Grow Your Own, the third book in the measurefree kitchen companion trilogy is underway. Here’s one from the Leafing Out in Spring chapter.
One secret of this take on tabbouleh is making it the way they do in the Levant–where as my friend Rula Awaad-Rafferty observes, “it’s about the green, not the grain.”
The other secret is to go with what’s seasonal. No fresh tomatoes in spring, so a grand riot of greens held the day. Just ask Angela and Lenore who live next door. This salad is a hit for mommas and young’uns alike.
Red Quinoa Tabbouleh
Recipe Note
Steam some red quinoa using one part grain to two parts water with a couple pinches of salt. Make your rounds in the garden collecting parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme—or whatever herbs and greens are available. Do a rustic mince and toss them with the red quinoa. Dress with some organic oil and red wine vinegar, season with coarse salt and a fresh crack of black pepper.
On Herbal Trips to the Spring Garden—
Even in the spring trips to the garden net different offerings from day to day. On this venture, who called out along with the parsley, mint, and thyme but some young onions, a couple small spinaches that wintered over, a few tarragon fronds, and a totally luscious hyacinth that went into a vase to keep the cook happy.
Finally overcame some serious inertia and got started on the third in the measurefree trilogy: Grow Your Own: From the Garden to the Table. So you can say you saw it here first.
Also a variation on the theme in a video at the bottom of this post. “Tostadas: So Easy an Old Stoner Can Make Them”
Here’s a take on a taco salad that goes light years beyond iceberg and draws on the bounty of an early season garden. If you’re like me and want lotsa veggies, just pile the mount way high and grab your chopsticks or fork. Then once you graze off the main heap, you’ll have a nice warm bundle of food to pick up and eat.
Recipe Note for Tostada Salad
Warm a corn tortilla on the griddle in a tad of oil and salt. Spread a layer of refried lentils on and dot with chunks of blue cheese from a dairy that gets the mama cows out to pasture. Spike with red chile, salt, and whatever kind of vinegar’s handy.
Pile on flash cooked cabbage into which you’ve tossed roasted red peppers plus a riot of herbs: chives, summer savory, thyme, mint, and parsley—added at the last minute so the herbs keep their vivid green color. All’s left to do is pick that baby up and chow down.
Details
~Any legume will work here. Traditional Mexican-style pintos. Caribbean blacks. Mediterranean garbanzos. Good old lentils. How do you choose? Easy. Use whatever you’ve got cooked up.
~What’s nice about flash cooking the vegetables for a tostada is that since they get tender, you can cut things in larger pieces. Cabbage, for example. When I use it raw, I like to grate it into translucent shreds, something that takes longer and is messy. On the other hand, when you flash cook cabbage, you can do a tidy, rustic zippity-do-dah chop.
~Roasted red peppers are dear, as in not terribly prolific in my garden and spendy by the organic jar. The good news is that it only takes a little diced roasted reds to make for marvy eye candy. So think pretty, think thrifty, and you’ll be a happy red pepper camper.
On A Fresh Herbaceous Kind of Spring—
The thing with spring is that oftentimes there’s not much to eat in the garden. Lettuces are young yet and peas just beginning to grow. But no problem, the grand seasonal cycle seems to tell us, there’s plenty of herbs.
So, what better time of year to graze on fresh herbs. To turn them into your vegetables. Their pungent mystique powerful enough to gaily chase winter mugglies away.
So especially in spring, consider using herbs as vegetables. Perhaps not exclusively, but still in significant green proportions. They skinny up to lovely advantage things like cabbage in a Tostada Salad or Levantine-style with whole grains in what we call Red Quinoa Tabbouleh.
Why the combination of parsley, summer savory, thyme, mint, tarragon, and chives? That’s what was looking good in the garden when these two recipes came together. A lovely combo I thought, although one sure to change with the seasons.
So grab you basket and go gathering—keeping an eye out for the occasional flower. Once back in the kitchen, snip the chives into bits with your scissors. Strip the summer savory and thyme off the stems in one fell swoop of your pinched fingers. Give your parsley and mint as much chop as you have the patience for.
You’ll wind up with a fabulous heap of herbaceous green. A beautiful spring green that will hold its color as long as it doesn’t spend too long under the spell of much heat.
