Steve has been taking blacksmithing classes and has been doing some amazing stuff. Like this coat rack:
And this plant hanger:
A hook for my closet:
And two hooks for the bathroom:
And then, of course, there is the Japanese gate that he just built, modeled off the one at Kubota Garden:
With two very cool hinges and a latch:
When we moved in, there was a window in the bedroom closet–a closet that wasn’t terribly practical. When Steve redid the bedroom, he shortened the closet itself and built a little exposed nook. Then, he took a cabinet and built it into place. Like so:
He had originally wanted to do a marble top for it, but decided to see if he could do something that looked like marble in concrete. I think it looks pretty cool–and we’ve both agreed that it looks like a Holstein:
Yes, I cooked the tongue.
It looked like a tongue when I threw it in the pot and simmered it for a couple of hours. It looked like a tongue after I took it out and sliced the base off to give to the chickens (they didn’t care). It looked like a tongue when I peeled the tough tough membrane off it, which was totally weird; it just sort of peeled off in these almost plasticky sheets. And it looked like a tongue after it was peeled and placed in a backing dish with some mustard, apples, and onions. There were still taste buds on the inner membrane. We cooked it, and it still looked like a tongue when we put it on the table and sliced it.
But when you cut into it, the meat looks like beef, and it was tender and delicious. I personally felt the need to peel the inner membrane off entirely because I just couldn’t get over the taste buds. If you didn’t know it was tongue, you’d have no idea. Well, except for Geoff, who came over for dinner and not only raved about how much he liked tongue, but snagged the tip. “It’s the tenderest bit,” he explained.
So will I do it again? Yes. But I think I would bake it using a different recipe. I had assumed we had horseradish, because who doesn’t have a jar hanging out in the back of the fridge? We didn’t. So it was a little bland.
And there you have it.
We’ve really stepped up buying local/sustainable this year. Part of this has entailed going to Bob’s Quality Meats, a local butcher in Columbia City that features all local, pastured meats. I swear, their whole chickens are the most delicious things ever. A few weeks ago, I was perusing the freezer and came across a beef tongue. I was feeling daring that day–and thinking about eating “nose to tail”–and thus the tongue found its way into my basket and into our freezer at home.
Now my grandmother used to cook tongue all the time. I remember it as being very tender and tasty. I never really thought about it that much, probably because it generally appeared on my plate already sliced and smeared with horseradish. But this … this hunk of tongue. Any recipe entails boiling it and then peeling the skin off it. It’s been taunting me from the freezer.
Well.
Last night, I pulled it out out the freezer and stuck it in the fridge This morning, Steve took the Pyrex dish out of the fridge and onto the counter because it wasn’t thawed. We stared at it wordlessly. Finally, he broke the silence. “I’ll eat anything,” he said. “But I have to tell you. I’m not really looking forward to dinner tonight.”
The thing is, a tongue is a tongue is a tongue. It doesn’t matter whether it’s from a pig, a cow, or a human. They all look the same. (Except of course for size, which led to some fairly ribald comments as we were contemplating it.) But I tell myself: How is it any worse to eat tongue when we eat other meat? The only difference is that it’s more easily recognizable for what it is. When I was 10 or 11, I went out to a fancy dinner with some relatives and ordered sweetbreads off the menu. To be totally honest, all that was going through my head was, “WOW! I like this place–you can have COFFEE CAKE or DONUTS as DINNER!” So yeah, I pretty disappointed when I got some meat in a buttery sauce. It was pretty good. But it wasn’t CAKE. Later on, my great aunt told me what sweetbreads really were. I just shrugged. It was okay.
I’m hoping the tongue is like that.
So here I go ….
Otherwise entitled, Not only am I turning into MY mother, I’m turning into Steve’s as well.
“Zia, can you show me where those cake pans are?” Steve asked. “You know, the ones that have the sides and bottom that separate?”
“You mean a springform pan?”
“Yes, that. Where are they?”
“Why?” I asked suspiciously. “Are you baking something?”
“Kind of,” Steve hedged.
“Tell me what you’re planning on doing with it.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I need to mold something,” he said vaguely.
“What do you need to mold?” Foot tapping.
“Concrete.”
“No. No way. Absolutely not.”
“But you have two, and one doesn’t work as well,” he wheedled.
“They both work just fine.”
“PLEAAASSE?”
Sometimes I wonder whether cookbooks are becoming obsolete. I mean, I have cookbooks–and nothing is a better quick kitchen reference than The Joy of Cooking–but I find myself going online to find recipes far more often than looking through cookbooks. (I actually posed this question recently at a small dinner gathering; one guy said that he thought books in general were becoming obsolete. Yikes. Perish the thought.)
Anyway, one of the perils of researching recipes online is the fact that one gets easily sidetracked. For instance, I went online this morning to get the proportions of beef bones to water to make stock. And before you know it, there I am on a page on how to make butter.
Well.
Why not?
Here’s the page (complete with an explanantion of why you shouldn’t feel guilty eating butter). His directions are nice and lucid, and include complete pictures. Should you not feel like clicking, the process of making butter is as simple as throwing heavy cream into a KitchenAid and whipping it until the fat sticks together
So here we are at the buttermilk whooshing out of the butter stage.
We just happen to have an antique butter mold and paddle.
With a nice little pattern inside the mold.
Pressed it in
And now it’s resting in the fridge, waiting to be unmolded.
*Update: It behooves one to read up on how to use a butter mold before one actually uses it. To wit: Apparently, you are supposed to soak it in water for 30 minutes before using it. Otherwise, the butter won’t pop out. Sigh.
but the kitchen is FINISHED.
Well, okay, not 100 percent finished. We still need to get a new fridge and hood for the stove, but those are last on the line. We’re also getting new curtains for underneath the sink. But the bulk of the work? DONE.
It’s amazing.
Here’s a recap of the kitchen’s past.
Here’s what it looked like completely gutted.
And now, here’s a panoramic set of photos of what it looks like now.
I know! Let’s ban the holiday season entirely.
Well, I’m not totally serious. It’s nice to be baking and listening to the Messiah, but there’s just too much to do, and too little time in which to do it. Need to get presents wrapped and mailed. Which is a daunting task in and of itself.
But, there’s a hafla tonight at the bellydance studio, and I’m taking my Little Sister. And the house is clean–well, relatively. I still haven’t figured out how I can spend three hours cleaning, and then the cleaner arrives and unearths yet more grime. Sigh.
“Don’t try to cut a frozen salmon in half with your circular saw. The ensuing pink dust is gross.”
Just one because the large one is too heavy for me to carry, and he still has to pour one over the dishwasher (which requires rebuilding the cabinet).
But seriously, it’s going to be gorgeous. We’re both pleased, and, despite our WANTING concrete, still pretty surprised at how good it looks.
