese and crackers, or sliced and added to a salad.  This year as an experiment, I decided to add some fresh spring onions (the medium sized spring onions, NOT scallions) to half of the jars.    The onions added a really nice flavor to the peas, so it's something that I will definitely do in the future, but you should consider them optional.

Pickled Sugar Snap Peas

2 lbs sugar snap peas, washed and trimmed (strings removed, but left whole)
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 or 2 spring onions (not scallions) sliced (optional)
8 dried red chillies
4 t whole mustard seeds

3 cups unseasoned rice vinegar
1/2 c cold water
1 1/2 T kosher salt
1 1/2 T sugar

Wash and prepare the sugar snaps.  Wash and sterilize 8 half-pint mason jars with new lids.  Pack as many sugar snaps into each jar as you can (you may need more or less than 8 jars).  Place a single red chili in each jar and add a half-teaspoon of whole mustard seed.  If you are adding the spring onion, slice the onions into medium, round slices and add a few slices to each jar. 

In a non-reactive saucepan, add the vinegar, water, salt and sugar.  Bring to a simmer and heat just until the salt and sugar is dissolved completely.  Remove from heat and add the garlic to the mixture.   While the brine is still hot, add enough to each jar to cover the peas, making sure to get a few pieces of garlic in each jar.  Cover with lids and let cool.  Store in the refrigerator and give them at least a week before you open and enjoy.

 

P.S. A home remedy that I've discovered that really works:  I heard recently that if you have leg or foot cramps, you should drink a few tablespoons of pickle juice.  The acetic acid in the vinegar somehow sends stop cramping messages to your muscles.  I had a foot cramp the other night and after taking a sip of the pickle juice from the sugar snaps, my foot cramp disappeared almost immediately.  Maybe it's totally psychosomatic, but who cares if it actually works?

P.P.S.  Happy 4th of July!

Product Usability Review - Mandoline Smackdown

I've been a bad blogger:  It's been months since I last posted a food related post, and I sadly neglected Edible/Usable's one year anniversary that happened on January 30, 2009.  I've been busy at my new job, and haven't been inspired by winter cooking.  But now that spring has sprung, I've got no more excuses!  I'll get back into the action with something I've been meaning to do since I started this blog more than a year ago: a kitchen tool usability review.

I've been meaning to do a kitchen usability review for some time, but just haven't had the time to really develop my test criteria and actually do a test of different products.  I've also been meaning to come up with a kitchen tool rating methodology similar to how I did with restaurants and food web sites.  I thought that mandolines would be a great place to start, partly because a mandoline something that I've been meaning to get for awhile (there have been multiple moments when I've stood at the counter with a piece of food in my hand wishing that I had one) and they also seem to embody many of the 'judgment criteria' that I think about when I buy or use a kitchen tool:

1. Does it do what it was designed to do better than a simpler solution (i.e., a knife, my fingers, a rock).
2. Is it something that I will use fairly often.  This is kind of related to the first, but more specific. 
3. Physical attributes:  Is it easy to set up and use, does it use limited storage space when it's not being used, does it look and feel high quality and like it won't break or fall apart.  If it is something that needs to stay on my kitchen counter, is it nice looking.
4. Is it easy to clean.  For me there is a "time to clean specific tool:doing it by hand" ratio that determines whether I reach for that specific tool or just use a knife or other simple way of doing something - even if it means I'll get poorer results.  Food processors are prime examples of this ratio.

I spent quite some time reading online about different mandolines.   The most common complaints I read about were either that it wasn't sharp enough or people cut themselves on it - often both.  Based on several pages of reviews I read, within my price range (nothing over $50 bucks) it came down to two choices:  Swissmar Borner V-Slicer Plus Mandoline   or the OXO Good Grips V-Blade Mandoline Slicer.   They are both V blade mandolines (vs. the single straight or 30 degree angle blade) and both had pretty good reviews on Amazon.

The Contestants:
Both of these mandolines do what they were designed to do really well - at least so far with the few times that I've used them.  They have similar functionality - they do straight slices, julienne slices and have a V blade that is super sharp that cuts through harder vegetables like carrots quickly and easily.    The only food item that they both failed at was a ball of fresh mozzarella (I haven't tried a tomato yet which is the .  But the OXO has additional features that I was sure would make it a better and more useful tool:
 

1. The OXO mandoline can be adjusted to slice in four different thicknesses, while the Borner only allows for two. 
2. The OXO has legs that fold down on one side so you can slice at a downward angle
3. The OXO has four different blades - straight, crinkle cut, julienne and french fries, the Borner has three blades

All of that said, after spending time with both items, the Swissmar Borner Mandoline has become the one that reach for now when I need to do some slicing, not the OXO with it's fuller feature set.  There are four main reasons for this:

1. The OXO is confusing to put together and take apart.  It's got several moving and adjustable parts that flip open, pull out and clip in.  Every time I use it I spend a few minutes trying to figure out which thing I have to flip up to use the right blade or change to a different blade. 
2. The slices don't go where you think they will.  I really thought that the standing leg would be a key differentiator between the two slicers, but because of the fold down leg, you actually can't prop this slicer over a bowl to catch the slices as they come out.  Because of the angle, the slices end up accumulating at the lower end of the slicer which means you can't even put a plate under the slicer to catch the slices as they come out.  It ends up being really messy and you have to stop slicing and clean out the slices, put them in your bowl then start again.
3. It's difficult to clean because all of the parts are stored in the slicer body.  Although the body is dishwasher safe, because all of the different blades are stored in the body, you have to remove them from the body before you wash it.  This means that you have random sharp blades lying around your kitchen.  And I always forget how to put it all back together.  Maybe if I used it a lot, I would get it eventually. 
4. It doesn't seem safe.  In the storage position, the sharp blade is still exposed and it seems like you could easily cut yourself on it accidentally.  

This slicer definitely violates my fourth judgment criteria - ratio of time to clean: do it by hand.  It takes too long to take it apart, clean it then find all the pieces to put back together.  The OXO is a great example of how feature bloat has made what could have been a really nice tool difficult to use.  Even though it does what it is supposed to do well, I don't like using it and I probably won't use it very often.

