Category Archives: Around the Farmhouse

Troya Restaurant: My New San Francisco Favorite

It’s been a long time since a restaurant has inspired me to get back in my kitchen to learn to make new dishes. Troya, on 5th and Clement in San Francisco, reminded me of my trip to Israel and how I came home burning to get into my kitchen to learn to make my own pita and recreate the meze dishes we had at Arab restaurants there.

Troya looked a little fancy for my tastes from the outside. I like low-key restaurants that serve really approachable but delicious food. I don’t want my sauces foamed and precious and I don’t want enormous plates with single architectural bites arranged in the middle. Haute food is not my scene. I want humble dishes made exceptionally well. I want peasant food and country food and classic foods with fresh twists. In spite of how shiny Troya looked the menu was enticing and the prices just within my budget.

The restaurant describes its food as a blend of Turkish-mediterranean. I have no experience with Turkish food but Mediterranean food is my favorite and there were a lot of familiar dishes with slightly unfamiliar touches.

First we got some bread with olive oil, crushed pistachios, and what I think is a red za’atar mix. I loved dipping the bread in olive oil and then the pistachios but the spice mix was too perfumy for my taste, though Philip really enjoyed it.

Next we had the warm olives marinated in herbs and citrus. Philip says he’ll never eat cold olives again. They were amazing – the warmth enhances the olive flavor wonderfully.

The zucchini cakes. This was our favorite dish. Our only complaint was that they didn’t come with enough of the yogurt sauce. But honestly – that’s such a small complaint. I don’t know what else is in these deep fried cakes besides zucchini but I mean to find out when I go back again! The texture inside was moist but didn’t have an uncooked flavor – they were perfect.

Normally I despise images of half eaten food but I wanted to show you what they looked like inside the crispy exterior.

The grilled halloumi cheese with roasted baby beets, local greens, and pistachios was the second runner up for favorite dish. I’m a sucker for a beet salad with nuts and this one was perfectly dressed. (It’s a pet peeve of mine when salads are underdressed because, unlike bunnies, I don’t like dry greens.)

Lastly we had the vegetarian moussakka. It was creamy and the vegetables worked well together but they used fresh mint in the seasoning which isn’t my favorite. It didn’t ruin it for me but I wished I couldn’t taste it because it interfered with the melting flavors of the other ingredients.

I can’t wait to go back! There are some other vegetarian dishes to try and obviously I have to have those zucchini cakes again.

A couple of other notes:

The wait staff was super friendly and took good care of us from beginning to end. We went before it was crowded so I don’t know how it is when it’s bustling but we had a great experience.

Though the restaurant seemed a little on the fancy side for me at first I changed my opinion soon after being seated. It’s casual enough that you won’t feel stupid for not dressing up or knowing how to use a fish fork (they don’t have any – ha!).

You won’t care about this but I could see my old apartment from my seat and it pleased me so much! I thought of my friend and old roommate Jessica and if she ever comes up to visit I think we’ll have to eat at Troya and talk about the old days.

Pajama Pant Sew-Along: update

Hello my intrepid sew-along friends!

I am writing to apologize for not posting the next set of steps this past weekend. My mother was very sick on Sunday (when I was going to write and post the next sew-along post) and had to have emergency surgery.

I am going to beg that you all not give up on this project. I will be back with another post but probably not until next week. Then I may decide to do smaller posts that will be easier to manage while caring for my mother’s situation.

Thank you so much for joining my sewing adventure and I hope we’ll all pick up next week and continue on our fun trip!

The Dining Room and Living Room Tour: Unpacked and Settled In

Remember when I gave you the house tour right after we moved in and showed you all the scary piles and the crap everywhere? Well, we finished unpacking long ago and there are still generally piles of scary crap all over our house because I have the equivalent of 3 full time jobs and a very poor relationship with laundry, but when I do clean my house it’s much different than when you saw it the first time. This first picture is our dining room table. During the first house tour we were still pretending this was the living room. We like having festive lights on all year round so Philip decorated our window with them. We love it!

