Katydid Nymph

I was out in the garden shooting some pictures of the things that are flowering right now, including pretty blue flowers of the Plumbago out behind the fence.

When I was looking at the photos on my computer later, I realized that I also had a picture of an interesting bug on one of the flowers.

I wasn't sure what the bug was.  I thought it might be a brown cricket, because I've heard them chirping lately.  I put the photo up on the Bug Guide website to see if anyone could identify it, and a short time later the response came back that it was a Katydid nymph, probably Phaneroptera nana.

That sounded reasonable, because we've had Katydids before, mostly hanging out on our roses.

Pictures of the adult katydid at:
http://plantagarden-itllgrowonyou.blogspot.com/2010/09/mystery-bug-identified.html  and

http://plantagarden-itllgrowonyou.blogspot.com/2011/11/return-of-katydid.html

Winter Garden

The boxes and packages from seed and garden companies have started to arrive, and Cindy will soon be starting her tomato seeds for this summer, but right now the winter garden is still in full swing.

The other day she harvested some carrots and shallots.

Plenty of lettuces and other greens.

Swiss Chard is putting lots of color on the table, too.

And Broccoli flowers keep attracting the bees

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Fried Chicken

Last Sunday's attempt at cooking fried chicken went pretty well.

This wasn't Grandma's fried chicken; as I recall, Grandma, and later Mom, first dipped the chicken pieces in milk, then dredged them in flour, melted a ton of Crisco in the skillet, and then fried all the chicken pieces in that at the same time.

Cindy's recipe for Buttermilk Pan-fried Chicken required me to make a marinade of seasonings and buttermilk, let the chicken pieces soak in the marinade overnight, dredge it in the flour and seasonings, and then fry it in vegetable oil.  We could have used lard, but I don't think we've ever actually had lard in the house, and I haven't seen Crisco for years.  

Cindy's cooking technique involved adding the flour-coated pieces one at a time, and no more than four in the oil at a time, adding them slowly to allow the oil to heat back up after each piece is added, then putting the pieces on a cookie sheet in the oven to finish crisping as the others cook.

She told me that the drumstick and thigh pieces always take longer to cook than the breast pieces, which was contrary to what I thought, since the breast pieces usually have thicker meat on them.

However, when I thought about it, I realized that some of my glass bead-making knowledge came into play here: since the chicken is refrigerated until shortly before cooking, the long, thick bones in the leg and thigh pieces are colder than the meat and act as a heat sink, pulling heat out of the meat.  When I'm making a bead on a big mandrel, I need to make sure the mandrel is heated before I start putting glass on it, or the bead may crack as the colder mandrel pulls heat out.  So next time I'll put the leg and thigh pieces in first.

Anyway, the chicken turned out fine.

Here's the recipe we used:

Pan Fried Buttermilk Chicken

4 Servings

MARINADE

2 cups buttermilk—well shaken in carton

1 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning

2 teaspoons Poultry seasoning

6 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

2 teaspoons salt

Pepper to taste

COATING

 3 cups flour

1 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoons Old Bay Seasoning OR 2 tsp Old Bay Seasoning and 2 tsp Poultry Seasoning

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 cups lard, peanut or other vegetable oil for frying

For the marinade:  In a blender or food processor, or with the long whisk, combine the buttermilk, garlic, Old Bay, salt and pepper and process until smooth.  Place the chicken pieces in a zip lock plastic bag and pur in the buttermilk mixture.  Seal the bag and refrigerate overnight.

For the coating:  Combine the flour with salt, Old Bay, garlic powder and pepper.  Remove the chicken from the marinade one piece at a time and coat it liberally with the seasoned flour.  Place the coated chicken pieces on a rack and refrigerate for one hour to allow the coating to set.  Chicken may be refrigerated for up to 4 hours.  Bring chicken to room temperature about an hour before cooking.

Heat a large, heavy skillet over medium heat and add lard or oil, heating it until it is completely melted.  The fat should be 1 1/2 inches deep.  When oil is about 325 degrees, carefully and slowly add chicken pieces one at a time to let the oil come back to temperature before adding another piece (don’t crowd pieces); fry until golden brown on all sides, about 10 minutes per side.  If chicken is browning too fast, lower heat.  When chicken is done, remove it from the pan and place on baking sheet in oven at 350° or 30 minutes to crisp skin and coating.  

Serve piping hot.  

I Made A Soufflé!

During the four years that I've been doing this blog, I've written mostly about gardening, with a few side trips into food, wine and travel.

I'm still going to be doing that, but I'm also planning to write a little more about actually cooking the food we grow.  Since Cindy is an excellent and very creative cook, she's always done most of the cooking, and, since cooking has always pretty much terrified me, that's been just fine with me.

But that's not really fair to Cindy, so a couple of years ago, as a Christmas present for Cindy, I volunteered to make dinner once a month, as long as opening a bag of frozen stuff was an acceptable dinner.  I did have one dish I could make with reasonable confidence, and that was spaghetti and meatballs.  Cindy showed me how to make a delicious tomato sauce for the meatballs out of our own pureed tomatoes; it was really nice to know that I was actually making something with the food we grow in our yard.

Last summer our friend Barbara came down to visit us for "cooking camp".  Barbara wanted Cindy to teach her how to use her new pressure cooker, a device that is still waaaaaay beyond my comfort level, and I wanted to learn how to make Chicken Piccata, a dish I really like (it has capers in it, who wouldn't like it?).  That proved to be within my capability, and I can now make it with some degree of confidence.

That small step led me to think about what other dishes I like to eat, so maybe I could learn to cook them, too.

With some degree of trepidation, I asked Cindy a couple of months ago if she thought I could learn to cook a cheese soufflé.  I knew it was a complicated dish, but it's one I really love to eat.  To my surprise, she jumped at the chance to teach me how to do it.  I've done it a couple of times since with her standing close by to supervise.  A couple of nights ago, I cooked a cheese soufflé pretty much by myself, with only a few cries of "Cinnnnndy, does this look O.K.?????"

So this slight increase in confidence led me to make Cindy another gift this past Christmas:  the promise to learn four new dishes to add to my existing small repertoire, which I will continue to practice.  I'm going to learn how to do fried chicken (Yessss!  Throw Brer Rabbit into that briar patch!), a salmon dish, a dish from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking that Cindy recently was given, and a dish of Cindy's choosing.  

Tonight:  fried chicken.  We'll see how it goes.

Chill Hours

We've had frost warnings for several nights recently.  That's a good thing for gardeners with fruit trees who need the chill hours for the development of the fruit, but not such a good thing for gardeners who have lettuces growing; they like cool weather, but not frost.  Because lettuce has such a high water content, the cells will be damaged if the water in them freezes.

So the garden for the past few nights has resembled a tent city, but at least the tender lettuces were protected.

"You've Got...Moss"

We had quite a bit of rain in San Diego in December; a total of 4.69 inches.  Considering that our average annual rainfall is about ten inches, that's almost half our average annual rainfall in one month.  We're very happy about that, because after several years of severe drought, we can certainly use it.

The plants love all that free water, of course, but that also means that the weeds are sprouting, and we've now got moss growing between the flagstones in the backyard and on the decomposed granite out behind the fence.

I think that's pretty cool, and we certainly hope the rain continues through the rest of the winter.