Organic/Sustainable Basil

Erin & I have been shopping at the Poway farmers market for about a year now. About 2 months ago a new vendor turned up with the most incredible basil plants we have ever seen! It is grown at a farm in Escondido http://www.archisacres.com/. They say it lasts 4-6 weeks. You keep it in some type of container, we use a vase with a flat bottom. Each morning you take the plant and rinse the roots with water then return it to the vase and add a splash of water. My parents are on their 2nd or 3rd plant now! We have never seen basil like this before. We have a small herb garden and our the leaves on our plants are about 1/4 the size of these.

The Olympics

I know this is not food related but I thought I would post anyways. Erin and I watched a ton of the Olympics this year. I am not sure why but it just kind of pulls you in. One night I even found myself on the couch @ 1:00 am watching a great ping-pong match! We really enjoyed the opening and closing ceremonies. There were a lot of rumors about things being fake and lip-syncing, which turned out to be true. Not to mention the Chinese gymnasts that were 12,13, or 14! I mean 16 years old! I think it made it a lot easier for me to watch the Olympics because I realize it is all about the $$$$$$$ for the TV channels and gold medals for the countries no matter how you get them! Nothing else matters! I do not agree with it, but I can not change that. The IOC is such a dirty organization I do not think it will ever be fixed! I found this great article from Ray Ratto on http://www.cbssportsline.com. I thought it was a great read:


Well, the Olympics are over, and we only dislike and distrust the Chinese and Russians a bit more than we did before, thus making the Games a success.

That is, if not getting the planet incinerated is your goal for any Olympics. If you're looking for fair play, honest competition, understanding and the joy of young people gathering together to give the peoples of the world hope for the future -- well, the Olympics have always been a bad place to shop for that anyway.

As a place to cash in and meet scads of young attractive women, the Olympics can be very helpful. Ask Michael Phelps. As a place to become inundated with NFL offers to get one's brains beaten in returning kickoffs, they can work quite well. Ask Usain Bolt.

But as a place to find 14-year-old gymnasts, 12-year-old gymnasts, 10-year-old gymnasts and even zygote gymnasts, the Olympics are the best. A place to find corrupt boxing officials who are so helpless now that they even fight in press conferences to prove it, you can't find a better spot.

For athletes who object to their results by kicking the referee in the face, it is Nirvana. A place to find Jacques Rogge lecturing one man on inappropriate celebrating while one entire sport is being judged by drunks, pimps and rounders ... well, where else would you find Jacques Rogge?

To find media people who alternate between raving about the charm of a new culture and slagging it through ignorance, you've found the right window. To find twelve-hour old events passed off as live ... well, the NFL Network shows three-day-old exhibition games, but that's hardly the same. And specifically this time, it was a good place to find repression with a smile.

The Beijing Olympics did, on a slightly grander scale, what every other Olympics has ever done -- make some people rich, irritate others, and remind us in general that sport doesn't change the world, it just entertains it a while before we all get back to our principal duties of misunderstanding, slandering, swindling, punishing and killing each other. That it provides a little something for everyone along the way is just an added bonus.

Phelps will make upwards of $100 million in a sport most Americans care nothing about under any other circumstances. That will be a fraction of what NBC takes in for glomming on to him early, flogging him like he was Miley Cyrus with gills, and having him crush the hype for an entire week. Bolt won't make nearly so much, because of the lack of buildup, the lack of American citizenship and our eagerness to assume that any track person is one with a needle, but he'll get rich, too. A couple of American gymnasts might cash in a bit, and a couple of others will be stalked by people with iPhones hoping to catch them in bathing suits.

Some athletes will take their nanosecond of fame and their lifetime memories and be happy. Others (the U.S. softball team comes immediately to mind) will have one bad day stick in their throats for years. Many will take their seventh-place finish in a quarterfinal heat and go on with their lives. Why, some might even find a use for their share of the 100,000 condoms the Chinese Olympic Committee provided for them.

In short, what we're saying is this: If you're looking for a greater enduring meaning from these Olympics, you won't find it. The Olympic machine is getting closer to the NFL ideal, which is that you can have a hundred scandals and still pass them off as paper cuts and get a lot of people to go along with you. It hums along as it has since 1984, when the U.S. showed the world how to turn a buck (which is what we have always done best), and now that it staggers the Winter and Summer Games, it cashes in twice as often.

Beyond that, the Olympics' true gift is that it gives a little something for everyone, while providing nothing close to what the pundits and officials say it does. Glory and shame. Triumph and humiliation. Semi-truths and quasi-lies. Spectacle and embarrassment. Nobility and corruption. All the things that make us one of the more interesting subsets on the planet, right there between jellyfish and plasma televisions.

Oh, wait, there is one thing we learned from these Olympics, and it is a lesson we should all embrace and hold as our own for all time.

If you're looking for a kid singer for your next wedding, anniversary party or sporting event, always always always check her teeth first. The prestige of nations have risen and fallen on bad orthidonture, and you know we'll go for the cute nine-year-old with straight, white incisors over the truly talented eight-year-old with asymmetrical overbite every time.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.

