MORE FOOD

Der te der, what's this? Leftover wild mushroom risotto? Dearie me, I seem to be forming it into golf ball sized forms, and stuffing it with a little piece of mozzarella, oh my goodness.

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Nooo, the dreaded flour-egg-Panko triple threat!

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It spares no fingers!

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Phew, at least someone is making sure we are eating green leafies around here.

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and their steamy stems, too!

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Deep Fried Risotto Alert! At 370 degree F, these turned golden in .6 seconds, but didn't burn like I thought they would, even after about a minute. Probably I just need to fry more things, right? Right??

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Ah yes, our complete tapas meal, "Tuscan" bread from Whole Foods, white-bean/rosemary/garlic spread (thanks Jamie Oliver), Swiss Chard, and a few delectable arancini (the technical term for 'fried leftover risotto balls'). We have blurred the photo to protect the innocent.

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Food photos courtesy of new schnazzy camera!

Christmas Food Blog

We ate so many good things at Christmas, but I only took a few pictures. We arrived four days late due to the Baltimore snowstorm, but started the holiday off right with roast pork in milk curd sauce, an italian dish. The next night was lamb loin, cardoon gratin (too bad I didn't get any pictures, cardoons are wacky - they look like barbed celery, which, not endearing AT ALL) and rosti (a swiss shredded potato cake sauteed in its weight in butter).

Christmas Eve we made lobster ravioli with the remains of a five-pound lobster that a student of my Dad's brought him, in thanks for helping him through a tough job search, and two salads. One was fennel and parsley; the other, a tricolore salad with a buttermilk chive dressing.

Then the GOOSE.

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Take one goose. Stuff some prunes with duck foie gras.

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Now, put those in the goose. Roast your goose, mostly on its side, turning it like one does in a tanning booth for extra golden color. Apply hot water from time to time to keep the pores open and the goose schvitzing.

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Meanwhile, make a mushroom soup using approximately 8 lbs of butter and 1lb of mushrooms. The pomegranate is for scale, and also to go with the roasted butternut squash cubes + cilantro. This was delicious, btw, and sorry, no pictures. Dad made up the recipe.

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Also meanwhile, make some twice-baked potatoes. Paprika, we have decided in the end, is basically sine qua non, even if Mom thinks it looks tacky. Note additional butter on top, after having stirred in 2 sticks of it during the mashing process.

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Ah yes, the goose must now be done.

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Throw in some spinach cooked in butter (of course) for some greenness on the plate, while you're at it. Finish it all off with lemon tart to cut the butter. Ha! Just kidding. There's butter in there too.

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Most of these recipes from Julia Child. The goose was delicious, very very very dark meat. The squash/pomegranate/cilantro was amazing. The buttered mushrooms, potatoes, and spinach - well, let's just say, I've never been happier to be full of butter. Dee-lish. I think the secular Koenker household can take on any Jewish household during Hannukah season in a butter-off, I'm just sayin'.

New Year's Resolutions

1. Bike to work as much as possible.
I basically took the whole fall off, and didn't start again until the car was up in Philly between Christmas and New Year's. Even in the cold and wind of late December it was nice to get some exercise, and the streets were not so scary, as long as I stayed on Fallsway and Guilford.

2. Cook really delicious things more often.
This won't be as hard when Joshua and I are in the same house all the time, but until then, even when he's not around, I want to cook more fun things.

3. Run, climb, and walk Kima a lot. I've been so far mostly successful by biking to work and running on days that I didn't bike.

4. More tricks with Kima. I have all these books, and I have a clicker, and really, the more training the better!

Porcini

I found some porcini at home yesterday that were still good (another package was infested with grubs). So I zipped up to Eddies to get some crimini mushrooms and started this mushroom risotto recipe from Gourmet (via Epicurious). The best part is you can make the leftovers into fried risotto balls with melting mozzarella in the middle.

