We're here, folks. We've hit the summer weather, the days are sunny and breezy, and the weekends are cooperative. It's like the great outdoors wants us to enjoy it.
So this weekend, we used the little grill that Kate bought from Amazon for $30. We used it Saturday, we used it Sunday and we used it earlier today, because we had some sausages that were just begging to be charred up and eaten with a generous dollop or two of spicy mustard.
Saturday afternoon, we fired her up and ate burgers and guacamole with tortilla chips. We piled our burgers high with toppings and ate them in the shade of the overhang on our tiny little porch. Kate made raspberry lemonade with fresh raspberries, that earthy, sour-sweet taste that rings true on your tastebuds, and we sparkled it up with seltzer water, served over ice.
We more than doubled our usage of the tiny little grill this weekend, feeling indulgent but also resourceful.
On Sunday, we had kebabs (kabobs?), and parroted "ke-bab" at each other over and over, laughing as we threaded cubes of meat and vegetables on soaked bamboo skewers that blackened on the grill but did not burn. I marinated the chicken and beef both in a concoction of oil, freshly squeezed lemon juice, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, dijon, garlic and black pepper, and the meat sat out in a ziplock bag for three hours or so, more than enough to soak in and stick.
We all agreed that, surprisingly, the chicken was nicer than the beef. It was juicy and moist and just-so, the lemon coming out on a high note when you bit into the chicken, the other flavors seared appealingly on the outside. The beef was tougher and the flavor didn't come through as clearly, but I did think it might have been an artifact of beef+chicken, because one might like medium-rare beef but one does not like medium-rare chicken. Honestly, though, it might just be that I didn't get the right cut of beef.
We didn't really have sides for the kebabs, because the meal is fairly complete on its own. We chopped up squares of white onion, elephant garlic, bell peppers, summer squash; whole baby bella mushrooms and grape tomatoes; cubes of pineapple. Some larger slices of pineapple were saved to be seared on the grill on their own, affording a burst of hot flavor when we, impatient, bit into them.
Grilled pineapple, on and off kebabs, is going to be a staple this summer. It just is.
However, we've also agreed that the relative ease of kebabs plus the lovely customizable, delicious results mean we have to do them again and again, and maybe with just chicken from now on because it was better and cheaper than the beef.
I made watermelon limeade that also went with seltzer water, and was surprised how thoroughly the delicious flavor of watermelon floated over the top. We used an old quarter of watermelon for it, all the sweeter for being older, and pureed it into a simple syrup. Squeezing enough juice from limes for the limeade portion was a rather thankless task, though.
This morning, we woke up and leisurely headed outside; we had the aforementioned sausages and another entire watermelon that I cubed into big pieces the way that Mom used to do and put into a large tupperware container, told Kate and Ben that we needed to eat at least enough that we could fit the top on to store it in the refrigerator.
We achieved the watermelon goal, and we also had potato wedges rubbed with chili powder and cumin, then roasted over the grill. We went through one small cylinder of propane this weekend and ate most of our meals outside.
With our lunch this morning (I headed to work later than usual because of Memorial Day and enjoyed my respite), I had iced coffee from the cold brew I made during the week. Ben made coffee ice cubes from the same batch of cold brew at some point yesterday, so we popped the cubes from their silicone mold to ice our coffee without diluting it (although I did add a lot of milk and enough water to thin it a bit, so the iced coffee cubes seem almost a little silly in retrospect). The cold brew is milder over ice, soft rich tones that actually do achieve a dark-chocolaty flavor without any added chocolate.
Last Wednesday, Kate bought a rosemary plant and a basil plant at the farmer's market, and I repotted them into plastic planters designed to look like terra cotta pots, set them out on the back porch to catch some sun. I'm strangely invested in their success. The rosemary is tall and spiky; the basil is squat and rounded. We've named them Sonny and Cher - Cher is the rosemary, naturally. I watered them this morning, misted their leaves (didn't last long with the sun beating down around 80 degrees by noon, but I think it's the thought that counts) and hoped that they were perky and happy.
