Tag Archives: haymarket

On Whining and Wining

Posted on by
6

Warning- I’m about to whine.  Not wine (okay..I’m doing that too!).  I’m whining like a sick baby.  Remember when I got the “man flu”? Well…it’s still there. It’s been 4 weeks.  Ugh!  I had an xray on Thursday and it’s still pneumonia.  Another round of antibiotics.  I took all of 3 sick days.  That’s ridiculous.  I work in a hospital, so they know I’m not really contagious anymore.  Okay- whine over.

So, I haven’t been writing a lot.  Or at all.  Not much going on in that head.  I’m taking moxifloxicillin.  It makes you dizzy.  On top of that, NyQuil.  With wine.  Only when I’m at home, of course.  It doesn’t really make you better, but it makes being sick a lot more fun.

I’m also playing with my new dehydrator.  That is a lot of fun.  The other day, I cleaned out my fridge.  There were some peppers that were getting a little wrinkly.  And some celery that was looking a little floppy.  Sounds appealing, right?  I decided to slice up a lot of veggies, and dry them.  We ended up with the red peppers, celery, green onions, green beans, broccoli and carrots.  Once they were totally dry I added them to a jar with thyme, fennel seed (I just love fennel), bay leaves, bouillon and dried mixed beans.  Some day this winter that will be a nice pot of soup.

That wasn’t the only thing we dried.  On Friday I met one of my senior daughters and Grumpy at Northeastern University.  She’s at the college tour time (my other senior saw exactly one college, fell deeply in love and married it forever and ever.  Sadly, it’s in Charlotte, NC. Sniff).  Anyway…after Syd fell madly in love with Northeastern (we’ll have to wait and see if this love is reciprocated), I had this great idea.  Why didn’t Grumpy go fill the car with gas, while Syd and I took the subway to the Haymarket?  I had promised princess Avery that I’d buy strawberries.  They had beautiful berries there, and we bought 4 pounds for $3. That’s right- we are awesomely lucky with shopping (and to quote my dear friend Dr Mikhail: “sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good”).

When we got home I cleaned and sliced the berries.  Most of them fit into the dehydrator.  I meant to get a picture of all those strawberries inside the dehydrator.  I’m not sure what happened.  I remember so little about things sometimes.  I’m blaming the NyQuil.  Totally.  Anyway, there were about a quart of dried berries when they came out.  Not bad.  Then princess Avery discovered the jar.  This is what was left.  About a cup at the most.  Ugh.  She ate the equivalent of 2 pounds of strawberries.  Is that even healthy?

Not all of the strawberries fit, by the way, so with the rest I rewarded us for surviving another day by making my favorite cupcakes- the ones with the strawberry-buttercream  filling that I told you about in the post “Insomnia“.  Don’t they look amazing? You can make them with any type of cake, but it’s a really light buttercream frosting mixed with about an equal amount of finely diced fresh strawberries.  I pipe the frosting into the middle of the cupcakes, dust them with powdered sugar and put half a berry on top to cover up the evidence.  Go back up there and click on “insomnia”(yeah- the blue one) for the actual recipe.

So that’s what’s happening around here.  Time for NyQuil, moxifloxicillin and a little bit more wine.  G’nite all!

 

 

 

Kenepa, aka Zombie Fruit

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve discovered that my kids are no longer picky eaters.  They won’t all eat everything; but they will pretty much try anything.  They’ve gone from “no sauce, this food can’t touch that food” to “I learned how to make lentil stew”.  I don’t really know when these gastronomic adventurers arrived, or what they’ve done with my “bland food only” kids, but I’m going to keep mum for a while longer and enjoy eating with these alien-spawned creatures.

On Friday I took Syd (1/2 of the blond twins – aka the blister sisters) and a friend to the Haymarket.  There were more exotic/foreign fruits and veggies than usual.  Among the fresh figs and dragon-fruit, jackfruit and lychees, were some I’d never seen before.  I was kind of staring at some little hairy ones, trying to figure out what they were and if I could con the alien-spawn into trying them, when a women started hooting and hollering behind me.  “HOOO, dems all mine!”.  She was a sketch, colorful headwrap and dress.  She had a mesh shopping bag- the kind that looked like macrame from the 60s.  She was laughing and pointing at some boring looking little green fruits.  They looked like a smaller oval shaped key lime.  “Dems my favorite dere”.  Being as how I had 2 teenage girls with me, and how easy it is to horrify teens, I decided to make conversation with my colorful new friend.  “So what the heck are those things and why are they so good?” “Dems Kenepa, dey from da islands” she said.  “Dey be soooo good! You has to try one”.  Haymarket vendors are very free with the samples, and the guy at this stand gave me the thumbs up.  “Okay, how do you eat them?”.  “Yee bites off de heads and eats de fruit inside, like de brains”.  OMG!!! Does she know about my zombie loving alien-spawn kids?  They’ve been obsessed with anything zombie for a good 3 years now.  How could I not have known about this fruit??? I bought a pound of the tiny little things.  That would be plenty, I thought.

