Up-cycled Picnic Bags

I got embroiled in a project I've been wanting to turn attention to for well over a year.  It actually has nothing at all to do with food, but I feel like blogging it, so let's just call it a Picnic Bag Project and declare that food-related....

Last year, after a big event at the Ritz-Carlton, we had a 30-foot vinyl banner left over.  Now, there's no way we'll be able to reuse the thing, but I hate seeing stuff like that go to the landfill, so I offered to take it and turn it into bags.  It's only taken me a year to get around to it.

You can actually send your o ld vinyl banners to a service like Ecologic Designs and have them come back to you as messenger bags, clutches, lunch sacks, which is very cool, but I wanted to try making some myself. 

The general pattern I used is pretty easy.  For a shopping bag, I cut pieces about 22" x 36," for the smaller bags it was more like 16" x 24".  You then fold the piece in half and stitch up the sides.  Then, I square off the bottom using the same method you would to make box cushions.  Martha Stewart explains it here.

My trusty old Kenmore sewing machine has enough power to sew through the layers which are pretty thick, but I could've used a heavy gauge of needle.  I broke 4 of them in the process.

Still, after nine bags, I really can't complain about how well the machine performs.  My Dad got it for me for my 13th birthday and after countless dresses, pants, tutus, shirts, and, yes, bags, it's still going strong.

The really fun part of this whole exercise though, and why I wanted to try it myself, is that you get to play around with the patterns on the vinyl and cut it in any way you think might be interesting on the finished bag.

Do you want abstract bits of letters?  Swooshes? Whole words? Patterns? Should there be little pockets? Long straps? short handles? I think the part I enjoyed most was chopping the thing up. 

And since it's heavy duty weatherproof vinyl, the resulting bags will be durable, water resistant and easy to clean -- oops, did I drip some blood on it after stabbing my finger with a  pin?  No matter,  it just wipes off. 

In the end, six hours later, I had three large shopping bags, and six smaller totes which could conceivably hold a nice little picnic lunch, or anything else really. 

I also cut a roughly 3' x 5' chunk of the banner  to make a picnic table covering for when we encounter those dusty, dirty old picnic tables with lots of splinters...

Only a few little trims and scraps went into the garbage, so, upcycling mission completed. A satisfying way to busy myself on a Sunday.

California Dream...

Even as I drool over the gorgeous photos of food in Paris or markets in Barcelona, it often occurs to me that for people in Paris and Barcelona, they probably think we here in California live the dream, with fab food and sunny days lived in elegant, luxurious ease.

Of course, I know that most San Francisco days are spent shrouded in fog, with me wrapped in three or four woolen layers, possibly eating nothing more exotic than a burrito.  But every so often we have a spectacular day, a day in which you can hop into a convertible Mini Cooper, and speed across the Golden Gate Bridge with the top down and the wind in your hair, and then pull up next to the waterside for a simple little picnic.

Although, I don't deny that it was cold as we passed through the thick fogbank over the bridge. Picturesque, but chilly.

Northward bound...to Mendocino

When the spring turns to summer and the weather turns cold (that's the life here in San Francisco, of course), my thoughts go toward wine country and the dream of a relaxing getaway.

My Omnivore and I have, neither of us, ever been to Mendocino, so we decided a little time off to explore the Northern Realms might be in order.

To be honest, I know nothing of Mendocino beyond "Murder, She Wrote." So we had only a few hints of places to go and things to eat while up there.  It was enough to keep us busy though.

On the way up, we decided to pass through the Anderson Valley and investigate the Pinot Noir situation there.  Without too much to go on, we kinda picked a couple of places randomly.  First on the list was Toulouse Vineyards -- a very cool little family place on Highway 128 in Philo. You might drive right past it if you weren't looking for the little goose signs posted on trees that warn you as you get closer to their driveway. It's the kind of place with a steep gravelly drive leading up to it -- i.e. a place where you won't find tons of tour buses in the parking lot.  We're discovering we like that a lot.

At Toulouse, wine and food pairing is an important selling point, and Maxine helpfully brought us some tiny bits of lemon rind and bay laurel to try with the Pinot Gris. Astonishingly, straight up lemon doesn't kill their Pinot Gris, but works quite nicely with it.  Spices like coriander, cumin might work well together with this one, Maxine says.  Hmmm... we're packing a few containers of Chicken Curry and coconut rice for our dinner, so that's that.

Further down the road, we stopped at Navarro Vineyards. I won't say it was entirely because they had a llama in their field, but that might have been a partial factor...

I skipped tasting to take in the views and try to catch a llama.

Just saying.

And then we hit the long and winding road for Mendocino, where we were renting a little cottage run by the Alegria Inn near the edge of town.

Mendo is one of those incredibly cute places that generally are not my cup of tea, although I have to admit it was beautiful and certainly quiet.