All weekends should be like this one: warm, leisurely, full of piping hot food fresh off of the grill so that we can walk back into a cool, dark apartment afterward. It just feels so good to be outside. The air is fresh and the sun hasn't quite roasted us yet (although we're supposed to feel the heat this week, that's for sure). Combined with today being a holiday, I think I'm going to carry the refreshment from this weekend right on into the week.
Monday, May 25, 2015
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
commuter life
But, really, everyone's a commuter when you "grow up". No one lives at work.
This morning wasn't necessarily a rough morning. I did manage to gouge a little piece out of my hand with my opposite thumbnail, which has drawn a little sprinkle-sized pool of blood and hurts a lot. Probably because public transit is dirty and because fingernails are dirty. It's like the Daily Double. I should wash it out pretty carefully, I guess.
When I exited the T station, I headed to the left, as always, to take myself to work. One of the minor streets that branches off of Main is plain, unmarked, no stop sign or light or crosswalk. This is almost never a problem, because there is almost never anyone trying to turn onto this street.
Not so this morning!
A woman in a black sedan was crawling up, signal winking, and I couldn't quite figure out what to do, having used up all of my aggression in exiting the train car to begin with (there is an unreasonable amount of pushing, some mornings). I wasn't far enough away to conclusively stop, and I wasn't close enough to enter the road without being the kind of pedestrian that (if we're honest) I sometimes dream of being.
Lawlessness.
So I was watching the woman in the sedan very closely for any kind of indication. If she waved me forward, I would cross. If not, I'd wait. Unfortunately for me, she had one hand on the wheel and one hand on the phone she was talking on, so she couldn't make any gestures.
She slowed to a stop. I started to enter. She jerked forward. I stopped. She stopped. And so on and so forth. If she called me names (I couldn't hear her), I'm rubber and she's glue, etc etc. Don't care. You have to be the duck and let it roll off in these situations.
When she finally cleared the intersection, painfully slowly and probably giving me a death glare the whole time (DON'T CARE, GET OFF YOUR PHONE), I also cleared it, feeling like an amateur. Then I heard a voice from behind me, low and that deadpan monotone.
"Never trust that any drivers around here know what they're doing."
"Yeah. Yeah, I see that," I replied, turning to see the man with small round glasses.
"There's a reason they're called Massholes."
I laughed.
"You new here?"
This didn't help with my feeling like an amateur, but he meant well. Just wanted to make a connection by complaining about drivers in the city.
"No," I said, "I've been here a while, I just..." I shrugged. "This morning, you know? I used to have a car for the first few months I was here, but actually, getting rid of it was the best thing that's happened to me."
He looked at me. "If I had to drive to work every day, I'd slit my wrists." No smile, just the same deadpan monotone. Then he turned off to enter a building and wished me a nice day.
What a world, eh, Boston?
This morning wasn't necessarily a rough morning. I did manage to gouge a little piece out of my hand with my opposite thumbnail, which has drawn a little sprinkle-sized pool of blood and hurts a lot. Probably because public transit is dirty and because fingernails are dirty. It's like the Daily Double. I should wash it out pretty carefully, I guess.
When I exited the T station, I headed to the left, as always, to take myself to work. One of the minor streets that branches off of Main is plain, unmarked, no stop sign or light or crosswalk. This is almost never a problem, because there is almost never anyone trying to turn onto this street.
Not so this morning!
A woman in a black sedan was crawling up, signal winking, and I couldn't quite figure out what to do, having used up all of my aggression in exiting the train car to begin with (there is an unreasonable amount of pushing, some mornings). I wasn't far enough away to conclusively stop, and I wasn't close enough to enter the road without being the kind of pedestrian that (if we're honest) I sometimes dream of being.
Lawlessness.
So I was watching the woman in the sedan very closely for any kind of indication. If she waved me forward, I would cross. If not, I'd wait. Unfortunately for me, she had one hand on the wheel and one hand on the phone she was talking on, so she couldn't make any gestures.
She slowed to a stop. I started to enter. She jerked forward. I stopped. She stopped. And so on and so forth. If she called me names (I couldn't hear her), I'm rubber and she's glue, etc etc. Don't care. You have to be the duck and let it roll off in these situations.
