Green soup

Hello, everyone.

When the cold weather hit, it was soup weather for sure.

There has been a lot of arugula and mustard around this season, and inspiration struck.

In my treasured Brother Victor soup cookbook

Just for fun: a dog picture

Hello, everyone.

The Cantankerous Cat has been getting publicity lately and it seemed good to also let one of the Marvelous Mutts have some blog time.

This photo was taken on the night of the Miracle Christmas Snow of 2004. It started snowing at 8 p.m. and stopped around 10-ish. The next day, the snow had all melted by noon. Snow doesn't last in deep South Texas!

Senior Dog, back when he was the only dog, contemplating the change in his world.

The barrel cactus is up on the porch, but it still got a good dusting.

 The next morning, before all the snow melted:

The native sabal palm, dressed in White Christmas beauty.

That snowfall covered pretty much the entire state of Texas. And the HEB Gocery company actually published about 5 books of peoples' snow pictures over the ensuing years. They were beautiful.

So I found the "lost" pictures

Hello, everyone.

The "lost pictures" I was fussing about have turned up: in a directory that is the entire month of February's imports. What's up with that? But it's good to be able to find them.

The Cutter ants are back at work again. They think it's springtime enough I guess.

Fat juicy ants carrying stuff from their tunnels to the edge of the mound

Another mound--this one has multiple nearby doors--hard at work.

 And we tried a new type of fish that we found at HEB grocery: Swai fillets with Cajun seasoning already added. (The first Swai package we tried was lemon-herb and it didn't go well as a baked fish item.) As the Swai apparently doesn't go for the baked fish treatment, I cut the fillets up into strips and breaded and fried them. A little salt sprinkle at the end, and some Ranch dressing for dipping sauce and they were great!

Fried Swai tenders!

Swai apparently is a kind of Far Eastern shark species. The flesh is very delicate, but it responds well to the fried-fish treatment.

We're still having soup weather

Hello, everyone.

As mentioned in my last post, Zuppa Toscana was on the menu. I had to go to my local HEB a second time, because I'd forgotten to include bacon on the shopping list the previous day. (Took advantage of having to go anyway to pick up a few things on sale--seasoned chicken leg quarters and suchlike.)

Then it was time to get cooking.

Browned Italian sausage, partly-cooked cut-up bacon, and cut up kale

The soup after the olive oil, onion and garlic and a little potato and cauliflower are added. The cauliflower substitutes for most of the potato.

Completed soup--with the meats, the greens, and the cream. Also a couple of nights in the fridge to marry the flavors!

 This was just the thing for a light supper on a chilly night.

Gardening--and food ideas

Hello, everyone.

It was 46F when I went outside this morning, it was cloudy, but the wind wasn't blowing and there was no wet stuff coming down. So after feeding the birdies I went over to the garden to thin some of the plants. (I did mention that my sweetie sowed *very* thickly on the rows he planted?) I didn't get them all, but I did take a big bowl of arugula (rocket) and a good sized bowl of mixed gai lan and Portuguese kale. Also there were a few small, just-turning tomatoes to be brought inside.

After first washing, the bowls ready to go inside.

I have in mind that the gail lan/kale mixture will be just right for using in the Suppa Toscana recipe--truth to tell, I wanted to get more Tuscan kale seeds and they were hard to locate, so I got the Portuguese kale instead. Now I read that it's a tougher leaf. But the leaves of that and the leaves of the gai lan "Happy Rich" look identical and, more importantly, feel identical in texture. So I'll cut them up and use them in the soup and see how it goes.

The Tuscan kale is the best for that soup--not too tough of leaves, good flavor, and no annoying frilliness on the green bits when you're eating. IMHO. And if you want it, and don't have a handy farmer's market to buy it in, you have to grow it. The only kale type stocked in grocery stores--even the fancy type of the HEB--is the curly stuff that looks so pretty on plates as a garnish. Fortunately it's a great fall garden plant and will hang on through cold weather (even light freezes) until the heat comes in in late spring. Now all I have to do is remember to buy some hot Italian style sausage, a potato, and a head of cauliflower. (I make a low-carb version of the soup, with just enough potato to keep the texture and a whole lot of cauliflower to make up the difference.)

The arugula I'll share with my sweet DIL and her mom. (There's a lot in that bowl! And there is still a whole lot in the garden.)

We have hopes that this afternoon will be at least 60F and we can bring the orchid pots out for some decent light. The blossom stems on one are showing actual buds now! (These are the butterfly type that is so easily available at the stores these days. They do well for us, hanging from the lemon tree The few other ones we're still learning out to grow along.)

It's about time to plant tomato seeds for spring/summer garden, if I can find a place to set them when they sprout. (Not outside in this weather!) Planting time for our area is mid to late February, and we never need to use gadgets like cold caps. (No wonder we weren't expecting the kind of normal spring weather we encountered in Spain! But that place is at a much higher latitude than we are. "Normal spring" is colder and wetter.)

Frutas del bosque remembered

Hello, everyone.

