Driftless Organics

This week's Driftless Box was amazing! We made gorgeous quiche with corn, roasted tomato and poblano, caramelized onion and Hook's cheddar. Look for potato and roasted corn chowder, and heirloom tomatoes on salads and roasted in soups.
For those of you at home, the day I got my own CSA box I was able to make a Driftless Dinner that my family loved. Fresh sweet corn, heirloom tomato salad with arugula, sweet watermelon, and tortilla espanol made with Driftless pinky-red potatoes.

Driftless Organics Summer Vegetarian Minestrone

Our new Driftless Organics summer soups are coming along very nicely. This week we (yes I mean David) made a beautiful vegetarian minestrone using driftless CSA ingredients like cauliflower, zucchini, onions and green beans. Check out the picture! We used our CSA basil finely sliced and some shredded asiago cheese on top and I couldn't have been more pleased with the results. Soup, salads, and quiche have been our best way of absorbing the wide variety of veggies we get through our CSA box. Having a base soup or quiche recipe that can vary according to what's in season is key to not wasting those beautiful crops.

Driftless Organics Summer minestrone

Ingredients:

1 ¼ c Potatoes
4 ½ c vegetable broth
4 ½ cups cold water
3 Bay leaves
3 Sage leaves
2 sprigs Oregano
1-2 T Olive oil
2 t Dried Basil
2 t Dried Oregano
6 Cloves garlic diced
2 Carrots Coarsely chopped*
1 Red bell pepper coarsely chopped
1-2 small Zucchini quartered
¼ c red wine**
1 32oz can of tomatoes plus juice***
Fresh basil and grated Parmesan cheese for garnish

*vegetables can be substituted, Squash; cauliflower, eggplant, beans etc...Go for color!
** Balsamic vinegar is an excellent substitute.
***you can use more or less of the tomatoes depending on you personal taste.

Directions

Saute your potatoes for about 5-10 minutes* Set aside.
Heat the oil in the bottom of a large soup pot
Add the onion and herbs and saute over medium heat until onions become soft, about 7-10 min
Add the garlic, peppers, zucchini, carrots **
Add the wine or rice wine vinegar, cook until the pan is almost dry
Add tomatoes plus juice
Add 1-2 t salt, and 3-4 pinches of pepper Simmer for 15-20 minutes
Add potatoes (any other vegetables left, beans, cauliflower, etc) and bay leaf
Simmer for an additional 20 minutes until potatoes and other veggies are soft
Season with salt pepper to taste
Top with fresh parmesan and finely stripped basil

* This will help with the breakdown of the potatoes in relation to the time it will take for the rest of the vegetables.
** Or other veggies, Be careful to adjust for time. Add vegetable with a longer cook time now, and ones with a shorter cook time later.

Three Cheers for Lapham

All of our hard work and time seemed to pay off today when we were able to serve fresh spinach with tahini dipping sauce to 6 classrooms for snack. This spinach (and some beautiful radishes) was student-grown and student-picked. I can't think of anything like it in all of Madison. As Sophia's teacher Mark said, "this is what science should be." YEAH! Today it feels like we pulled off something incredible for the kids.

Just in Time before the Rain...

We had some good, wholesome fun in the Lapham Garden on Tue. night. LOTS of weeding, pruning a sage, and, everyone's favorite, the compost pile. What a fabulous, stinky, STEAMING mess it was! Trace & Asher did tons of hard work pulling the pile apart, then Chris & I added 4 buckets of egg shells & coffee grounds and a big bag of carrot peels from Mermaid. Lucky Chris made it all the way through on account of his low zinc problem. We had blisters, nosebleeds, and a break for sandwiches. The elusive Shadowy Shanooners was sighted. Hazel tried to capture her (see side pic) but, as always, was unsuccessful. Lapham Parent Randy turned a huge section of the garden over while his son Trace turned the compost and weeded....

