Farm Photo: 7/29/07

Spycat

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© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

Farm Photo 7/28/07:A Picture Perfect Walk In The Woods

Forest By Mother Earth

Accessories By Mother Nature

Something strange is going on. On July 16th, I took 81 photographs. I haven't taken a single one since. At some point during the past 12 days I stopped lugging around my beloved camera and didn't even notice.

I'm blaming summer. I don't function well when it gets above 80 degrees (okay, okay 65). Toss in 90% humidity (yes, that's really what it is, I just checked), and my brain hangs out a giant Do Not Disturb sign, while my body wishes it could do the same. Even the smallest outdoor chores feel monumental.

When I moved from northern California to Missouri back in 1994 it was November. And it was lovely. A big ice storm hit the small town we were staying in a few days after our arrival, and every single thing became encased in ice. While everyone else was huddled indoors staying warm, I bundled up and went for walks, admiring the glistening landscape that had magically appeared overnight. I felt as if I'd moved to Disneyland.

Then people began asking me if I'd been here in the summer yet. Lots of people. People who all said a variation of the exact same thing: "I thought it was humid in [insert nearly any state in the country here], but that was nothing compared to Missouri." I started getting very nervous. And unfortunately my fears did not go unfounded. Summer in southern Missouri must be experienced to be believed, and in a bad year you have from early May until late September to experience it.

I realize, of course, that there are many lizard-type people who think there is nothing better than lying on a burning hot rock in the scorching sun while most of the water in your body pours out of your skin at a medically alarming rate. It's too bad I'm not one of them. In my opinion, if you're not moving, you shouldn't be sweating profusely.

All of this whining is in fact leading to a point.

I know that many of you have come to believe I live a picture perfect life in a picture perfect place, and while I don't like to complain about all the bad stuff (and on a farm we definitely get our share of it), once in a while I think it's only fair to set you straight.

It's beautiful here. Really, really beautiful. Stops-me-in-my-tracks several times a day beautiful. My life is far from perfect, but I do in fact live in a picture perfect place. What you do not want to do, however, is actually climb into some of the pictures. Take the one at the top for example. I could have said nothing about it and simply let you believe that Bear and I were out for a pleasant stroll in the woods, enjoying nature and the crisp, refreshing air.

The reality, though, is that despite the early morning hour, it was already very hot and very muggy, and my clothes were completely soaked with sweat. A small part of my brain was functioning well enough to see the photo opportunity in front of me, but the rest of it was taken up with counting out how many more months until autumn on my fingers, and thinking about how much nicer everything would look if it were covered with several inches of snow. Right now it feels like a jungle. A jungle with pine trees.

I wasn't planning to write this. I was actually in the middle of watering the garden and feeding insect-ravaged turnip greens and Swiss chard to Whitey and her not-so-baby-anymore chicks (yes, I promise a long overdue chick update is coming soon). I only popped inside to jot down a couple of notes before the sun zapped them right out of my mind, which is what's been constantly happening lately.

Originally I was going to post these two photos with nothing but their captions and let you think whatever you like. In retrospect, that may have been the better way to go. You could have stared contently at them, letting out a small sigh and taking in a deep breath of cool woodland air. But as they say, misery loves company, and so I thought it only fair to hit you head-on with a sweat-drenched, furnace-like blast of my summer reality instead. Besides, the longer I sit here and type, the longer I can stay holed up in my little office--the only room in The Shack with air-conditioning--before I have to open the door and step back out into those perfect pictures where there won't be any snow for months.

P.S. There are plenty of nice winter photos in the monthly archives located on the homepage sidebar if you feel like cooling off.

© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

Small Scale Marketing & Little Olive Cheeks

Italian Black Olive Cheeks (Puccia) (Click here for the recipe at A Year In Bread)

If your bakery cafe has 500 locations scattered around the country, launching any new product is a complicated endeavor. First there's the research and development stage, which in many cases can last as long as a year, even if all you're creating is a sandwich. Producing something that is not only tasty, visually appealing, and on budget, but that can also be easily and exactly replicated around the country — or even the world — is no small feat. Then there are the amazingly expensive, in-store and out-of-store publicity/marketing/advertising campaigns needed to spread the word about your delicious new invention.

If, however, your bakery cafe has only one location, one oven, and one baker, introducing a new item is as easy as flipping through a cookbook, pointing to a recipe and saying, "That looks good!" then baking it up and sticking the results in your display case next to a handwritten sign stating what it is. Years ago when I had a little bakery cafe in northern California, that's exactly what I used to do.

One of the nicest things about opening a small eatery several miles from any place to buy a cup of coffee, let alone a still-warm chocolate chip cookie and a latté made from freshly roasted coffee beans, or a pot of English tea and a freshly baked scone, is that you quickly develop a band of very loyal customers. And although some of them happily ordered the same thing day in and day out, I was fortunate to have a fair share of eager guinea pigs.