The fabulous aroma of thyme, mint, and parsley makes this approach to working with fresh herbs so worth it. They remain innocent until the leaves begin to bruise when you strip the thyme off their woody stems and chop the parsley and mint with your knife. A rather lovely treat for the cook. No need to go out and buy aroma therapy when you’ve got this kind of action going in your very own kitchen.
You heard it here first. Straight from Hippie Kitchen, p. 44.
On the Cook Counts Too—
Fussing with cooking vegetables by the singleton is something I do less often than not. That’s because when you’re going for a quick meal, it’s easier to get a bunch of veggies onto the heat to flash cook together, warm salad or soup style. Between that and leftover grain and protein waiting in the fridge, you’re there.
The singleton scene could be that’s why so many of us spend forever in the kitchen—sometimes resenting the time and trouble. We think we have to make picture perfect meals every day with these separate little piles of whatever.
Contrast that with the spirit of one-bowl meals popular around the world. Ethnic cooks from Asia to Latin America to Africa know how to combine an enticing array of vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes into easy meals. They know that the cook’s happier and the food’s better when they keep things simple.
It’s the same thing on how much of this and that to put into what you’re making. The cook needs to count. The cook does count. It’s the cook’s call.
That’s why one day when journalist, Laura Marble who took to measurefree cooking instantly, asked how many tomatoes I knew to put in some dish or other, I came back with a reply that made us chuckle. “I don’t know?” I said gearing up for a flip but seriously radical remark. “Like when I’m tired of chopping.”
Facebook friends, Laura and Emily, commented on my cast iron skillet, so thought it time to share this entry from the pages of Cooking Beyond Measure.
Cooking Beyond Measure, p. 72. On Roasting Vegetables—
Vegetables roast marvelously well from low to high temperatures. On highs around 450 F, colors are preserved but you have to watch things like a hawk. Medium ovens of 350 work well too, and depending on what you’re roasting, munchies will be yours in a half hour. Then again if you’re going out for a walk you can turn the oven to 250. When you return, you’ll have the sweetest caramelized morsels a soul could ever ask for.
My preferred roasting vehicle is—or was—Jessie Branom’s extra large cast iron skillet. The iron and the sides of the pan cradle the vegetables in a cocoon of heat that caramelizes, and the veggies y turn out sweet and golden. Baking trays work too, but as you’ll discover if you use both vehicles like I usually do, the results cast iron produces are decidedly superior. Yet at this writing, a new over-sized cast iron skillet is on my shopping list. Here’s why.
Jessie Branom and my mother were close friends in Phoenix during the early 1960s where they raised their families. Jessie had two children; Mom had four. So the women reasoned that my mother should have the big frying pan Jessie owned, and Jessie should have my mother’s medium sized skillet. The swap was made, and much later after Mom passed away Jesse’s skillet came to me. I used it for years but as a historian who thinks in terms of centuries, I’m aware of how numbered our days are—and how things can get lost in the shuffle at the end of life.
So it was that Thanksgiving of 2007 when Jessie’s first granddaughter married, I posted the skillet swathed in wedding wrap. As I wrote to the young bride, Jenny Branom Patberg, “Great scratch cooks have used this skillet for a half century. May its journey go on.”
Postscript: I have by this time, 3 years after the above was written, purchased a new skillet which has definitely earned its keep and love as a new member of the kitchen family.
It’s an exciting time to be on the American culinary journey. We’ve certainly had twists and turns and all manner of steep grades, with the path getting downright mired in some pretty strange places over the years. Think: SAD (Standard American Diet)
Here’s a bit of my own story that I included in Hippie Kitchen (page 81) so people just coming to the world of real food might know that most of us have been newbies in our time. So here’s the vid, or if you’d rather just read the page, scroll on down.
It was a spring day at Spaceway—Safeway if you must—back in the 1980s in Flagstaff, Arizona. There was this nice looking couple on the taller side, quiet as they waited in the checkout line, carrying themselves with a comportment that caught my eye. The fresh garlic and lemons they held in their hands looked like sedate jewels that only the
privileged got to enjoy.
I felt chagrined over the garlic powder and plastic bottle of faux lemon juice back in my kitchen. Worse, I fretted that someone like me not only wouldn’t take the time to use fresh ingredients, they probably wouldn’t taste the difference if they did. I turned away from the well-heeled couple and tossed a couple candy bars in my basket.
Yet I wasn’t a complete stranger to the world of real garlic and well remembered my mother making her own garlic oil for her Caesar salads. She had a bottle just the right size to contain some oil, and she’d put several cloves of peeled garlic in before letting it steep in the cool safety of the refrigerator.
