WhimsyLand

Junie wandered back home, care of Northwest Airlines, and I'm back to being a bachelor.   Before she left, though, we spent a good part of a morning weeding the backyard flower bed, something that I'm quite certain builds character, as well as opening up lots of virgin soil in which Junie could plant flowers.  The flower bed actually has some small bushes and large perennials which were hidden by what looked like the world's largest wheat grass plot.  I watered the bed, waited an hour or two, put my Lamont White Mule pulling gloves on, and went at it with a vengeance. Junie took the northwest corner and was meticulous.  I took the rest and played the part of Marauding Hun.  By the time we were done, we had five or six 30 gallon bags of weeds and room for both flowers and tomato plants.  I haven't grown tomatoes for a couple of years and always regret it.  If you've ever grown vegetables, you know that most store vegetables are decent substitutes for garden fare (red peppers, spinach, most lettuces).  Not so for tomatoes, however.  Home-grown are so much better than store-bought that it's hard to believe they're the same fruit.  I suppose that might be true for bananas and kiwi, but I'm hardly in the right growing zone to find out.

Now, if you think that was an excessively bucolic description for an introductory piece, you should read Christopher Kimball's description of Life in Vermont in this month's Cook's Illustrated.  In that editorial, the picturesque cast of Real Vermonters include a man who still traps his own game, sisters who share dentures by swapping every other Saturday, and farmers who sit in the country store swapping tales and flapping "ears like elephants".  It's hard to believe that this is the same editor who runs world-class test kitchens and buys thousands of dollars worth of gourmet-class knives just to rate their ability to slice onions.  Luckily, the sticky-sweet editorial never get in the way of a good read in CI.  Notes from the Readers contained these gems:  skim milk foams up better than whole for those interested in low-cal cappuccinos;  recipes often call for "room temperature" eggs, but only the most finicky cake batter will be affected; to detoxify a cutting board that has been used to chop onions or garlic, a baking soda rub is far superior to any other method of cleansing;  don't soak dry beans more than overnight as they lose flavor and texture– if you can't use them immediately, just freeze them in an airtight plastic bag until you're ready.  From Quick Tips:  A good way to clean your grill is to drizzle a couple of paper towels with oil, then wrap aluminum foil around them.  Punch a few holes in the resulting ball and use long-handled tongs to scrub the grill bars.  If your recipe calls for lots of seedless tomato flesh, just chop the tomatoes and use a salad spinner to separate out the seeds.  Authentic Texas Brisket instructs you how to get "brisket with slow-cooked, pit barbecue flavor" from a charcoal grill.  The secret is score, brine, season, tent, slow-cook, flip, more-cook, temperature-taking, rest, and slice.  Another summertime favorite is Grilled Garlic-Rosemary Potatoes.  The standard is halved red potatoes, parboiled and coated with olive oil, skewered and placed on the grill for 15 minutes.  This recipe has you microwave the potatoes for a couple minutes before transferring to the grill, after coating them with a mixture of olive oil, minced garlic, fresh rosemary, and a little Kosher salt.  The secret to grilled chicken breasts is to use homemade marinate composed of Dijon mustard, lemon juice, olive oil, fresh parsley, sugar, and garlic and to cover the breasts with a disposable aluminum roasting pan for the first six to nine minutes on the grill.  Bringing Gyros Home is too complicated to tell you about.  Perfecting Pasta Caprese (a recipe with fresh tomatoes, basil and mozzarella) includes a useful tip on how to avoid the "bubblegum effect" on dishes with mozzarella – dice the cheese, then put in the freezer for 10 minutes before combining with the pasta.  There's an excellent article on freezing summer produce, but too detailed to go into.   Thinking about grilling Cornish game hens?  Remove the backbone, cut the breastbone, and butterfly.  Then use skewers to tuck the wings out of the way and flatten the thighs.  If you're using frozen hens (and who isn't), thaw in the fridge, then brine.  Coat with a rub of brown sugar, garlic powder, chili powder, coriander, black pepper, and little cayenne.  When they're done, brush on a glaze of ketchup, brown sugar, white vinegar, mustard, and garlic.  Good article on Better Shrimp Salad, but I don't eat it anymore because of the cholesterol.  Summer Fruit Salads are improved by crushing fresh mint leaves into lime juice, as bartenders do with mojitos.  The Best Blueberry Scones require a lot more work than I'm willing to sacrifice, and also means baking, at which I'm miserable.  Ditto, Rustic Plum Cakes.  If you have to buy your tea at the supermarket, check out Twinings English Breakfast Tea, PG Tips, Bigelow Novus Kenilworth Ceylon, Lipton Black Pearl or Stash English Breakfast Tea.  If you're In Search of the Perfect Garlic Press, you'll be happy to know that the $35 Kuhn Rikon 2315 Epicurean Garlic Press takes the prize.  The $9.95 Messermeister Pro-Touch did well too.  To be avoided?  Both Oxo garlic presses, which doesn't surprise me, considering how diluted the previously excellent Oxo brand name has become as they wander into product segments where they haven't done their homework.  The Equipment Corner includes Onion Goggles, which I actually saw an adolescent carry over to her mother's checkout basket at Safeway recently.  CI thinks they actually work.  If you're in the market for a good tabletop grill, check out the Sanyo Smokeless Electric Indoor Grill at $40, which CI thinks "closely mimics the heat of an outdoor grill".

Tomorrow is poetry day.