Look how clean that floor is! The dining room table has no mail on it! Chick is running up the stairs to position herself for maximum barking impact when the mailman comes.

This is my single most favorite piece of furniture besides my desk. It’s from the early thirties and was shipped over here from Italy.

Just another view of my dining room. I’m only showing you the dining room and living room this time so I want to give you lots of opportunity to enjoy it. If you ever come to visit me you will not recognize them because they will be covered in crap.

Looking from the living room to the dining room. Chick is not a restful dog.

I love this picture because of the light streaming in from the ONE window in this room. The curtains are usually drawn to keep the glare off the tv.

We like chairs, not couches. Though I miss having an alternative place to fall asleep if the bedroom is inhospitably loud. When we hang out together we each like having our own chair. The purple one is mine, the blue leather one is Philip’s and the dark rose colored one near the floor lamp is Max’s.

Lastly – this is the tv cabinet. It’s my mom’s and she’s taking it back to put in her apartment. We don’t know what we’ll do. We’ll have to find some kind of replacement. I’ll worry about that another day. The shelf to the right is filled with my cookbooks and gardening books.

Some day the stars will align and the upstairs will be all tidy and looking pretty and I’ll give you the tour of that. I’m just happy to have it on record that every once in a while my living room and dining room are neat and tidy and pretty and inviting.

Hope you enjoyed the mini-tour!

Stitch Needs a Facelift but Pippa Doesn’t

You may have noticed that my blog is all jacked up? I have. My drop-down menu disappeared and there’s a weird overlapping and blacking that happens sometimes when I do a search and scroll down. It’s weird. I’ve been wanting to change things a little for a while. Then I spent two weeks learning to use a new theme over at Better Than Bullets and it exhausted me before I even got it just how I wanted it.

So if things get even funkier and more messed up in the next few weeks – please be patient and don’t give up on Stitch and Boots! I have some updated pictures of my dining room and living room to share with you and I’ve also got a recipe for laundry detergent to post. Not only that – but some yard work has happened and this week I’m planting some culinary herbs in pots outside my back door that I’ll want to show you.

Now I just have to get up the nerve to dive into the world of themes and fonts and try to make Stitch both functional and attractive again. I think I’m going to need a lot more sustaining beverages to accomplish this!

Meanwhile – enjoy Pippa being adorable! Her new nick name (in case you haven’t already heard) is Squeaky Pumpkin. You know you want to touch her belly!

10 Food Blogging Trends That Need to End

1. Rehashing the rehashed recipes ad infinitum…

Here are some food trends that have been done to fucking DEATH: bacon, candied bacon, bacon jam, doughnuts (the new cupcake), kale chips, buffalo anything, pulled pork, quinoa, bacon in desserts, red velvet anything, chocolate chip cookies, cookie dough anything, loaded baked potato soup, green smoothies, anything with chia seeds, s’mores anything, homemade marshmallows, and sweet potato fries just to name a few. You’re just following the fumes of trends that have been driven into the ground.

2. Photos of food spilling and dripping over the sides of dishes.

It’s not arty – it’s gross. It makes my fingers feel sticky and rather than wanting to grab a spoon or fork and eat your food I want to grab a sponge or a dish towel and clean up after you.

3. Stuffing cookies with candy or other cookies.

Stuffing food inside other food. This over-the-top stuffing of food inside other food has become one big gluttonous denial that heart attacks and diabetes could happen to YOU.

4. Supporting the packaged crap industry

There is apparently a continuous contest to see how many ways one can cram processed crap into their home baked goods. Disposing of whole bags of fun-size candy bars in a cake recipe is sick and needs to stop. Please refer to #3.

5. Hyperbolic food writing.

We get it – food can be emotional for some people. Suggesting that a single dish of food is “life changing” is ridiculous. Talking about food as though it can heal all the wounds of life is also ridiculous. Be real. Stop trying to flog emotions out of us with the promise of life-changing pasta. We’re not simpletons.