Mother's Day Brunch with Morgan's Resurrection

We're hoping to have something new and exciting for our Mother's Day brunch. Twenty years ago I worked for a guy named Chuck Mann. Chuck was skinny, super high strung, an avid smoker, and good lord could he cook. ANYTHING! I don't really remember why he was knocking around Madison but I still miss his food (I don't miss his pointed criticisms of my work habits. They were true...but still). Through the miracle of having worked at a bar I was able to track down Chuck and get his recipe for my favorite blender Hollandaise sauce. We've been playing with the poaching and with the sauce. Carrie from Jordandal helped us to find the perfect Canadian bacon. And, of course, those beautiful New Century Farm eggs!

Colin Emerges from Hiding to Garden

Everyone was really pleased to see that Colin and Cristen feel that they are able to move more freely now that the timber industry lawyers and their henchman have left town. Colin surprised us at Lapham Garden last night showing up with some root beer and ready to dig! Isis transmogrified into human form and brought her husband and daughter. Corinne is a chip off the old block, bringing a unicorn in a box for our night helping out. It punctured the box several times but didn't get out. Corinne is the result of Isis' coupling with mortal Chris Stephens in a moment of weakness. We turned the compost, weeded the daffodils, and dug over some winter wheat.

Recipe for Banh Mi Chay (Vegetarian Banh Mi) Serves 3-4

You will need: Fresh baguette♥Aioli or mayonnaise♥Baked lemongrass tofu ♥Carrot/Daikon slaw (do chua) ♥Cucumber in thin slices or matchsticks♥Cilantro sprigs♥Optional: Bird chili peppers in slices

Lemongrass Tofu:

1 pkg of firm tofu
1/2 C peanut or vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
5 T soy sauce
2 t salt
2 t fresh ground black pepper
1 t turmeric
1 t sesame oil
1-2 bulbs of fresh lemongrass. When chopped should be about 3 tablespoons.
Optional: crushed dried chili to taste

Instructions: Drain tofu. Slice into ¼ inch pieces. Smash chopped lemongrass in mortar & pestle or with rolling pin in plastic bag. Marinate with rest of ingredients for at least an hour. Pan fry or bake at 350° for 15 minutes.
Carrot/Daikon Pickle (Do Chua)

1 C Daikon radish
1 C Carrot
¼ C white vinegar
¼ C white sugar
pinch salt

Instructions:
Heat in saucepan until dissolved. Place in icebath or fridge to cool.

Matchstick radish and carrot by hand or on mandolin. Pour cooled marinade over slaw.


Assemble in above order♥♥♥ Veggie Variations: Roasted eggplant, mushrooms, celery, variety radishes, peppers. Meat Variations: Lemongrass beef, minced pork, ham, pork liver pate, scrambled egg.

Banh Mi Chay or The Bahn Meatless

The Bahn Mi has garnered quite a bit of attention lately in the press (e.g., cover of NYT dining section 2 weeks ago). We are getting ready to demo our vegetarian version for Isthmus' Green Day event this Saturday, April 25th, at 4 p.m.
What IS a Bahn (or Banh) Mi? Bahn Mi are Vietnamese sandwiches served on a baguette. They are hybridized French-Vietnamese street food. While the ingredients of the sandwich vary widely and, now, wildly, the essentials seem to be: mayonnaise, crusty baguette, daikon/carrot pickle (do chua), and cilantro. Add to that many, many different things: hot peppers, ham, beef, pork, pork paste, cucumber, tofu, egg, mushroom, eggplant, on and on. This is what makes this sandwich the perfect Farmer's Market food! With the basics readily available (daikon is available at the Willy St. Coop & Woodman's, as well as the huge variety of Asian food marts here in Madison on Park St. and a new one on Monona Drive) the possibilities for extreme tastiness stretch to the horizon. I saw a lemongrass-tofu recipe while searching the net and I'm almost convinced to change our tofu marinade.
I'm beginning to come around to changing up our bahn meatless a bit if the season allows...I also saw an eggplant recipe that made my mouth water. Chay means vegetarian, BTW. We are looking forward to a great Farmer's Market season and some really nice loaded boxes from Driftless Organics. Here's hoping folks are interested in learning about this sandwich and seeing how it is put together...

