School Days

Yesterday, after a lazy hour long ride poking around the property, we headed back to the barn and I see the ring is empty and the footing looks pretty good. So L and I went ahead and schooled in the ring for a few minutes. She got so mad!

We haven't been in the ring in ...well, it's over a year anyway, and, considering that, she was really good. We schooled for maybe 15 minutes doing mostly flexing and bending exercises. She's strong and fit but she hasn't been as supple as I know she can be. It's been so wet this Spring it's been hard to school in the fields. If I push really hard I know her feet will slip out from under her.

So we did our 15 minutes doing concentric circles and lapping the rail and finished with some serpentines. I know she was working at it but it was mostly because she was mad. Far as she was concerned we'd already gone 10 minutes over by the time we got there.

L is a very funny horse. And the funniest thing is she doesn't know how funny she is. She got all pushy when we went back into the barn and I smacked her. Well. She *glared* at me! She hasn't given me her "I can't believe you did that!" look in ages and it's very funny.

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Dinner this past Friday night was something special. I might have to frame this.

Friday 13 May 2011
That, by the way, is American Paddlefish caviar and I thought it was quite good. Closer to the best than the worst.

Kitchen tip! I made some tabbouleh a week or so ago and of course I had leftover fresh mint. I love mint on peas too. Other than that I don't use a lot of mint and usually I just chuck what's left when it goes bad. But this time the light came on - I chopped it all up finely while it was still fresh, dried it, and put it away.

Chopped Fresh Mint Leaves
Spread out on a dinner plate and left on the kitchen counter out of the way it was fully dried in 48 hours.

Dried Mint Leaves
I'm a little extravagant sometimes but I'm acutely aware of what things cost and I really hate seeing things go to waste.

Edit: You know, I love mint with tomatoes too but I either forget that when I'm shopping or I forget I have mint when I'm fixing tomatoes!

Feathers

I just love L's feathers!

Feathers - 8 May 2011
I love seeing the seasons change in New England. Roll your mouse over the picture to see that window the day after Christmas, remember this?

1 May 2011
The apple blossoms are out!

Apple Blossoms 8 May 2011

Results are in!

The shocking results.

On the left is (an expensive) small bottle of hand made organic extra virgin olive oil from a medieval village in Tuscany.

On the right is a domestic extra virgin olive oil (gasp!) from California.

In a blind taste test, straight up, using a baguette, my hands down favorite was the domestic oil from California Olive Ranch.

By the way, it's also interesting to note that I couldn't tell which was which by looking at them.

The shocking part is not that I liked the less expensive product. That's happened before. For many years Colavita was my favorite daily use olive oil. Then one day when I had several bottles of olive oil around I did a blind taste test and, much to my surprise, my favorite was Berio. I've been using Berio up until a year or so ago when I took a liking to Greek olive oils.

I've also found that I'm just as likely to prefer a $6 bottle of wine to a $60 bottle of wine.

I highly recommend doing your own blind taste tests!

But no, the shocking thing is I preferred a domestic olive oil! Who ever would have thought!

It was rich. It was pungent and flavorful. It was spicy. I like strong, bold flavors. Maybe the Volpaia was just too subtle for me. It's a premium product and it's made using a cutting process rather than a pressing process and its highlights include exceptional purity and notably low acidity.

The Volpaia oil, by the way, is roughly 14 times the price of the California Olive Ranch oil. California Olive Ranch boasts a very high level of automation to reduce its costs while claiming to be a superior product.

The California Olive Ranch extra virgin olive oil at my local supermarket is dirt cheap. The first time I looked at it I thought someone had made a mistake. And the first time I tasted it I wished I'd bought a case.

Yes, I'm raving about the product. Try it!

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Easy Marinated Mushrooms. Restraint is the secret here!

I don't know how long I worked on this recipe. A very long time and it turned out to be more about technique than ingredients. I needed an unusually light hand (for me) with the herbs to finally make it work.

Clean 8 ounces of button mushrooms. White or crimini. Cut the bigger ones in half. Sometimes I take the stems out and cut them up.

Finely chop 2 or 3 cloves of garlic.

Bring to a boil:

• 3 tablespoons champagne vinegar
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon honey
• pinch of salt

Add the mushrooms and garlic to the boiling mixture and reduce the heat. Let the mushrooms gently boil, stirring occasionally. After 7 minutes turn the heat off and let them sit a minute or two.

While the mushrooms are boiling put a half teaspoon of dried thyme and a tablespoon of finely chopped red onion in a bowl with a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. I like to put a couple of dried chilis in there too. That's optional.

Now here's the technique I accidentally found one night that made them just right: After the mushrooms have cooled for a couple of minutes spoon them into the bowl with the olive oil using a slotted spoon. Toss to coat them with olive oil and herbs.

You can optionally add a tablespoon of the vinegar mixture to the bowl and toss again to emphasize the flavor.

Refrigerate the mushrooms overnight and let them come to room temperature for serving.

These are so easy to fix - I often fix them when I'm just hanging around the kitchen doing other things.

I've used cut mushrooms in a pinch and they're just as good as whole button mushrooms. But they're not as pretty.

A fine specimen?

Well I don't know about that.