The Camino lives and grows in your soul, and at the oddest times you find yourself missing one particular moment. That happened to my sweetie this weekend. He went to HEB and saw the ripe (imported) cherries and came home to say that I should pick them up. It's a great deal, he said. Well. Maybe, for midwinter, but they were still about $6/pound. (4-plus euro for the half kilo, ouch!) I didn't get them. But I thought about it--and here is where my thought led me:

In the last part of the Camino, in Galicia I think, we were walking along over green and often woody hills. We passed one particular bit with some houses, my sweetie walking ahead as he so often did, and I looked up and found I'd caught the eye of the sweetest little old lady. She was sitting on her chair in her drive, just off the trail, and arranging frutas del bosque (raspberries) in baskets for sale to the passing pilgrims. She smiled at me with the brightest twinkle in her eye...I caught up to my sweetie a few steps later and said, "I can't believe you passed that up." Well, he didn't know what I was even talking about, so he went back, and there she still was. He got a basket of berries and we munched on down the trail, quenching our thirst with the wonderful berries.

And that was what he was really after with the cherries. He wanted to be there again, on the trail, meeting this nice old lady and getting a basket of berries to eat.

Once I figured that out, I looked around for something that was a little closer to frutas del bosque. And there were fresh blackberries there, marked down to about a dollar for 6 ounces. I got two packages of those and handed them to my sweetie with "I got your frutas del bosque at the store."

Now I want to be back there, smiling at that sweet lady, and then tasting the lovely juicy berries. (and as with so much we saw toward the end, neither of us had a camera out!)

This and the next one were both on the same day. The path was slanted and rocky, so we walked on the road instead. That bright red speck is my sweetie, up ahead.

We saw so many different pilgrim statues. You can see, he has his staff, his water gourd, his Cross of Santiago on his coat, and his shell on his hat.

Top of the pilgrim monument at the overlook Monte de Gozo just before Santiago.

Friday fish dinner

Hello, everyone.

You may remember my gushing over the St. John's Day sardines in Fisterra.

We came home determined not to let the wonderful new foods fade from our memory. You will recall the post about making Pulpo.

Today we had sardines. Our grocery store, HEB, has been stocking little bags of frozen, fat sardines. They're not quite as fat and wonderful as the St. John's Day sardines--but the nice man at the fishing museum in Fisterra told us that the sardines start out very fat at St. John's Day and get, well, leaner and drier as the season progresses. I presume that all the frozen sardines we see were caught in the middle of the prime sardine season.

We eat the sardines with fresh baguette bread--that being basically equivalent to the barra breads we were buying in Spain.
The recipe for preparing the sardines, from my end, is really simple: thaw bag of sardines. Hand over to Sweetie. (He grills them over charcoal.) Serve with slices of baguette, sea salt, extra-virgin olive oil, and a nice white wine. No extras required. Fight off the pets who are crawling into your lap trying to get some!

The sardines (these were fresh, not frozen, but still...) we ate in Fisterra. With bread chunks and a nice albarino wine. 

And my sweetie was very proud of having caught me in a picture with the sign "pirata."

It's not Madrid, but it does relate to Spain

Hello, everyone.

I know I told y'all that I really liked the octopus (pulpo a feira) that we ate in Galicia. I liked it so much that I trawled the internet and found a recipe to make it.

That was all kind of academic at the time, because I had no idea how to find octopus to cook. Then my grocery store (HEB) suddenly stocked thawed, cleaned octopus in the fish counter. Thank you, HEB!

Last night's dinner, in three photos:

Ready to dip into the boiling water

The instructions say to fill a large pot with water and get it boiling. I used a 20 quart stock pot. When it was boiling, I added the peeled whole onion and let it get acquainted with itself for a couple of minutes. Then I rounded up the long handled meat fork and used it to dip the octopus into the boiling water. Removed, stood tapping foot while water returned to boiling, Did the dip-and-remove-and-wait thing one more time. The next time the water came back to a boil, I put the octopus in and left it to cook. I set the timer for 45 minutes. (This octopus was previously frozen. And we know that freezing meat tenderizes it somewhat.)

Ready to check doneness

When the timer went off, I pulled the now-curled octopus out and put it onto the cutting board for the doneness test: cut a chunk out of the thick part of a tentacle and see if it's tender. It was. I cut the tentacles up into bite sized chunks. I also cut where the tentacles join into bite sized chunks. I didn't cut the head up. (The head I serve to the dogs and cats afterward. They love it, too.) Then I transferred all of the chunks to a bowl.

Yum!

I poured Extra Virgin Olive Oil onto the chunks, added a generous sprinkle of ground Chipotle pepper, and salted. I also sliced up one of the short-baguette loaves baked earlier in the day and we had Pulpo a Feira con Pan for dinner. With tinto to drink.

I confess, tinto sometimes is a little too muscular a wine for chicken and seafood, but it seems like the Spanish are keeping their good Albarinos and Verdejos at home instead of sending them overseas where I can get them. Drat. I love the Spanish wines.

(Oh, the bread was made from the recipe in my copy of Bo Friberg's Pastry Chef book...I've had it some years so I think there's a newer one out, but I'm fairly confident that basic baguette is still in the "Breads and Pastries" chapter. I used a pan of warm water on the bottom shelf of the oven for the steam and used the Pizza Tile and the spiffy new French-bread two-loaf pan to bake it.)

If I remember to take pictures, the next time we find frozen sardines at HEB, I'll take pictures of my sweetie cooking them for me on the fire. And likewise for the next time we make Gambon al Ajillo, shrimp with garlic and olive oil. Both of these are also served with baguette slices.

Did I mention that I divided the bread dough into 4 parts when I made it, baking two and freezing two at the formed loaf ready to rise stage? Now all I have to do to get wonderful baguette bread is to thaw out the loaves and let them rise and bake them. Bread dough freezes wonderfully well.