Mushroom Risotto
yield: Makes 4 to 6 servings
active time: 45 min
total time: 1 hr
This recipe serves 4 as a main course after you set aside 3 cups to make the mushroom and mozzarella arancini or the mushroom risotto cakes.... more ›

ingredients

1 oz (28 g) dried porcini (1 cup)
3 3/4 cups hot water
5 1/4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth (42 fl oz)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter
1 small onion, finely chopped (1 cup)
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3/4 lb fresh cremini mushrooms, trimmed and thinly sliced
1 lb Arborio rice (2 1/3 cups)
2/3 cup dry white wine
1 oz finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (1/2 cup)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Special equipment: parchment paper (if reserving some risotto for another recipe)
Garnish: Parmigiano-Reggiano shavings

The importance of background music

You all have seen countless video clips with dramatic background music highlighting development issues in Africa. This one's a little different, and a welcome change!

No more running around in the playground when it's cold out!

Kima's tailio got froze again this year. Video is from last year.

Yesho Raz

(Once more)

Origins of Breakdance

It's worth watching the whole 3 and a half minutes.

Grass Fed Beef and Fishy Taste

We had three different steaks on Saturday, two grassfed and one grainfed. The massive thick grassfed steak had a fishy taste most noticeable in the fat. Strong, like the dried fish in Gabon. The meat itself was fine, it seemed, but the grainfed steak was milder (and I suppose more familiar). It was a disconcerting experience. Turns out, though, that grassfed beef has higher Omega-3 levels, and this contributes to the fishiness (as it does in wild fish).

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Blackberry Pearl 9100 should be able to do everything I need....maybe.

Kima not that dumb

Tried to cut her nails again last night without muzzle or headlock, and she wasn't having any of it. So, back to square one. Or just have the kennel do it this week while she's having a Thanksgiving vacation.

Craving a new smartphone

The Pearl has been good to me, and fits in most any pocket, but recently has begun to slow down. Nifty new apps are available for faster, bigger, nicer smartphones. But those won't fit in my pocket!!

Please note this is not a ploy for any holiday gift giving, just befuddlement. Would it not be cool to have Evernote on my phone? Or Epicurious? Or be able to implement one of those auto-shut-off-when-phone-senses-it's-in-a-car dealios? Or map all my Africa travel down to the clinic level?

Advertisers are so damn good at creating a need. Curse you and your slick Flash popups!

Update

I think it's been about 80 million years since I last posted. Lots of things going on.

- I returned to Baltimore to get my Nigerian visa and promptly got a big ol' fever, which was probably not really the swine flu, but was enough like the swine flu that I wasn't able to go to Nigeria, even though
- I did in fact receive my Nigerian visa in time.

- USAID made me a job offer that was pretty dang awesome.

- Nick and Johanna had their baby! Oscar.

- CCP made a counter offer in order to keep me in Baltimore. And I'm taking it. Despite all my professional heroes telling me to take the USAID job, because it will be good for my career, etc. Basically, it boils down to: a) I can get a lot of similar job experience at CCP and b) I don't have to commute in order to do that and c) all things being thus more or less equal, sort of kind of, I would rather spend those 3 hours with Joshua, Kima, and my other interests rather than on the MARC train with my New Yorkers. I'm sure I will regret at some points not taking on the badassness of the USAID job, but hey, that's the breaks. The feeling that I have now, after taking this counter offer (read: promotion!) is, I would say, "happiness", whereas the feeling I had after waking up thinking I would take the USAID job I would have to classify as "sad, and putting career ahead of family, for maybe some not super good reasons".

So you know everything works out.

Second:
I have been reading 'quirky' and 'indie' wedding blogs like a maniac and using Evernote to file all the ideas I can steal from them. I don't think I will blog much about the wedding planning. It's pretty boring. Not that we will have a boring wedding, no sirree, but who wants to see the sausage being made?

Third:
Joshua and I took Kima for a walk at Jerusalem Mills and we let her off leash (which *gasp*, illegal!) and hullo, it was totally fine. This dog just wants to cuddle, she is not liable to run off after anything, because I am the most interesting thing to her. To the point that when cutting her nails later that evening, she freaked out in Joshua's chokehold, and came over to me, all "Mom, I'm scared, he's scaring me, don't let him squeeze me like that!" and just LET ME cut her nails, no trouble at all. Good doggie!!

