Green Modern Kits On Planet Green!

We are so focused on our prefab house kit projects it took me a few months to notice I had been nicely mentioned on Planet Green... oops. : )

Solar cooking is one of my favorite hobbies and I am always happy to share my experiments!
[Not. All. Successful. ]

 

Coq. Au. Vin.

*Sigh* I always cook too much and then invite guests…

Yesterday I attacked the Monster Zucchini the size of a baseball bat and made chilled puree of zucchini soup with cream.
(Dice then sautee zucchini, onion in butter until super soft, add broth, lemon, s&p... puree, then chill, add cream, serve.)

For appetizers I made Momofuku Pork Buns Done Gone Southern Style, Honeychile’ Cucumber Sandwiches. (Which, by the way, won 4th prize in Save Our Food's recipe contest! And it has no recipe!)

And then there was our rooster, slow cooked & basted, served atop a bed of roasted potatoes, garlic, onion, celery, & carrots.

Salad… cheese and fruit… sorbet.

...On vintage dishes.

Check out this HUGE hawk in the tree across the street… he must have heard I was cooking…


The second Tony walked in, he turned to me and whispered, urgently,
“Fermes ta bouche regardent le coq, d’accord?”
I nodded. Kristin immediately asked, “Don’t talk about what?”


Lovely evening…
Brilliant sunset…


After the rain, we sipped wine outside...the droplets sparkled on the Japanese maple like a Christmas tree.

Morning… Please send coffee.

 

Momofuku Pork Buns Done Southern Style, Honeychile.

This post is for my dear friend V., her sister B., and my cousins C., & C.!
When I was in New York this spring for ICFF, walking to a party on 2nd Ave., I was introduced to the joys of Momofuku steamed pork buns.

I mentioned they not only promoted local food, but equally the local farms- writing the farm names along with the menu items on their blackboard.

Well, it is now cucumber season, and I recalled the sweet / savory taste of those pork buns and thought I'd do a Momofuku Done Gone South version.

So, I present...
Momofuku Done Gone South:
Cucumber Sandwiches with BBQ! (Oh yes, I did.)

• First, go to the Amish store and get some of Mrs. Esh's white bread. This bread has a great texture and consistency because, like the steamed buns, it has a slightly sweet, yeasty, dense taste. If you do not have Amish living nearby (I realize most people don't), maybe try dinner rolls or anything heavy, slightly sweet.
  
• From the garden: cucumbers & spring onion (or scallions).
  Slice the cucumbers and follow this recipe to give them that Momofuku taste / texture.
  
  ***What this recipe doesn't mention is that it is clear you need to drain the cucumbers after it has time to mix with the salt/sugar to give it the same firm texture as those in the Momofuku buns.
  
  Plus: Note I never follow directions: I peeled & sliced up a bunch o' cucumber from the garden, added the salt & sugar, drained after a few hours, decided it needed more salt & sugar, drained... then, at the end, when putting them on the sandwiches, decided to not only drain but pat 'em down on a dishtowel to give the cukes the right consistency. (Don't tell me you use paper towels in your house... that is NOT practical or environmentally friendly.)
  
• Thinly, thinly slice the onion.
• Purchase locally made BBQ- the lightly sweet, not vinegar kind (sorry, North Carolina, this is the Virginia version with tomatoes!).
  
• Cut the bread into squares, 4 per slice, to give it the appearance of your usual cucumber sandwiches, and add to platter. Or, if you do not have Amish bread, I bet you could pack the ingredients into a dinner roll that is slightly sweet, opened & folded over.
  
• Top the Amish bread squares with a slice of pickled cucumber, then a bit of onion, then a dollop, and when I say dollop I mean a DAB of BBQ! (Otherwise it will overwhelm the tastes.)
  

And there ya go, yer done!
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

(Actually, this pic on the right has too much BBQ on it- make it a smaller dollop.)

Here's some pics of the tray, and then I headed off to Girlz Nite where my friend Melanie also made a delicious HOMEMADE BLUEBERRY COBBLER for the feast! Yum.

 

Solo Solar Cookin'

I've been blogging on solar cooking for almost two years. Why, with such a rise in lifestyle changes towards gentler, smaller footprints, are more people not harnessing the sun regularly to cook? It seems sometimes like I'm the only one blogging on this topic, yet it's so frickin' easy and simple to add to one's daily routine!

As I readied my solar cooker just now for dinner, it occurred to me exactly why more people are not utilizing this easy clean energy.

Maybe it's NOT so simple.

In order to regularly incorporate solar cooking into your lifestyle, one must be able to take odd moments out from your day to 1. load the food into and 2. check on / turn the oven according to the sun's position in the sky.

Although our company has been telecommuting for almost ten years, most businesses do not yet offer that in their culture. Picture the average, air-conditioned, cubicle-bound person trying to achieve solar cooking in the workplace.
It ain't gonna happen!

(Although images of

• suit-clad employees hunching over cookers in bland parking lots - instead of a smoking break they venture to the sidewalk to turn their cooker regularly then
• wearing oven mitts, carefully transport their aromatic dinner home on the subway

certainly made me smile and nod to surrealism, and my art history teacher, for providing me super cool mental images!)

Really, to adapt this into a lifestyle, it is imperative to have a flexible work environment (or not work at all, but who are we kidding? That is not a great option!). Delicate, multiple factors must converge to allow an environment where you can successfully solar cook -and- work in the course of a day.

So, now I get it. I understand. And I hope that you enjoy my silly solar posts when I don't feel like writing anything technical. : )

Maybe as more people begin to telecommute, as more companies see that giving their employees more life/culture during the workday and self-determination on how they are productive, we will see more people in this country able to solar cook.

And with that, I am off to make sure my cooker is correctly aligned to best capture the sun, ensuring tonight's dinner will be ready on time!

 

Solar Cooking: Pork, Grapes & Garlic

It's been awhile since I've posted anything on solar cooking. I guess I just felt I hadn't made anything of note lately... when you solar cook, it IS convenient, but the novelty does wear off - I mean, how many people blog about what they make for dinner each day? (Suddenly a rush of web domains devoted to cooking overwhelms me! Never mind!)

For those of you on myspace, I have a whole album of solar cookin' successes (and failures), as well as posts in the green building group. But lately I've just been making... I don't know... normal stuff?

So today when I decided to "make something out of nothing" by looking through the icebox as I often do, I became a little more creative- and it occurred to me this dish could be photo-worthy. : )

In our family, we buy our meat from two families near us. That means we buy in bulk (I mean, when I buy lamb... I buy A lamb...) so our meat is usually frozen the day it's butchered. So I dug through the freezer and pulled out some beautiful pork chops from the Ault's, and defrosted them overnight. Then I found some grapes that the children were not devouring- they had been a little on the sour side. But if they were cooked? Dee-lish. So I threw in the chops, grapes, added cloves of garlic and a dash o' balsamic... and YUM! Tonight's dinner!

I also added a side o' potatoes. Solar cooked potatoes are frightfully easy and taste more earthy & delicious.

Feel free to try this at home! Cooking was never so easy- I'm off to play instead of hunkering over a hot oven: Let the sun do your work!