The Borner on the other hand, is really simple:  The mandoline body slides in an out of a hard plastic case that also holds the additional blades.    There aren't any additional moving parts - you simply slide in the inserts to change the slicing thickness or the blade type.  There is a square notch at the bottom of the slicer that fits over the lip of a bowl or dish so you can slice directly into a bowl or other container.   When the mandoline is stored in the plastic case, the blades are completely covered and not exposed. It is very easy to clean - even though it isn't dishwasher safe.  The Borner is a great example of how simple = usable.  The Borner has become the mandoline that I reach for, even for simple small jobs that I would have normally just used a knife and a cutting board.

There is one thing that neither of them do very well:  the food holder/guard that you are supposed to use to protect your fingers.  They both have a similar contraption - a round disk with prongs in the center that you push into the food to hold it while you slice.  This might work for some food, but for hard foods like carrots or small food like radish, this doesn't really work, which means I never actually use it.  I haven't seen any mandoline that has anything that works better than what is included with these tools.  I may end up getting one of these cut resistant gloves.

Mandoline Smackdown winner: Swissmar Borner V-Slicer Plus Mandoline

A Digression: The redesign of thesixtyone.com and Listening to Your Users

This post isn't about food.  It's about my favorite music site and what happens when a business doesn't get feedback from their users before they do a massive redesign.

Last year a did a brief stint at AOL.  I worked mainly on their music site, AOL music.  While I was working there, I looked at a lot of other sites in the online music playing, collecting, and discovering spheres.  A lot of my focus was figuring out the best way to do two things:  create playlists of songs, and how to have a good seamless playback experience.  Both are somehow harder than you would think, but there were lots of good and bad examples out there of both. 

Two of the sites I discovered became regular music sites for me after I left AOL (well, 3 if you include the sadly departed original muxtape.com): first, blip.fm.  This site is great for when you have a song in your head, you don't have it handy on you iPod, you can go to blip.co and do a simple search then play it online.  It's also really easy to listen to what other users are listening to, but isn't really that great for discovering new, unheard music.  The second site is thesixtyone.com.  The site features new music, uploaded by the actual artists.  I'm writing the rest of this paragraph in past tense... The playback experience was great - there was a small, unobtrusive but functional player that featured uninterrupted continuous music playback.  By this I mean that if you were on a page listening to a song, and you navigated to another page on the site, the song would continue playing.  I know this sounds simple, but very few sites actually support this. 

I discovered a lot of great new music by small bands from all over the world on t61.  I recommended it to all of my friends.  When I had time at work that I wasn't in meetings, I listened to it for hours at a time.  There was a whole game/reputation element to it that I didn't really understand entirely, but I was still able to easily participate in.  I could indicate that I liked a song by giving it a 'heart.'  I could save songs to my profile so I could listen to them again later.  I was at level 14 - again not sure exactly what this meant, but 14!  When I got bored of listening to my own saved songs, I could listen to other people's 'radio.'  I could 'favorite' people, they could 'favorite' me and musicians that I liked could comment on my profile and thank me for 'hearting' their music.   It wasn't totally perfect, but it seemed to have a lot of promise.  I was really looking forward to the iPhone app so that I could take it with me.

So imagine my dismay when I went to the site yesterday and saw that they had done a total and complete redesign of the site.  Gone was the list of songs on the home page.  Gone was the simple music player.  Gone was the genre list of songs.  And gone was any sense that anybody else was actually using the site to listen to music.   I do think that the new design has it's merits.  It looks REALLY nice.  I brings a really nice focus to the artists on the site - in a way that may be really beneficial to them.  It could be a really nice way to listen to music if you start with a list, then launch the 'visual' version of the player.  But I have two major issues with this redesign:

1.  They removed significant functionality for no apparent reason:

They removed or disabled functionality that was primary to what I felt (and from their previous tag lines and branding indicated) was the primary experience model of the site:  a community where you could discover new music.  By removing this functionality, or in some cases just making it really hard to find, they made the site difficult to use and ruined one of the best music experiences on the web.  In just one day of use, I've discovered specific removed/hidden functionality that have resulted in several usability issues:

Music Discovery:

• The home page is now just an image of one band, and the song starts playing on page load.  It's not immediately clear how you navigate to the next song, there isn't actually any clue given that there IS a next song, and there isn't any way to tell what the next song is.  By removing the list on the home page, they've made it really hard for new users to understand what the site is, and really hard for existing users to browse through songs to find stuff to play.
• Maybe it's a bug, but the same song has been the first one on the home page for the past two days.  This NEVER used to happen on the old version of the site.
• They removed the genre pages.  I used genre pages fairly frequently.  I'd go to the "alt country" or "house" or other genre pages just to find new stuff.  Artists must also be pissed that these are gone because unless music gets promoted to the 'home page' it will be really hard to find music that no one else is listening to.
• As far as I can tell, you can't purchase music from the site anymore.  I didn't buy tons of music from there, but I did buy some.  From what I remember, purchasing music directly from the artists was a big business differentiator for them.  It seems to have gone away entirely.  Were artists made aware of this change?

Music Playback:

• I mentioned before that I really liked the music player they had before.  It was small, hung out up in the upper left corner (at least the most recent incarnation did, there was one at the bottom on the previous design).  From the player I could do these things:  pause, replay, heart, save, change volume, see the songs I've listened to and move to the next song in the list.  Now the 'player' has been separated into two different parts:  one on the left is a flyout layer that shows the band name, the song, lets you heart, comment and share.  To pause, change volume, save, return to playlist (??) or replay, you have to go to the upper right of the screen.  Both actions require a mouseover, and both are annoying.  My most common behavior when listening to a song was to heart it and then save it.  Now I have to go to two different places on the screen to do this.  And now when I save it, I have to specify a playlist - an extra action that I'm not really interested in doing.
• Constant playback doesn't work the same way anymore because they have removed the song list pages.  If you can find the way to get to different 'lists' of music, the song you were listening to stops and a new one starts playing.  You don't have any idea what it will be, and there isn't an easy way to get back to the song you were just listening to.
• Search functionality has been removed entirely.