6. Striped paper straws

Time for a new prop for food photo shoots involving any kind of sweets or sweet beverages. My eyes are so tired of seeing the same striped straws everywhere. What annoys me about them aside from their ubiquity is the “old fashioned wholesomeness” bloggers seem to be implying as if jaunty little straws can neutralize the potential for heart disease and obesity represented on the endless parades of plates piled high with processed-crap-stuffed baked goods.

7. Fondant.

Fondant doesn’t taste good. The first rule of food is that it should nourish your body. The first rule of food worth talking about is that it also taste good. If it neither nourishes nor tastes good it doesn’t matter how pretty it is, you may as well be sculpting cakes out of play-dough.

8. The evils of “mouth-feel”

Never describe to me how food will FEEL or ACT in my mouth (or in yours). The second you start talking about food in people’s mouths I am imagining masticated food and that makes me lose my appetite which is the opposite of what your writing is trying to accomplish. It’s not funny. It truly grosses me out. I don’t want a “party” or an “explosion” of any kind IN MY MOUTH. So get out of my mouth, please, and keep me out of yours too.

9. Fluffy cake flavored drinks pretending to be martinis

Calling any beverage in a martini glass a martini. It’s not the glass that makes it a martini – it’s the use of gin + vermouth that makes it a martini. The only other version of a martini that’s still a martini is vodka + vermouth. If your drink contains anything else – it is most definitely NOT a martini so give it a new name.*

10. The cast of characters ingredient shot.**

Unless you plan to not have an ingredient list with your recipe (which would be a dumb move) no one needs to see the ingredients all grouped together on your kitchen counter. It adds insult to injury when every item in the photo is labeled – it suggests that your readers are so new to the world that they don’t know what butter looks like. Trust me – we know it when we’re looking at eggs just like we understood what you meant when you listed “2 eggs” in the ingredient list.

*A splash of olive brine and a garnish of an olive or a lemon twist are the only other variations allowable for the drink to still bear the name “martini”. If you’re using flavored vodkas – it’s not a martini.

**My friend Sarah’s words for it. Brilliant.

A Walking Tour of San Francisco: Chinatown Groceries

Last Friday I went into San Francisco to meet a friend I hadn’t seen in over 15 years. I did a lot of walking, as I always do. If you want to see more of my walk in San Francisco you can read A Walking Tour of Down Town San Francisco: Angelina Style over at Better Than Bullets. This post is all pictures of groceries in Chinatown.

Starting with those chicken feet. A big bin of chicken feet. As a vegetarian who prefers that animals not be killed for eating I am happy when people use as much of an animal as they can. But I have to say – the sight of those toenails is about as unappetizing as food gets. I’d rather eat fried brains than suck on a chicken toe for juices or eat soup that was stewed with chicken toenails. If I was going to eat a human being – I would definitely not eat their fingers or toes.

What I love best about Chinese markets is how unpretentious they are – there is such a melee of STUFF. Such a jumble of dried goods and grains and nuts and packages of mysterious ingredients (only mysterious to me, not to the regular shoppers of the markets) and the bins and boxes used to hold all these interesting edibles are always bedraggled and funky. It may sound like an insult but it really isn’t. I think this is how people have been shopping for a thousand years before there were fancy big-ass grocery stores with shiny shelves and precious rustic (new) bins for vegetables*.

Like so many shops in Chinatown – the windows of this one don’t look like they’ve had a good scrub-down in ages. I don’t really know what that stuff is in the window. Maybe pastries of some sort? Except that I think they were selling live seafood too.

This fried skin interests me because it still has the ink markings on it. Waste nothing! I couldn’t figure out what it originally was. I thought maybe fish except that I don’t think fish scales would puff up like that with frying. I have no idea.

This shop has all kinds of packaged up fish. Are they cured fish? The fish in the bags in the front here aren’t vacuum sealed and they aren’t dried. Are they pickled in some way? Being in a bag on a warm day in San Francisco with no refrigeration makes me think these fish are preserved in some way. I’ll tell you what – this market was the stinkiest one I passed. What’s in those jars up high? Next time I want to explore more closely.

