Camellias

Mid-February in Missouri means that the camellias are blooming in the Linnean House at the Missouri Botanical Garden.





Less dramatically, except when you think about the season, the witch hazels are blooming outdoors.

Locavore

Listening to The Splendid Table on my mp3 player during a workout a couple of weeks ago, I learned about their new project: Locavore Nation. They asked 15 people across the country to try to get 80% of their food from local sources in 2008 and to write about their experiences. I've been following the adventures of the Central Region Locavores. It's a struggle for us to get local fresh produce this time of year! But, lots of other things are available.

I went to Local Harvest Grocery yesterday with a couple of friends. It's in St. Louis just south of Tower Grove Park. I bought locally made balsamic herb mustard (used it last night in a sauce for chicken and it was amazing!), honey, and salsa. I also bought agave nectar, which wasn't local but I'd been hearing about it as an alternate sweetener. We really liked it both in hot tea and in that chicken sauce.

As far as local produce, about all they had was dried mushrooms, hydroponic lettuce, and sprouts, which were very expensive. Does anyone have advice about growing your own sprouts? I'd like to try that.

We use a grilled chicken breast recipe from the July & August 2007 Cook's Illustrated magazine. They hide their recipes behind a firewall, which makes them tempting to steal -- I found it here online. I changed the sauce part of the recipe enough to make it my own, I think, and managed to reduce the fat and increase the flavor.

Sauce for Chicken:
1 Tbl olive oil
1 Tbl Terrapin Ridge Balsamic & Herb Mustard
1 Tbl lemon juice
1/4 tsp agave nectar
1 clove minced garlic
2 Tbl minced flat leaf parsley
Salt and pepper

Whisk the liquid ingredients together until well-blended. Add the garlic, parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour over grilled chicken breasts. We usually split one piece, these days, and don't use all the sauce. I mix the leftover sauce with yogurt cheese and a little mayo to make a sandwich spread for the leftover chicken.

Mexican-inspired stuffing

Stuffing and its culinary cousin, bread pudding, are my favorite adult comfort foods. Stuffing seems underutilized when it only comes out on holidays. I'm calling this "stuffing," although I know it's really "dressing" but that's what I put on salads!

I recently learned that my new bread machine can be used to bake Savory Bread Stuffing. That thrilled me because "fix the oven" has yet to make it to the top of the priority list in our new house, so my choices were going without or making tiny one-serving versions in a miniature loaf pan using the toaster-oven. I may continue to use the bread machine when I do have an oven -- it uses less energy and, if I should want it in the summer, it doesn't heat up the house.

So, when I end up with too much bread, accidentally or on purpose, I make bread stuffing. The recipe is open to endless variations -- I usually let the variety of bread I'm cubing suggest possibilities. Today's purpose was to use up asiago sun-dried tomato bread. I usually make that to go with chili, so I was thinking Mexican as I invented this version.

Using the recipe linked to above as my base, I substituted red pepper for celery and added a chipotle pepper to the vegetables. I always use a couple of tablespoons of oil (in this case, olive) instead of the stick of butter and my stuffing comes out nice and moist and much healthier. I seasoned it with cumin and stirred in a couple of tablespoons of grated asiago cheese.

Stuffing makes a warm, nourishing accompaniment to the main dish salad that my New Year's Resolution has me eating for lunch most days.

Unhappy herbs

My herbs are failing to thrive. These were stem cuttings from my potted herbs that grew on the deck this summer. I rooted them in water and planted them in small pots in October. That went well, but they haven't grown much since. This window seems better equipped to keep plants alive than to force them to grow.




So, I'm going to try something different in 2008. I'll make my stem cuttings in late June, pot the plants when they root, and leave the plants outdoors to grow for the rest of the summer. Then, I should have large herbs to move inside before the frost, keeping me supplied with fresh herbs through the winter months.

Merry Christmas!

If I'm going to record the rest of this year's Christmas decorating, this seems like the day to do it!

These swags were a lot cheaper than wreathes, especially considering that I need two since we have a double door in the front, and I think I like them just as well. For us, the most important aspect of the door decoration is that it have that wonderful evergreen smell. I have allergies so our tree is artificial -- this is the place where we sneak in the real stuff. Perhaps, I'll put a bow on them next year for a bit more color.

The nativity scene has a story to go with it. My mother said for years that she was going to get a nativity set when she could afford to buy a good one. The family ignored this comment and assumed she’d get around to it one day. But my fiance (now, husband), when he heard that the first time, saw an opportunity. The next Christmas he bought her the basic pieces of a nativity set and for years after added more and more pieces until she had a very large scene. Mother died in 2005, so now it’s mine. This year is the first time since then that I’ve had the time and space to set it out.

Next year, I think I'll try putting a piece of fabric under it so it's not quite so brown on brown. And I'm still trying to decide if I like the Christmas cards around it or not. That was mostly accidental (I put the first couple of cards on the edge of the buffet and then it just grew), but visitors have paid attention to both together and the cards have certainly added some color to the mix.

Merry Christmas! And God bless us, every one!

Indoor Christmas tree

Last year at Christmas, we didn't have any furniture in the living room, so we plopped the Christmas tree in the middle and appreciated having something to fill the space for awhile.

This year, we have our furniture and there's really no room for a Christmas tree. So, Rick had the idea to put the tree in the sunroom and it's been quite wonderful. We can see it, or its reflection in windows, in nearly every room of the house.

Outdoor Christmas trees

We may never be able to replicate this year's outdoor trees, but I thought I would make record of it. There are three evergreen trees in the part of the landscape design that we're ready to implement. We bought them, potted, early in December so that we can use them as Christmas trees for the season, then plant them.

We put a thuja at the bottom of the driveway. It wasn't stable so Rick buried the pot partway.



He did the same for the one by the garage. We put multi-colored lights on both of the thujas and appreciate them when we come home after dark. We can also see the one at the bottom of the driveway from a couple of windows in the house.



The weather didn't cooperate for us to get lights on the juniper that we put near the front door. But it had pretty natural decoration after our snowstorm.