These adventurous eaters were always willing to try something new and different, no matter what it might be. Some of my experiments, such as the pistachio olive quick bread, never made it onto the permanent menu (or even into the oven a second time), but others, like the pesto piezones, were instant bestsellers. This ongoing creative challenge was one of the most enjoyable parts of the job.

I haven't been trying many new bread recipes lately because I've been focusing on refining the five or six breads that will be the mainstay of the small wholesale bread bakery we're building here on the farm. But the other day I had an enlightening realization. When it comes to offering additional items for sale, things won't be much different than they were at the cafe.

Testing out a new type of bread will simply be a matter of finding a recipe that sounds interesting, baking a few dozen loaves, loading them into the delivery truck, and seeing if our wholesale customers want to offer them to their customers. If the response is positive, we bake more. If not, there's no big loss.

That was all the excuse I needed to start baking new breads. Add in the publication of my new favorite bread book, Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers, by Daniel Leader (renowned baker and author of my previously favorite bread book, Bread Alone), and my priorities around the farm have suddenly shifted. Weed-filled garden, piles of dirty laundry, ravenous baby chicks, and scorching summer heat be damned — I'm on a bread baking roll.



These little cutie pies, made with the strong and salty oil-cured olives I love so much, may very well make it onto our bread delivery truck some day. In the meantime, they've been on the lunch menu every day here for over a week, starring in a scrumptious new version of a very old summertime favorite: cream cheese and tomato sandwiches.

Simply pluck a couple of olive cheeks out of the freezer and let them defrost enough so you can slice them in half (they defrost quickly at room temperature), tuck them in the toaster oven, then slather each toasted half with some nice cream cheese and top with thick slices of juicy garden tomatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste, and try to pace yourself.

These are absolutely amazing. So simple, and yet literally one of the best things I've eaten in months (and we eat pretty darn well around here). I used to have open-faced cream cheese and tomato sandwich on toasted English muffins as a kid, then later on bagels. They were always very good, perfect for lunch, brunch, or even breakfast. But the flavor of the olives in these delightful little rolls—which have just enough crunch and just enough chew—brings this humble meal to a whole new level. Three ingredients combine to become edible perfection. This is more fast farm food. This is seasonal eating at its best.

Local Breads is a 448-page, hardcover beauty of a book that I highly recommend for bread bakers of all levels, including complete beginners. It will be available in stores on August 13th, but you can pre-order copies now at Amazon.com for $23.10, which is 34 percent off the cover price of $35.00, plus there's no tax and free super saver shipping on orders of $25 or more. Click here for more info or to place your order.

There's no need to wait until August to start baking, though. Over at A Year In Bread we're devoting this month to Italian breads in Local Breads, and I made these Black Olive Cheeks. Click here for the rest of my article and the step-by-step recipe. It's easy to follow, and you don't even need a baking stone, just a couple of baking sheets. (Any kind will do, but if you do any baking at all, I urge you to treat yourself to a couple of commercial half-size sheet pans. I promise once you try them you'll never look back.) Kevin made a gorgeous Grape Harvest Focaccia, and I can't wait to see what Beth is baking up for next week. Ready, breadie? Then come bake bread with us!

Related articles & info you might find interesting:
—Parisian Breads, Local Breads, A Year In Bread includes the recipe for a four-hour French baguette, another easy and tasty bread from Local Breads, along with more about Daniel Leader's new book and why I love it so much.
—Don't know what A Year In Bread is? Click here to read more about this joint blogging project between myself and two other passionate bread bakers. I also discuss some of my favorite and affordable bread baking equipment.
—Oatmeal Toasting Bread is already a bestseller in my book. Try it and let me know what you think.
—My Ten Tips For Better Bread is one of the most popular posts in the Farmgirl Fare archives.
—I still recommend Daniel Leader's first book, Bread Alone, which was pretty much responsible for nudging me into the bread baking business. Considering that thousands of cookbooks are published in the U.S. each year and it's still in print and selling well after 14 years, I'm obviously not the only one who thinks this book is wonderful.

© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares recipes, stories, and photos from her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

Farm Photo: 7/17/07

Haying Supervisor

Click here if you'd like to see more photos of Robin, the smiling beagle who loves country life. And click here if you'd like to read how Robin came trotting into my life ten (can it be already?) years ago.

A year of Farm Photos ago:
7/15/06: Something New Is Always Popping Up
7/16/06: Butterfly Bonanza
7/17/06: "I'm Ready To Come Inside Now," Says The Privileged Animal (That would be Cary, who is doing just fine for those of you who've been asking. I'll be posting my new favorite photo of her along with a brief Cary update soon.)
WDB#43: Morning Dog Walk Through The Woods

© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

Farm Photo: 7/14/07

In the hay. Be back soon.

