Cream of Carrot Soup

Let me start by saying that my love for carrots has been a bit overstated. Ever since the whole "I would give anything for a carrot right now" out of context, thats-not-quite-what-I-said comment in the paper, people have offered me carrots left and right.
Let's set the record straight. I really do like carrots.
I would not kill someone for a carrot.

There.

Having gotten that off my chest, I now feel free to tell you how much I like carrot soup. It's an easy, filling soup that looks pretty as well. It's right at home as a starter for a fancy dinner, and equally as appropriate as a main course by itself with some bread when you're shlepping around the house. I've been looking forward to making it ever since carrots came back into season, but we ran out of broth a couple of weeks back, so it's been on hold. We roasted a chicken and got a ton of stock this weekend though, so tonight Sal made the carrot soup.

I originally got this recipe from Cook Your Meals the Lazy Way, a cookbook I got for like, $2.00 after college. Since the lazy way is my preferred method of doing anything, I've used this recipe over and over again. I tweak it ever so slightly so it looks like this:

Cream of Carrot Soup (or any vegetable)

3 cups chopped carrots (or whatever veggie you want)

1 tbs. butter

1 med. onion (or a couple of spring onions, which is what we have now)

2 tbs. flour

4 cups chicken stock

1/2 c. milk or cream (cream is much more delicious in this recipe if you don't care about the fat)

salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat and add the onion and carrots. Stir to combine, cover and cook over low heat for about 10 minutes - until softened but only lightly browned.

Stir in the flour and cook about 3 minutes. Blend in the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 5 to 10 minutes, until carrots are tender.

Add milk or cream and puree the soup in two or three portions in the blender (filling the blender only half way or less - do not overfill it!) and transfer to a large serving bowl. It's probably best to cover the blender with a towel during this process so you don't have a kitchen covered in cream of carrot soup. Believe me, this advice comes from experience.

Season to taste with salt and pepper.

We also made chicken sandwiches with some of the leftover roasted chicken, Great Harvest Honey Whole Wheat bread, lettuce from our yard and my homemade mayonnaise. Yes, I finally figured out how to make mayonnaise. It really wasn't that hard (Stew-you were right) once I used the right equipment. I remembered that we had this tiny little 1 cup attachment for our blender that was perfect to mix everything up to the right consistency. I know that's not the Martha Stewart way of doing it, but it worked, so that's what counts. Next time I'll use canola oil vs. olive oil I think. It came out pretty lovely though, all things considered.

Recipe for a chilly, rainy day

This Saturday it rained all day - it was awesome. It was the start of a three day weekend, so we had pretty much already given ourselves the pass to laze about all day, but the rain just sealed the deal. I ended up getting some things done that I had been meaning to do, all at a leisurely pace. I finished Sal's scarf (that I started last year - hey, better late than never!), did the laundry, and read some magazines that had been piling up. Finally, I decided that I wanted to bake something warm and yummy. I searched around the kitchen for ingredients that would perhaps meet my craving requirements, but that wouldn't sit around for days tempting me with deliciousness. I had: apples that were going soft, a never ending stash of oatmeal, and peanut butter.

Apples and peanut butter are perfect together, so figured that someone in the universe had to have been smart enough to put these two into a recipe for cookies. A quick search of the internet told me that yes, such a cookie does exist. However, it was tough finding one that I could adapt to my local stash. I finally settled on one from Cooks.com that I changed a bit, but the results were totally satisfying. They totally hit the spot on the chewy, peanut buttery scale - and really can't be that fattening, right? I hope not, since I ate half the batch in one sitting. Here it is if you want to try for yourself:

Mix:

3 tbsp. butter

3/4 cup peanut butter

Add and mix in:

1/2 cup sugar (or honey)

2 egg whites

2 tbsp. skim milk

1/2 tsp. baking soda

Add and mix in:

3/4 cup flour

3/4 cup oats

1 medium apple (peeled and finely diced - 3/4 cup)

Stir until mixed; drop by tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet; flatten slightly.

Bake at 350 degrees for 12-14 minutes.

Makes about 1.5 dozen cookies.

They're heeeeere!

My order from Baker's Creek Heirloom Seeds arrived on Friday, a mere 5 days after placing my order online. That's fabulous customer service. All my selections were in stock, and they even included a free gift of Tropeana Round onions, which I can't find in their catalog, but I'm assuming must be the same as the Tropeana Lunga they have listed?

Since I basically have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to gardening (though I don't let that stop me!), I made a visit to our local library and picked up an armful of books on growing heirloom seed and the like. A couple of them ended up to be hugely helpful, so I'm going to buy them. Here are my favorites so far:

Seed Sowing and Saving: Step-by-Step Techniques for Collecting and Growing More Than 100 Vegetables, Flowers, and Herbs

Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening

The North Carolina Fruit & Vegetable Book

I'll probably go back and get another load of books and add more to this list next week. God, I love the library. And books in general. As a complete side - I also adore the Amazon feature that suggests other books you may like based on your shopping cart. Just by adding these three books to my cart I've already discovered like, five others I now want. But I'll check them out at the library first - Amazon doesn't always know what it's talking about.