Oh, Nigeria

Nigeria embassy wouldn't give me a visa here in Dakar, because I do not have a Senegalese residency permit. A small Nigerian offered to take me to the Police Whatsit to get said permit, quickly, and without them asking me all the usual annoying questions. I declined. Lagos doesn't offer visas on arrival, and it's illegal to send one's passport back to the states to get a visa (or with someone else, for that matter).

So either I:
a) go back to the states a bit early from Dakar, get my visa, and return to Nigeria within a week or
b) ef Nigeria and stay in Dakar to do more work here or
c) ef Nigeria and go home to regularly scheduled programming.

Much depends on how much it will cost to change my flights, and whether or not my collaborators on the Nigeria workshop are willing to let me bail.

Also, two men are up in my ceiling draining water that has been gurgling up there for a couple days. Looks kinda messy in there.

Downtime

In Dakar for a two week needs assessment to set up our newest biggest project, delivering nets and promoting their use globally - or at least, just in Senegal to start with. Lots of meetings already, everyone touching on the same issues (routine distribution not working, out of nets, procurement is hard, need more communication to increase use of nets, help help help us). But today is a bit slow as some meetings have just been canceled, so I am waiting for a caesar salad in my room and catching up on the little tasks, like writing an invitation letter to the private sector, so that they can attend a meeting where we are likely going to tell them we're not subsidizing their operations in this project, unlike the previous project. Hoping that the Nigerian Embassy guy wasn't really serious when he said he could reject my visa application because I am not a resident in Senegal.

The caesar salad came without any dressing. This hotel has been open only three months. Yesterday my soft-boiled egg was perfect - today the yolk was still raw, but they insisted it was soft-boiled. "You know oeuf en coquotte? C'est comme ca". No, really, it's not. For some reason this made me really pissed.

CRS is helping us out with vehicles, sample letters, putting our Chief of Party ad in the paper - being completely wonderful. And we're getting fairly good information, but nothing too detailed, from our interview so far. As one member of the Global Fund CCM said this morning, "Quelquechose nous echappe". Hopefully by the end of these two weeks we'll have captured it.

Yes We Can!

From Anna in Dar.

Favorite line from Global Fund Round 7 proposal

from translated English version:

"Once these CBOs and NGOs are well rehabilitated and equipped, they could, during discussions and home visits, advocate, at the same time, for other health problems such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and diseases linked to fecal peril."

Engaged Engaged Engaged

So, the other weekend, on a bike ride, during lunch, Joshua asked if I would marry him!

And I said "Holy crap!"

But no, he was serious, and I said, "But we've never lived in the same city."

He admitted this was true but that it didn't have any bearing on his wanting to marry me, and also that he would move to Baltimore in May, if I was so set on us living in the same place, jeez louise.

I thought about this for a little while. Until dinnertime, actually, when we discussed the logistics of the whole thing some more, and also some non-logistical things.

And then said yes. :)

New bed

Even before I had finished laying it down, Kima curled up on the new bedroom rug and was all, jeez it took you long enough to get me another bed upstairs, jeez!

From Kima

Help Adam make an album in Mali!

Wascally Wabbit

The egg dudes at the Sunday market said they had rabbit, so I got one. Biked it home in a bag of ice cubes in the Peugeot's front wire basket, how very Frooonncchhhe of me.
Nick and Johanna came over to help eat it. Cutting it up wasn't very hard at all, its little shoulder blades were easy to find, belly and ribs were self-explanatory, there was hardly an ounce of fat on it to confuse things. Following Julia Child's instructions for cutting, and Jamie Oliver's instructions for grilling, it turned out quite well.

From Food

Marinate in olive oil, lemon juice, rosemary, thyme, garlic, honey as grill heats. Here you can see the rib pieces (bottom left), skewered belly with bacon, kidneys, and the two pieces of saddle or loin (cut perpendicular to the backbone) at the top right.

Start the back legs first:

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Despite soaking, skewers catch on fire:

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Baste with thyme sprigs on a skewer, because HOT:

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Flame flame flame:

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Garnish:

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Beautiful tomato salad!

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It was super delicious, props to Jamie, we ate the whole thing along with N&J's potato salad and some peach cobbler.