Since we arrived during the week and it was a rainy week at that, we saw precious few other humans around --it was a little too quiet actually. As someone who watches way too much procedural drama, that sort of thing makes me worry about serial killers and evildoers who've retired to the quiet seaside town.

But I digress...

There is a very nice little French place about a block from the cottage that came highly recommended, Cafe Beaujolais, which offers some comforting French bistro fare in a  pretty quiet setting. It's a little on the pricey side, but I have to say, the fact that you can get truly caramelized onions with tasty French brie and a genuinely beautiful duck confit makes it worth the extra.

 Best of all, behind the restaurant is a bakery where they make the dense wonderful loaves that Beaujolais serves its diners.

We bought a pretty hearty multigrain loaf that was, as they say, "heavy for its size" and had to be sliced thin to enjoy.

By the way, see those gray skies? It rained nearly the whole time we were there.  San Franciscans bring cheerful weather with us wherever we go...

Anyway, pushing onward.  We went back to Philo to troll for more wine, Pinot Noir to be exact and found spectacular examples at Phillips Hill (yes, that's a lot of "l's" and "i's" all together).

It's a bit of our snobbery that we tend toward small, less trammeled places--they often seem to make the most surprisingly good stuff and you don't have to fight a horde of folks off a tour bus at the tasting bar.  Personally, I don't even favor places that have a "tasting bar"-- I really like the "plank over two barrels" model, but there's not a lot of that anymore in California.

Phillips doesn't really have even a picnic ground, but there is a battered old table out back ("We're glad someone is getting some use out of it!") where we set up our usual lunch of cheeses and bread and sausage. In the photo from left to right are Brie de Meaux, some Jurassic d'Ete, and some Goat Gouda with Nettles.  Yes, we shopped at Gourmet & More before setting out.

Yep, that and some Divine Delight petit fours and I'm good.

One more stop: Philo Apple Farm.  I wanted to check it out and see if it was a good candidate for a "family-friendly" feature in the Chronicle, but really it's much more of an agriturismo, where you can buy apple cider, or stay in adorable cottages on the farm. 

After careful consideration, we selected some cider vinegar and --"Hey!  They have pastured eggs--from their own chickens!"

I'm a sucker for chickens, so now we have to go visit the birds, who look quite sassy in their little moveable coop.  

"They look happy," I observe to my Omnivore. "Happy Chicken eggs."

Yes, we hustled back to the little honor-system farmstand and recorded our purchase of the last two dozen eggs.  Just in time it seemed, as a bunch of cars pulled up into the parking lot.

"They would've taken our eggs," I remark to My Omnivore, as I fight the urge to hide them under my sweater as if they'd get taken away from me. 

Scenes from the Ranch: Dinner at Della Fattoria's Webber Ranch

I am about to outline the Perfect Summer Day.

So Ms. Five-and-a-Half and Mr. Thirteen have been trying to organize a trip to the Webber Ranch for ages, and FINALLY we succeeded. The Ranch is where Ed and Kathleen Webber of Della Fattoria (the local favorite artisanal bread makers) got their start and their daughter Elisa and her husband Junker do a phenomenal job hosting these summertime get-togethers.

For some $50 a person, plus corkage for any wine you bring along, you get a lovely home cooked meal, a lesson in how to shape bread (which you'll get to take home), and a relaxing day on the farm.

The Webbers describe the farm as quirky, and that it is. There's a menagerie of dogs and cats, along with sheep, chickens, small crops of corn, a vegetable garden--basically it's everything I want in a home.

The food is cooked up on Junker's wood-fired cooktop, which he created himself -- essentially a large steel cooking surface heated from underneath, on which he made everything from fabulous roasted padron peppers to pork and chicken. And yes, it smelled divine.

Local cheeses, including some Cowgirl offerings, of course. Also in the small dish are some of Elisa's homemade cornichons, made with pickles from her garden.

The roasted padrons. I could eat about a million of those...

The table under the tree was near a giant barrel-like vat that looked like it was for making sauerkraut. about 30 gallons of it...

The breadmaking is one of the highlights of the day. The dough is already made, and has risen, but needs to be shaped.

My Omnivore getting some tips on the flip and tuck...

And the bread goes into the oven. Hot work, and for professionals only...

Mr. Thirteen watches the push and stick technique carefully.

After bread-making, there was time to wander the farm, say hi to the chickens and stare down the sheep.

While we were there, Elisa was nice enough to give me a bunch of pickles from her garden--and her cornichon recipe which is stellar. Make these babies and you'll never go back to store-bought. If you grow the cornichons in your garden, be sure to pickle them the day you pick them -- the flavor is incomparable when they're pickled fresh.

The farm is also home to a wide range of non-human folks, who are happy to wander about and mingle with the guests.