When she finally cleared the intersection, painfully slowly and probably giving me a death glare the whole time (DON'T CARE, GET OFF YOUR PHONE), I also cleared it, feeling like an amateur. Then I heard a voice from behind me, low and that deadpan monotone.
"Never trust that any drivers around here know what they're doing."
"Yeah. Yeah, I see that," I replied, turning to see the man with small round glasses.
"There's a reason they're called Massholes."
I laughed.
"You new here?"
This didn't help with my feeling like an amateur, but he meant well. Just wanted to make a connection by complaining about drivers in the city.
"No," I said, "I've been here a while, I just..." I shrugged. "This morning, you know? I used to have a car for the first few months I was here, but actually, getting rid of it was the best thing that's happened to me."
He looked at me. "If I had to drive to work every day, I'd slit my wrists." No smile, just the same deadpan monotone. Then he turned off to enter a building and wished me a nice day.
What a world, eh, Boston?
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
cold brew: an adventure
It's funny that the last time I posted was in the beginning of December. I guess I'd like to say a lot has happened since then, but I'm not sure that it would be entirely true.
The weather has warmed up an awful lot, though. In some ways it's nice - our gas bill has fallen to half of what we paid just two months ago, and will fall further as we desperately try to keep the apartment from becoming a functional greenhouse
Which, I suppose, begins our discussion of what isn't so nice about the weather.
On Sunday, it hit 90 degrees outside. This was some serious temperature whiplash, up from 50s and maybe low 60s during the week previous. We kept all of our shades down, but cracked all of the windows, and in desperation plugged every fan we own into any outlet we could find. I did not sleep well on Sunday night, tossing and turning fitfully under a single sheet until 4:00am, when I can only assume my brain finally shut itself down and I woke up four hours later to a cheerily chiming alarm.
Needless to say, yesterday was a tough day. I climbed out of bed, brushing at the sheen of sweat already beading on my skin, and put on the lightest shirt I could find. Exhausted, hot, and miserable, I entered the kitchen and couldn't even think about heating water for coffee. Hot coffee when the apartment is 80 and muggy? No thanks.
As it turns out, cold brew coffee is easy to make in a French press, and I have a French press (I'm slowly moving along the path to fancier and fancier coffee, although the internet laughs at my sad little attempts because I don't roast my own beans - who has the time?! - but more importantly, because I drink my coffee with a little cream. I, coffee plebeian.). So I did a little research and tried to figure out where I wanted to pick up some coffee beans.
Even though Starbucks is conveniently located both directly next to the building where I work and about a three minute walk down the street (WHERE IS YOUR DUNKIN DONUTS NOW - it's in many of the T stops and also everywhere else), I didn't particularly want to pay for Starbucks beans for an undertaking that I wasn't even sure whether or not would work for me. Especially since I prefer lighter roasts for hot coffee, but the general consensus on the internet is that lighter beans don't have a bold enough flavor profile for cold extraction, which would lead to, what, caffeine water? Would that be so terrible?
Quick sidebar: I tried some iced coffee on that self-same hot Sunday, made by the pourover method over ice. It was pretty delicious but I can't justify paying $3.21 for a relatively small cup of iced coffee every time I have the urge. Cold brew is supposed to be easy!
So. Anyway. Yesterday as we left work, the temperature had dropped to a relatively balmy 65 or 62 or something that was exquisitely lovely after the unforgiving 80 degree heat in the morning. (Also, wow, what a change!) I asked Kate as we were boarding the train if she wanted to take a walk to Trader Joe's with me, because I had never been to this one and she had never been to one, period, and the weather was nice.
I have somewhat complicated feelings about Trader Joe's, mainly because I don't totally understand the praise that it gets. To me, it is far more a specialty store than an all-purpose grocery store. I would never do all of my shopping at Trader Joe's. Still, for the sweet tooth that I undeniably have, Trader Joe's has a truly impressive stock of various chocolate-type things. I bought some dark chocolate toffee with roasted pistachioes - what?? I came in well under-budget for this month and sometimes you just want to treat yourself a little - and then headed slowly around the store with Kate. I narrowly avoided buying cookie butter by remembering that even if it tastes amazing, I don't have anything to eat it with, and do I really need something that tempts me to have it straight from the jar?