Mermaids Swim in Lapham Garden

Today was the first day that I saw the garden at the school and saw what it could be. Spring has a way of doing that, anyway. It's hard not to get too excited. We had our first Merfamily outing to the Lapham Garden today. One way the cafe is trying to invest in our community this year is by helping in the school garden at Lapham. Of course this is double dipping for those of us who have children at Lapham-- Isis has a 1st grader, I have a kindergartner, my niece is a 2nd grader, and of course the Just Coffee folks have a kindergartner and a 1st grader as well. The cafe will be contributing some coffee grounds in the coming months as well as labor and perhaps some composting scraps.
Jim Hansen is a Lapham parent who has been coordinating the garden this year and I couldn't be more wowed by the progress-- we had compost to screen today and there were 8 or so new raised beds. I AM SUCH A FAN OF RAISED BEDS! The kids handled some fat, sassy worms and I did some path digging. Sophia, Asher, and Hazel were put to work pushing the compost through the screens and making garden stakes. Volunteering in the garden is easy...Tuesdays at 5:30. There is lots to do.

Check out Ruth Conniff's Isthmus Piece

Hey everyone - if you get a chance, please check out Ruth Conniff's piece on school hot lunches. We have been talking a lot about children and food lately at Mermaid and I feel like we as a community are on the verge of shifting our thoughts about this very important issue.
It is not enough, we believe, for those of us who can to send our kids to school with nutritious fare and leave the other children in our community to be fed for under $2.75. My kids have had plenty of hot lunch because I was too frazzled and disorganized to get 3 lunches made before the bus showed up. This is our collective life now. It is not out of our reach to make nutritious fresh food available at least some of the time to the children in our schools. Ruth mentions Alice Waters' program through Chez Panisse and also Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch through REAP. These are worth looking up on the internet.

Banana Bread with Fresh Ginger

Those of you following the travails of Mermaid staffers are warned that this post is, well, it's actually about food. Food we don't serve at the cafe, come to think of it. Banana bread. For I, creator of the blog, fictionalizer of staff, maker of genius-quality sandwiches, am also capable of fully realizing the best banana bread in Dane County.
We have all been tortured by dry, tasteless, spongy, banana bread. I personally tortured my husband and my oldest child through many, many versions of burnt, dry, or raw in the middle banana breads. As my staff now know, when things go badly for me, my first reaction is to weep, so let's give it up for Ben & Quinn who suffered and were ultimately rewarded with tasty, fattening, moist banana bread.
My mother, Katie, who makes arguably just as good of banana bread as me, taught me to make it. That is to say, my mother made it in front of me my whole life while I took little to no notice except when called upon to consume. Then I had to cajole, coerce, spy, and steal the secrets that make it so good. Upset as a young adult, I would call her and say, it's so dry. She would say, Oh? Hmmm...well, keep trying. Wench. She was probably biting her hand to keep from laughing at me.
The secrets. The secrets are easy, but rarely written about. But here on my blog I will reveal my top secret banana bread recipe, and the two easiest things anyone can do to pull off decent banana bread.
Secret One: If you would eat it, it doesn't belong in your bread. Banana bread bananas are disgusting. They are black, they are smelly pools of liquid that have little black hairs in them. They slip out of the peels like something from the bottom of a pond. If you are not willing to do this, your banana bread will always be inferior. So when your bananas go bad, stick'em in the freezer. When you're ready to bake, thaw them out to room temp and then peel.
Secret Two: Pop them out of the pan and wrap those babies up in tinfoil while they're still hot. Not plastic, tinfoil! Not tupperware, tinfoil! Then stick them in the fridge to cure. I usually make mini-loaves (Williams-Sonoma makes some that are really half-loaves with is even better) so that we can eat one right away, when it's mostly tasteless but hot and you're dying to eat it. The others are for when the loaves are cool, and dense, and moist, and flavorful.
The Recipe
1.5 C white whole wheat flour
1/2 C white sugar
1/2 C br. sugar
1/8 C honey
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
10 T butter, softened (it's more than a stick but worth it)
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
3 or 4 super-ripe bananas, a little more than a cup mashed, at room temperature
1 T fresh finely grated ginger.
1/4 C ground nuts, if desired
Preheat oven to 350. Grease bread pan. Sift, flour, soda, and salt together in large bowl. Set aside. Beat butter and sugars (not honey!) till fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla. Add honey, then bananas. Stir this very liquidy mixture into the dries in the bowl by hand. Last, stir in ginger, then nuts if using. Mix thoroughly and spoon into pan. Bake between 45-60 minutes (seriously, ovens are soooo different) until wooden pick comes out clean in center. Bread will brown quickly because of addition of honey. Let cool a couple minutes, then turn out and wrap in foil. If you are using mini loaves, the bread will be done much more quickly so keep an eye out, 25-35 min.