All of these pictures were taken on Stockton Street except for the chicken feet. Grant Street is pretty much all shops exploding with tourist crap and jewelry stores. Stockton Street is where most of the real markets are for kitchen supplies, food, and useful groceries. I think this is sugar cane.

When shopping in Asian grocery stores or Chinese shops like this one the thing that impresses me most is how much dried and pickled food there is. I think this is because the Chinese have had an established culture for so much longer than most others and traditions run deep – think about all those hundreds of years when there was no canning or refrigeration to keep foods good. People of all cultures relied on dried, fermented, salted, and smoked foods for getting through lean seasons until the last 150 years when people figured out how to can foods in sealed jars. While all cultures have a food history rich in dried foods – I think Chinese people still rely a great deal on dried and fermented foods out of tradition rather than necessity. Who’s going to fare the best in an apocalyptic situation? I’m betting on the Chinese people both in China and in the United States. People who know how to make meals from a handful of dried mushrooms and fish and fermented soybeans have a leg up on those who rarely use dried goods or keep much in their pantry. By the way – if you want to read more about the history of food preserving you should read the book “Pickled, Potted, and Canned” by Sue Shephard.** I don’t rely on dried goods much in my own cooking but I plan to play with my dehydrator more and explore the potential there.

That concludes my food tour of Chinatown. I hope you enjoyed it!

*Full disclosure: I love all grocery stores and food markets. I love those fancy ones too – I just don’t feel the same sense of curiosity when in them and sometimes it annoys me when stores get a little too precious over a carrot or charge $5.99 p/lb for tomatoes during the height of tomato season. But seriously – put me in a grocery store, open food market, or farmer’s market and I’m going to be in my happy place.

**No one I mention that book to ever wants to read it but it’s a truly interesting read – very entertaining and informative. It’s not some boring book about making jam. It’s a book that talks about how the cod industry grew a nation and how salt pork made exploring by ship possible and how dried goods made fighting wars on other people’s turf possible. Please ask for a copy for Christmas if you like food at all. I get nothing for recommending it to you. No affiliate links here and no sponsorship. In fact, the copy of this book I read was checked out from the library. (See if yours has a copy) and as I’m talking about it I realized that I want a copy of this for myself – so I think I’ll ask for it for Christmas.

An Olive Update: the first taste test!

This past weekend we tasted the first batch of olives. I flavored them two ways. 1) bay, lemon, garlic, and rosemary and 2) bay, lemon, garlic, and thyme. I removed the garlic from each jar after one week. Holy mother of garlic fiends! Does that garlic get strong in the brine! Lesson learned: use one clove per jar and see what happens. Several is much too pungent.

I love rosemary so I fully expected to love it in my olives. I did not. Philip didn’t like it much either. You know who tasted both and preferred the rosemary olives? Max. I am amazed that he wanted to try either of them – he recently tried his first commercially made green olive and didn’t like it. But he wanted to try mine. The texture of olives is still throwing him off but he liked the flavor. Especially the rosemary flavor. My take on them: very sharp and much too piney, overwhelming herb flavor.

Philip and I both loved the thyme flavored ones. SO GOOD. Excuse me but this is what I said when I tasted them “These are SO FUCKING GOOD!!”* The texture is perfect. The flavor of these ones was more subtly herby but with the briny flavor of olive coming through.

I was completely excited by how good these turned out until Philip put a damper on my excitement ten minutes later by saying he felt a sudden wave of nausea and broke out in a little sweat. He thinks it was the olives. I denied the possibility very strongly. I do not poison members of my family with my preserving projects!

However – I had just burped up pine flavor before he poked a giant hole in my triumph so I had to admit to myself (but not to him!) that there might be something in his experience. That rosemary flavoring was really harsh and Philip has a delicate stomach. I’m not saying that to be mean. He’s tough in many ways but his stomach is not an organ of great fortitude.

It is the easiest thing in the world to make him get queasy. Here’s how you do it:

You “Hey Philip.”

Him “What?”

You “I think that milk was bad. I feel queasy.”

(wait two minutes)

Him “I feel queasy too.”