Oh, one more useful thing that my mom got me for Christmas (thanks, mom!), is this garden journal. It's got weekly entry sections to record what you've planted, what the weather was like, etc. and it's got little tips and info specifically for North Carolina. I've been good about recording for the past two weeks, but then again, it's only mid-January. We'll see how long I can consistently keep it up.

Starting from scratch

I got my first ever Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Catalog in the mail a few weeks ago, and I've had a hard time putting it down. It's a gorgeous, loverly thing, filled with beautiful pictures of heirloom fruits, vegetables, and flowers - but the descriptions alone are enough to make you salivate. I swear I read every entry, poring over each category to pick THE seeds that were going to be fabulous in my garden this year.

We'll see - I'm not exactly an expert gardener. I haven't been a big seed starter up until now. I usually just get some already started little planties and stick them in the ground, hoping for the best. But this year, by golly, I am starting my garden from heirloom seeds. Choosing which ones, though was quite the process. I mean, there's got to be like, 300 varieties (okay, fact check - there are 175 - but it felt like 300) of just tomatoes. And they all have these tantalizing names like Missouri Pink Love Apple, and Cherokee Chocolate. How to decide?!! After much circling, and dog earing, and crossing out and recircling, I think I've finally got my crop. Here's what I finally decided to order:

One pack each:
- Snowball Self-Blanching Cauliflower
- Golden Bantam 8 Row Sweet Corn
- St. Valery Carrots
- Danvers 126 Half Long Carrots
- Cosmic Purple Carrots
- Amarillo Carrots
- Florida Market Eggplant
- Lincoln Sweet Peas
- Texas Early Grano 502 Onions
- Giant Noble Spinach
- Winter Luxury Pie Pumpkin
- Crookneck - Early Golden Summer Squash
- Zucchini - Black Beauty
- Arkansas Traveler Tomato (Pink)
- Roma Tomato
- Tappy's Heritage Tomato (Red)
- Principe Borghese Tomato (Red - cherry variety)
- Amish Paste Tomato
- Siletz Tomato (Red - early crop)
- Big Month Tomato (Red)
- Chadwick Cherry Tomato (Red)
- Golden Sunray Tomato (Orange)
- Golden Monarch Tomato (Yellow)
- Yellow Pear Tomato

Holy goodness. I'm seriously craving a tomato sandwich just writing this list. Hopefully the seeds I've chosen will be happy in my garden. I probably do not need, nor shall I be able to grow 11 varieties of tomatoes (or 4 varieties of carrots for that matter), but I just couldn't narrow my list down any more. It was hard enough to whittle down the options once I had selected my 20 favorites. I tried to contain myself on the other veggies as well, settling on just those that we eat the most.

I placed my order online at Baker Creek's website, which has tons of resources and also some great information about Baker Creek founder Jere Gettle and his wife Emilee. Precious. Seriously. You can also order or download your own catalog there if you like. Oooh, and there's also information on their Garden Shows and Heritage Day Festivals happening in the Spring. Lordy, the place is adorable - we're already planning a trip.

Updates later when the seeds arrive - we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Ringing it in

I really do love celebrating the arrival of a new year. Okay sure, alot of that usually has to do with champagne, but what I like most is the idea of a clean slate - that fresh start. I'm a minimalist kind of girl, and the start of a new year always inspires me to purge the closets, organize my files, and begin again with only what I need.

I also like the idea of making New Year's Resolutions. I try to stick with attainable, meaningful goals that I think will make a difference in my life in some way.

Last year's (which were almost all attained, save one) were:

1. See 4 new movies at the theater. Check. ( I had previously thought I'd only seen three, but realized we also went to see The Future of Food at UNCW, which I think counts.)
2. Try 3 new foods. Check. (I actually waaay surpassed this thanks to our local eating. Rutebagas - who knew?)
3. Invite over/hang out with 3 new people. Also check.
4. Take a class for fun. Check - Spanish class at Centro Latino. Not the best, but fun.
5. Walk for exercise three times a week. Nope. Try again this year.

This year is a little harder. If you hate me after I say this, it's okay: I'm quite content with my life the way it is right now, and am not hugely motivated to make dramatic, life altering changes. I am happy. After much thought though, I've come up with these - may add more later...

1. Add at least 5 more vegetable varieties to our garden to expand our eating self sufficiency. Try not to kill them.
2. Call/email at least one faraway friend per month.
3. Call H to schedule at least 4 sessions of cake decorating lessons.
4. Do my best to create more good in the world. Try not to be an ass.
5. Okay fine... Exercise three days a week.
   

You may notice that I didn't say anything about blogging more often. It's a goal, but not one that I'm going to be tied to. I spend way to much time on the internet anyway.

So that being said - I hope you have a wonderful, peaceful, meaningful 2008!