We already have Nutella at home, I guess is what I'm saying.
So eventually we found the coffee, and I stared at the wall of colorful cylinders for a while before I just picked a dark Italian roast. Who knows? This could be a total bust. But the beans smelled pretty good, and I figure cold brew is supposed to be forgiving.
I guess I haven't been totally straight with you about the reason I wanted to go to TJ's for coffee, and it was that they have a grinder right there in the store with variable grind sizes. Perfect! I poured the entire cylinder of oily brown beans in, selected the coarsest grind (gotta filter that sediment with a French press grate, after all), and hit start. I won't run you through the whole gory process, but I did eventually figure it out.
Also, grounds take up way more space than beans. I sort of felt like I was cheating myself out of some coffee, so I took a break, tapped the can around to try to get everything to settle, and ground those last seven beans. Ah, life.
I bought chocolate and coffee; Kate bought milk and grapes. Oh well.
When we got back, I read approximately thirty different recipes for cold brew coffee, and thought that I had maybe stumbled on a ratio of grounds to water that would suffice. It's all very complicated. Luckily for us, I have a food scale. Talked Jonathan into buying it for me for Christmas with the intention of using it for bread (flour weight is way more reliable than volume because it packs so easily), and then discovered that to actually make a good loaf of bread, you have to trust your hands to tell you when enough flour is enough.
So I started to weigh out 140g of coffee grounds and got a little concerned around 50g when I already had probably close to a cup of coarse grinds. I compromised by filling the container I was weighing them in for a grand total of approximately 120g, then dumped them in the French press.
"Kate," I said, laughing, emerging from the kitchen with a French press literally half-full of coffee grounds. "Look at this."
She humored me by looking and laughing about it, and then I poured in about 3.5 cups of cold water, tried to figure out how to saturate the mountain of grounds, then rubber-banded some plastic wrap over the opening and pushed it into the refrigerator.
This morning was nice and cool; the temperature outside was right around 60 as we left for work, the temperature inside hovering around 68 if the thermostat is to be believed. Today is supposed to be hot, but sitting in my climate-controlled, air-conditioned workplace wearing a sweater over my clothes, I couldn't tell you whether or not it's living up to the hype.
I think, ultimately, that since cold brew coffee is meant to be brewed as a concentrate and then diluted, that this will work out. But if it doesn't, at least I still have my dark chocolate roasted pistachio toffee to remind me that the trip wasn't a waste. Anyway, in about six hours, I'll be pouring off what is hopefully a dark brown, caffeinated nectar.
It's a good thing I have a lot of milk in the fridge. I'm excited.
The weather has warmed up an awful lot, though. In some ways it's nice - our gas bill has fallen to half of what we paid just two months ago, and will fall further as we desperately try to keep the apartment from becoming a functional greenhouse
Which, I suppose, begins our discussion of what isn't so nice about the weather.
On Sunday, it hit 90 degrees outside. This was some serious temperature whiplash, up from 50s and maybe low 60s during the week previous. We kept all of our shades down, but cracked all of the windows, and in desperation plugged every fan we own into any outlet we could find. I did not sleep well on Sunday night, tossing and turning fitfully under a single sheet until 4:00am, when I can only assume my brain finally shut itself down and I woke up four hours later to a cheerily chiming alarm.
Needless to say, yesterday was a tough day. I climbed out of bed, brushing at the sheen of sweat already beading on my skin, and put on the lightest shirt I could find. Exhausted, hot, and miserable, I entered the kitchen and couldn't even think about heating water for coffee. Hot coffee when the apartment is 80 and muggy? No thanks.
As it turns out, cold brew coffee is easy to make in a French press, and I have a French press (I'm slowly moving along the path to fancier and fancier coffee, although the internet laughs at my sad little attempts because I don't roast my own beans - who has the time?! - but more importantly, because I drink my coffee with a little cream. I, coffee plebeian.). So I did a little research and tried to figure out where I wanted to pick up some coffee beans.
