Sacramento Beer

I was reading in the latest issue of Sactown magazine (while on the treadmill at the gym, no less), that prior to Prohibition, Sacramento was the nation's largest hops-growing region.  Unfortunately, once Prohibition passed, it never regained its national prominence and the Pacific Northwest took over.

But apparently, a local entrepreneur is trying his hand at making a fully Sacramento beer.  Including locally grown hops.  And he's having quite a bit of success:


After reading the article and watching the video, Gropius was anxious to try it and our local Whole Foods just happened to have a BIG display of it, too.  So, he busted out this one to enjoy:

And I think we might be getting a few more before they sell out, so we can let our visitors enjoy some of Sacramento's beer, too.

And it just so happens our local Whole Foods has 20% off beer for today only....better motor!

Quinoa Pancakes

Before we left for Stockton, I tried out a new recipe at breakfast:  Quinoa Pancakes.

No, wait!  Honestly, they were tasty!

I used a mixture of white and red quinoa (but mostly white)

I can't remember where I came across the recipe (from someone's blog I'm sure), but I thought they would be tasty and I was right.  The only tricky part was cooking the quinoa the night before so that I didn't have to worry about it that morning.

Just a thick pancake batter...

The dough was on the thick side, but well within the normal pancake range.

doesn't that look delicious?

And they cooked up like you would expect.

best of all, the recipe made enough for all three of us!

And best of all, they were higher in protein than our normal pancakes, thereby keeping us fuller longer, and they were only sweetened with maple syrup.  Actually, there was more quinoa (1 cup) than flour (3/4 cup) in the there.  Lulu's only complaint was that I didn't make her the usual "Minnie Mouse" pancake this time.

Hurrah for quinoa!

Purple Cauliflower/Lila Blumenkohl

Apologies--this week has been full of last-minute errands and furious preparation for the beginning of the semester on Monday.  I have been taking pictures and doing things, but not necessarily fun things that I thought people might enjoy reading.

We made a new recipe from Essen und Trinken magazine (or should that be Magazin?) earlier this week.  Gropius couldn't refuse a pretty purple cauliflower in the grocery store and I found a tasty Rezept online for it.  It was delicious, easy to prepare (just involved multiple steps, but they were easy ones), and hit the spot!

puff pastry cut, par-baked, filled and ready for final baking....

purple cauliflower, creme fraiche, Gruyere, and thyme

The final dinner:  grilled pork chop, cauliflower, green salad

doesn't that look beautiful?

We also made a special meal with a recipe in honor of Julia Child's 100th birthday.  Not on the actual birthday, mind you (we aren't that organized), but we certainly stated our gratitude to her when we tasted our dinner!

buttering the pan for baking, béchamel sauce cooking on the stove

zucchini,  parboiled rice, parmesan cheese

Hellen came over for dinner that night because Derek was out of town and brought a tasty Provençal rosé that we enjoyed with dinner.  Everyone thought it tasted like a much heavier, calorific meal than it actually was.  I never would've thought to use the zucchini's expressed water as a base for the béchamel.  No photos of the final meal because we were too busy talking and having a good time.

Veggie Tart

simple ingredients:  olive oil tart crust, zucchini, tomato, onion, eggs, cheese. sunflower seeds.

amazingly tasty result:

Grilled Pizza

We've been enjoying a LOT of grilled pizza lately because the weather has been so HOT.  On Friday evening, I finally decided to take a few shots of the action.  We made a pretty simple grilled pizza--no tomato sauce, just pesto on ours and tomato paste on Lulu's.  We did have a beautiful roma tomato from the garden that we used on our pizza in lieu of sauce though.  I think after a couple more tries, we'll have this grilled pizza thing down flat.  (and on the plus side, the grilled flatbread makes a great transfer medium for hummus!)

first pizza of the night (for Lulu)

flipping it over in a thwack works better than sliding it off the peel

Lulu's pizza

the mise en place

such concentration....

our basil pesto pizza with mixed cheeses

adding a little smoky char to the roma tomato

Blueberries

The trouble with going to a greenhouse on the Fourth of July is buying the unexpected....we were there to pick up another Parrot's Beak to replace the one that died while we were gone (too hot, not enough water, outside on the patio, etc) when I came across the Pink Lemonade blueberry bushes.  My eyes lit up and Gropius hung his head and said, "Okay."

Resistance is futile.

acidic soil, sand, and vermiculite

Once we got it home, we had to decide where to put it (I hadn't gotten that far) and ultimately decided that it would be best to rip out the horrible bush/refuge for scary spiders next to the carport and put it there.

action shot with the roto-tiller (i.e., best birthday present ever!)

Then, Gropius did some additional research and discovered that blueberries do better when planted with another species of the same plant (even though they are self-pollinators).  So, we put in two:  a pink lemonade (with pink berries) and an O'Neal (with blue berries).  And we also picked up a star jasmine when we were at Home Depot getting the necessary soil amendments for the blueberries.

pink lemonade on the left, o'neal on the right

two (edible) bushes are better than one

And of course, we decided to do this unanticipated landscaping project on a day when the temperature topped out at 100 degrees F.  Luckily, we could escape into the shade of the carport to elude the sun, and I insisted that Gropius drink water every time I saw him pause, but that still meant he was pretty tired at the end of the day.  And dehydrated.

The finished product with star jasmine in the back corner

But the new plants look beautiful.  And I hope that we get to enjoy some of our own pink/blueberries next spring!

Strudel

So, I have dedicated myself to learning how to make strudel--the real thing with actual strudelteig that you pull until it's so thin you can almost see through it.  The idea of being able to use that strudel dough to make sweet and savory strudels makes my mouth water....

But, before then, this recipe for Apricot Baklava Strudel called out to me from Sunset magazine.  I bought a handful of pistachios earlier in the week and a friend gave me a bag of apricots from her backyard tree--I figured this recipe was kismet!

Once I started getting everything assembled though, I realized that I didn't have the ground cardamom after all.  I had green and black cardamom pods, so I ended up splitting the green pods and grinding the cardamom up myself.  As my friend Hellen told me when she sampled some that afternoon, "You bake with love."

my miss en place, ready to assemble

the ground nuts, sugar, and cardamom

the finished product

Then, because I had plenty of the honey/sugar mixture leftover from macerating the apricots and half a package of phyllo dough, I decided to make a small cherry strudel, too.  Rather than using pistachios, I chopped up some almonds instead.

a little cherry peeking out....