A year of Farm Photos ago:
7/10/06: BB & Tana Are Always Together
7/11/06: Donkey Daycare For Cary Today
7/12/06: Donkey Daycare?!
7/13/06: Looking Up While Tucking In The Sheep
WCB#56: Cary & Doodle Snacking In The Living Room

Welcome new visitors!
Click here for a brief introduction to this site.

© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

Parisian Breads, Local Breads, A Year In Bread

Parisian Daily Bread: A Four Hour Baguette (recipe at A Year In Bread)

Many of you know how much I love the award-winning book Bread Alone by renowned baker Daniel Leader. I've written about it numerous times, and I've been recommending it for years to anyone who showed even the slightest interest in wanting to bake their own bread. I have a shelf full of bread books, and this is the only one that has earned a permanent place in my kitchen. My original copy is in at least four pieces, and I credit this book for nudging me into becoming a professional bread baker. But I'm afraid it's the end of an era. Believe it or not, another book has leaped over my beloved Bread Alone to steal first place and my heart--uh, stomach.

Back in January, I received an email from a marketing coordinator at W.W.Norton, an independent and employee-owned book publisher in New York, congratulating me for winning the Best Rural Food Blog at last year's Food Blog Awards. He then went on to say:

When I read that you're working towards creating an artisan bread bakery on your farm, I thought I'd let you know about a book we're publishing this summer. It's called Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers. It's written by Daniel Leader, the founder of Bread Alone, the legendary bakery in Woodstock, NY. The book won't be available in stores for a few more months, but I'd love to send you an advance copy. Interested?

Of all the bread bakers and all the bread books. . .

Fourteen years after he wrote Bread Alone, Daniel Leader has created another book--and it's wonderful. And unique. And inspiring. And informative. And entertaining. And beautiful. And of course absolutely delicious. And as you can clearly see, once again I'm hooked.

Local Breads is the culmination of Daniel Leader's dozens of trips to Europe over the past two decades in search of bakers who are still using time-honored methods and ingredients to create loaves unique to their towns and cities. Part travelogue, part bread making class, and part gastronomic history lesson, the book is full of colorful stories of local artisans and their authentic treasured recipes, many of which have been shared for the first time, and all of which have been translated by Daniel for American home bakers.

Advanced bread bakers are going to glom onto this book, but beginning bakers should not shy away from Local Breads. The first 60 pages are packed with detailed information on equipment, ingredients, and techniques, all of it clearly written and easy to understand. Even better are the several dozen Q&As throughout the book--Daniel's responses to the questions most frequently asked by his students at the Culinary Institute of America and other places where he teaches bread-making. Thirty-two mouthwatering, full-page photographs and 100 helpful line drawings round things out.

Local Breads will be available in stores on August 13th. You can pre-order copies now at Amazon.com for $23.10, which is 34% off the cover price of $35.00, plus there's no tax and free shipping on orders of $25 or more. Click here for more info.

But you don't have to wait until August to start baking authentic European breads. This month at A Year In Bread we've baked up three different summer/picnic breads, and I chose (at Daniel's suggestion) to make the beautiful Parisian baguettes you see in the photo above. (Wondering what A Year In Bread is? Click here to find out--and to read about some of my favorite bread baking equipment.) This is the first recipe in Local Breads, and it's definitely a keeper. From first step to first bite really is under four hours, and even beginning bakers should have delicious success with these loaves. Click here to read my Parisian bread article over at A Year In Bread. And don't miss Beth's famous Pesto Rolls and Kevin's Bacon Buns, both of which have been receiving rave reviews from A Year In Bread bakers.

We'll be devoting next month (which actually starts this Thursday--assuming I get my article written in time) at A Year In Bread to Local Breads. We'll each be baking a different Italian bread from the book, and during the fourth week I'll be posting my exclusive interview with Daniel Leader. We'll also be holding a contest and giving away two signed copies of Local Breads to lucky (and skilled!) A Year in Bread readers. More details will be posted soon.

Then in September, once everyone has their copy of Local Breads in hand and their sourdough starters standing ready in the fridge, I'll be making several different breads, writing about them here, and inviting you to bake them along with me so we can compare notes.

It's going to be hard to choose which of the 80 recipes to make first, though I already have my eye on the Green Olive Sticks from Milan and a couple of authentic German rye breads. Tonight I'll be mixing up a biga for the Italian Black Olive Cheeks, made with those wonderfully strong and salty oil-cured olives, and then baking them up tomorrow, which just happens to be my birthday.