Community & My Profile

• The sense that there were other people on the site actively listening to the site is totally gone.  I didn't come to the site because I knew other people were there listening, but it was great to discover music through other users.  Radio, followers, listeners. All seem to be gone.
• There was a concept of being able to bid hearts to promote songs to the home page if you were willing to spend the hearts to do it.  I can't tell if that still exists or not.   This is another thing that I rarely did, but I really appreciated when others did it.  It made the home page seem more dynamic and fresh.
• The new user profile on the site is just ugly.  There are CD covers in the middle of the page (I think they show actual covers if you have bought albums from the site - but since I haven't bought full CDs they are just blank covers sitting in the middle of the page). 
• My song lists are relegated to a small module in the bottom right of the page.  I used my saved song list a lot.  Now I have to scroll through a little module to find songs I'm looking for.
• People who follow me and people I follow are gone.  There's a button to follow myself, but I get an error message when I try, and why would I want to anyway?
• My radio is gone as well as the ability to shuffle my saved songs
• They've added the concept of 'playlists' which may be useful for some people, but I think it's a mistake to make them such a priority.  Some people make playlists, others don't.
• There's a really clear "etiquette" link that explains how to be nice on the site, but there's no-one left to be nice to.

2.  They are ignoring their users

They seemed to have done this total redesign without talking to ANY of their actual users.  It's possible that they did talk to some of their users, but when I read all of the backlash against the re-design on their Facebook fan page, and when one of the most active listeners that I know of, writes this on his profile: "I don't have an ipod and the[new]sixtyone is worthless - what were they thinking?" it definitely seems like they didn't.  I've worked at start-ups before, and I know that it's easy to claim that you don't have time/money/resources to have multiple versions of a site available and working for A/B or user/usability testing.  But these aren't small changes.  This is a massive redesign and redirection for the whole site and it deserved to be vetted by some actual users.  I've heard developers claim that they don't have to do usability testing or talk to actual users because they ARE the users (ahem, 37signals...) but it's just not true or right.  And it doesn't have to be a difficult, expensive or time consuming process, especially when there is an ardent and active user base such as with t61. 

But the most damning evidence is that NOWHERE on the site is there a way to give feedback.  Not even a bug reporting link which is highly unusual for a newly launched site.  And with all of the grumblings and rumblings I've read online, I haven't read any response or word from the site developers since they posted a note on their Facebook Fan page saying that saved songs were back.  Not a word.  Where are you guys, and why have you done this to us?

My suspicions are that there is a big business or technical reason they did this.  I'd love to know what it is.

There is a lot of chatter and feedback about the new redesign, most of it negative.  Here's a few good links with other thoughts.

http://www.iusedtolikethesixtyone.com/ - site calling for the boycott of the new t61 with several good links
http://www.movementsixtyone.com/ - collection of links about the new redesign
http://t61place.freeforums.org/ - original forums on how to use t61
http://trinitylast.com/a-letter-to-thesixtyone/ - An open letter from an artist
http://www.thedevilsfeet.net/archive/the-rise-and-fall-of-t61-com/ - with some good links to other articles about the redesign
http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/as9ql/when_you_do_a_site_redesign_please_dont_do_this/ - great list of the basic usability issues of the new redesign

Thanksgiving Success Including Apple Sour Cherry Pie

Just a short post about some of the great food I had this Thanksgiving.  We went to a friend's for dinner where they made their famous turkey on the BBQ which is a fast and delicious way to make a turkey that I'd never seen done before.  There were also some delicious parsnips roasted with Parmesan, fantastic roasted potatoes and carrots with ginger.   I made brussel sprouts roasted with pancetta, one of the few ways I like brussel sprouts, and I spent literally 2 hours peeling pear onions for balsamic roasted pearl onions from The Cutting Edge of Ordinary blog which were fantastic.  Since I was dining with Brits, they requested that I not make the normal American version of sweet potatoes (the marshmallow ones), so instead I made Sweet Potato Gratin from Smitten Kitchen.  I made a few changes/substitutions since some of the 200+ commenters (!!) mentioned that it was a little watery: I used fresh spinach instead of chard (the chard at Fairway looked uninspiring), I baked it twice - once the day before, then I reheated it right before dinner.  And before I reheated it, I sprinkled some bread crumbs on top along with another sprinkling of Gruyere cheese.  It was a huge hit and definitely a keeper.

For desert, rather than the standard pumpkin or pecan pie (apparently Brits don't like Pumpkin) I made the Beet Pie which has become a new favorite, and since I had about 2 cups of sour cherries left from what I'd frozen this summer, I made an Apple Sour Cherry Pie.  Although it came out a little 'juicier' than I'd like, here's the recipe exactly as I made it.  I may try it again (next year when I have sour cherries again) and I'll drain the sour cherries before adding them, and I'll add a bit more flour and corn starch - corn starch being something I only use in berry pies that I know will be really juicy.

Four things I've been experimenting with lately with pies and pie crusts that I've been happy with: First, I've been making the pie dough in a food processor up to the point where I add the first half of the water (a few tablespoons), then turning it out on the counter and adding the rest of the water.  And I always make each top or bottom separately (it just seems easier to me that way).  Second, I've been using my standard recipe for pie dough (flour, butter, ice water, salt, sugar) but for sweet pies I've started adding about 1/4 cup of very finely chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans). Third, after reading the section about flour in Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking"  where he talks about gluten and how it develops in pastry dough, I've been making the dough a day in advance and letting it sit overnight in the fridge.  Fourth, I've been using at least half raw or turbinado sugar http://www.sugarintheraw.com/ in the fruit filling, the other half regular granulated white sugar.  So far, my experiments have been successful.

Apple Sour Cherry Pie

4 apples - mix of baking types like Rome, Macintosh or Cortland
2 cups pitted sour cherries
1/2 cup raw sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 T lemon juice
Lemon zest from one lemon
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t cloves
2 T flour
2 T corn starch
1 T Port or Whiskey (or 1 t of vanilla if you prefer)

For crust: (makes one top or bottom crust)

1 C plus 2 T flour
1 stick cold butter, cut in pieces
2-4 T ice cold water
1 t salt
1 T sugar
1/4 cup walnuts or pecans

The day before you are going to bake the pie, make the crust recipe twice:  add the nuts to the food processor, and pulse until nuts are very finely ground.  Add flour, sugar and salt to the processor and pulse briefly to mix dry ingredients.  Add pieces of very cold butter and blend until it looks like cornmeal with a few bigger lumps.  Add about 2 tablespoons of cold water and mix briefly just until the dough starts to come together.  There will still be loose bits of flour/butter mixture.  Dump mixture into a bowl or onto a floured surface and add the remaining ice water and gently knead together until it easily forms a ball.  Don't over knead!  Pat it into a round disk, wrap well in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

For the filling: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Peel and core the apples and cut into slices or chunky pieces (or both), adding lemon juice as you go to keep apples from turning brown.  Add sour cherries, port and lemon zest.  Mix all dry ingredients together in a small bowl, then add to the fruit mixture.  Mix well and set aside.

