Home butterfly garden

(Picture courtesy of woodleywonderworks at flickr.com.)

The world isn’t altogether friendly to many butterfly species, so if you’re putting in some crops for yourself, this would be a good time to consider putting in something to keep these beautiful creatures afloat.

Recently, visiting the Smithsonian I took a few moments to wander through the butterfly garden there.   While it was too early for much of a population, during warm seasons, the plants attract many butterflies and the signs there give visitors ideas for their own.

One sign struck me as good to know, advising that we shouldn’t be cleaning all the old materials out in the fall, because eggs may be in them waiting for spring to hatch out.   Here, spudtruckowner tells me it’s been a family practice that he still follows to take out the old dead stems and put them in the back of the barn.   Burning them just isn’t done, as there will be hatchlings waiting for warm months.

Of course, using insecticides is obviously the reverse of what we need for these delicate insects.   Planting varieties that are well adapted to your area would make it easier to avoid their use.   There are a lot of hardy plants too, and I was delighted to notice that my new sprouts of Kohlrabi will be a butterfly attractant as well as providing good veggies for the table.  Plants and butterflies vary by area.  For the monarch, milkweed is a must, for black swallowtail, carrots and fennel; and be prepared to see big holes munched in the leaves they like best.

Creating a butterfly garden should start with some serious research to learn which kinds of butterflies are native to your area. You can learn that from our article “Butterfly Gardening by Area”. Make a list of all of the different kinds of butterflies you would like to attract, and then learn which flowers and plants they both feed on and lay eggs on. All of the plants will certainly be native to your area and therefore easy to grow with the right conditions and care. Adult butterflies will visit for a longer period if they find plants to lay their eggs on. These are called ‘Host Plants’ and you can read about them in our article on “Butterfly Host Plants.”

Plants that are local to your area may be ordered in advance, but as now is planting season, you can check with nearby greenhouses and growers for the ones you want.

There are a few varieties called ‘butterfly bush’ and all have a wonderful aroma, but are not adapted to your everyday garden as they are not particularly dainty.    Any bright color will attract most species, and they are among the few species of insect that ‘see’ red.

Here’s hoping you can set aside a little space to help this wonderful species to survive and brighten our lives.

Smithsonian butterfly garden sign/butterfly and hummingbird attractant

Taken in Dallas State Fair Butterfly House

Bananas

Okay we probably all know that what you want from bananas is potassium, but just yesterday I actually saw in print that heart health is a major benefit of that potassium fix.   If you already know that, pardon my ignorance.   Now I know why we keep bananas around.  That is one of many reasons for munching that banana.

• It contains health promoting flavonoid poly-phenolic antioxidants such as lutein, zea-xanthin, ß and α-carotenes in small amounts. These compounds help act as protective scavengers against oxygen-derived free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS) that play a role in aging and various disease processes.
• It is also a very good source of vitamin-B6 (pyridoxine), provides about 28% of daily-recommended allowance. Pyridoxine is an important B-complex vitamin that has a beneficial role for the treatment of neuritis, and anemia. Further, it helps decrease homocystine (one of the causative factors in coronary artery disease (CHD) and stroke episodes) levels within the body.
• The fruit is an also moderate source of vitamin-C (about 8.7 mg per 100g). Consumption of foods rich in vitamin-C helps the body develop resistance against infectious agents and scavenge harmful oxygen-free radicals.
• Fresh bananas provide adequate levels of minerals like copper, magnesium, and manganese. Magnesium is essential for bone strengthening and has a cardiac-protective role as well.  Manganese is used by the body as a co-factor for the antioxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase. Copper is required in the production of red blood cells.
• Fresh banana is a very rich source of potassium. 100 g fruit provides 358 mg potassium. Potassium is an important component of cell and body fluids that helps control heart rate and blood pressure, countering bad effects of sodium.

Once in my long ago toddler stage, I lives on Okinawa and acrtually got tree ripened bananas, so of course, no store bought banana will ever be good enough for me.   However, I do make a point of eating one, usually just plain peeled and munched, a couple of times a week.

After making the discovery that my heart is the reason for eating the bananas, I did check for the amount of potassium dried bananas retain is good enough.  Yep, you’re fine with the dried version, something I have in my snacking dish with the trail food.

Tamales

(Picture courtesy of World to Table at flickr.com.)

Season’s Eatings!

One traditional food around Christmas time in Texas is tamales.   I love them, and usually glom onto some at this time of year.   As a matter of fact, I picked up some pork tamales and had them for lunch yesterday.

I have never myself made tamales, but will throw a recipe at you, below.   For my part, I have so many excellent mom & pop Tex-Mex operations nearby, it would be silly for me to make the attempt.  Others have experience I lack, and more likely to be really good.

If you want to make a stab at this tamale making yourself, here’s some directions.