See? Or you can just make him clean out the litter box 15 minutes before having him taste your olives. Or just ask him “Are you feeling queasy?” just asking him that question has often been effective.**

My theory is that those rosemary olives are unpleasantly potent and upsetting to stomachs. Until I have proved this is the problem I will not share my olives with anyone else. The next step is to taste only the thyme olives and see what happens. But I have to let Philip’s fear fade a little bit first.

Fingers crossed.

Next up – flavoring the second batch. But not with rosemary.

*That’s what I said in my head and then put on facebook. I did not say it in front of Max. Although I completely approve of swearing on general principle, I don’t swear in front of him. Except by accident.

** While I can make fun of him for being so highly suggestible – I have to remind you that I’m emetaphobic and this means that if I know someone is sick with the flu and are vomiting or if I see or hear vomit – I will become nauseous immediately. However, my stomach is very strong and rarely feels a twinge that is not produced as a byproduct of anxiety or proximity to sick people.

Fermentation Fail: witness my moldy pickle

It was time to check up on my fermenting pickles. The cloudy water was not encouraging. When I opened up the jars the smell was: garlicky dill with a hint of food-gone-bad. It almost smelled right but really didn’t. I suppose that they might be safe to eat when you consider that people have been burying fish to rot them for eating joy for hundreds of years.

But I am not a person who buries things until they’re rotted just-so. My dog does this. There is nothing finer to her than to bury a bit of rawhide in a good rainy spot, let it acquire a strong odor of dead body, and then dig up the blackened delicacy to eat at my feet.

I don’t know what I did wrong. The cauliflower I fermented two years ago never went bad. I had it in the cupboard for months before we finished it off. I was completely confident in it and we enjoyed eating it. I followed essentially the same process. An acquaintance of mine has suggested they got too warm. This is a very real possibility as September and part of October was pretty hot and there isn’t a truly cool spot in the house to store pickles.

I’m disappointed, obviously. Such a waste of pickling cucumbers. But as with all skills – there is a learning curve and some failures are expected. My olives seem to be doing alright still and I can start a new fermentation project using winter vegetables like cauliflower, carrots, and possibly some greens. My friend Cam suggested fermenting mustard greens like her mom did when she was growing up. She says she’ll see if she can get the recipe for me.

On the bright side of the food preserving front – last night I didn’t want to make dinner. I was too tired. But hungry. So I pulled a jar of my tomato sauce from the pantry and whipped up a super easy and quick marinara sauce and had spaghetti with roasted cauliflower and it was so good! This is why I do all the canning work I do.

Have any fermenting tales to share? I want to hear them!

Georgia O’Keefe Should Have Painted Figs

My too-dry-dried figs sat on my desk for quite a few days before going into storage. So I had a lot of time to look at them. And it came to me one day that they looked like small mean vaginas with teeth. I put them away the next morning.

Can I offer you a fig?

I didn’t photograph my Thanksgiving dinner. I cooked for three people. I missed having my sister with us. Needless to say – we kept our meal simple and we watched Miss Marple while we ate. Here’s what we had:

Casserole: poblano peppers stuffed with tofu, corn, and zucchini on a bed of green rice (rice with pureed tomatillos, cilantro, and lime juice) and topped with a cashew cream sauce.

Mashed sweet potatoes: plain for my mom but for ours I added salt, pepper, and butter.

Salad: romaine lettuce, apples, walnuts, and cranberries with a vinaigrette.

The salad and yams were predictably good.

The casserole was an experiment – something I thought up to use the last of the summer peppers and tomatillos and summer squash. It turned out really good – it was delicious! Except that I have come to realize once again that I really don’t like peppers and can’t eat them. Except for pickled jalapenos, crushed red pepper, and cayenne – peppers do NOT agree with me. They made me burp for hours. So if I did this casserole again I would not use the peppers. I would just do a bottom layer of the green rice, then do a layer of the tofu and vegetables, topped with the cashew cream. I’d eat that again in a second. I don’t love rice, as you may have observed from the lack of it in my recipes. I don’t hate it but I never crave it and generally speaking – I’d be fine never eating it again. Even so – the rice layer of the casserole was really good! I think what I liked about it was the tanginess of the tomatillos and because I precooked the rice and then mixed it with the puree – it was a little bit like risotto – not fluffy and dry – but not soupy either. It was perfect.