Walking around Philadelphia

Bartram's Garden:

From Ratners visit Philly

Morris Arboretum!

From Ratners visit Philly

From Ratners visit Philly

Japanese Threadleaf Maple:

From Ratners visit Philly

Outside the Fernery:

From Ratners visit Philly

In the Stumpery:

From Ratners visit Philly

"Out on a Limb" exhibit:

From Ratners visit Philly

From Ratners visit Philly

Stumpery

Excellent weekend of botanical adventures! Here is one answer from Wikipedia about one of the curious features of the Morris Arboretum that we enjoyed:

A stumpery is a garden feature similar to a rockery but made from parts of dead trees. This can take the form of whole stumps, logs, pieces of bark or even worked timber such as railway sleepers or floorboards. The pieces are arranged artistically and plants, typically ferns, mosses and lichens are encouraged to grow around or on them. They provide a feature for the garden and a habitat for several types of wildlife. The first stumpery was built in 1856 at Biddulph Grange and they remained popular in Victorian Britain.

A stumpery traditionally consists of tree stumps arranged upside-down or on their sides to show the root structure but logs, driftwood or large pieces of bark can also be used.[1] The stumps can be used individually or attached together to form a structure such as a wall or arch. Stumperies can vary in size from a handful of logs to large displays containing dozens of full tree stumps.[2] The use of storm-damaged or diseased trees is not uncommon and can save the landowner the cost of their removal.[3][1] Where tree stumps are unavailable a more modern, angular look can be achieved by using railway sleepers or old oak floorboards and some companies sell waste timber or driftwood specifically for the purpose of constructing stumperies.[2] Plants such as ferns, mosses and lichens are often encouraged to grow around and on the stumpery.[2] Stumperies provide a home for wildlife and have been known to host stag beetles, toads and small mammals.[4][5]

Stumperies have been described as "Victorian horticultural oddities" and were popular features of 19th century gardens.[4] The reasons for their popularity vary but it may be a result of the Romantic Movement which emphasised the beauty of nature.[6] Their popularity may also be attributed to the increasing popularity of ferns as garden plants at the time. Ferns were very fashionable and hundreds of new species were introduced to Britain from around the world. The stumpery made an ideal habitat for these shade-loving plants.[2] Additionally stumperies may have been used in place of rockeries in areas where suitable rocks were in short supply.[7] Their popularity is once again on the rise.[3]

The first stumpery to be built, at Biddulph Grange, Staffordshire, in 1856, was designed by the artist and gardener Edward William Cooke for the estate's owner James Bateman.[1] The stumpery at Biddulph Grange consists of stumps placed into a 10 feet (3.0 m) wall either side of a garden path and used as a scaffold for the growth of ferns.[1][6] A famous modern stumpery is that at Highgrove House, Gloucestershire, the home of Prince Charles, which is considered to be the largest stumpery in Britain.[8] The Prince built the stumpery from sweet chestnut roots, held in place by steel bars, when he first purchased the estate in 1980, and it now provides a home for organically grown ferns, hellebores and hostas.[7][5] The largest stumpery in the United States is at Vashon Island in Washington.[6] It rivals the Highgrove stumpery in size, measuring 9,000 square feet (840 m2) and including around 95 separate tree stumps.[6] Stumperies can sometimes be mistaken for garden rubbish; indeed, when Prince Philip first saw his son's stumpery, he remarked: "When are you going to set fire to this lot?".[5]

Eddie Izzard, in Legos

Secret Garden

Sherwood Gardens is an ex-private park taken over by a neighborhood society up the road from my house (quite a bit up the road, a good jogging route actually). It's planted full of flowerbeds and is in bloom spring through summer - a great place for picnics!