• Tamale Filling:
• 1 1/4 pounds pork loin
• 1 large onion, halved
• 1 clove garlic
• 4 dried California chile pods
• 2 cups water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

• Tamale Dough:
• 2 cups masa harina
• 1 (10.5 ounce) can beef broth
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup lard
• 1 (8 ounce) package dried corn husks
• 1 cup sour cream
  Directions:
  1. Place pork into a Dutch oven with onion and garlic, and add water to cover. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer until the meat is cooked through, about 2 hours.
  2. Use rubber gloves to remove stems and seeds from the chile pods. Place chiles in a saucepan with 2 cups of water. Simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes, then remove from heat to cool. Transfer the chiles and water to a blender and blend until smooth. Strain the mixture, stir in salt, and set aside. Shred the cooked meat and mix in one cup of the chile sauce.
  3. Soak the corn husks in a bowl of warm water. In a large bowl, beat the lard with a tablespoon of the broth until fluffy. Combine the masa harina, baking powder and salt; stir into the lard mixture, adding more broth as necessary to form a spongy dough.
  4. Spread the dough out over the corn husks to 1/4 to 1/2 inch thickness. Place one tablespoon of the meat filling into the center. Fold the sides of the husks in toward the center and place in a steamer. Steam for 1 hour.
  5. Remove tamales from husks and drizzle remaining chile sauce over. Top with sour cream. For a creamy sauce, mix sour cream into the chile sauce.

Beer cheese soup

(Picture courtesy of Greyhawk68 at flickr.com.)

The title is a bit misleading, but since we talked about cheese soups last week for Food Sunday, I went looking for such an animal.   There are a couple of versions, and our friend, nonquixote, kindly supplied a good recipe for Wisconsin beer cheese soup.  That works!   Thank you kindly, nonquixote.

Ingredients:
½ pound butter (clarified optional)
½ cup flour (or to desired consistency)
2 quarts milk
1 ounce tabasco
1 ounce worcestershire sauce
¼ cup chicken base
12 ounces Sprecher beer – Preferably either Micro-light or Special Amber
1 cup culinary cream (optional) or heavy cream
½ ounce onion powder
½ ounce garlic powder
White pepper to taste
Salt to taste
½ pound shredded Wisconsin cheddar cheese
½ pound shredded Wisconsin Swiss cheese
½ pound shredded Wisconsin jalapeno jack cheese
Method:
In a 12-inch sauté pan or skillet, melt butter and remove from heat. Add flour and whisk until incorporated. Consistency should be like wet sand. Cook over low heat stirring occasionally for 10-15 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a large soup pot heat milk to almost boiling – DO NOT BOIL. Lower heat and add tabasco, worcestershire, chicken base and beer. Incorporate well with whisk. Add cream and seasonings and heat to almost a boil again. Slowly incorporate small amounts of the butter/flour mixture to make a roux to thicken to desired consistency. Cook for 10-15 minutes. *Gradually add cheese in small handfuls making sure to thoroughly melt and incorporate each handful before adding more.
*Do not let the soup reach a temperature over 150-degrees or it will separate.
Cook over low heat for 15-20 minutes, serve immediately.

Allright, this week I didn’t get up to Wisconsin to get the right ingredients.   I did have potatoes, and am told that regular cheddar can be pitched in with a potato soup to make a decent kind of cheese soup.   For this lower state, I made this potato based variety, which I indulged in this past week.   Yummy, and wonderful with a quick bread.  Okay, I used a beer bread.

Any way you make a cheese soup, it will be lovely and warm fodder for a chilly day.

Making cheese soup is a sideline for me, I’m snacking away on my basic ingredient to a disgraceful extent.   Cheese is one of my favorite things to eat, in all forms.   Don’t mind me while I put a dollop of sour cream in the cheese soup to cool it off a bit.

For my kind of cheese love, just melting the cheese and dunking crackers or bread in it like fondue would be fine, too.

(Picture courtesy of vissago at flickr.com.)

The Cheese

Lentil soup

(Picture courtesy of stevendepolo  at flickr.com.)

While it may not be the most exciting food you may eat, lentils is a staple in a large part of the globe, and particularly in populations whose health is better than ours.  Studies of healthy food usually have shown lentils are among the best, and that does influence me to use them.

I usually give you a recipe I picked up from some source other my own experience, but this time I’m going to tell you what I do, and let you look elsewhere if you like.

My recipe;’

Wash a package of lentils well, using a colander held over a pot, then dump the pot of wash water, add 7 cups of fresh water. Add lentils with a handful of braised sausage, a large potato cut into small portions, a few chopped cloves of garlic, an onion, a couple of chicken broth cubes, and a few vegetables that you have around.   I used fresh chard from the garden, and a half red pepper.