Poodles...

Pugs...

And kitties!!!! Very young, very adorable kitties.

This particularly friendly little one had the most charming habit of falling asleep in your arms.

Junker and Elisa overseeing the food making...

Pork steaks and halved peaches -- absolutely super! Peaches were wonderfully juicy and scorched.

A grilled seafood salad.

On the table, a carafe of water with a branch of lemon verbena in it. One of the things that really makes the whole dinner are details like these.

Ms. Five and a Half, perhaps on the verge of a toast?

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The updated Webber Ranch tour information is here.

And see video of the bread shaping technique here.

In a pickle...kosher dill pickles, cornichons and sauerkraut

I've been off of the blog for a little while -- life's been busy , in a good way--but it's meant that we've been doing an awful lot of eating and cooking that I just haven't yet blogged. Yikes! Catchup time.

I figure I might as well start with our pickling adventures, since pickling and preserving is such a hot topic in these more economically frugal times.

So, I've been toting around a sauerkraut recipe for ages now, and meaning to make it, but it always sort of sounds vaguely complicated. Well, let me tell you, now that I've made some, it takes absolutely no time to start it off. Really. Plus it's cheap to make and if you can wait a few days for fermenting time, you'll be rewarded with the easiest cheap delicious condiment you've ever made.
Homemade Sauerkraut

Unusually for me, I was very cavalier about the amounts I used in making this recipe. But basically you need the following:

• Green cabbage (a nice tight head, cleaned, and sliced very finely. Save a couple of leaves for covering the sauerkraut later) I used a 5 lb head
  
• caraway seeds (I used about a tablespoon here)
  
• coarse sea salt (I used about a tablespoon of La Baleine sea salt)
  
• Clean crock or jars (after the initial salting and squishing, it all fit in two quart sized jars)
  
• time (around a week or so)
  

Shred or finely chop the cabbage -- this is easier with a food processor to be sure, but can be done by hand, believe me. Leave a couple of large (3-4 inch diameter) leaf pieces to cap the top of the sauerkraut later.

In a large non-reactive bowl, toss the cabbage with sea salt. Use liberal amounts of sea salt -- as usual I went for the notion of the whole thing tasting as salty as the ocean and that seemed to work.

I also vastly underestimated how much cabbage I'd have, so I wound up needing other pots and bowls initially, but after 20 minutes or so, enough water had drained out of the cabbage that I could squish it all down and condense it into one bowl. Don't throw away that brine, transfer the cabbage and water into the same bowl!

I sprinkled it with the caraway seeds until it seemed like it was nicely dotted with seeds (see above pic) and then set it aside for a bit longer, maybe another half hour. After that I squeezed and wrung as much moisture out of the cabbage as I could, (still saving the brine in the bowl, mind you) and packed it into two clean quart-sized Fido jars with the wire-clasp closure. Tamp the sauerkraut down very firmly as tight as you can -- if you're doing this in a big crock, tamp it all down and weight it further down with a heavy plate too.

Add in the brine to cover the sauerkraut, leaving at least an inch of head room at the top of the jar, and cover it with the cabbage leaf and close it up. Do the same with the other jar.

Stand them in a tray or pan in case the jar leak -- I overfilled mine and they leaked quite a bit over the next few days-- and then put them in a cool dark place for a few days. Say, under the sink or in the closet. You may notice that they'll not only leak out liquid, but also some foam off the sides. Don't worry, it just lets you know that fermentation is working. Do be careful though, as you open the jars, mine sprayed out a bit as I unclasped it from the pressure buildup.

After a few days taste test the sauerkraut and see if you like it -- if you want it more sauer, let it ferment a bit longer. When it's to your liking, you can just close up the jar and put it in the fridge, or you can can it to preserve it for later, perhaps an Oktoberfest.

I bought a box of half pint Ball canning jars in case I liked the sauerkraut and/or thought it might be a useful item to trade someone for other food items, perhaps some fresh eggs, or such.

To can the sauerkraut you can follow the instructions on the bottom of the Ball packaging, to which I will add that not only should you heat the jars and lids to sterilize, but also heat up the sauerkraut. If the kraut seems a bit dry, you can add in clean plain water to moisten it up again.

Pack the kraut in the jars and add water if you need too, leaving at least 1/2 an inch of headroom. Wipe the rims and center the lid on top, screw down the band, and then process them for however long the instructions advise it takes in your pressure canner or in boiling water -- it's different for different altitudes. Let them stand in the hot water for five minutes and then take them out and stand them up on a towel in a tray (in case there's breakage). I always find it satisfying to listen for the little metallic pops as the jars cool and the lids suck downward, indicating a good seal.