Even though Starbucks is conveniently located both directly next to the building where I work and about a three minute walk down the street (WHERE IS YOUR DUNKIN DONUTS NOW - it's in many of the T stops and also everywhere else), I didn't particularly want to pay for Starbucks beans for an undertaking that I wasn't even sure whether or not would work for me. Especially since I prefer lighter roasts for hot coffee, but the general consensus on the internet is that lighter beans don't have a bold enough flavor profile for cold extraction, which would lead to, what, caffeine water? Would that be so terrible?
Quick sidebar: I tried some iced coffee on that self-same hot Sunday, made by the pourover method over ice. It was pretty delicious but I can't justify paying $3.21 for a relatively small cup of iced coffee every time I have the urge. Cold brew is supposed to be easy!
So. Anyway. Yesterday as we left work, the temperature had dropped to a relatively balmy 65 or 62 or something that was exquisitely lovely after the unforgiving 80 degree heat in the morning. (Also, wow, what a change!) I asked Kate as we were boarding the train if she wanted to take a walk to Trader Joe's with me, because I had never been to this one and she had never been to one, period, and the weather was nice.
I have somewhat complicated feelings about Trader Joe's, mainly because I don't totally understand the praise that it gets. To me, it is far more a specialty store than an all-purpose grocery store. I would never do all of my shopping at Trader Joe's. Still, for the sweet tooth that I undeniably have, Trader Joe's has a truly impressive stock of various chocolate-type things. I bought some dark chocolate toffee with roasted pistachioes - what?? I came in well under-budget for this month and sometimes you just want to treat yourself a little - and then headed slowly around the store with Kate. I narrowly avoided buying cookie butter by remembering that even if it tastes amazing, I don't have anything to eat it with, and do I really need something that tempts me to have it straight from the jar?
We already have Nutella at home, I guess is what I'm saying.
So eventually we found the coffee, and I stared at the wall of colorful cylinders for a while before I just picked a dark Italian roast. Who knows? This could be a total bust. But the beans smelled pretty good, and I figure cold brew is supposed to be forgiving.
I guess I haven't been totally straight with you about the reason I wanted to go to TJ's for coffee, and it was that they have a grinder right there in the store with variable grind sizes. Perfect! I poured the entire cylinder of oily brown beans in, selected the coarsest grind (gotta filter that sediment with a French press grate, after all), and hit start. I won't run you through the whole gory process, but I did eventually figure it out.
Also, grounds take up way more space than beans. I sort of felt like I was cheating myself out of some coffee, so I took a break, tapped the can around to try to get everything to settle, and ground those last seven beans. Ah, life.
I bought chocolate and coffee; Kate bought milk and grapes. Oh well.
When we got back, I read approximately thirty different recipes for cold brew coffee, and thought that I had maybe stumbled on a ratio of grounds to water that would suffice. It's all very complicated. Luckily for us, I have a food scale. Talked Jonathan into buying it for me for Christmas with the intention of using it for bread (flour weight is way more reliable than volume because it packs so easily), and then discovered that to actually make a good loaf of bread, you have to trust your hands to tell you when enough flour is enough.
So I started to weigh out 140g of coffee grounds and got a little concerned around 50g when I already had probably close to a cup of coarse grinds. I compromised by filling the container I was weighing them in for a grand total of approximately 120g, then dumped them in the French press.
"Kate," I said, laughing, emerging from the kitchen with a French press literally half-full of coffee grounds. "Look at this."
She humored me by looking and laughing about it, and then I poured in about 3.5 cups of cold water, tried to figure out how to saturate the mountain of grounds, then rubber-banded some plastic wrap over the opening and pushed it into the refrigerator.
This morning was nice and cool; the temperature outside was right around 60 as we left for work, the temperature inside hovering around 68 if the thermostat is to be believed. Today is supposed to be hot, but sitting in my climate-controlled, air-conditioned workplace wearing a sweater over my clothes, I couldn't tell you whether or not it's living up to the hype.
I think, ultimately, that since cold brew coffee is meant to be brewed as a concentrate and then diluted, that this will work out. But if it doesn't, at least I still have my dark chocolate roasted pistachio toffee to remind me that the trip wasn't a waste. Anyway, in about six hours, I'll be pouring off what is hopefully a dark brown, caffeinated nectar.
It's a good thing I have a lot of milk in the fridge. I'm excited.
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