Cooking & Kitchens

We're almost to the end of our storage share vegetables. Today i made a cabbage, carrot, potato, onion, daikon soup. I thought it was quite good. I've found i like cabbage much better cooked than raw. A few weeks ago Adam tried making radish chips. They didn't turn out well, but it was an interesting experience.

Our kitchen is coming along. The new Kenmore range was delivered yesterday and so far has baked a key lime pie, honey oatmeal bread, valentine cookies, and a pasta bake. The cooktop has cooked balsamic blueberry chicken and apple cinnamon oatmeal. I accidentally used salted cracker crumbs for the key lime pie so the crust was extra salty, but the filling was tasty. Adam mudded the edges of the wall we took out. He has a little more work to do. Here's a preview of the missing wall.

 

Amazing Soup

We went over to Hannah & Will's house for dinner a while ago and they made us the most delicious soup. Hannah graciously sent me the recipe and I made it again at home. It is so tasty, you'd never know how good for you it is. Here's the recipe the way I made it:

2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed*

1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes
1 16-oz can pumpkin puree (i used approx. half a fresh pumpkin that i cubed, steamed, and pureed)
1/2 cup red onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 tbsp olive oil
4 cups vegetable broth
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground pepper
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Place oil, red onion, garlic and seasonings into a large pot. Cook on low-medium heat until red onion and garlic brown. Puree the beans and tomatoes. Add pureed ingredients, pumpkin and broth to your pot. Puree with an immersion (stick) blender. Simmer uncovered until thick, about 40-45 minutes. Before serving, drizzle with balsamic vinegar and serve with fresh bread.

*In general when I need black beans I cook dried beans in the crockpot on high for about 3 hours. I normally add a half pound of beans and 6 cups of water. It's much cheaper than canned and you don't have to worry about rinsing off added sodium.

Madison, Eden, Neenah, Manitowoc, Milwaukee, Phoenix...

To say that this Christmas season has been busy would be an understatement. I was reflecting the other day on the fact that of the past 10 days, we'd only spent 3 of them at home and the remaining 7 had been spent in 5 cities and 2 states. That doesn't count our 3-week New Zealand trip which ended earlier in December. All that said, I feel that God has been there with me through these past few weeks. I have had a harder time each year focusing on the story of his birth at Christmas, especially right on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day since the hecticness of the Christmas Eve service and all the present opening easily consumes my concentration. And Jesus' birth seems like so distant a happening that it's not real. But I know that He is real and working in my life, despite my incredible human failings.

Cheri's wedding was beautiful. The weather was in the 60's and the bridesmaids wore knee-length black dresses. I played violin at the ceremony (the pianist and I threw in a couple extra prelude pieces for fun!) and Adam was a patient soul throughout. The reception was held at a different church and was beautifully decorated with Christmas trees and lights. Unfortunately, we lost our camera in the Milwaukee airport on the way to Phoenix so we didn't get any pictures of our own (we bought a new camera yesterday). Here's one that Lisa took for us at the reception. The way they had it set up, the spouses of the bridal party got to sit at head tables which was really nice since Adam didn't know anyone there.

Here's another one that was taken at a park near Cheri's house. The photographer was photographing our shoes which is why we're all lined up and not looking at anything in particular.

Celeriac, anyone?

Adam and I have been members of the Vermont Valley farm, an organic CSA in Blue Mound for the past 2 years, but this is the first year we decided to buy a storage share. This consists of 2 deliveries, one in November and one in December, of 80 lbs each. Included in the share are pumpkins, winter squash, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, potatoes, leeks, brussel sprouts, radishes, daikon radish, beets, and 12 celeriac roots. Now I'm pretty open to eating any vegetable and I love to be creative in how we use them. I pride myself in my ability to open the refrigerator and create dinner from what I find. However, I am having a hard time bringing myself to attempt to cook the celeriac. According to the helpful sheet that comes along with each share, celeriac is an "essential winter vegetable," but the one time we tried it last year, it made the whole soup taste very strongly of celery (one of our least favorite vegetables) and I can't get over that mental block. I put up a post at work and managed to get rid of 4, but there are many more waiting in our fridge for some creative (and merciful) friends to come over and take them! Help!

You can see that it was a good year for potatoes (the whole right side of the lower shelf) and carrots (the whole right drawer). Yes, you can indeed keep potatoes in the fridge. In fact, they seem to keep better there than in our "cellar" in the basement.

New Zealand is for the birds

New Zealand originally had no mammals (except for a couple bats), so it has an amazing bird life. Many of these birds are flightless. Of course, it was better before they introduced mammals like rabbits, stouts, ferrets, dogs, cats, and deer that ate a lot of the birds (especially the flightless ones), but it’s still quite an amazing diversity. Before we went, Adam bought me a book of New Zealand birds and it was really helpful. We wouldn’t have enjoyed them half as much without it. Thanks to Mom and Dad too for the binoculars that served us well. Here’s a list of the birds we are sure we saw, in the approximate order we saw them. The pictures are not ours, because we don’t have a cool zoom lens to actually get good pictures. It should be noted that we also believe we heard a kiwi (New Zealand's national icon) and a kaka, both of which are rare.

