Babbling Blueberry

By “fix an ant problem,” I mean extermination.  By “extermination,” I mean killing.

We’ve had an ant problem in our kitchen for a few weeks now. We set out various poisons (like the POISONOUS TEAT OF TERRO, as Mark calls it) and they may or may not be working. There seem to be fewer ants, but it’s hard to know for sure.

Now this extermination method that I’m talking about, we know for sure that it’s working. Somehow the ants have found a way to climb into our freezer but then they can’t find their way back out again. Then they freeze to death.

Yes, all those dark specks in the photo are frozen dead ants. I don’t know why they do this. It seems pretty stupid to me. But as you can see, a large number of them have done it and the pile keeps getting bigger.

So here’s the way to exterminate ants:

1. Make sure that there is a tiny crack for ants to climb into the freezer.
2. If the path that the ants are using isn’t near the freezer already, lead them towards the freezer with crumbs. (I didn’t have to do this)
3. Clean the freezer with lemon scented Lysol.

Yes, that’s right, lemon scented Lysol. I think that’s the key. For quite a while, we had an ant problem but they weren’t going into the freezer. After I cleaned the freezer, they couldn’t wait to get to the lemony Lysol party.

Or had someone act in a stalkerish way?

My sister has had a few stalkers. Or at least, a few people who have behaved in a fairly stalkerish way. She thinks this is normal. I, on the other hand, think this sort of thing is pretty unusual - she is one of two people that I knew who have had stalkers. She thinks that maybe the people I know do have stalkers and they just haven’t told me. So, now I’m asking… has anyone had a stalker?

This exercise will either prove my point or it will bring out entertaining stories that people are hiding away.

Don’t worry, Simona. I’ll eventually get to six. It just takes a long time for me to think of them.

This one is about the stones in my hands. Let’s assume that you believe me. Then you might be wondering, “How did I discover these?”

My sister did this program at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa when she was in high school. There, she learned this little trick to check the doneness of meat. If you touch the tip of your thumb to the tip of your index finger gently, and then use your other hand to press against the fleshy part at the base of your thumb. That’s what a rare piece of meat feels like when you press against it. Medium rare = thumb to middle finger. Medium well = thumb to ring finger. Well done = thumb to pinky.

It’s a good thing that I don’t cook very much meat! It turns out this doesn’t work with me. If I tried this trick to check my steak, I’d have really overdone steak! My pad of flesh at the base of my thumb feels like there’s a rock in there rather than feeling like a piece of meat, even with the thumb to the index finger. When my sister shared this trick with me, I compared her hands to mine - hers feel like meat. I’ve actually felt the hands of quite a few people and everyone (Except for Vince, my rock hand brother!) seems to have normal steak hands.

Vince and I tried to figure out why we were different and we’re not really sure. We both hold pencils the same way and it seems to be different from most other people. But we have the rocks in both of our hands even though we just write with one. Maybe it’s from playing piano and/or cello and/or doing ceramics and/or kneading lots of bread dough and/or doing foot reflexology for my mother. But I’m sure Vince didn’t do ALL those things.

Hey, LaMancha! They’re talking about LaMancha goats on So you think you can dance! Great show, by the way.

I love getting inspired by ingredients that I already have sitting around. It’s always fun to use up random bits and pieces of ingredients these dishes usually turn into my most yummy creations. But I usually do it with savory food. Tonight, I played with sweet ingredients and made an impromptu dessert.

I whisked together a couple of eggs, poured in some soy milk, added some sugar, vanilla, and freshly grated nutmeg. And then soaked some leftover sourdough bread that I had in this mixture. I diced some peaches and threw those in as well. I baked this up in some ramekins and wound up with a lovely peach bread pudding. I didn’t measure anything - it was all instinct and using up bits of what I had on hand, so there is no recipe to share. All I have to share is a photo and a little bit of bragging - the sweetness and flavors and textures came out just right!

Okay, so bread pudding isn’t that complicated to make. Plus, most of the ingredients were things that I have around all the time. So it’s not that special of a story. But it was still quick to make and really delicious to eat.

LaMancha the Localvore, Ben, and I visited Redwood Hill Farm and Creamery for a tour (free) of their goat farm and yogurt and cheese operation. LaMancha and Ben have been visiting a lot of farms around the Bay Area and in Northern California so they’re experts on this whole agriculture business. But for me, it was new and interesting. I figured I could share some of what I learned and provide some reviews of Redwood Hill Farm’s various products. I’ll put some photos in this blog entry, but if you want to see more photos, you can see the full album.