So it was that somewhere along the line after my epiphany at Spaceway, I started buying fresh garlic to make garlic butter for sourdough bread. These days, I think nothing of mincing up a clove of garlic for soups and salads. There’s almost always a bulb or two sitting out handy where I slice and dice. That plus some braids hanging about from the winter crop.
You wouldn’t think a post on homemade bread would include former husbands and cat, but what can I say. It all comes down in three-part harmony. So here you be–a three-part vid on me making it, a focaccia recipe and photos straight from the pages of Hippie Kitchen. Don’t know what else I could do to lure you into this elemental and thrifty world. Here’s hopin’.
Tangled Up Focaccia, (Hippie Kitchen, page 152)
One thing that helped me get a life with focaccia is discovering that the indentations in these round flat discs of bread are not from first rolling the dough out and then poking it with your fingers, but in never picking up the rolling pin in the first place. Indeed, in my hippie mind focaccia is a big, thick tortilla that you round up all nice and then flatten and pat and press into place—without tearing your lovely dough, of course. Besides that, since it’s a flat critter, you don’t have to worry that it won’t get done in the middle like loaves of bread. More, it’s done in twenty minutes. Focaccia is right on—and really nothing more than a thick pizza crust without the rim and
toppings.
Recipe Note
Mix whole wheat flour with salt and make a well in the middle. Pour in a puddle of warm water and sprinkle your yeast in to dissolve. (Use a teaspoon of yeast for each cup of flour.) Add pink hummus, olive oil, uncooked millet, and more water. Mix first with a spoon and then your clean hands until you’ve got a nice ball of dough you can knead for a few minutes on a floured board.
Let the dough rise in the bowl you stirred it in until an indentation made with your finger doesn’t spring back. Then gently press it down and either go for a second rise or straight to the shaping. Flatten out into a thick round and let rise on an oiled baking tray. Paint with more olive oil. Once it’s risen again for a bit and is pretty and puffy, slide it into in a
medium oven—and let the smell of freshly baked yeasted dough fill your winter moment.
Details
~On how much flour, I usually work with about three cups to a tablespoon (or packet if you don’t buy it bulk) of yeast. That will make a nice sized focaccia as well as a pizza crust, something that comes to life simply by rolling out the dough as thin a you like and duding it up with your goodies. Depending on the size pans you use, you might also find you have a small ball of dough leftover for a calzone, those great pizza turnovers. Yum. Just layer your cheese and veggies onto half of this little dandy and then fold the dough over, sealing the edges by pressing them tight.
~One trick when you’re working with a whole grain dough like this is to press or roll it out as far as it will easily go and then let rest five minutes. When you return to finish up, you’ll find it soft and pliable enough to go the distance.
~Also if you’re going to make pizza and don’t want the fun of crunchy millet in your crust, leave it out. It’s the same with the pink hummus, but I hope you give at least a small spoonful in your dough a try. You wouldn’t need to risk too much your first go round. You wouldn’t need to be too hard core. You can use your own common hippie kitchen sense.
~The thing is that beans are good food. What’s the harm in letting pink hummus bring both some of the liquid you need to the dough as well as a decent hit of protein? Seems right on to moi, especially when you put some first rate Crazy Diamond Garlic Butter (page 178) on a warm wedge of focaccia. Then again, my former husband would certainly take issue.
On Former Husbands—
McKee, my ex, loves his pizza. He and I consumed our share through the years, snugged into a booth over a pitcher of beer at Alpine Pizza, a joint that’s become institution on Leroux Street in Flagstaff. Yet, MacSpee—as I have taken to calling him most recently—has been so co-opted by the white dough clan that it would take a leap across the Grand Canyon for him to first run some whole wheat rapids never mind scaling the heights of pink hummus and millet. Too bad the turkey always had such little faith in my hippie cooking. Then again, I guess I wasn’t the best either. Here’s how I got a clue on that score.
It was a few years ago when I was in Northern Arizona and stopped out to see him. Some of the old gang happened by, and we were shooting the breeze when McKee tosses out this remark about how in 1969 a year after we were married, I announced we were becoming vegetarians.
“What?” I thought, stunned at his implication that I issued some sort of edict. “He wasn’t into that? He never said a word.”