They tell me that sauerkraut is often made in big batches. The amounts above seemed like a lot to me-- it was a 5 lb cabbage and about a tablespoon of caraway seeds with about two tablespoons of sea salt. But I gather "big" is relative, as other sauerkraut makers talk about making it 75 pounds at a time. And at the Webber Ranch last night, our host pointed me to a ceramic crock that could fit a small child and was marked "30" as in 30 gallons. That was their sauerkraut crock. Well, I was happy with 5 pints of sauerkraut. I know how to make more after all....

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Flush with the success of the sauerkraut -- and while it was still quietly foaming and fermenting in my closet-- I turned my attention to pickles.

For many of us crazy food-obsessive New Yorkers, pickles mean only really one place, Guss' Kosher pickles, right out of the barrels in front of 85 Orchard Street (helpful hint: if you're there and they're open, buy a lot, because God only knows when the next time will be when you see them open again.)

If you are sadly, hundreds of miles away from pickledom, though, you might turn your thought to making your own kosher dill pickles, which is in fact what I did.

Kosher Dill Pickles

Basing off of the Arthur Schwartz recipe which David Lebovitz so kindly linked, I made the following adjusted recipe, which worked well for the baker's dozen of Persian cucumbers I found at our local market. There are better cukes out there for pickling, and I'd like to try the Kirbys or lemon cucumbers, but unfortunately this is what I had on hand.

12-14 short pickling cucumbers
2 quarts water
3 tablespoons coarse white salt (kosher, if available)
4 cloves garlic, unpeeled and lightly-crushed
2 tsp whole coriander seed
1 tsp whole fennel seed
1/2 tsp whole allspice berries
2 bay leaves
4 sprigs of dill, preferably going to seed, washed

1. In a large pot, heat 1 quart of water with the salt until the salt is dissolved. Add the remaining water.

2. Prepare a quart widemouth jar or a couple of pint jars by running them through the dishwasher or filling them with boiling water, then dumping it out.

3. Pack the cucumbers vertically into the jars, making sure they're tightly-packed. As you fill the jars, divide the garlic, spices, bay leaves, and dill amongst them.

4. Fill the jars with brine so that the cucumbers are completely covered. Cover the jars with cheesecloth, secured with rubber bands, or loosely with the lids. Store in a cool, dark place for 3 days. A white slimy scum developed at the top of my brine, which I scooped off.

5. After 3 days, taste one. The pickles can ferment from 3 to 6 days. The longer the fermentation, the more sour they'll become. Once the pickles are to your liking, refrigerate them. I'm still souring my pickles as we speak.

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Cornichons

I have always wanted to make cornichons because I LOVE LOVE LOVE them, with a bit of pate and cheese or salumi. Mmmmmm, perfect lunching materials. Unfortunately I had no idea where to get the minis to make cornichons.

While we were at the Webber Ranch in Petaluma, our hostess Elisa, set out some cornichons along with a fab cheese board. "Homemade" she said while describing the whole board. My ears pricked up.

"Where can you get the cornichons?" I asked Kathleen, Mme. Baker.

"Oh we grow them. We have them in the garden -- in fact you have to keep picking them before they get too big. You want to see?"

Within about fifteen minutes, I have a little over a dozen cornichons in my hot little hands, including a couple of overgrown fellas which I plan to pickle in the same way as I did the dill pickles above. You can order the seeds for the Cornichon de Bourbonne, the preferred cornichon (also called gherkin) for pickling, from Scheepers.

Elisa was kind enough to share her recipe for cornichons:

• Small cornichons, freshly picked
• Tarragon
• sliced shallots
• whole peppercorns
• whole dried red peppers
• bay leaves
• white wine vinegar

As with much of my pickling experience to date, I haven't been good about amounts or measurements. I had only picked about a dozen cornichon-sized babies, so it all fit into one half-pint Ball jar. therefore I layered them in the jar with only a few slices of shallot, one sprig of tarragon, about a dozen peppercorns, 1 dried red pepper and a bay leaf. Then I just heated up enough white wine vinegar (about a cup) to cover everything, poured it over the whole lot, and put on the lid and screwed on the band (not too tightly) and let it cool, which sealed it without processing. I don't intend to keep it for long, so we just put it in the fridge and plan to eat them oh, probably in the next week or so.
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Final note, so in the process of hunting down my ingredients, I noticed that the corn I had gotten from a local bodega (intending to use much later in a posole,) looked mighty suspicious. I could see even through the tupperware sides that it seemed to be very powdery looking, so I hailed it out and took a look. Indeed, it was not just powdery but full of HOLES. Ew. Ew. EW! Like Swiss cheese, i.e. as if it had been eaten...by something....

With the corners of my mouth drooping ever more downward I looked closer and saw movement.

EW EW EW!!! Unwelcome visitors.
I have tentatively identified it as a granary weevil and am now putting bay leaves in every damn thing I lay my hands on.

Ew.

And ew.