The Mighty Isis

This week if you get a latte from Isis, Queen of Heaven, Lady of the Green Crops, Star of the Sea, try to have some understanding. They had a PBS special this week on Pompeii, and she really shouldn’t watch that stuff. Never mind all the bad shit that went down in the waning days of her power in Egypt. Isis never really recovered from the catastrophe at Pompeii. The discovery and subsequent excavation of the city and its majestic Temple of Isis has been difficult for her to bear. The record is sketchy, but it appears that the Festival of Worship at the Temple of Isis in AD 79 was a particularly good one; Isis, wanting to reward the people, turned to Mount Vesuvius for some goddess-inspired “fireworks.” Ahem. After her followers’ screams were muffled by hot lava and 60 feet of smoking ash she packed quickly and left Europe. After a long period of unemployment (who wants that on their resume?) she wound up in North America and took a part-time job as An-gu, Ojibwe goddess of protection from tipi mold.
Deity employment is always a struggle for all parties involved; daily interaction with a goddess is a potent cocktail of excitement, worship, and frustration. The other day, I just had to put my foot down about some things. If you won’t reveal yourself, I said, customers wont know you’re there. This isn’t your Temple. You need the tips. When you punch in, you manifest. End of story. Basically, I was like, my house, my rules. I’m no chump for some immortal with some second-rate party tricks.
She shimmered then turned into a floating mass of feathers with a hundred eyes. Then a locust appeared at my feet. Kinda smallish for a locust, actually. Herein lies the somewhat pitiful circumstances that have led to the Lady of the Words of Power needing to supplement her income. I think she was trying to visit a plague upon me. She’s not very good at the big stuff. I needed to underscore my point, I have a business to run, so I very deliberately stepped on the locust. The last I heard, she ran down to the Yahara to fill it with tears. Tears of self-pity to be sure. She’ll be back. She needs the dough.
P.S. By special request, the Mermaid Café asks that those creepy, modern-day followers of Isis refrain from worship at the café.
P.P. S. To our concerned readers: we do have quite a few daily, devoted patrons. Customers are in no way coerced into returning to the café. It just seems to happen that way a lot. I blame the delicious lattes and excellent bakery. Employment as well is “at-will.” David loves working at the café. Occasionally he does seem pale and tired. Scottish people are naturally pale. He’s O.K. Everyone’s concern is touching. And Charlie, well, he’s such a good boy. I’ve rewarded him with a vacation. Colin & Cristen are simple, earnest people who love trees and fell in with a bad crowd. They seem skittish because they’re still learning the ropes at the café.

Show you the Muffins?

We make our own bakery every day (usurping earnest, squeaky-clean proletariat labor, as you now know) from scratch. So here is a fresh, hot muffin for our anonymous post. Just look at that sweet thing...