We started trying them on the way to the train.  You really do bite them off at the top, right below the stem.  The skin is hard and cracks off easily.  Inside, is the strangest stuff.  There is a gooey, gelatinous substance.  It tastes sweet, and tangy, but leaves a weird feeling on your mouth.  Sort of like when you eat a not-quite-ripe banana.  Some of the gel is in kind of snot-like strands clinging to the shell.  Most of it is clinging to a big, hard seed in the center.  She said you could roast the seeds, but I’m thinking that after everyone sucks the brain slime off of them that just isn’t happening.  Sounds not-so-appealing, right?  Well, the alien-spawn kids loved them.  They seemed to love biting off the “heads” and sucking out the slime.  They also liked the flavor.  They polished off the whole pound before dinner.  They spent the rest of that night, and the weekend, asking if I was very sure there weren’t any more.  I’m going to look for that vendor this Friday, and see if he has more of these strange green things.  I’m starting to wonder if there is some link between the fruit and my zombie loving crew.  Maybe it’s just a coincidence.  And so is that Twilight Zone theme song playing in my head…..

On Ants and Aunts…and Peaches!

Posted on by
7

Remember the song? Frank Sinatra made it famous…”Just what makes that little old ant…Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant…”.  That was me on Friday.  Friday, aka “Haymarket Day“.

Each Friday I set off to the Haymarket with a small wad in my pocket for The Shopping Games. This week I had $13.  It isn’t much, but I decided to just play with what I had on me rather than go in with a flash wad and buy “too much”.  Heaven forbid.

This week I was victorious.  I bought 1/2 bushel (25 pounds) of perfect peaches, 10 mangoes and 2 lbs of campari tomatoes for my $13.  I was so excited.  I hit the jackpot.  Then, after I paid for my prizes, I tried to pick them up.  OMG.  What the heck was I thinking??  This stuff was HEAVY! Impossible! I repositioned my backpack, which already had a small laptop, 2 books and some other crap really important things in it.  Then I grabbed the whole load in one big stack and headed towards the train.  I made it about 50 feet before I had to rest.  I tried again.  Made it to the corner, but Thank God unfortunately had to stop for a red light. After much flexing of fingers, balancing on posts/trash barrels/newsstands and the fender of a very chatty cop I finally made it to the subway.  What??? You thought I’d make it to the big train?  Nope.  With arms trembling and sweat running between the twins like a luge I finally set my cases of bounty on the seat of the subway car and road for…one stop.  As in 2 blocks.  I’m so pathetic.  Maybe if I was more like an ant…but no.  I can’t lift 1/2 my weight, never mind 50x.  I meekly rode the escalator upstairs to the commuter train station.

After recovering from my workout, however, I returned home where my Aunt Jo was visiting from her home in Tucson, AZ.  I don’t have a lot of relatives.  Having her visit is a rare treat.  Last time she was at my house…I think GW was in office for the first term.  So what wonderful things would I do to entertain my dear Aunt during her visit?  Did you guess I’d have her skinny little self in my kitchen for a peach cooking party?  Oh you do know me so well!  Friday night was processing night.  We peeled 25lbs of peaches.  I didn’t think to take a photo before; this is what was left (mixed with mangoes):

I saved the peels and stones for peach jelly (I’ll explain later).  We canned 10 pints of peach pie filling (easy-peasy, but that’s for later).  This morning we had peach coffee cake (yeah- we’ll go over that later too).  But first, before anything else, we had to have peach cobbler.  We caught up on the cousins, the nieces and nephews and each other over the makings of a magnificent cobbler.  I can say this with confidence, as we made a double batch and I just had to do another quality check while I wrote. :-)

Peach Cobbler  :an adaption of a recipe from my favorite baking book: the 1987 edition of Jim Fobel’s Old-Fashioned Baking Book (1987 edition not in print; link to 1996) .              Ingredients:

8 medium sized peaches

2/3 cup sugar

1 Tblsp cornstarch

1 Tblsp salted butter

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp grated lemon zest

2 Tblsp lemon juice

(For the Topping)

1 cup all purpose flour. (Plain old flour to you , Allen!)