Roll out bottom crust into 9 inch pie pan.  Add filling and cover with top crust.  Cut small holes in the top crust and sprinkle with raw sugar.  Bake at 400 for 10 minutes.  Reduce temperature to 375 and bake for 55 - 60 minutes until filling is bubbling and crust is brown.  You may need to put foil or a pie crust ring around the edge of the crust to keep it from getting too brown.  You may also need to place a pan on the rack below the pie pan to catch any escaping juices.

Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Beet Pie

I am actually working on blog posts about UX and usability (really, I've got two in the works...) but this is an emergency recipe posting!  A few weeks ago, we went to visit some friends in Pennsylvania.  They live in the northern part, past the Poconos - a really nice part of the state that I'd never been to before.  They have a beautiful hill-top apple orchard that they are in the process of reviving.  It's all organic, so I picked some apples and planned to go home and make an apple pie (which I did last weekend).  I forget why it came up, but I think I started going off on how much I love beets and how wonderful they are.  Our friend volunteered that she had a great recipe for a beet pie.  Not a savory beet pie, but a sweet beet pie.  I was intrigued and asked for the recipe.

I wasn't really sure what to expect.  But when I did get the recipe it sort of made sense.  It's officially called "Ruby Red Fruit and Nut Pie" which is really disingenuous because the only fruit it has in it according to the original recipe is raisins.  Maybe they thought people would be scared to make it if it was really called what it is.  Rather than being cagey about it, I'm officially renaming it Beet Pie.  I'm not sure what newspaper it was cut from, so I can't take full credit for it, but I did make a few changes to the recipe as it was sent to me (I used dried cranberries instead of raisins, and maple syrup instead of dark corn syrup).  It's actually similar to pecan pie, and it turned out much better than I expected.  I think it is now one of my new favorite pies.  It may even be on the desert line up for Thanksgiving.

Beet Pie

1 single unbaked pie shell (9 inches)
2 medium beets
1/2 cup grade B maple syrup
3 eggs
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t ground cloves
1/4 t white vinegar
1/2 t salt
1 t vanilla
2 T butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 T flour
3/4 cup dried cranberries
3/4 cup roughly chopped walnuts

Cut tops and bottoms off beets and boil for 20 - 30 minutes until tender.  Cool and peel.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Chop roughly and put into a food processor.    Pulse until beets are in small pieces, being careful not to puree them (you could probably also shred them with a box grater to get the same effect).    Remove the beets from processor and set aside.  Add all other ingredients except walnuts and cranberries to the processor and blend well.  Add 1 cup of the chopped beets (you may have some beets left over), the walnuts and dried cranberries.  Pulse until just blended.  Pour into the unbaked pie shell.

Bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees.  Reduce temperature to 375 degrees and bake for 25-30 minutes or until pie is firm.  Cool on a rack and serve still warm with vanilla ice cream.

Sweet Tomato Chutney

 

I'm having a blog identity crisis.  I've been ignoring my other half.  I'm not married, so no, I don't mean my husband.  I mean the other half of what this blog is supposed to be about.  I've been having a nice summer creating lots of salads, canning stuff when I can (and freezing it when I can't can) and doing a bit of baking here and there.  But I haven't been writing at all about usability and user experience.    Definitely part of is has been that I've been taking advantage of all of the social media, promotion and blog marketing tools that I've discovered in the food blog world, so I've been focusing a lot on writing recipe posts.  I'm pretty amazed at the sheer number of food blogs there are out there, many of them excellent and inspiring.   But it's also a little overwhelming.  I definitely feel like I need to both step up my game in the quality of food photos (which means investing in a decent digital SLR) and the variety of recipe posts.   But I also need to really find my niche and differentiate my blog from others.  I still think that the differentiator should be a focus on usability and user experience with cooking, so I plan on focusing on that a little more down the road.  Those kinds of posts are more difficult to write, and generally not as much fun, but really, I'm not doing this to have fun.

But for now, here's a fun chutney recipe.   At this point you must think that I'm chutney crazy.  I sort of am, but my real reason for making chutneys this summer/fall rather than jam, jelly or simply freezing fruit has been twofold:  first, I've made jams and jellies all of my life and I don't find them particularly challenging anymore.  Chutneys have more ingredients, have more complex flavors and the end result can be used in ways other than just spread on toast.  I serve this chutney with curries, with a cheese plate, as a condiment for egg rolls, on a sandwich, with chicken, fish or pork.  Yesterday, I was making some chicken soup, so I added a teaspoonful of the chutney, and it added a nice acidic sweetness that really added to the overall flavor of the soup. 

The second reason is economic.  I think it can be argued that price isn't an issue if you are learning something about preserving food, so it doesn't matter how much you spend on home canning.  But it can also be argued that the main reasons to preserve food at home is to control the quality and sources of what you eat and to save money.   I didn't can tomatoes this summer.  The late blight on the east coast and New England drove up the price of organic tomatoes, and it didn't make sense for me to pay $50 for 11lbs of tomatoes (nice organic tomatoes run about $4.50/lb at the farmers market) which would translate to probably 5 or 6 pints of canned tomatoes - a cost of roughly $8/pint.  I didn't get out of the city often enough to canvas rural farmers markets for cheaper tomatoes.   I wanted to do something with tomatoes before they all disappeared from the farmers market, so I decided to make this chutney.  I bought some cheaper, non organic tomatoes at $2.00/lb from the farmers market.  I got a little over 5lbs of tomatoes for the chutney, which in the end resulted in 8 half-pints of chutney.  Figuring in sugar, vinegar, spices and raisins (organic where I could, all cost approximately $4.00) each half-pint ended up costing me about $1.75 each. 