• Magpie (introduced; these were everywhere, especially in pastures)

• Chaffinch

• Yellow-eye penguin (this is one of the rarest penguins)

• Little blue penguin (probably my favorite)

• Fantail (these were really cute – they fly with their large tails up in order to catch insects)

• Wood pigeon (NZ’s only native pigeon)

• Harrier
• Goldfinch (not the same as ours)
• Song thrush

• Bell bird

• King shag

• Black swan (they introduced these for hunting, but turns out they don’t taste good)

• Paradise shelduck

• Pukeko (kind of like a chicken – very cute)

• Myna (common, sort of like our crows)

• Australian Coot

• White-faced heron
• Welcome swallow
• Silvereye
• Yellowhammer
• Blackbird
• Australian gannet
• Little black shag (also called a cormorant)

• Grey teal
• California quail
• Variable oystercatcher

• Pied stilt
• Red- and black-billed gulls
• Black fronted tern
• New Zealand pipit

• Skylark (they sing like crazy while hovering in the air until they run out of breath and then they fall)
• Bush robin
• Redpoll
• Eastern rosella (not native, but still very cool)

• Tui (the largest of the honey eaters - we usually saw these on flax plants like in the picture below)

• Pheasant (saw lots of them on the side of the road in Northland)
• New Zealand dotterel

• Reef heron
• Banded rail

Peace & Plenty

For our final 2 nights in New Zealand, we decided to spend them at a well-known B&B called Peace and Plenty. It's in a charming Auckland suburb called Devonport. The B&B is in an 1888 mansion with a view of Auckland harbor and 7 bedrooms. Our room has an attached Juliet balcony and came with Devonport chocolates, port, and sherry. The owner loves to talk and makes an amazing Belgian waffle.

Unfortunately, it's been raining since we got here. We spent the day touring the Auckland Museum and the Auckland Art Gallery. The museum had a fantastic Maori and Pacific Islander collection.

We had hoped to visit a bird sanctuary island tomorrow, but I don't think the weather will allow it. We fly out at 11pm and will get back Sunday morning at 10am after a long layover in LA where we think we'll head over to Hollywood. We look forward to seeing you all soon and whipping out the Christmas decorations ASAP. :)

Go North, Young Couple

So, to start, a quick story. When we were planning this trip, we were going to stop in Fiji on our way home. But in the end, that was prohibitively expensive, plus that would take away from our New Zealand time. And the nation of Fiji has had a significant amount of unrest of late. So we decided to go to Northland instead, hoping to get a taste of subtropical weather. We stayed just north of Kerikeri, on a river called Takou River (Incidentally, I think it's pronounced 'taco'). Most international visitors don't go north of Auckland, so Northland is much less of a tourist destination. Many Kiwis (the people) vacation in the North, in an area called the Bay of Islands, which includes Kerikeri. Where we were staying is at 35 degrees south, Which for comparison, is about as far from the equator as Northern Los Angeles. (The furthest south we were during our first week here was about 45 degrees south, which is equivalent of Wausau, WI.) The area has a very tropical feel.

We stayed at a cottage called the Magic Cottage at a resort called the Takou River Lodge. The entire resort is off the main grid. They generate their own electricity from solar and small scale hydro power. Our cottage was very cute, and was set into the tropical gardens that they have planted all around. We were surrounded by huge tree ferns, pohotukawa, kauri and palm trees. Also, fragrant tropical flowers, beautiful birds of paradise, and other great tropical plants. Perhaps most stunning of all was the birdlife. We were surrounded by birds. The most common were Tui, Pukeko, and Rosella. The Rosella were certainly the most striking, they are essentially a very colorful parakeet. The Tui is a native NZ bird that is mostly black/blue and eats nectar. The Pukeko is another native bird that looks a little like a chicken, except they are blue and have a large red beak. We also saw lots of quail, pheasants, Shags, herons, gulls. The area we were in is known to be home to a (relatively) large population of Kiwi (the birds) which are very rare. They are nocturnal, so we didn't see any. But we heard several bird calls that might have been kiwi. We're not very sure, since we don't know the kiwi call very well.

There was a kayak at the cottage that we could take down the river. We took it down to the ocean. It's about 25 minutes paddling. The river is tidal, and we paddled down at low tide, so the river was low, and we got stuck in the estuary trying to find where it was deep enough to paddle. But we finally made it to the ocean. It was ridiculously windy, but very beautiful. We found a hill to shelter the wind to have our picnic, and then waded into the ocean a bit before heading back during the rising tide.

We also explored a litte bit in the Puketi Kauri forest. The Kauri trees are the second largest trees in the world (behind Redwoods). The Northern part of the North Island used to be covered in Kauri forest, but they were cut down for farmland and timber. Now they've protected a few areas to preserve these incredible trees. Some of the oldest trees are believed to be between 1200 and 2500 years old, and are up to 45 feet around and 60 feet tall. The ones we saw were only a few hundred years old, but were still huge. The walk through the forest was nice, we saw a lot of the native plants, like the huge ferns that grow into tall trees living amongst the monster Kauri.

Overall, Northland is a beautiful place. I'm glad that we went up there. It was a nice chance to relax, and see some pretty incredible natural features of these islands.