Four or 5 years ago I couldn't walk a quarter mile. Nevermind run 3 miles. I quit smoking cigarettes a year ago yesterday and... to mark the occasion? I *finally* threw out my butts! For the time being I never felt better.

Hey he can cook too!

Seared Tuna
Some would call that overdone but that's just the way I like it. I marinated a 4 oz. tuna steak in soy sauce, lime juice, sake, sesame oil and a tiny bit of honey for about 30 minutes. I seared it for 3 minutes each side in a rocket hot cast iron skillet. You need to be careful with the honey. A tiny bit of honey "caramelizes". A lot of honey "burns".

The dipping sauce is soy sauce, sesame oil, honey, lime juice and finely chopped red onion. It's on a bed of finely chopped lettuce and serano chilis.

I always burn the sesame seeds so I sprinkle some toasted sesame seeds over it when I serve it.

I served it with brown basmati rice and steamed asparagus. Asparagus season will peak this month. This was just *delicious*.

Earlier in the day I'd enjoyed a sensational ride with L. She's strong and she's fit and she's been messing with me. So I had spurs. L has taught me two things. It's important it is to be decisive and it's very important to have your horse's mind.

If I haven't reacted by the time she thinks about it I'm already at a disadvantage. She has to believe I know what she's thinking. And I have to be strong enough to settle it the first time. Actually my trainer taught me that. It's not fair to "poke poke"..."poke poke"..."poke poke". I have to give her what she needs and be done with it.

Those are simple things and when I get them right I swear it's like riding a breeze.

After a nice ride L gets grass...

And I get beer!

By the way. That's a Belgian wheat beer. I never had Belgian wheat beer. It's important to have it in a glass. You have to swirl the yeast in the bottle. Do not drink Belgian wheat beer from the bottle.

Early Bugs

The bugs are early this year.

Her Best Side!
We've had some relatively mild weather for a couple of weeks now and that's brought the bugs out early!

L is a sensible creature. Mostly. I like how she leaves the end with the fly swatter outside in the sun.

Our last ride I felt like L threw one huge tantrum for the whole trip. She'll do that when the bugs first start coming out and I felt bad. It's really impossible to do anything productive when your mount is tossing their head and furiously kicking at gnats. She even spooked herself once and almost lost me. I think a good hard run would have distracted her but we don't have good hard runs bareback. And I knew too if she was out eating grass she would hardly have noticed the bugs and frankly that irritated me. Which really wasn't fair to her and I felt bad about that too.

I'll make it up to her.

Treats

Are important. A lesson I've learned from my horses.

I was going to get a nice bottle of wine to have with dinner. But you know, I do that often enough. Then the light bulb came on!

The Good Stuff
I stopped by a little Italian market and got this really nice bottle of Volpaia olive oil. It was a real treat. I'll have to have a friend blind taste test me against my daily favorite and see how I really feel about it.

The real star of the weekend however is this celery soup. It's "holy crap" good!

I was watching Top Chef Masters on TV and Naomi Pomeroy made a Celery Velouté that stole the show. So I Googled celery soup recipes and decided I'd try this recipe. Well. I used olive oil instead of butter. I used a Yukon Gold potato. I was amazed. The soup is rich and luxurious and it was just *delicious*.

Cooking Tip - did you know there's something funny about onions and fat? According to America's Test Kitchen, onions take longer to cook in unsaturated fat than saturated fat. Saturated fats are solid at room temperature. So, if you see a recipe that says cook your onions in butter for 2 or 3 minutes, you'll have to cook them for 7 or 8 minutes in olive oil.

This soup will go with just about anything at all and I thought it was especially "Springy". A keeper for sure. Oh, that's chopped parsley garnishing the soup. Chopped parsley was a good choice but my treatment was a little heavy handed. Half that would have been perfect. I always do that. You'd think I'd know by now.

Speaking of treats!

Local honey
I love honey. If you're lucky enough to have local sources for things like this - support them!

They're baaaaack...

Wednesday afternoon, 20 April, 4:58 pm, the barn swallows came back!

What are you looking at? (June 2003)
I didn't see the scout swallows this year so their arrival wasn't expected. They're not quite as reliable as the miracle swallows are but they're close. Every year they're back at the same time give or take a few days. These are North American swallows. They've been in Costa Rica or Panama all winter.

I don't know exactly what it is about the swallows. Sure their return is as sure a sign of Spring as the peepers. And they eat bugs. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of bugs. But it's more than that. Their flying skills are just amazing and they always strike me as having fun. They'll fly the length of the barn and come at you right between the eyes. At the last instant they'll cut left or right. They're so close you can see the little hairs around their nostrils. You get used to it and after a couple of days you don't even duck anymore.

And you should see them dive bomb the cats!

In a good year we've lost count of the chicks at around a hundred.

June 2003
And in a bad year? We had that cold wet summer a few years ago, I don't know if any of the chicks survived. That was rather sad. Those birds worked their butts off and there just weren't enough bugs to feed the chicks.

The day the chicks learn to fly is pretty funny stuff. They're obviously clueless and they're scared to death and sometimes it takes a day or two to persuade them to take the leap.

But when they get started there's no stopping them and they make it look like tons of fun!

We call it Flight School.