The magic of fruit chutney is to have idiosyncratic yet complimentary blends of fruit, sugar, spices and acid.  The amounts of each vary depending of if you are making a spicier chutney or a sweeter one.  This chutney is pretty sweet, but it's also very acidic, with equal parts of sugar and vinegar.  You probably could make this chutney spicier by adding fresh chilies or more cayenne, but I think I'd rather have a hot chutney (like lime or a specific spicy chili chutney) as a separate condiment.   This chutney is fairly easy to make - it doesn't require a lot of preparation besides peeling and cutting the tomatoes, chopping garlic and ginger.  It calls for garam masala, a ground spice blend which you can make yourself by grinding your own spices (cinnamon, cumin, clove, pepper, ginger, anise, etc) which I did with the last chutney I made.  One of the great things about living in NYC is that you have close access to specialty stores that carry fresh spices and spice mixes.   I found some already mixed garam masala from Dual Specialty Store  on 1st ave and 6th street - their custom house blend is great.

Three notes on this chutney.  First, it WILL make your apartment/house smell like vinegar while it's cooking (but in a nice way, of course).  Second, you really do need to cook it for longer than you think you do.  It should get to the point where it is dark, thick and shiny, about 90 minutes.  Third, the recipe below makes approximately 8 half-pints so I processed them in a boiling water bath.  If you don't feel up to processing them, cut the recipe in half, and after cooking put the chutney in glass jars while it's still hot, let cool and refrigerate.

Sweet Tomato Chutney

Adapted From Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking

• 5 lbs of fresh tomatoes
• 4 cups white sugar
• 4 cups white vinegar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh garlic (about 10 cloves or 1 medium head)
• 1 teaspoon ground fennel seed
• 1 teaspoon ground fenugreek seed
• 1 1/2 teaspoons garam masala
• 1 t cayenne pepper
• 3 t salt
• 4 bay leaves
• 1 cup raisins

Peel tomatoes by scoring the tomatoes and blanching for 20 -30 seconds in boiling water.  Chop into large chunks.  Place all ingredients, except raisins, in a large non-reactive heavy bottomed pot.    Cover and bring to a boil.  After 30 minutes, remove the lid, add raisins and adjust the heat so you have a low boil.  Continue cooking uncovered for approximately another hour, until it  has reduced by half, is thick, dark and shiny.  You will need to stir it more frequently towards the end as it will be thick and you don't want it to burn on the bottom.

If you are going to can the chutney, prepare your jars by sterilizing in boiling water.  Fill jars with hot chutney, gently tap to remove air bubbles, wipe jar edges, and place lids on the jars.  Process in a  boiling water bath for 20 minutes.  Confirm all jars are sealed.  Chutney will last for approximately 1 year in sealed jars.

Homemade Granola

As promised, at long last, the granola recipe.  Granola is one of those things that can seem really difficult and intimidating, but really, it's very simple to make, and is almost limitless in the way you can customize it.  I've been making this granola off and on for the past 3 years or so, experimenting with different levels of liquid, sweets and oats, and I feel like I've finally found a good base recipe to which I (or you) can add your own personal favorites.  I've actually been seeing a lot of 'homemade' granola for sale around Brooklyn lately (Early Bird Granloa is usually on sale at the Brooklyn Flea).  But at $8 for a 12oz bag, it's not cheap (disclaimer: I haven't actually tasted their granola).  This recipe makes about 24oz, and depending on the quality of ingredients you use, can cost as little as $5.00 to make.

So first, some notes on my methodology that affect the outcome: 

• Use thick cut oats - I use Bob's Red Mill organic thick cut rolled oats, so this recipe is formulated I think with the right amount of liquid for this type of oats.  It would probably work with regular cut oats (Quaker or another brand), but I wouldn't recommend using quick or instant oatmeal for this recipe. 
• You can add your own mix of nuts - I generally use sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds (pepitas)  and one other kind of nut - usually pecans or walnuts.   But really, you could use any kind of raw nut in pretty much any proportion that you like.   Make sure you use RAW nuts. The recipe below has a 2:1 oats to nuts ratio, but you could add more nuts if desired.  If you add more oats, I would increase the amount of liquid.
• Dried fruit - I also usually make this with dried cranberries, but recently made it with dried cherries, coconut and dried apricots.  Just be sure to add the dried fruit AFTER you've cooked the granola or the fruit will be really hard and chewy.  I most recently added coconut after I baked it, but next time I might try baking the coconut and see what happens. 
• Go organic - I try to use organic ingredients whenever I can, including organic nuts and seeds and dried fruit. 
• Sweetness - This recipe doesn't have any refined sugar (unless you use sweetened fruit juice), so if it's not sweet enough for you, either add more maple syrup or add some brown sugar to the dry ingredients.  Obviously, if it's too sweet, decrease the amount of either maple syrup or honey, or use entirely unsweetened fruit juice.
• It's not clumpy - This granola doesn't really cluster together - but I like this way.  If you want more clustery granola, you could probably add more juice (or other liquid) and stir it less often while baking.

Homemade Granola

3 cups thick cut rolled oats
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds
1/2 cup raw pepitas
1/2 cup raw peacans
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 t salt

1/3 cup canola oil (plus 1 T for the pan)
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 c fruit juice (apple, cranberry or a mix)
2 T honey

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a large, shallow roasting pan with canola oil and set aside.  In a large bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients including spices.  In a smaller bowl or a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup, mix together all of the liquid ingredients.  Tip: If you measure out the oil first and use the same measuring cup, the maple syrup and the honey will slide right out of your measuring cup.  Mix all of the liquid ingredients well, then pour over the dry ingredients.  Mix well, and pour into the greased roasting pan.  Spread evenly across the bottom (ideally it isn't more than an inch or so thick at the bottom of the pan.)

Bake for 45 - 60 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so, making sure to bring the granola from the edges of the pan to the center so that it all browns evenly.  You may need to stir more frequently towards the end of baking, and keep a careful eye on it so that it doesn't burn around the edges. 

Granola in the baking pan before going in the oven

Granola after baking

Breakfast!

What to Eat When Your'e Camping: Shopping, Preparation and Storage Tips

Part of my  menu preparation for our camping trip required some deep thinking about what foods were "camping friendly" and convenient to have on a 8 day trip.   This meant food that didn't require more than the three days of the refrigeration we would get from our collapsible cooler, food that was relatively lightweight and compact, had minimal but sturdy packaging, and food that could be prepared before-hand so it was fairly easy to prepare in camp.  And it also had to taste good.

