Farmer's Market Season Is Open

Tomorrow begins one of the best parts of being a foodie in the Milwaukee area: the West Allis Farmer's Market opens for the season. Produce has to be home grown by the people who sell it, promising local good stuff. But what to expect? Winter lasts all Summer here in Wisconsin, so I'm not sure what can be harvested this early in the season. The site mentions radishes, asparagus, and rhubarb as well as bedding plants (I'm guessing generally not edible on their own). I'm looking forward to the prospect of rhubarb having recently come across a delicious-looking recipe for Rhubarb Bread Pudding. Equally hoping to find some ramps, or maybe even fiddle-head ferns...

The Chocolate Garden

This is the first year of garden time in our new house. New to us, and about 60 years old. We are not the first to appreciate green things around the house, a fact that is obvious based on the gardens already in place. What isn't completely obvious is what's going to grow.

Being the latecomer to an established garden is like that famous box of chocolates: you never know what's going to come up.

We're in the process of cataloging what we can recognize and trying to figure out what we don't. We can label about 90% of what's here, although we don't know all the cultivars, hybrids etc. We may never know for some, but it's not that important.

Exciting today: the viburnum is blooming. This morning it was covered in buds, and in the space of one warm day, it has come into bloom. We guessed a viburnum, and now have proudly ID'ed it as Koreanspice Viburnum (V. carlessi if you like). Charming and headily fragrant. It's my new favorite.

Pass It On: Heavy on the Cheese Please!

Living in Wisconsin has always been associated with eating cheese, and with good reason. People in other states ridicule us as "cheese-heads", but frankly I think it's because their jealous.

Every local grocery store carries wonderful local cheeses; even the gas station stop-n-shops carry cheese curds and string cheese from the dairy up the road. So of course, we have a dairy marketing board, and of course, they have a website. Only for them, being cheesy is a good thing.

The Wisconsin Dairy Marketing Board has a lot of recipes and ideas about serving cheese (you mean you can't just lop off a piece and eat it??). It's given me a new focus in the kitchen: to recreate every recipe from their recent 30 Days of Mac & Cheese promo. Cheesemo indeed!

Upcycle: Old T-Shirts

I had an "omigosh - me too!" moment while checking out a blog post at Re-Nest: turns out I'm not the only one with unrealistic emotional attachments to t-shirts and a closet full of them to prove it.

Over the years, duhMan & I have purchased or received t-shirts on purpose, as participant swag on bicycle rides, vendor freebies (back when companies were allowed to give out freebies in academia). We have piles of them. Most clothing items I don't mind giving away when they cease to be useful for us, but t-shirts...? They don't last well, and for those with true sentimental meaning, well, they're just garbage for anyone else. So I keep them.

Turns out there are other people suffering from the same issue, and they're smart enough to come up with solutions. I'm only smart enough to use their ideas (and give them credit). Regina Yunghans at Re-Nest had five ideas, my favorite coming from Stefanie Japel at Glampyre Knits where she has a video tutorial on turning t-shirts into yarn. Awesome! Just think of the softness of a blanket made of your favorite, wash-worn t-shirts....

Silly Excuses: The Range

Today we had our first visit from a professional technician (a.k.a. the oven guy). We called the cavalry after we tried using our oven and smelled something between gas and burning insulation mixed with cleaner - something wicked this way wafts. The smell was noxious - bad enough to make your eyes burn and wonder how fast you could run. Our home came with a "warranty" purchased by the sellers to cover things like appliances over the first year of owning the home. So we called.

He turned on the oven, smelled the same smell, and proceeded to tell us that the oven flames were burning off the paint and primer fumes in the house, it being winter here in Wisconsin and the windows were all closed.

Right.

The full extent of our painting consists of: three 2ft square swatches of paint on the kitchen walls for colors we're trying out, one bathroom cabinet painted with the exhaust fan running (it's on the same circuit as the light, so running is not an option for the moment), and two cabinet doors. We're using water based primer, and we've only gone through less than half the quart purchased. These have been painted over the last two weeks during which time we've been holding the doors open for extended periods while moving in our stuff.

Paint fumes indeed.

What little I can glean from searching for answers online is that it might be an ignitor going bad. At any rate, the oven itself is rusting out through the bottom (!) and is probably not worth the estimated $200 for a new ignitor.

It would be time, though, for a new range. Definitely more exciting, but more importantly, much safer.

Then we can paint all we want.

Pass It On: Use less water to boil pasta.

Small, simple changes in energy use can often make the biggest differences when spread out over many people. Over at the NYT, Harold McGee shows you can cook dried pasta (your typical grocery store shelf variety) with a lot less water and for a shorter cooking time. The trick: start with cold water.

Details here.

Making Do: Kitchen cabinets

My grandmother was always good at using what she already had around the house - she called it "making do." Raising a family during the depression on my grandfather's salary as a school teacher was no easy feat (high school chemistry, in case you're curious), and often it was the only way necessities were met. The whole idea of customized solutions derives from necessity; she is, after all, the mother of invention.

duhMan and I are wading through the first wave of home ownership: what can we live with and what would scare us in the morning. The list is typical: painting walls, cleaning, replacing fixtures, installing safety devices (detectors, remote garage door openers), did I mention cleaning? The House was built in 1948, so some things have been replaced, others "renewed" (if you've ever seen painted tile, you know what I mean). Items on our list keep changing order due to moving time constraints and the cost of replacements. Case in point: the kitchen cabinets.

They seem to be an early version of the IKEA DIY cabinet sets. Assembling your own furniture is not a new idea (even before particle board book-shelving). In fact, Sears & Roebuck used to sell kits for whole houses. These cabinets had been through one life stained then two painted white (different hardware), and while the materials were holding up, the original assembly parts were showing their age. Our first thought was another repaint and new hardware, but during the pre-paint sanding, they began to look pretty convincing as "distressed cabinetry." I suppose the years of usage helped..... We decided to go with the idea and use the cabinets as is. And after another trip to the Magic Housewares store for new hardware (admittedly not free, but still far cheaper than replacements), here's how they look:






Not bad for making do.