Kvetching, Part II

I feel justified in kvetching about the weather again since we’ve been hit with even more snow. It is supposed to be spring, with the grass greening up, not buried in cold white yuck. The wind was unrelenting until Saturday morning, which is also far from cheering. This is not to mention the cold temperatures: we saw a morning reading of only 6° once. The other big complaint, and it’s a major one, is that the three-day snowstorm had little to no moisture in it. All it did was stress both people and livestock. (Yes, I know other areas were hit much harder than here, but that’s little comfort.)

The only thing I did outside since last week’s column was to shovel some of that yuck away from our front door, and to make a path to the vehicles in the driveway. And the shovel had to be retrieved from the garage where I’d stupidly stored it, thinking we wouldn’t need it again.

Indoors, I did pluck the “hairy” section off the Mother of 1,000 Babies. Actually, it broke over when I was watering the plants, so I separated it from the main plant and plunked it into one of the plastic water bottle rooters I’d made. After turning the main plant, I found another “hairy” section that had fallen over some time ago. The main stem was hardened and brownish. It was tough when I cut it loose and planted it. I used a pot that had contained something that had died of neglect, so it was fairly easy to loosen the packed dirt using a fork and lots of water. I hope it thrives and that pot isn’t cursed.

I’ll confess here that I procrastinated much too long with the bush-on-fire crotons and they died. They had formed roots, but letting the water level drop too low too many times was not conducive to life. Ah, well, I console myself by reminding myself I have too many plants in the house anyway.

So, back to cooking, the chore that doesn’t end. I’d mentioned pickled eggs last week. They’ve marinated long enough that I’ve eaten a couple of them. I’ll keep this recipe and use it again, when I’ve fallen behind on using eggs and there are enough older ones to hard-boil. I did use a jar of my unsweetened canned beets. I subbed 1 teaspoon of cardamom powder for the pods, and 3/4 teaspoon anise seeds for the star anise. The eggs were pickled in a plastic pitcher since I didn’t have a glass jar large enough. You don’t want to pickle things in metal.

Pickled Eggs, Beets &

Cardamom & Anise

1 can beets

1 C apple cider vinegar

1/4 onion, sliced

3 cardamom pods

1 star anise

6-7 hard-boiled eggs

Drain beets, reserving juice. Add water to make 1 C liquid. Peel eggs, put in bottom of container. Cover with drained beets. Boil the rest together for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. Pour over beets and eggs. Refrigerate (up to 1 month). Ready to eat in a few days, but will develop more flavor with more time.

I don’t know how many of you get the Rural Montana magazine, but they always have a page of recipes towards the back of each issue. I’ll tear that page out, and sometimes I’ll even make one of those recipes. Here’s one I modified to be compliant with my Whole Life Challenge nutritional guidelines. I used coconut sugar instead of brown sugar, and liquid aminos in place of the soy sauce. I’m sure it would be even better with the listed ingredients, but it tasted fine with those modifications. And I felt virtuous for sticking to my dietary restrictions.

Sweet and Tangy Salmon

4 salmon fillets

1 Tbl butter

2 Tbl brown sugar

2 Tbl reduced sodium soy sauce

2 Tbl Dijon mustard

1 Tbl EVOO

1/2 tsp pepper

Dash of salt

1# fresh green beans, trimmed

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Place salmon in a rimmed baking dish, coat with cooking spray. In a small pot, melt butter, stirring in sugar, soy sauce, mustard, and salt and pepper. Brush half over the salmon. Add remaining sauce to the beans, tossing to coat. Arrange beans around salmon. Bake 14-16 minutes until fish just begins to flake. Beans will be crisp-tender.

I didn’t have fresh green beans, so I used a canned beans. Mine weren’t crisp-tender. Dennis won’t eat green beans, so I added three medium-sized yellow waxy potatoes, quartered. Those were also coated with the marinade (I only used one large fillet, so had plenty of marinade). I should have cut the potatoes into French-fry sized pieces as they didn’t get soft enough in those 16 minutes. Or I should have baked them for 15 minutes before adding the salmon and beans. Live and learn.

I also made a batch of cinnamon-roll cookies for Dennis. We haven’t begun to seed our crop (thank you Mother Nature), and his supply of chocolate chip cookies is diminishing. With more snow in our forecast, I’m sure I’ll need more sweets for him. That recipe was shared back in the middle of December. I resisted licking the beater and bowl, both for the batter and the frosting, but I did eat one cookie just to make sure they’re edible. They definitely are not compatible with the WLC!