Hello comrades!
In the epic battle of proletariat vs. bourgeois we have struck a blow that will be remembered forever by everyday working class men and women as a day when the people rose up and took back what was rightfully theirs!
I am happy to say that I was able to retrieve the stolen bike, The treachery of these bourgeois goons, this injustice, comrades, will receive its answer, retaliation will be just, I assure you.
comrades, despite all the evidence to the contrary, on the other side of that counter it is like a scene from Indiana Jones and the temple of doom. Do not be fooled by her references to Sunprarie or growing up in Wisconsin, behind all that friendly talk and the pretty smile is a cold blooded, tyrannical madwomen.

this is about much more than just One bike belonging to One man.

nonstop sandwich and soup production, countless off the clock hours slaving over the east side’s best muffins, zero protection rights for ideas, forcing pregnant women to work up until the day of birth, confiscating employee modes of transportation to prevent them from ever leaving. Our meager hourly pay is monitored on a daily basis by a software program that only our employer can see or understands and this is altered every two weeks at our employer’s arbitrary discretion. Worst of all we exist in a extremely hostile working environment that promotes the degradation of men, and the emotional/mental breakdown of employees; that is our yoke.
Friends, comrades, remember the workers of the mermaid, they have fought hard and valiant, and struggle on every day, and despite insurmountable odds, we continue to produce. We keep moving because if we stop we die. Please stand in solidarity with the workers who fall under the giant umbrella of a certain east side clan.
where you see a bike, think of us...
I must sign off now, I fear my illegal presence on this server may be detected I must always stay on the move. Signing out,
In solidarity
D2

The Father of Existentialism Strikes Again

I'm giving the bike back. As of tonight, David has taken to his bed, clutching a tattered copy of Kierkegaard's journals. He refuses to work. The sandwiches are cold. The Mermaid kitchen is in tatters. Charlie went to visit him (not to shake him down for change) and reported that he is lying around in his boxers, intermittently opening up his window and sticking his head out in the rain/sleet/snow. Apparently, he hopes to contract pneumonia and die. Just to get back at us. Well, he can die for no reason, then, because his bike is in the basement of Mermaid. Now if I can just convince Colin that it's over before it's too late.
Shannon called to try to cheer him up and get him to go out for a drink. He quoted thus, "Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth - look at the dying man's struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment. " Some people should not be allowed to read philosphy. More to come.

The Ransom Note from The Bad Guys

I guess I knew that none of the 6 ransom notes would be any good. It was impulsive to take the bike, and even more awful and impulsive to turn to The Bad Guys to make my point. Charlie & Colin are dangerous men. They were licking their chops at the thought of breaking Dave's knees over this. But crafty they are not...Charlie is connected and I don't want this to go too far. As far as I know Colin and his wife don't hang out with any more of those ecoterrorists. But suddenly I'm realizing maybe he just happened into a good cause where he could apply his shady underworld behavior. He was sort of gently humming Kenny Rogers under his breath today. God, I just realized it was The Gambler. I'm a little frightened that I haven't seen David. I suppose he's trying to come up with the money, somehow. I should of thought of the repercussions.

Bicycle for Ransom

Introducing David. He did not heed the warnings about the potential fate of his bent, cruddy, ridiculous, one-wheeled bicycle left chained to a parking meter for weeks on end in the front of my Cafe. Also introducing David's bicycle, formerly Eileen's bicycle, loved beyond reason and compare despite having seen far better days. Missing a wheel at the moment. If you knew my family you would understand how easy it was for me to come up with the idea of kidnapping the bike as a natural consequence type thing. Eeeeeasy as pie. Yet this morning I am having difficulty managing to think up a clever way to return it.
Possession, I have heard, is 9/10ths of the law. I am not a lawyer, but right now I believe that statement to be true. Time and feelings of possession seem to grow with each other. Like secret knowledge, possession sparks different instincts. One can never go back to one's prepossession thoughts. Of course, people hear about employee theft all the time. But they hear far less about employer theft-- yet here I sit. Employer, thief. To be fair to myself, I did give warning. And I have had help. What price? Next I shall introduce Charlie & Colin, A.K.A The Bad Guys (They wrote the ransom note. Actually, several ransom notes. God, where they punched in when they did that?)