I brought the whole bunch to a boil while I was chopping in the veggies, and let it boil for a few minutes, then turned to simmer.   About a half hour of simmering, then I begin to test for the texture, usually about an hour later I have the soup I am looking for.   Serve with a large dollop of sour cream.

Recently studies have been published that show lentils are showing benefits to those with imbalanced blood sugar that leads to diabetes.   We have a lot of sickness associated with western diets, and use of sugars that don’t give us health benefits is a problem that increased use of healthy legumes counteracts.

Lizano salsa

(Picture courtesy of dOug&rObyn’s photostream at flickr.com.)

One sauce that is found on almost everything in Costa Rica, Lizano costs a pretty penny to buy.   There are few products that keep their secrets, and much experimentation has resulted in some sauces that come pretty close.   This one sounds like the real thing, but I don’t guarantee it.

I should mention this though most of you probably know this.  When you handle any pepper (besides bell), you should take care not to touch any sensitive part of your skin, eyes, nose, etc.  If you want, wear gloves.  I’m just really careful.  If you make this stuff in big batches, take note:  as you cook the sauce, the pepper will release some capsaicin into the air with the steam, creating a similar effect to being maced or pepper sprayed.  Same thing happens if you throw ground pepper on a hot pan.  It’s about the worst feeling ever, and takes several minutes to clear out the kitchen, and the entire time your lungs burn.  Cook on low heat, and avoid breathing deeply over the pot to minimize this side effect.  Also, using chilies lower on the scoville heat unit scale would help.

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: approx 20 minutes

• Mince onion, carrot, tomato, two habaneros (don’t use the seeds unless you want your ass handed to you)  and two sprigs of cilantro.  Throw into small pot.
• Cut a lime in half, juice both sides into the pot.
• Dash in some apple cider vinegar (helps it keep fresh, also is slightly sweeter than white vinegar).  I’d say a tablespoon or two is good.  If you can smell it overpowering everything else in the pot, you put in too much
• Liberal amounts of salt, probs at least 2 tablespoons.  It’s a condiment, can’t really be too salty.
• Add some more spice in, just to keep it flavorful.  Cumin, ground coriander, chili powder, some cayenne to back up the heat, whatever you wanna do.  Also, it might be easier to use garlic powder (gasp!) instead of legit garlic cloves, since it’ll spread the flavor around easier.
• Cook it covered on medium low to low heat for anywhere from 10-20 minutes, you basically want it to thicken up and break down some of the tougher ingredients (read: carrots).  If you have xantham gum or anything like it (I used cornstarch, though that’s not the best way of going about it), that can also thicken it up.  Stir occasionally.
• If you have a food processor, and want it smoother, feel free to pop it in.  I do not own one, and my blender wouldn’t do anything with 6 ounces of liquid besides laugh at me and make weird smells.
• Put it in a container and refrigerate it.  On the safe side, I’ll bet it keeps for 2 weeks, though depending on how much vinegar you use, maybe more?  My family genes gave me near invincibility, (with the exception of allergies that exist only in Missouri) so I don’t worry about bacteria nearly as much as I should.  (I’m kidding Mom.  Safety first!)

Now, this is not any official way to make your own sauce, it just came out of me playing in the kichen over the last two years.  Again, a cuisinart would make this job much easier.  If anyone has any tips, leave em in the comments.

The same theory could be applied to jalapeños, serrano, ancho, chiles de arbol, thai chilis or cayenne.  Also, you could fool around with adding different fruits such as peaches (consider roasting them and pairing with chipotle to give it smokey flavor).   Mango would also be quite nice with the habs.  Luckily all these ingredients are pretty cheap unless you are buying mass quantity, and allow for experimentation.  Once you get it right, it becomes much cheaper to make your own sauce in greater quantity than the bottle at the store.

The particular tastes of any devotee of the actual product may or may not find satisfaction here.   We all crave certain things, and no substitutes allowed.

The taste for Lizano salsa has been strong enough to build a whole industry on.   No need to tell you, it’s worth a try.

Cinnamon buns

(Picture courtesy of miscdebris at flickr.com.)

In a food post a few weeks ago, several of us began sharing memories of easy things we remembered our families making up.   When I mentioned a cinnamon bun quick fix we’d done when I was growing up, there were a few figurative sighs.

That easy recipe is still around, and here it is.

In my memory, we used string instead of scissors, and pulled it quickly through the dough.

There are lots of us who were working moms, but when I was a child it was unusual.   The things that were easy for moms to do when they had all day to do it in, our mom found ways to whip up sometimes.

The smells of baking cinnamon buns will always be worth whatever it takes, to the kids.

Dig In, It's Game Day

(Picture courtesy of DAKoontz at flickr.com.)