First, let’s talk about the yogurt to get it out of the way. The tour wasn’t very interesting and the yogurt wasn’t so good. Because it’s a liquid product, California requires that their whole process be automated in this huge system of pipes and vats and tanks. So it isn’t that interesting to see. Plus, I’ve already learned a bit about how to make yogurt from various people who make their own yogurt (Jen at SEP, Da - she makes DaDannon yogurt!, and Karin) and the larger scale process is pretty much the same. Plus, this tour leader, while knowledgeable, didn’t answer my questions as fully as I would have liked, and I didn’t want to be a pain for the rest of the tour group, so I let things go. For example, he said that goat milk comes out of the goat homogenized while cow’s milk is not and will separate if left standing. When I asked him why that was the case, he basically just defined what homogenization meant rather than really explain why. We decided amongst ourselves that it must be because the goats are more active than cows, jiggling and jumping all over the place to homogenize the milk in their udders. If it were any other reason, this tour guy would have said so, right?

Other than learning that goats homogenize their milk, the only other interesting thing that I learned on the yogurt tour was that they package the milk and cultures into the little cups, and then let the bacteria grow within each individual cup! It’s not going to change my life, but it’s interesting, to me, at least.

We had to wear hairnets and booties over our shoes to help them keep things sanitized, but I suspect that it was all a sham or an excuse to point out the long shelf-life of their yogurts. They weren’t making any yogurt that day and all the yogurt was enclosed within steel pipes and tanks. So what were the booties and hairnets protecting? They weren’t really making cheese that day either, but that portion of the tour was much better because of their head cheese maker doing a good job talking about cheese and answering questions. That’s head (cheese maker) not (head cheese) maker.

Before I get to the cheese, a quick review of the yogurt. They add tapioca and pectin to thicken the yogurt. Boo. The flavor is pretty good, but I didn’t enjoy the texture and I wish they wouldn’t put tapioca and pectin in it.

The cheese maker was the exact opposite of the yogurt guy in how much information she provided and it was great. It would have been slightly improved if she had described the different types of cheese and how the final product looks and tastes before she described how each kind is made, but I think I put together the pieces eventually. It looks like a really fun job. She tweaks various parameters relating to proteins (casein in the milk and rennet - from baby cow stomaches! - that’s added), fat, squeezing the whey, shaping, different aging conditions. And she takes plays with various microorganisms - bacteria that produce lactic acid, yeast, mold. She says that she has a number of small experiments running to tweak and optimize the cheeses that they produce, and to develop new ones. Seems like a really fun job. In case anyone is wondering what it takes to get a fun job like this, she did her undergraduate work at Davis in animal science and dairy something or other, and then she did a masters degree in microbiology. And then she studied with some cheese makers in Europe, maybe France. Plus, I’m sure she has a ton of other qualities that help, but those are the basics.

So on to what I think of their cheeses! I won’t really cover the information that’s already on their website, so go there if you want more information. I’ll just share what I think is the most interesting and/or relevant.

Gravenstein Gold - This would have been LaMancha’s nickname had I not decided to use the breed of goat with the funny ears. Based on what I’ve seen online, this is a type of cheese that was developed at Redwood HIlls Creamery and there’s way more information at this other blog. To summarize, they wash the cheese with cider from Gravenstein apples and that’s what makes it yellow. This cheese is aged so it’s firm and got a good stink. But only mildly stinky. And, it really is a good stink. I don’t have a good vocabulary to describe the stink of cheese, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that it’s enjoyable and try some yourself.

Camellia - This one is a soft one, very much like Camembert in texture and flavor and visually. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s probably made with the same process as camembert but with goat milk instead of cow milk. CAMEmbert? CAMEllia? They say this cheese is named after one of their favorite does, but it sounds like it’s also named after camembert.

Bucheret - This cheese has a texture is halfway between Camembert and feta, but flavor is more like Camembert.

Crottin - This one was quite similar to Bucheret and I can’t really do a good job describing the difference in their textures and flavors without both in front of me. I recall the difference in how they were made being that in one, the salt is mixed into the curd mixture before it’s added to the mold (to shape it, not mold like what grows on the cheese) and with the other, the salt is sprinkled on to the ends of the mold and it’s allowed to dissolve into the cheese. I think the former is Crottin and the latter is Bucheret.

They also have feta and chevre. These are pretty good, but there’s nothing interesting to say about them.

We wound up buying some chevre, Bucheret, and some of the Gravenstein Gold. I had a good dinner with some sour dough bread, these three cheeses, and some Rainier cherries! I would have liked to buy goat milk directly, probably to make ice cream, but maybe another time and another creamery.

Here’s one last bit of interesting information that I learned from the whole goat tour: Goats are seasonal and produce milk with highest fat and protein content in spring, and fall’s a close second. So goat cheese is best during those times.