I guess at some level I thought that since he mainly controlled our lives outside the kitchen—and yes dear, in your unassuming way, your hiking boots were planted firmly in the patriarchy—our food decisions were pretty much mine. Also I think I might have concluded that turning vegetarian was such a cool move, that he was as into it as I was.
Besides, as I noted, this then-husband of mine didn’t give me an inkling that he wasn’t a happy hippie veggie. Sigh. Sometimes I don’t know why I’ve stayed friends with him all these years. Maybe it’s because just when I think I’ve had it, he sends me a letter like the one I got this past May.
It starts with him saying how he was just sitting around spacing out, reading a little nineteenth century history, and listening to
Bob Dylan. Turns out that “Tangled Up in Blue” was on—the piece Dylan wrote in 1974 that came out on Blood on the Tracks.
“A line from Dylan’s song reminds me of you,” McKee penned in his old familiar backhand. “‘We always did feel the same. We just saw it from a different point of view. ’”
On Pink Hummus—
Hummus made of smashed garbanzo beans and tahini (sesame seed butter) is traditional from the Middle East. But what happened in my hippie kitchen is that I only had pinto beans cooked up and also wanted a lean version of hummus.
What to do but toss the pintos the blender with enough water to rock & roll. Salt, vinegar, and I was there. Pink hummus for crackers, to thicken soups and sauces, as a dip for carrots and apples—and to add to brownie batter.
On Yeast Dough—
Take this section seriously and you could save some real dough. That’s because yeast dough, whether you turn it into loaves, flat focaccia, or pizza pie, is just an affordable mix of flour, water, salt, and yeast—way cheaper than bakery bread. Besides, it’s serious play-play.
Play-play on how long you knead it, if in fact you do at all. Play-play on whether you add sugar to the yeast or pink hummus or little crunchy bits of millet or use oil in the dough and for painting the tops. Play-play on how long to let it rise, including overnight if you decide to stir some up on a winter evening before going to bed. Even playing around on whether or not to oil the bowl in which you let the dough rise.
The only critical thing with yeast dough is that the water needs to be baby bottle warm so it can dissolve the yeast but not kill it like hot water will. So test your water with a drop on the inside of your wrist. That way you can make sure your yeasty microorganisms will be able to feed on the natural sugars in the flour and release lots of carbon dioxide to make the dough rise.
What Really Happened—
Someone polished off the last of the pink hummus so I whizzed up some garbanzo beans thawed from a tub I’d frozen the week before (page 74). No tahini around either, so I called it good and named the beanpaste blonde hummus.
Also, I painted the pizza with oil but left the focaccia plain. The former was soft; the latter was crusty.
On the millet it was a different story, since there was a bag from the bulk bins up in the cupboard. But when I poured a handful into the bowl, I realized I’d nabbed the quinoa, not the millet.
The quinoa wasn’t quite as crunchy as the millet after the bread was baked, but its seedy nature (technically quinoa is seed not a grain) was uptown and had a pleasing visual
presence. Cool when serendipitous mistakes take you in directions you might otherwise not have gone.
Also cool when you make focaccia in the spring, split a wedge for the toaster, layer on ultra thin slices of caramelized goat cheese from Norway (gjetost) and a few local berries, grate on fresh nutmeg, and pour a cup of very dark espresso from just-ground beans.
After the Sixties in Flagstaff where better to go and chill out than Indian County. Call me lucky. I managed to cobble together an education degree and spent the next decade out on Navajo and Hopi posing as a school teacher. It’s true, I arrived looking for smoke and feathers–the romance of Indian spirituality. But what I found was the women and their kitchens–and a corn cuisine to write home about. Scarcity really can bring out the best in our creativity and ingenuity.
Bob and his wife, Beth, still live down on the big pink Colorado Plateau along with my ex and the old crowd. Last year he sent up a lid of blue corn meal along with some seed. So here you be: a recipe for blue corn waffles. And because when I lived up on Second Mesa we used to have a skillet of fried red chile in the center of the table to dip and dab in, that recipe’s below. Both measure free, of course. No room–or need–for Big Cooking here. After all, precise measurements and prescriptive step-by-step directions is hardly the Hopi Way–or mine.
Blue Corn Waffles Hippie Kitchen, page 130
These waffles aren’t traditional with the Hopi even though the tribe is known for its blue corn cuisine. I made them after hipster and gardener from Northern Arizona, Bob Goforth, sent up a lid of blue corn flour plus a handful of seeds to keep the circle turning. Thanks, Bob. What a cool way to “feed your head.” ~White Rabbit, Surrealistic Pillow, Grace Slick, 1967.