Easy white bean salad

I made this in about 10 seconds last night after a run, when I was starving. It's from the new Splendid Kitchen supper book. This made supper and lunch for me, but I would definitely double it if a hungry boy (or girl) is joining you for supper.

one piece or half a piece of whole-grain bread
2 oz parmesan/romano
pepper/salt

1 can white/cannelini beans
2 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped roughly
a small handful of rosemary leaves (about 10?), chopped up
1/8 c olive oil
handful of greens
salt

Food process your bread into breadcrumbs. Toast it at med-high heat in a skillet or saute pan till it's toasty. Set aside in a small bowl and when cool, add the grated parm and some pepper and salt. While it's cooling, put your olive oil in the skillet and set at low heat, let the olive oil calm down a bit before adding your garlic, otherwise it might burn (since your skillet was just med-high). Slowly cook the garlic for a few minutes till it softens, then add your rosemary for a minute, then your beans. Fold in gently so as not to smash them. Heat beans for three minutes, then add a handful of greens and wilt to your liking (if using lettuce, may not be necessary, but it was nice to throw it around in there to get the oil/garlic).

Serve up the beans/greens and top with the breadcrumb/parm, add more salt if you like and some pepper.

The book warns you to only use white beans for this, not tougher kidney/black beans, since the flavors won't be absorbed through their thick skins. Fine by me! This was great.

Cellphone-based microscopy

A new article in PLOS describes setting up a cameraphone with a magnifier in order to read slides, enabling those with cellphones but without microscopes to read say, malaria or sickle-cell slides. It can also be used with fluorescent stains and lighting for diseases like TB.



The slides - you can see some blood cells with gametocytes in A and B, and some sickle cells in C:


Seems pretty neat, if the system can be done cheaply, and the clinic has access to a 3.2 megapixel cameraphone.

UberNerd

Not only did I put a stem riser on my bike this weekend (which totally dumbfounded the Joe's Bike Shop kids yesterday when I took it in for a tiny problem), but I spent a long time playing with/setting up Sente yesterday! Did not know it was possible to have a crush on bibliographic software. I imported all the malaria journal articles and other gray lit I'd been saving all these years. Awesome!

Fallingwater

The check engine light came on during our trip home, somewhere along the PA turnpike, so we turned off the road to check things out. There was a sign that said "Fallingwater, 20 miles", and so upon determining our problem was probably not serious, we headed down the road. Byways are pretty and this was a good one. Once there, we squeezed into the last shady parking space, left Kima in the car, and headed down for a tour of the house. No photos allowed inside, unfortunately, but I was particularly taken with the beveled edge windows, which formed a clear corner, and in one part of the house, a three story corner column of windows each opened up. Joshua liked the Japanese prints, including a few by the guy who did the Big Wave print. Throughout you heard the waterfall the house was built on, and boulders jutted in near the fireplace and the walkway to the servants' house and guest house. The detour really added time to our journey that day, but it was well worth it!

 

 

 

Kima Kills

Poor little squirrelio.

 

 

Farm Dinner

Mom and Dad took us to a Whole Hog dinner at the Prairie Fruits Farm outside of Urbana last Saturday. Chicago suburban chef of Vie, Somebody Somebody, did the menu, which had pork all the way through until the cheese and dessert courses. We started with a headcheese torte, basically slow-cooked meat from the cheeks and head of the pig with some aromatics, wrapped up in a puff pastry dough that I could have eaten all night, and some mortadella (from the shoulder), and some red iced sugary tea which tasted like hibiscus/dableni/oseille from my Peace Corps days (but in fact probably was more berry-based, as they have lots of berry bushes).

 

Here's the smoker/oven they used for the porchetta and the roasted tomatoes:

 

And the barn where we ate inside, as it was threatening rain (we didn't end up getting any).

 

The farm has fruit trees and goats. Here's the goat milking operation, including Farmboy. They sell their cheeses at the local farmer's market but also to fancypants Chicago restaurants.

 

Their lovely herb garden:

From Farm Dinner

The porchetta. I was disappointed in my fellow eaters as most of them left the pork fat on the plate. The kale, beans n ham and tomatoes were pretty good, but the pork fat was the best part. I really wanted to ask my neighbor if I could have the fat she wasn't going to eat.

From Farm Dinner

Mom and Pop.

From Farm Dinner

Cheese Plate - including homemade preserves (one each strawberry and gooseberry), and their newest first harvest of honey(comb).

From Farm Dinner

And a nice sunset, too:

From Farm Dinner