Married to the Trail

Last weekend, I caught up with my high school friend Mary, who I hadn't seen in who knows how many years. These days, she's living an outdoorsy life to the fullest out on the West Coast. After hiking the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail in past years, she's now getting ready to thru-hike the Continental Divide Trail this summer, from May through October*, alone.

The CDT is no joke. It is 3,100 miles of primitive and challenging backcountry trail from Canada to Mexico along the backbone of America. Only 70% of the trail is complete, and it presents the most remote and challenging terrain, fewest signposts, and fewest hikers of the three sister trails. This is truly an epic feat I could never imagine doing (I'm too scared of bears and wild animals), but to Mary, waking and walking in the woods every day is her life's passion. This girl is hardcore. She leads white water rafting trips in the summer and lived in a yurt for six months.

She's started a blog to record her travels, called Married to the Trail. Since she will be out of communication on the trail, she will keep a written journal, and when she gets to town now and then, she'll mail journal pages back to her boyfriend, who will transcribe her words to update the blog. Old technology meets new technology at its finest.

Mary will also have a GPS device to broadcast her location each day on a map on the blog so we can follow her journey. And the GPS has a 911 button, just in case. I know I feel a lot better knowing about that!

* In October, another of my good high school friends will mark a major milestone...a new baby! First baby in my crew.

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Pizza Potluck!

I've decided to start hosting semi-regular potlucks. The inaugural one was a pizza potluck last weekend. The premise was that I provided dough, sauce, parmesan, and dried herbs and spices, and everyone else was encouraged to bring toppings and beverages. Check out the incredible spread, which included: goat cheese, shredded mozzarella, smoked mozzarella, my homemade ricotta, parmesan, garlic, onion, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, fresh basil, arugula, sausage, pepperoni, and sprouts. As well as lots of wine (see sleeping away weekend afternoons.)

I prepared the dough a couple days earlier, Heidi's pizza dough from 101 Cookbooks. This is my favorite pizza recipe for parties because it's easy to make in advance with a food processor and then slip the dough into individual oiled plastic bags in the fridge until you need them. I made three batches - 18 dough balls! For the most part, any topping preparation (chopping vegetables, grating cheese, cooking sausage) was done ahead of time to simplify the actual pizza creation process.

Each guest took a turn assembling a pizza with their desired toppings, and then everyone got to share little bites of their pizzas if they wanted. In total, the oven was on at a blistering heat for hours and we made 15 pizzas for 12 people, most of them pictured below. There were veggie pizzas, meat lover pizzas, goat cheese pizzas for the lactose intolerant, a carbonara pizza with egg on top, and a simple Neapolitan style pizza with just raw tomato sauce and mozzarella slices baked in a cast iron pan under the broiler and then on the stovetop for a nice char. Vote on your favorite in the comments!

I highly recommend a pizza party as a potluck theme. Everyone was really excited to get to make their own pizza and had a fun time. On the logistical side, it took some planning, but I was able to maximize my minimal kitchen surface area to make it possible to have a few pies going at a time. I also don't have a dining table - so for anyone who thinks their home is too small to host parties, I say that is just an excuse, and there is always a way around it. Given my love of pizza though, perhaps I should think about getting a pizza cutter... Also much love to my friends who helped me do dishes and clean up at the end of the night.

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Making Cheese

Following butter, next in the homemade dairy adventures was cheese! As I've mentioned, I get raw milk from the Bushwick Food Coop. I find that the raw milk goes sour tasting faster than I can drink it. I was ready to throw it out, until a fellow coop member filled me in on the fact that soured raw milk is still edible and can be saved for other uses. Apparently, raw milk has beneficial bacteria and enzymes that make it more easily digestible and kill pathogens, so it continues to be safe and nutritious after it starts to taste sour. In contrast, pasteurized milk extends the initial shelf life and eliminates disease risk, but becomes putrified and unsafe after it goes sour. I don't fully understand it, but you can find more information on this here and here and here.





I looked up uses for sour milk - I don't like yogurt so that was out. I wanted to make cheese, but nothing complicated involving rennet. Then I remembered Rachel's simple paneer from Heart of Light. Sold. Then poking through some old magazines I stumbled across directions for making ricotta in an old Diner Journal (offbeat food publication made by the folks behind Diner restaurant in Brooklyn). The directions for both are quite similar, one calling for lime juice and the other for vinegar. After making it, the texture reminded me of the goat cheese my mom made when I was young, and sure enough, she said she used the same process but calls it "farmers cheese." So whatever you want to call it, it was a snap to make.







Heat whole milk until nearly boiling, add an acid such as vinegar (which is what I used) or lime juice, and then let the curds (solids) separate and rise to the top from the whey (liquid). My instructions told me the whey would turn clear, which it never did. I also found curds hanging at the bottom of my pan in addition to the top, so maybe I didn't cook it long or hot enough for them to separate sufficiently. Not sure. Regardless, I spooned out the curds with a mini colander (or slotted spoon would work) and then laid them in a rag (any thin dishcloth or cut up sheet or cloth napkin etc would work here if you don't have actual cheesecloth) over a larger colander and let drain for a half hour. Then twisted the rag around the curds to strain out more liquid and let it drain another half hour before putting in the refrigerator to firm. I added the olive oil and rosemary later, mashing it up into small pieces which is the texture you see below. My cheese was still good in the fridge a week after making it.