On our fourth day camping, we decided to take a longer day trip from the Middle Saranac Lake where we were staying, over to the Upper Saranac Lake.   On our way back, we met a family of 5 (two parents with 3 kids aged probably 9 - 15) who were on a long Canoe trek from the Raquette river to the Middle Saranac (part of the Northern Forest Canoe Trial  that goes from New York to Maine).  They were at the second of two canoe portages of the day (first one was 1.5 miles and the second .5 miles).  They had two canoes and had all of their gear packed in 5 backpacks for easy portage.  I was duly impressed with the hard trek they had, but I was really wondering what food they had to eat.    I assumed they had packaged, dehydrated backpacking/camping food and I felt really sorry for them - that after doing all of that hard work they wouldn't have any good food to eat for dinner.  As you can see from some of the menu highlights of our trip, I think we ate pretty well.  Part of it was planning, part of it shopping and part of it was actual cooking.  So here are my tips for better camp food:

Planning Your Menu & Shopping

Generally speaking, the most convenient foods for camping are foods that don't need refrigeration, that pack and store easily and that are simple to cook or heat up.  Smaller packages or single servings help reduce food waste and mean that you don't have to refrigerate leftovers.  A few of my favorites:

• Boxed milk - I bought Horizon organic in the 8 oz packages.  We used it for granola, making pancakes and occasionally for tea.
• Cured meats - Salami and other cured sausage doesn't need to be refrigerated, don't require cooking and only require a knife to cut and eat.  And they are usually delicious.  I got some Saussion Sec (french style garlic sausage).  I also got some beef jerky from Trader Joe's, (I'm actually finding it really hard to believe that here is a site of JUST reviews of beef jerky, but here it is) that we both found it overly sweet and didn't really like.
• Flat bread - I prefer this rather than loaf bread because it's easy to pack and doesn't get smashed.   It's also easy to warm directly on the fire, on the grill or in a pan.
• Instant noodle soups - Annie Chun's Korean Kimchi Noodle Soup only requires boiling water, comes in a re-usable, biodegradable bowl with a lid that you can eat the soup out of, doesn't have MSG and tastes really good.
• Tuna - We didn't actually eat any tuna on this trip, but I always bring a can or two just in case.  Cans are good for day trips, as long as you remember to bring your pocket knife and know how to use the can opener.  I've recently seen tuna packed in flat plastic envelope type packages, but I haven't tried them.
• Crackers - Alhough you have to be careful with packing, crackers go with cheese, tuna, salami or other stuff for snacks.  I brought Trader Joe's wheat crackers (similar to Triscuits) because they come in a bag in a box and don't crush easily.
• Nuts & Trail Mix - A must have for day trips and for snacking around camp.  Not to mention Trader Joe's too much, but they have great trail mixes at decent prices.  You can also make your own by buying nuts, seeds and dried fruit.
• Peanut Butter - I'd like to say that I don't go anywhere without peanut butter, but it's not really true.  I would if I could. 
• Sweet stuff - I planned on making homemade cookies, but didn't get around to it with all of the other packing and preparation I was doing.  So I just brought some Nutterbutters and some Raspberry Newtons.
• 'Smores - If you are one of those people who MUST have 'smores when you camp, a great tip that a friend passed on to me.  Instead of buying graham crackers and chocolate separately, buy some Petit Écolier - either milk or dark chocolate, warm them by the fire, then put the toasted marshmallow between two chocolaty cookies.

Keeping Food Cold

I had planned for there to be about 3 days worth of cooler coldness on this trip, but I think because of the preparations I did before-hand, and because the weather wasn't too hot, we got about four days from our small collapsible cooler.    These are a few tips that I found helpful for this trip:

• Block Ice - It's really important that you use a block of ice rather than individual cubes.  One great way of doing this is to freeze a gallon (or several if you have a larger cooler) of water (thanks Camping Blogger for this idea)  and use these as ice blocks in your cooler.  For one thing, it stays cold longer because it keeps the water close to the ice.  It also means you don't have tons of water in your cooler as the ice melts, and if you are carrying your water in, you can drink the water after it melts. 
• Make a 'Freezer Chest' -Freeze anything you can before hand (all of your meat, bread, butter).  Get a plastic container with a tight lid that fits snugly in your cooler.  The day you leave, put all frozen food together in the plastic container.  Your food will defrost slowly and will retain some of the cold as it does so.  When you want to defrost something, remove it from the plastic bin and place it at the top of the cooler, away from the ice.
• Butter, cheese and eggs keep fairly well as long as it doesn't get too hot and you have a shady place to keep a cooler.  I moved the butter and cheese into the 'freezer chest' after we defrosted and ate some of the meat, keeping all of the coldest things together.

Keeping Food Away from Animals

Unless you are camping in your living room, you will most likely encounter some sort of animal - be it insects, mice, raccoons, or god forbid, a bear.  I've been on previous trips to Saranac Lake where we were practically attacked by marauding mice, so I try to be tidy, clean up any dropped food, and store food in tight containers or put it out of reach.   Some tips for keeping animals away from food:

• Buckets with lids - Last year we hit upon the solution of bringing along two 3 gallon plastic buckets with tight fitting lids.  We use them to store food at night (I used them for the especially tempting animal favorites like trail mix, peanut butter, crackers and cookies) and they can do double duty as water gatherers and a dish sink. 
• Tree Hang - For food that doesn't need to stay dry, or simply doesn't fit in your bucket, we rigged a rope between two trees that could easily be lowered and raised.  We put food in plastic bags, clipped a carabiner clip  to each bag, then clipped the bag to the rope and hoisted it up into the air out of reach.  We hung up our trash each night and when we left camp in the daytime this way as well.
• Ziplock bags - whether it's in your cooler, the plastic buckets or just in your backpack, ziplock bags help keep moisture, dirt and insects away from your food. 
• Use your kayak - if you have a kayak with a closed hatch in the front or back, you can generally store food there away from little animals.  Just make sure that you park your kayak out of the sun so your food doesn't get too hot and spoil.