My last comment regarding the Olympics is as we were watching swimming, track and field, boxing, taekwando or any other sport I was amazed how many foreign athletes have scholarships at U.S. universities and actually train in the U.S with U.S. coaches to compete against us! If it were my choice I would have them banned from the training facilities and universities athletic facilities 1 year before each Olympiad, and any U.S. coach caught coaching them within that year would be banned from being involved with U.S. athletes. Let them pay for their own training and training facilities

Carpaccio

One of our favorite things to eat as a hors dourves is beef carpaccio. We have had it many times at a lot of different restaurants. The last time we had it was at Ruth Chris's after the fires last October. We were married that weekend, October 20th to be exact. We ended up not going on our honeymoon instead having family that was evacuated stay at our house for a while. The circumstances were not good, but Erin and I really enjoyed the time with family. It is amazing how such a stress full situation can bring people together! After everyone had left I planned a romantic dinner for us a Ruth Chris. Erin had never been there before and I had always told her how amazing it was. She really enjoyed it! The most spectacular thing about the evening was that my sister, Debbie and her husband, Owen had picked up the tab and our great friends Christina ans Jaimie had bought a bottle of Opus One and had it waiting for us! We love you guys!

We saw the carpaccio on the menu and had to order it. It was a little different then I have had in the past. It came with a sauce, I think it was some type of aoli sauce. I am used to the more traditional plating, olive oil, lemon juice, capers, some arugula(tossed with a vinaigrette) and shaved Parmesan cheese. We have been thinking about trying it ourselves for a while but have not got around to it. I have been talking to Randy our butcher a Bishers in Poway. He said he could do it for us. The interesting thing is that he uses USDA Prime New York instead of fillet. He slightly freezes it cuts it thin and then you take it home and pound it out a little. it ended up working out really great. We got 2 nights worth of hors dourves for about $25.00! Here is what it came out like!

John's First Italian Gravy!

I have not posted in a while. Erin and I have not been doing much interesting cooking. It has been hot and we tend not to cook as much when it is hot. I did end up making a nice "gravy" with my fresh tomatoes! I do not like to eat chunks of tomato(I am weird) so I decided to try a gravy. Really was not sure what do to or how to do it so I did some research and the internet and found and easy recipe that I liked and used that as a guide.

10-15 cloves fresh garlic sliced thin lengthwise.
6 tbls extra virgin olive oil
1 onion roughly chopped
2 lbs tomatoes(blanched, peeled, seeded and chopped) I used our fresh beefsteak and a couple heirlooms.
1 cup wine
1/2 can tomato sauce (i think it a 32oz can)
1 tbls tomato paste
3-4 pinches sugar
1 package dried portobello mushrooms(re-constituted)

Note: to blanch tomatoes cut an "X" on the bottom, drop in boiling water for 1 minute, remove and put in a ice bath. After they cool you should be able to peel from bottom side where you cut the "X"

Note2: Peeling, seeding and chopping was no fun! It was quite messy and your hands get very slippery. I have no advice on how to do this. All tomatoes seem to be a little different as far seed quantity, location and how juicy they are. Now I see why people used the can stuff!

I used our big LeCruset pot and heated the oil until it was barely smoking. I then added the onion and let saute for 3-4 minutes, followed by the garlic. After this your whole kitchen will smell wonderful! I then added all the tomatoes and wine and let cook for 15-20 minutes. Since I wanted to make a gravy I need a little more liquid so I added the tomato sauce. I also added the sugar and the tomato paste at this point. I ended up letting it simmer on low for 3-4 hours using my smallest burner. I then took my trusty Braun hand mixer and proceeded to mix it into a thick gravy. This part I just eyeballed it until I was happy with the consistency.

While putting some stuff back in the fridge I saw a package of dried portobellos that needed to be used. I re-constituted them, chopped them then added to the sauce. It gave the sauce a really earthy tone to it!

Erin came home with some fresh linguini and ricotta raviolis from Mona Lisa Restaurant/Store in Little Italy. I made my fresh garlic bread and we were all set. I thought the sauce was really good. You really do a get a different taste from the fresh tomatoes. We like the idea of the gravy also. A lot of people bury their pasta in the suace. Due to a trip to Italy Erin and I took in 2006 we became intersted in the gravy type sauces.

Backstory: I ride a Ducati motorcycle and we were there for the Ducati Club World Presidents Meeting. Ducati supplied us with motorcycles, room and board all we had to do was buy the tickets and bring spending money. It was quite an opportunity. I had only known Erin for about 3 monthe before I asked her to go! We basically rode from Bologna, through umbria, out to the costal town of Rimini then to Rome. After Rome we rode up near Florence then back to Bologna. It seems quick but it was done over a 2-1/2 week time period. While there we had a lot of "homestyle" meals at the places we were staying. They never served pastas with a lot of sauce. There was always a big pasta dish filled with pasta and a light coating of sauce. I really enjoyed it that way. You do not lose the flavor of the pasta.

Back to work now!