Coming from soured milk, it had a little sour tang, and then I thought it still needed a litle something extra, so I mixed in rosemary and marinated it in olive oil. It tasted great on pizza and melted well. I think I will make cheese again next time I have sour milk, although I will play around with a different final preparation.

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Farmers Market Haul: 3/19/11

Speaking of farmers markets, they have been showing signs of life. From the McCarren Park Greenmarket a couple weekends ago: spinach (among the first greens of the season), shallots, rutabaga, potatoes, carrots, butter to have on hand when mine runs out, eggs, Consider Bardwell Farm's "fancy cheese" as a friend of mine calls it - I think their Rupert is my favorite, a baby leek for the biscuits, and tulips! And this was also the first time I've seen an Edible publication for Queens. I'm not sure if Saturday farmers markets are going to be a regular thing for me as in the past. I often find myself sleeping off my Friday night well into my Saturday afternoon unfortunately...

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Rosemary Leek Buttermilk Biscuits

What did I end up making with the butter and buttermilk? Again I copied Kelly of Eat Make Read and made biscuits! With dried rosemary and a chopped up baby leek from the farmers market.

This was the first time I've tried making biscuits and they didn't rise very much. I'm not sure if the consistency of the batter was too wet. Or it could have been that I used white whole wheat flour. Or that I cut the dough into rounds too small. Despite not being fluffy, they still had a great buttery flaky taste.

I brought the biscuits, as well as extra butter for topping, to a friend's potluck and meant to take pictures but was having so much fun that I forgot! I will also add that the homemade butter has lasted a few weeks now and has not gone bad as I had read it might.

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Making Butter

I recently joined the Bushwick Food Coop, which gives me access to raw, organic, grass fed dairy from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania. I was strangely craving ice cream last week despite the cold weather, so I ordered heavy cream in addition to my usual milk. However, feeling lazier this week and having run out of butter, I decided to give a whirl at turning my cream into butter instead. You can theoretically do so by shaking a mason jar of cream over a half hour, but I don't have an empty jar to spare right now (all are housing bulk goods), and butter can be made in just a few minutes in a food processor or stand mixer.

I followed Kelly's lead over at eat make read. Sure enough, the transformation went through all the proper phases as I paused the food processor every minute or so to check on progress: cream turned into thick white whipped cream and then into yellower crumbly soft butter. Next, liquid began to spray the sides of the food processor as the buttermilk separated from a mass of solid butter.

I strained the buttermilk to save for baking. The final step was to rinse the butter in extremely cold water while kneading it a bit until the water ran clear and then to dry it in a paper towel or cheesecloth. A pint of cream will give you about one cup of butter, good in the fridge for roughly one week.

I'm going to a potluck this weekend. What should I make to highlight this tasty butter? Bread to serve with herbed butter? Buttermilk scones or biscuits? Empanadas? Any other ideas? Help me decide!

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Bike Commuting Take 2

I've tried to bike commute in the past, but quickly fell off the wagon. I was all gung-ho in May 2009, but life had other plans that summer. It rained almost every day in June, my life went crazy in a bad way, and when I moved to Park Slope, my potential bike commute went from 5.5 miles to 9 miles, a task far too daunting for someone like me who is decidedly not a morning person.

Now I am happily back in Williamsburg, and my new bike commute is a much more manageable 3.5 miles, so I am recommitting for real. To force myself to bike regularly, I signed up for a metrocard (through my work transit check program) with only enough money to travel by subway half the month. I'll see how this goes and hopefully adjust to an even cheaper metrocard in the warmer months. I'm also hoping that because the ride is relatively short, I won't get sweaty enough in the summer to need a gym membership just to shower before work.

To prepare, I bought a basic fender for my back tire (something like this) to protect me from slush and rain spraying up my back, and got my bike tuned up. My bike is over 10 years old and I'd never taken it for a tune up before. I'd always wondered if the creaky gears and weird noises were a sign it might fall apart at any minute, so it's good to feel confident in its working condition now.

So this morning, I rode my bike to work for the first time this year. I've been getting around Williamsburg and Bushwick by bike all winter, so the 30 degree weather didn't faze me. I don't wear any special gear for biking in the cold - just my usual clothes, winter coat, gloves, scarf, a ski headband underneath my helmet, and a backpack. For now, I'm bringing a clean shirt to change into when I get to work.

It was 30 minutes door to door, the same as taking the subway. The route had me safely on bike lanes most of the way. Bike lanes have come under a lot of controversy lately in New York, but they are necessary for bicycling to become a viable form of transportation as we move away from reliance on cars and oil, and I am personally grateful for the Department of Transportation's work to create an extensive bike lane network in this city. And I didn't encounter any ticket-happy police. Here we go...

Have you ever tried or thought about commuting by bike?

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