About cashew cream: it’s really good stuff! I have discovered that you need a blender that doesn’t suck to get it really smooth and creamy. If you have a blender that has issues with blending things you may have to do small batches and add a little extra water to it. I could smell my blender motor burning. Nice. But it managed to get the job done with a lot of coaching. Cashew cream is rich without being heavy and it browns nicely like cheese does. I definitely want to play with this again. It’s certainly not a low fat food so using it won’t be less fattening than using cream or cheese – but it is a really nice vegan option and it is full of good protein and nutrition. Biggest problem is that cashews cost a fortune. So I won’t be using this a lot – but it’s worth experimenting with some more.

Over all we had a really nice Thanksgiving. If you want to hear all about my thankfulness you can read my post Gratitude for All of You over at Better Than Bullets.

So how was your Thanksgiving? I hope you all had a good time with people you love!

Salt Curing Ripe Olives: First Batch

First of all – this process is known as “oil curing” not “salt curing” but since the actual curing is done by the salt and the oil is just a finisher – I think it’s ridiculous to keep calling it oil curing, even though that’s what it’s traditionally known as. I like to be specific as much as possible. Henceforth everyone will be confused about what I’m talking about – except for me. Once again I am following curing instructions by one of my favorite food bloggers Hank Shaw. His post “How to Make Oil-Cured Olives” is a must read if you want to try this. There are other articles you can read about this – but make sure this one is part of your research.

My dad has a rental property in the town of Sonoma on which he has a small vineyard of pinot grapes and a small orchard of olive trees. They are all varieties of olives grown specifically for pressing oil which he does at various community presses. I have missed out on his olive adventures because they only started maturing while I was living in Oregon. He said I could come pick some for curing before the big harvest for pressing which happens in a couple of weeks. So my friend Sharon and I headed out to his place yesterday for some olive picking.

The orchard is very pretty. I love olive trees. However – the first thing we noticed and what I ought to have realized before going up there is that the olives are very small. Olives for pressing have a much smaller flesh to pit ratio and tend to be much smaller than eating olives – I know this because I’ve read a whole book about olives. Never the less – we both picked a small bag of the small ripe ones to cure. Since I didn’t get to use many of them for curing I am going to come back to help my dad and his crew pick them for pressing. Hanging out in olive orchards, even little ones, is really peaceful.

We were disappointed in not having had more olives to play with but Sonoma is absolutely covered in olive trees so we kept our eyes peeled for promising trees. We ended up finding a couple of trees in front of a house-turned-radio-station on a main street and got permission to pick them. These babies were ripe and nice sized. In the end this is what I came home with:

1 lb 3 oz of my dad’s small olives

2 lbs med olives from Sonoma (town tree)

Hank suggests putting them in old (but clean, obviously) pillow cases. Because I wanted to keep my two varieties separate and because I didn’t have many of either I cut my pillow cases down in size. I used about a 1 to 2 ratio of salt to olives (in pounds).

Here’s an informative image to demonstrate the size of my olives to each other and to a quarter for reference. I am annoyed by quarters being used for sense of scale but when I tried using a thumb tack for contrast it wasn’t effective. Oh well.

Hank hangs his olives out in his back yard. Since I don’t have anything rigged up yet or a good spot chosen I just hung them on a rod in my tall bucket. These will live in my office until they’re done or until I find a good spot in the yard. They will eventually start dripping black olive juices. Yum. I’ll keep you posted on the progress. I’m hoping to get a lot more ripe olives to cure in the next few weeks. I definitely have enough green ones at this point. Tomorrow I will jar up my first batch in their second brine with flavorings. I’m pretty excited. I want to do it right now but I need to get back to the paid job.

If any of you have salt cured olives and want to share your results or methods that have worked for you – please do!