We also stopped by Screamin’ Mimi’s in Sebastopol for ice cream. I was a little concerned when we walked in and it looked and smelled very much like a Ben and Jerry’s store. And I was a little disappointed in their flavors (I’ve been spoiled by Bi-Rite Creamery), but they still had a good selection and things were very tasty. LaMancha and Ben got lemon poppy and ginger, and I got black walnut and cassis sorbet. The lemon poppy was nice and bright, maybe a little too sweet and not tangy enough. The ginger good, but I would have preferred it to be more sharp and spicy Black walnut was good but not spectacular. The cassis sorbet was really nice with a full and bright flavor. The texture for everything was pretty good but I would have preferred it to be a little bit more custardy and chewy (which would be a direct result of custardiness). The best part of this place is that they sell you the ice cream by weight so you can get what you want to eat and what you want to pay for. My guess is that the bump up the price a little in exchange for the customization, but that’s okay, I think. It was a fun place to stop if you’re in Sebastopol, but there’s no need to go out of your way to come here. Bi-Rite kicks Screamin’ Mimi’s butt! And it’s much closer to where I live.

We had a few other stops up north, but this post is long enough and I’ve already covered the parts that are most worth writing about. See, I’m using these awkward phrases. That means it’s time to end now.

Last night, I went to a Pakistani/Indian restaurant in the Tenderloin that blew me away in how delicious it was - I haven’t been blown away by Indian/Pakistani food in a long time - there are many good places in San Francisco, but no one stood out from the rest of the pack.  It’s my new and clear favorite Indian/Pakistani restaurant!

The best dish was an eggplant curry dish. Eggplant by itself is magic, but in this dish, it was elevated beyond magical - to godliness and divinity. There’s also this hard to find (according to our C Facilitator, which, in this case, stands for curry facilitator) fish dish that looks like it’s cooked in the tandoor oven. (Is saying “tandoor oven” like saying “The El Camino”?) Others in the group thought this was the best dish, and it is quite good, but it was not even at the same level as the eggplant dish. Some of my companions think that Shalimar, a neighbor to this place, has better naan, but I respectfully disagree. The flavor of the dough was much better, almost sweeter. And the texture was better - chewy but very light at the same time. And there was a good balance of thin crusty parts and thicker, but not too thick parts. And they were very generous with the butter/ghee.

I haven’t revealed the name yet because that’s the best part. No, the eggplant was the best part. This is maybe second place. Lahore, pronounced “La whore.” Full name is actually Lahore Karahi. This extends the fun beyond dinner, both before an after… “I have a craving for Lahore.” After sitting in the fragrant atmosphere of the restaurant during your leisurely meal… “I smell like Lahore.” And so on.

They gave us some kulfi to end our meal. I’m not sure if they do this for everyone or if it was because of our C Facilitator, but it was a nice touch.

If I’ve ever recommended an Indian and/or Pakistani place to you in the past, scratch that. Just go to Lahore.

I’d like to buy a cherry.

If you’re trying to plan for meals that use local and in season produce, it helps to have an idea of what’s in season in your area. But I know I’ve lost touch with my farming roots (what farming roots, you ask? I’m sure I have some ancestors at some point who were involved in farming) and I don’t have a complete picture of how things grow and when they’re ready. But I’m getting better with the help of the SF Bay Area’s local foods wheel. It’s a literal wheel made from cardstock and you can spin the wheel to figure out what’s in season at any point in the year. I love mine and it’s worth the investment of $12 or so, I think. It also makes a great gift. I’m actually planning to give mine to someone when I leave the Bay Area (don’t worry, I’m keeping mine nice and pristine). I haven’t decided who I’ll give it to just yet, but if you’re interested, let me know! Someone should enjoy it when I’m living far from California’s bountiful and fruitful and vegetableful harvests.

The website also has all the information listed as text, but the wheel is a lot more fun with nice hand-drawn pictures of the different foods. And with the text version, it’s not easy to see which foods are in season at a given time during the year. The wheel is good for inspiration when I’m planning a menu or before I go shopping or to the farmers market.

For those of you outside of the Bay Area, there’s also Epicurious’ map. But it’s not as complete as the local foods wheel - California only has 9 things listed as being in season during May! But it’ll do until there are wheels are invented for everyone!

I was craving macaroni and cheese and so I made some.  That’s why all the people who don’t cook should get more familiar with doing stuff in the kitchen - you become more self-reliant and you can get what you want when you want it.

I used these fun looking and colorful spiral noodles - from Rainbow Grocery, how appropriate.  I added some grape tomatoes and some fava beans (it’ll probably be the last fava beans of the season).  I also decided to throw some bread crumbs (from the sour dough bread that I made) on top and then throw it in the broiler to crisp it up, but I wound up burning the top a little.

I usually make a bechamel-like sauce first, add cheese, and then add the macaroni.  But this time, I tried a recipe from Elise at Simply Recipes.  It worked really well, and it was pretty fast.  And I only needed one pot.  So I guess, in the future, this is the way to go.

I thought this was a very interesting and telling figure:

That figure says a lot all by itself, but if you’re interested in reading more, here’s the blog post that talks more about this figure and the latest farm bill.

Mark calls them “volcanic mushrooms,” but after you cut off the 1/2 cm of burnt crust on the bottom, it’s not bad. The inside/crumb is nicely chewy.  But still, not worth pictures. Maybe the next batch will be more photogenic.