Recipe Note
Whisk an egg, milk, shot of oil, and polite slug of vinegar together.Stir in blue corn flour leavened with soda and seasoned with salt and red chile flakes.Bake in an oiled waffle iron.
Details
~Vinegar fizzes with the soda to lighten these waffles, and the red chile gives them serious la-la. Make your batter thick enough to spoon into the waffle iron since it’s mainly batters that are too thin that tend to stick.
~If you aren’t into making waffles, do feel free to turn these into pancakes or cornbread. They’re all family. Or you can do like Bob did and make blue corn flour crepes. I tried these too, and they smelled like the Southwest after a thunderstorm.
Source: Hippie Kitchen: A Measure Free Vegetarian Cookbook, p 130
I also included the bits below as side bars in Hippie Kitchen. Basically tips on waffles, working with cornmeal, and Hopi memories.
On Avoiding
Sticky Wicket Waffles—
I’ve dug my share of failed waffles out of the little square indentations. That was back when I didn’t oil the iron nicely with a pastry brush, and more critically, when I used too much liquid in the batter. It’s true that sometimes I can get by with a thin batter that results in the cracker-like, crispy waffles, but the safest bet until you get your sea legs is to go with a thicker than thinner batter, something akin to thinned mashed potatoes. At one point in my waffle making, I thought milk products made things stick, but I never got very scientific about it and can’t really say it wasn’t because those batters were simply too thin.
The main thing is that making waffles isn’t as much of trip as I used to think. Plus, they’re better than pancakes because there’s no possibility of doughy middles. Sort of like the difference between baking a cake in a regular pan and a Bundt pan—the indentation in the center helps the cake cook through.
Finally, on the horror of lifting the lid and finding your lovely waffle pulled apart and clinging to the top and the bottom. Never fear. All it takes—given that your batter was thick enough—is closing the iron and letting the heat finish doing its thing. In another minute or two, the miraculous will have happened. The waffle will be waiting under the lid in one dazzlingly fabulous piece.
On a Roll with Blue & Yellow Corn—
It goes without saying that you can substitute yellow for blue cornmeal and still rock. You can also easily turn waffle batter into pancakes or cornbread. The gist here is to make pancake batters thinner that waffle batters so they pour onto a griddle easily and aren’t too thick to cook through. On the cornbread route, follow the lead of your waffle batter, augmenting it with whole wheat pastry flour, a little honey, and another egg or two. That way you’ll get a moist cornbread plus leftovers to toast into croutons and toss into to Bourbon Chard Ribbons (page 134).
Most recipes that use cornmeal—whether for waffles, pancakes, or bread—call for at least part wheat flour and sometimes I go that route. Mainly, though, I like to explore what happens with 100 percent cornmeal and have found I can control how well what I’m making holds together with the amount of oil and eggs I use.
On Leavening—
I remember a novel set in the early 1800s in which the older women criticized the young marrieds for using the new quick leavenings. It was just one line, but it’s stayed with me. The idea of how little the old guard thought of the young moderns and their penchant for being in such a hurry they couldn’t wait for yeast to work. There’s not a reason other than time that you couldn’t use yeast to make Blue Corn Waffles, using a ratio of a teaspoon of yeast softened in warm water for every cup of dry ingredients. But what can we say; we get more biz-biz all the time it seems and want things on the double.
Sodas can leave an off taste in quick breads if you goof and use too much, which is one reason so many recipes call for baking powder. But as my all time favorite cookbook, Laurel’s Kitchen, points out, you can make your own aluminum-free baking power using one part soda to two parts cream of tartar. Frankly, whenever I have some of this made up I use it instead of straight soda. But I can be a very lazy hippie cook. Besides, isn’t it the Irish that use nothing but soda in their famous bread?
On Blue Corn—
I still remember the time after I’d moved from Hopiland home to Flagstaff. It was back in our rafting days and someone wanted to take some blue corn meal along on a trip down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. So I called Alfreda out on Second Mesa.
“How can we get some blue corn for the river trip?” I asked.
Her answer? “Grow it.”
Tough love from a Hopi woman for sure.
I arched my middle class brow and thought, “Forget it.”
The times, though, they really did change. This season I’ll be sowing the blue corn kernels Bob sent along with slew of other things. Perhaps not the big time thrills of a romp through the Grand but an experience sure to bring its own enduring joy.