Two important notes about bigger animals:

1. It is highly recommended that you don't keep food in your tent (this actually applies to small animals as well).  I could imagine what a horrible thing it would be to wake up in the middle of the night to find mice, racoons or bears rummaging through your tent.    If possible, keep your food cooking and storage area on the other side of your camp away from your tent.  Luckily, I've only once had a bear encounter in camp (when I was a kid, and I slept through it), not including hitting one with my car a few months ago on the Taconic parkway (it was his fault, and he was OK enough to run off into the woods)
2. If you are going into an area where bears have been sighted, it's a good idea to bring a bear safe or metal food locker.   And just to be even more service-y, here's some info on what you should do if you encounter a bear  and other bear proofing tips   (excellent tip here: "Never try to move a grizzly bear!")

There are a few things that I forgot to bring for my kitchen set up and that aren't included in my previous post on Tools for Your Camp Kitchen:

• TONGS! - I can't believe that I forgot this super important utensil.  From turning meat to grabbing hot things from the fire, tongs are a must for any camp kitchen.
• IKEA blue tarp bags - If you haven't ever been to IKEA,  you may not know what I'm talking about.  But those of you who do, may understand the utility and value of the blue tarp bag from IKEA.  You used to only be able to use them when you were shopping in the store, but a year or so ago, they stopped using plastic bags for purchases and 'make' you purchase a blue tarp bag.  They are super handy and versatile.  We used them for collecting wood, storing food, and carrying tools.  You could probably also use them for collecting water if you needed to.
• Stove canister stand - Also in my previous camp kitchen tools post, I mentioned that the small camp stove I have is a little difficult to use because it's unstable.  I found this canister stand at EMS before I left, and it came in very handy.  It fits on most gas stove canisters and provides a little bit more stability than just using the can alone.

Up next, the very last camping post, the recipe for Homemade Granola.

Camping Menu - What to Cook When You're Camping

 I've been back from my camping trip for over a week now, but because I've been busy at work and a few social obligations, I haven't been able to blog about it until now.  As I was writing this post, I realized that I actually had a lot to say, so I think I'm going to break this up into several posts that I'll put up in the next few days.  This first post will be specifically about the best food we ate on our camping trip.  The second post will be a sort of follow-up to the "Tools for Your Camp Kitchen" post I did a few weeks ago and it will focus on food shopping, preparation and storage tips, and things that I forgot that would have been really useful.  Lastly, I'll post the recipe for homemade granola since I think that it's good enough to stand on it's own.

So just to refresh your memory, I just came back from a canoe camping trip to Saranac Lake Islands in the Adirondacks park in New York.  The Saranac Lake Islands have primitive camping sites (primitive meaning they have a fire ring, and an outhouse - no running water or other facilities) around both the Middle and Lower Saranac Lakes.  All of the sites require a boat of some sort to get to, and while I've used a kayak on past trips, for the past two years we've chosen to bring a canoe since you can generally bring more stuff with you. For this trip, since I knew we were planning on staying on the lake for the entire week (8 days and 7 nights) without going back into town for groceries, I planned the menu to have all of the cooler required foods (i.e., meat) in the first few days.  In general, I've found that with block ice, and weather between 40 - 70 degrees, our cooler keeps stuff pretty cold for about 4 days, so I planned a menu around that.

I won't go through the entire menu, but I will talk about a few of the new camp food discoveries I made and some stand out meals that we had. Luckily we had really great weather  (hurricane Danny dumped rain on the city and the beaches, but we were far enough away in the mountains to miss it) and the camp site we reserved was the best one we've ever had on the lake, with a nice little beach on a sort of secluded bay: several pairs of loons, bald eagles, no bears, no biting bugs (though a lot of daddy long legs) and of course, great food.

Update:  Also check out my final camping post on Camp Food Preparation and Storage Tips  and the recipe for homemade granola.

Generally almost all food tastes better when you're camping, these were a few of the standouts:

Best Breakfasts (or in some instances, brunch):  

Scrambled eggs with Spanish chorizo - If we didn't have big plans for the day and were either hanging around camp or doing a smaller canoe trip in the afternoon, we'd start a fire and get out the cast iron pan.  I brought a single package of Niman Ranch uncured bacon (I know, not very much for two people, but I didn't know how warm it would be and how long it it would keep in the cooler) which we had with pancakes one morning (which were good - I used Arrowhead Mills Organic Multi-Grain Pancake mix mainly because you only need water or milk and oil to add to the mix).  Generally with a single pan, I sometimes find that the bother to reward ratio for pancakes is a little high, but I do love pancakes.    My favorite breakfast was scrambled eggs with Spanish chorizo.  I got a vacuum package of four small Spanish chorizos that didn't require refrigeration.  Spanish chorizo is a hard cured sausage - very different from Mexican chorizo.   I sliced up two little chorizos,  sauteed them in the cast iron, drained off most of the very red fat, then added the eggs.  Served with flat bread heated briefly over the fire on the fire grate, and some butter and jam, it was tasty and satisfying.

Homemade Granola (cold or hot) - A few mornings we had plans for day trips to different lakes, and one morning it was really windy so we chose not to start a fire.  I've been making homemade granola for a few years, so I made a special extra nutty batch to bring camping.  Every morning, even when we had a fire, I'd use the little camp stove to heat up water for hot tea,  hot chocolate or hot Tang (or even hot tea with Tang).  On this particular cool windy morning, I heated up some milk to add to the granola for hot granola.  It was a great start to a cold morning.

Best Lunches:

Hard-boiled Eggs and Saucisson Sec - We didn't have lunch every day, mainly because sometimes by the time we got up, got the fire going and got breakfast made, it was brunch.  But the few days we went out for day trips, we'd take snacks with us - nuts, trail mix, beef jerky and cookies.  The one day we went on a big trip, I realized the night before, that it would be super easy to put a pot of boiling water over the fire while we were making dinner, and hard boil some eggs.  We even cooled off the boiled eggs by putting them directly in the lake.  Our day trip lunch the next day was hard-boiled eggs, a really delicious saucisson sec (dry french garlic sausage), sharp cheddar cheese and crackers.  Super simple but really tasty after an afternoon of paddling.