2 Tblsp sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3 Tblsp salted butter

1/2 cup milk

Prepare the fruit part:

1. Peel, pit and cut peaches into 1/2 inch slices (or 1cm).  You should have about 4 cups.

2. Preheat over to 400f. In a large saucepan stir together sugar and cornstarch.  Then add peaches, butter, and cinnamon. Place over moderate heat and bring to boil, stirring frequently.  Remove from heat and stir in lemon zest and juice. Turn into an ungreased 8 inch square pan (I don’t know why it has to be square. It says so in the book).

Prepare the cobbler bit:

3. Prepare the topping: In a medium-sized bowl combine the flour, sugar and baking powder; then cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal.  Stir in milk to make a soft dough and drop by the spoonful all over the peach filling.  Bake about 20 minutes, until light golden brown.  Cool on a rack for at least 15 minutes.  Serve warm, with heavy cream (or ice cream!) if desired. Dive in!

TGIF in Boston: aka Haymarket Day!

Posted on by
4

I do not work after 3pm on Fridays.  It’s my favorite time of the week.  Haymarket time.  Shopping.  Sigh.  When asked if I like shopping, the answer is always “of course”.  I love competitive shopping.  It should be an Olympic sport.  Thanks to the coupon wizards, this may someday happen.  But that’s not the kind of shopping I like.  In fact, I’m fairly certain that I don’t like most shopping.  Shopping at any mall on December 24th?  They’d better be offering free cocktails at every store.  A day of clothes shopping with my teens?  I’d rather stick a fork in my eye.  But an afternoon at the Haymarket?  Now that’s my kind of shopping! 

The Haymarket is on Blackstone Street and runs from North Street (at the south end, naturally) to Hanover Street at the north.  These streets were among the first laid in the original settlement of Boston.  There are a few shops that are open during the week.  There is a halal butcher, a shop that sells remarkably bad pizza, and Durty Nelly’s (a great little pub with some good food and amazing views from the upstairs room). Most of the week, it’s fairly peaceful.   Starting on Thursday evening, though the place really comes alive.  The vendors arrive late in the evening, setting up tented stalls and stacking up the first crates of produce (there are a couple of fish vendors, but mostly it’s about the produce).  The produce is from the warehouses in Chelsea that all the markets buy from.  They clear out the places at the end of the week, selling cheaply to the vendors who can then sell at below market prices.  Their are some unusual items; the selection is usually better than the average market.   The produce might be ripe, almost ripe or over-ripe.  I’ve been lucky; the quality and flavor is usually better than what I get from the big store.  I’ve heard some tales of woe; fruit that looks great on the outside, but inside is totally rotten (I call this “Ursula fruit”; ;like from Ursula in The Little Mermaid).  You have to proceed with caution and know your produce!

Being prepared is also important. Fortunately,  the  local markets advertise their sale items before Friday.  I’m aware, for example, that I can buy (fragile) grapes for $.99 and strawberries for $1.50 this week.  Since I’m carrying my purchases (I commute by train) they need to be not TOO heavy or fragile.  The menu at home will not dictate my purchases, it’s the other way around.  I usually spend about $15-20, and buy just a bit more than I can comfortably carry.  Within about 2 blocks it has become way more than I can carry.  By the time I lug it onto the train my wrists are numb, my arms are shaking and I’m glowing (as in “horses sweat, men perspire and ladies…”). You will never convince me that it’s not a physical sport!  Our menu on the weekend is always more interesting and vegetable based for my efforts.  This week was a version of middle child (Avery)’s favorite: Roasted Ratatouille.

Ratatouille always includes eggplant, zucchini, onions, garlic and tomato.  Depending on what’s in the pantry, it may also include mushrooms, olives or other vegetables. I start by chopping everything (except tomatoes) into about a 1 inch cube.  Some people go through a big salt/press thing with their eggplant to remove “bitterness”.  I’ve tried and it makes no difference; so it gets only a rough chop  like all the veggies.  Then, I toss the chopped veg into a large roasting pan with olive oil, sea salt and a generous helping of ground pepper. This all gets roasted in a 400f (204c) oven for about an hour. At this point it’s a bit caramelized and the veggies are soft.  Now I stir in a 15oz can of diced tomatoes, or if I have them about 2 cups of diced fresh. Then I cover lightly with grated cheese.  This week the fridge gods offered up some nice Gruyere and mozzarella.  It goes back into the oven, at 450f (232c) for about 30 minutes.  The end result is an amazing casserole filled with lush veggies and melted cheese.  My middle (vegetarian) child is happy,  my young boy (devout carnivore) even likes it.  I’ve also served it as a side for holidays.  On Easter it was actually the only dish that we ran out of.  Enjoy!