While it may be that during bigtime sports” season, baseball or football or your other choices, a lot of households build a party out of the games, it’s also true that as many businesses count on being that party’s booster.   It’s good for those businesses, and easier on those of us who bring in the buddies.   Last Sunday we talked about the DIY variety of wings, but there were a lot of boosters for the kind you go out for.

The institution of having wings appears to have been arrived at in the Buffalo, NY, area, where the image of herds of buffalo with wings was part of the fun.   In the D.C. area, I discovered that hot chili was part of the local celebration, though what chili has to do with the Redskins is still a mystery.

The Saints would seem like a natural for the wings, but in NOLA you’re going to find it’s more likely to be jambalaya and hot shrimp.   Of course, every area has its own sort of celebration, so it’s going to vary with geography, but wings has taken over as far as I can tell, in TX.

There are a bunch of chain restaurants that have come up with Sunday specials to take advantage of the game day rush, and I’m not going to name them all.   Local watering holes are going to have their own, and it’s a great way to send them business they need, and that benefits your own community.

If you look around at the grocery store, you are going to see most likely that there’s a pickup offering – often trays of various sorts of finger food.   Our delis are certainly distinguished on Sundays by pompom decor, and the local teams’ colors.   That’s in addition to the usual Sunday dinner packages that so many religious groups depend on, to keep from doing any work on Sundays.   In my experience, taking the time to walk into your grocery deli section saves a lot over driving through any of the restaurants’ drive-through section.  Of course, bigger orders really ought to be done in advance, and hosts of one big party I went to went ‘whole hog’, a pig cooked and picked up.

I’ve heard that tailgating goes to extremes too, but really haven’t gone that route myself.

If you have the time for making and cleaning up after your own party offerings, you’ll save the most, of course.   Telling your guests they will make themselves more welcome next time if they bring in something to share makes it even easier on the host home.    If you’re getting together with people you know well, rotating on a regular basis works really well so that everyone gets enough, without all the burden of the cost being on anyone.   Need I mention that a keg might be part of the rotating contribution, for many of us.

In case you want some real variety to DIY, I’m throwing in a recipe here for cajun catfish wraps;

• Slaw:
• 3 1/2 cups thinly sliced red or green cabbage
• 1/4 cup light mayonnaise
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar

• Wraps:
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
• 4 (6-ounce) farm-raised catfish fillets
• 1 tablespoon butter or stick margarine
• 4 (8-inch) fat-free flour tortillas

Preparation

1. To prepare the slaw, combine the first 4 ingredients in a bowl; cover and chill.
2. To prepare the wraps, combine flour and next 7 ingredients (flour through red pepper) in a shallow dish. Dredge fillets in flour mixture. Melt the butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add fillets; sauté 5 minutes. Turn fillets over; cook 4 minutes or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork.
3. Heat the tortillas according to package directions. Cut each catfish fillet lengthwise into 4 pieces. Arrange 4 fillet pieces on each tortilla; top each serving with about 3/4 cup slaw, and roll up.

In the Eastern Shore of Virginia, there was near where I lived, a local bar that had a true Game Day tradition for Superbowls.  Local hunters brought in their actual ‘game’, from wild turkey to actual bear, and I hear that muskrat wasn’t unheard of.  Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

For the return of the referees, there’s reason to celebrate for sure today.   Zebra wings, anyone?

Waffles at Lucille's (photo: Youssef Abdelaal, flickr)

Growing up, special days were enjoyed with a special treat, making waffles.   Back in the day, a bulky waffle iron had to be heated up, buttered or greased, and watched over as the little indicator moved to the red area and the waffles were done.

Nothing invented since those long ago fifties has made waffles taste better to me, and fluffy Belgian variety are just a variation on the theme.  Waffles should be trouble, to my mind, because they are a way to make breakfast into an event above the everyday.

Ingredients

• 4 3/4 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 1 cup
• 4 3/4 ounces whole-wheat flour, approximately 1 cup
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 3 whole eggs, beaten
• 2 ounces unsalted butter, melted
• 16 ounces buttermilk, room temperature
• Vegetable spray, for waffle iron

Directions;

Preheat waffle iron according to manufacturer’s directions.

In a medium bowl whisk together the flours, soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar. In another bowl beat together eggs and melted butter, and then add the buttermilk. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until combined. Allow to rest for 5 minutes.

Ladle the recommended amount of waffle batter onto the iron according to the manufacturer’s recommendations. Close iron top and cook until the waffle is golden on both sides and is easily removed from iron. Serve immediately or keep warm in a 200 degree F oven until ready to serve.

Waffles are good with butter and syrup, and can be just as good but not better with fruit and whipped cream.   Add nuts to either variety, it’s all good.Should I mention frozen waffles?   Oh, well, it’s fast and easy, and a way to enjoy otherwise good syrup.

Chicken and waffles is not for the faint of heart, and I admit I’ve tried them but am not a fan.