Best Dinners:

Steak, Baked Potatoes and Baked Beans - How can you not like a nice organic shell stake grilled over a wood fire in front of a beautiful lake?    The baked potatoes were wrapped in tinfoil (poke a few holes in them first) and put directly in the fire for about 30 - 40 minutes, turned and moved occasionally.  My favorite baked beans are Bush's Original Baked Beans.   You can simply open the can (keeping the lid attached so it covers the beans while they are cooking) and put the whole can in the fire for 5 -10 minutes (generally I put it just to the side of the actual fire so the beans don't burn) and stir occasionally.    A little fresh garlic rubbed on the steak, some salt and pepper then on the grill 'til they are done to your liking (I prefer medium rare).  This was a super simple meal, but one of our best dinners, partly because we had really nice steak.

Marinated Lamb Kabobs with Cous-Cous and Baked Yams -  I like lamb, but I actually don't make it that often - I think partly because I never ate it growing up so it's a meat that I'm not really used to cooking.  The lamb was really the only thing that I prepared at home before we left.  I found a recipe for a garlic & cilantro lamb kabobs (recipe below).  I made the marinade, added the lamb, refrigerated overnight, then tossed it in the freezer for the few days before we left on our trip.  I hadn't ever made cous-cous while camping before, but I make it a lot at home, and it's one of the easiest things to make.   Just bring some water to boil (I usually do a 1.5:1 ratio of water to cous-cous - even though some recipes call for a 2:1 or even a 3:1 ratio) add the cous-cous, bring it up to a simmer, then remove from the heat, cover, let sit for five minutes, then fluff with a fork.  Because you don't have to actually boil it over the fire, there is less of a chance of burning it on the un-even heat than there is with rice.  I made the yams the same way I made the baked potatoes the night before - wrap in tinfoil and throw in the fire, moving and turning them occasionally.

Because I actually brought a lot of extra of lamb and really big yams, the next night was leftovers which somehow was even better.  I made a pilaf with the left-over cous-cous and yams: I chopped up some trail mix (almonds, cashews and dried cranberries) sauteed the nuts over the fire until they were slightly toasted, then added chunks of the cooked yams, then the already cooked cous-cous with a bit of water and warmed it over the fire.  The lamb went into the cast iron pan over the fire just until it was warmed through. 

Trader Joes Pesto Tortellini with Marinara Sauce - Really the only credit I can take for this meal is that I bought it at the store, boiled the water for the pasta and heated the marinara over the fire.  This was the last dinner that we had at the campsite.  By this time, we had been out of ice in the cooler for several days and it had been in the 70's and 80's during the day, so it was good that we had this simple meal planned it for the last night.  The Trader Joe's dried pesto tortellini was actually really good considering it's dried pasta.  And their basic marinara sauce is pretty decent as well.  It may have just been the last night of camping, the beautiful sunset and eating outdoors, but this was a simple and satisfying meal.

Desserts:

Sticky Toffee Pudding - I love baking - cakes, pies, cookies, etc. but I've never actually tried baking over a wood fire.  I'm also not actually a big after dinner dessert eater.   As a frequent insomniac, I try to avoid eating sugar and chocolate late at night because it seems to keep me awake (it may be totally psychosomatic, but insomnia is generally all in your head anyway).  Beyond some cookies (Nutterbutters and chocolate covered digestives) we only had one big dessert treat: Sticky Toffee Pudding with warm Devon custard.  I'm sure that there are better homemade versions of these, but for camping they are great once a year treats.  I heated up the custard in a small pot (which was a little risky on the un-even heat of the fire), but the pudding itself stays in it's can in a pot of boiling water for 20-30 minutes.

Drinks:

Wine - Having a beer in the afternoon hanging out in the sun and the water, can be one of the great parts of enjoying the outdoors, but beer isn't a great thing to take on a longer camping trip for several reasons: first, it requires cold (or at least the beers that I like do), and second, bottles and cans add to the bulk of items you bring into camp and to the trash you need to carry out.   I remember back in the 80's that boxed wine made a big splash in the states, but in general it was cheap, sweet and not very good.  A few years ago I discovered the "From the Tank" boxed wine, which I can highly recommend.  A box is approximately 3 bottles.  We got one of these and then a smaller box of French Rose which was also really good.  Boxed wine is great to bring camping because you can burn the box after your done and all you have to carry out is the plastic or mylar bag that the wine is actually packaged in.

Bourbon - Some people require bourbon.

Brandy - There was also a bottle of brandy for sipping on cold evenings in front of the fire.

Tea - I drink coffee sometimes (and I really love coffee) but I'm mainly a tea drinker.  My favorite these days is P.G. Tips - a classic British tea.   Tea doesn't require any special equipment to make and since I drink mine black, you just need a way to boil water.  I didn't bring any herbal teas on this trip, but definitely plan on bringing some on my next camping trip.  A nice cup of hot peppermint or chamomile tea can be a great way to end an evening.

The aforementioned Tang - I generally don't drink soda, and this is something that I would never drink at home, but for some reason it just fits with camping.  Since we were filtering our water from the lake, which requires adding chlorine based purification tablets, a little spoon of Tang in your water bottle adds a little flavor and covers up any strange tastes that I'm not normally used to.  Hot or cold, Tang is good.

So now, the recipe:

Lamb Kabobs with Garlic & Cilantro  (adapted from Serious Eats)

Marinade
1/2 cup packed fresh cilantro leaves
4 medium garlic cloves
1/4 cup dried cranberries (or dark raisins)
1/2 garam masala
2 T lime juice
1/2 cup olive oil
1 t salt
Freshly ground pepper

2 red onions, cut into 1 inch chunks
2 1/4 lbs of lamb leg center slices or arm chops, cut into 1-2 inch squares
Metal or bamboo skewers

Add all marinade ingredients to a food processor or blender and pulse until completely blended.   Cut lamb into 1-2 inch squares, removing any excess fat.  In a large bowl, place meat and pour marinade over it, mixing together and making sure that all meat is covered.  If you are cooking the same day, let marinate for at least an hour.  Otherwise, place lamb and marinade in a ziplock bag and refrigerate until ready to use.

If you are using bamboo skewers, soak them in water for 1 hour before you prepare the kabobs.   Cut the onions into large chunks and make the kabobs alternating meat and onions. (You can add other vegetables to these if you like - peppers and cherry tomatoes are good additions).  Grill over a hot charcoal or wood fire until medium rare. 

Stay tuned for my next post on Camp Food Preparation and Storage Tips.