Friday afternoon our new Federal Express guy, who jokingly said "So couldn't you find a place further out in the country?" once he finally found the farm, delivered a signed copy of Local Breads. Considering that more than ten cookbooks a day are published in the U.S. and Bread Alone (which I still highly recommend) remains in print after 14 years, I have a feeling this is one birthday present that is going to be around for a very, very long time.

© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

Farm Photo: 7/2/07

Holding on for dear life or just hanging out? (click on photo to enlarge)

So it finally rained. A lot. Like three inches in twenty-four hours. Thank goodness.

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© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

On Loving Lettuce & Eating Salad for Breakfast

I Never Get Tired Of Looking At Lettuce

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that I do not think about salad the same way normal people do. The first step toward this realization occurred one Thanksgiving dinner when I was passed a beautiful wooden salad bowl. Peering inside, I saw a mouthwatering mix of butterhead lettuce, red onion, and avocado tossed with a creamy dressing. There was just one helping left, and as I was about to place it on my plate, I glanced around the table and noticed that only one other person had any salad. The contents of that bowl were supposed to feed seven more people!

Then there was the phone conversation I once had with a long-distance gardening friend. He had called to announce that he and his wife had made an interesting discovery about growing lettuce.

"If you just pull off some of the leaves instead of plucking the entire plant from the ground, the leaves will keep growing back. The way we figure it," he said brightly, "you only need three lettuce plants to feed two people for the entire summer."

I decided not to mention the three heads of lettuce I'd consumed earlier that day for lunch—or the 200 square feet of salad greens in my organic heirloom garden.

A few weeks ago I was harvesting a pile of mesclun to send home with a gardenless friend. "That’s plenty!" she said as I continued to pick.

"That," I politely informed her, "is barely enough for one serving."

And when I set a bowl of salad in front of a houseguest recently, he looked down at it, looked up at me, and said, "Please tell me this is for all of us."

"You don’t have to finish it," I reassured him. But I probably will.

So I’m a little obsessed with salads, which I eat nearly every day of the year. And while pretty much anything green, leafy, and not poisonous is fair game for my salad bowl, lettuce holds a special place in my heart.

For there are certain times when absolutely nothing, not even chocolate, will satisfy my soul and stomach except some freshly picked butter lettuce from the garden. Even if it’s 1:30 in the morning. And we’re in the middle of a thunder/lightning/wind/hail/rainstorm. And my terrified, 50-pound, thunder-phobic dog is trying desperately to climb into my arms as I crouch down harvesting lettuce in the wet darkness with a 98% dead flashlight. But oh, how that salad hit the spot.


European Mesclun Mix From Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

The lettuce season this year was surprisingly bountiful. Lettuce is an iffy thing to plant for spring in southern Missouri. We usually have at least a few days in the 90s in April--which in itself can be enough to ruin your crop--and it's always a toss up as to whether May will behave itself and stay mild or jump headfirst into summer. This year it behaved, and I harvested gorgeous lettuce every day for weeks.

On June 8th, with temperatures threatening to soar upwards, I grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped what was left in the two 4' x 8' raised beds I'd direct seeded at the end of March, leaving the base of the plants in the ground. It amounted to several pounds. Because I make it a point to plant varieties that are heat tolerant and slow to bolt, despite quite a few days in the upper 80s I was still picking unbitter bounty on June 19th (while crossing my fingers the stuff in the fridge wouldn't rot). Today I enjoyed the last of the spring lettuce. July 1st--I think that may be a record.

My salads will now be lettuceless for the next several months, but if you live in a place where summers are mild (oh, how I envy you!), it's not too late to plant, and growing your own lettuce from seed is easier than you might think. Click here to visit my kitchen garden and learn how.


Fast Farm Food

With such an abundance of wonderful lettuce hanging around, it was only a matter of time before I figured out a way to eat it for breakfast. For the first time in months, I was out of my beloved blueberry bran muffins, and morning found me flailing around the kitchen, half starved, my mind a blank. I'm the kind of girl who needs to know what she's going to have for breakfast when her head hits the pillow the night before.

Incapable of doing anything else, I turned my mind toward thoughts of lunch. Before long I'd convinced myself that freshly laid fried eggs on a bed of lettuce wasn't really all that different from the scrambled eggs with chopped Swiss chard I sometimes whip up. Thinly sliced pieces of homegrown lamb salami crisped up nicely in place of pancetta or proscuitto or bacon and left me a little grease to fry the eggs in. A few chopped scallions, a drizzle of creamy dressing (yes, even foodie farmgirls sometimes buy bottled salad dressing--organic of course), and some freshly grated pecorino romano finished things off.

It wasn't until everything was arranged on my plate that I realized I'd just spent about five minutes making a meal that had not only come mostly from the farm, but was healthy and beautiful as well. I snapped a photo and dove in. I guess I need to run out of bran muffins more often.

© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares photos & stories of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.