These puppies get more than passing notice. They go with spicy breakfasts and function as fresh bread come lunch or dinner time. They also work baked up as small fry for starters. Like neighbor, Patrick Earnest, said, “We really enjoyed the other night with everyone. The little pancakes had to be my favorite ….. Yum!”
Corncakes with Pepper Jack Cooking Beyond Measure, page 44
Recipe Note
To a couple beaten eggs, add a half cup vinegared milk and a spoonful of oil along with a pinch of salt and soda. Stir in enough cornmeal to get a spoonable batter. Bake your corncakes on a medium griddle and sprinkle on grated pepper jack once you flip them. Use a lid to melt the cheese while the cakes finish cooking.
Details
Keep your heat around medium with hotcakes so they won’t burn while the first side is cooking. Watch for the bubbles that form in the surface. When there are lots of them, it’s time for a flip.
On Vinegared Milk, Buttermilk, Yogurt, and Beer—
You can buy buttermilk which is already sour and certainly genteel. But vinegar’s always on hand in my kitchen and making my own soured milk is cheaper. All it takes is a spoonful of vinegar to clabber a cup of milk—or if the truth be known I add the vinegar to the egg, milk, and oil, letting it do its thing right in the bowl.
There’s also yogurt which in addition to sour power has all those healthful organisms. Since it’s thicker than milk, add a little water if you go this route. Or you can skip milk products altogether and use beer like the Wild West’s grizzled prospectors did, either flat from the night before or splurging with a fresh bottle.
On a Roll with Corncakes—
I often add spaghetti squash and minced cilantro to corncakes, skipping the cheese altogether as pictured on p. 53.
Another twist is departing from the cornmeal and using leftover quinoa. An egg beaten into a half cup of salted quinoa and a little vinegar and soda yields a great batter for spooning onto the griddle.
Here a Chick, There a Chick—
Hens who get to peck around like on Old MacDonald’s Farm might be a minority at this point in history, but as Bob Dylan sang in his rusty 1960s voice, “the times, they are a-changin.” In response to pressure from the Humane Society of the United States, Ben and Jerry’s has pledged to stop using eggs from hens who live out miserable lives in batteries of cages stacked ten high in cavernous barns.
Such ideas are not new for Ben and Jerry’s. The company’s United Kingdom plant that produces ice cream for Europe has used cagefree eggs for years now. That’s because British consumers have a record dating back to 1876 of insisting farm animals be treated humanely even if they all aren’t out on Old MacDonald’s any more.
“This new ethic is conservative, not radical,” maintains Professor Bernard Rollan, who is widely recognized for pioneering the field of animal ethics and policy during the 1970s. “It is a return to the roughly fair contract those who have husbanded animals for virtually all of human history have had with animals. That of taking great pains to put one’s animals into the best possible environment one could find to meet their physical and psychological natures.”
For those that haven’t been following the romance, after Celeste appeared on the back cover of cooking Beyond Measure, friend Laura said in a rather fetching way, “I have a frog.”
A moment of silence. My brows arched.
“Is he a boy?”
That’s where it started and since then it’s been a few of us old biddies hatching plans and match-making in the best of traditions.
Why? Just a goof really. But also more about lightening up and not taking the kitchen so friggin’ (or froggin’) seriously.
That’s why even though Celeste insisted on the back cover of Hippie Kitchen as her exclusive preserve, she did allow HH to appear within its pages. Also, why after a year, she finally said yes to HH’s overtures.
We had their engagement party on Valentines Day and even made a video. Sort of a first try, but it was a good time–and many ideas generated on how to make the upcoming wedding more of a blow out. So stay tuned. Wedding’s scheduled for apple blossom time.
In the mean time, here are some photos from the engagement party in case you didn’t watch the vid.
The happy couple.
Celeste sporting HH’s engagement gift of a diamond heart necklace. You can see that Celeste is not a spring chicken–and even has a bad eye. Also that she makes no bones about her commodious belly. We think that’s partly what attracted HH–Celeste’s quiet dignity in the face of what life has brought.
Lastly, the “cross my heart and hope to love” polenta waffles we made for the engagement party. A play-play adaptation of Bob’s Polenta Waffles and Cashew Cilantro Pesto from Cooking Beyond Measure, pages 42 and 75. There are also vids of me making these posted here on the blog.
