Farm Fresh Deviled Eggs

We were recently invited to a pot-luck at nearby Tomten Farm, and I was going around in circles trying to think of something to take...  And then it came to me, Deviled Eggs, of course.  They're the perfect pot-luck dish, and always the first thing to go.  I was going to need a bit of creativity though if I wanted all the ingredients to come from the farm, and avoid using store-bought pickle relish, mustard, and mayo.  And this is what happened:

Dill & Radish Deviled Eggs

(This recipe does not come with measurements, so just keep testing the flavor and texture until it's the way you like it.)

Eggs- collected from the chickens that day
Mayo- home-made, recipe below

Leeks- in place of onions, that we don't have this time of year

Raddishes- I used mild French Breakfast raddishes, but would have preferred something with more spice and bite.

Dill- freshly picked from the dome green-house

Mustard Flowers- great mustard flavor, and bright garnish

Salt, Pepper, and Paprika- store bought, except for the pepper that I harvested on a farm in Belize

-Hard boiled eggs are always a struggle for me, but I followed James Beard's instructions and started the eggs in cold water, brought them to a boil, cooked for 10 minutes, and put them straight into cold water.

-When cool, I sliced them in half, scooping out the deep yellow yolks. I mixed the yolks with the mayo, finely chopped leeks, raddishes, dill (lots of it), and salt and pepper. 

-After scooping a dollop of filling back into each egg-white, I added a small bunch of mustard flowers and sprinkled with paprika.

This, I'm sure, was only the beginning of my Deviled Egg experiment for the summer.

Simple DIY Mayo Instructions:

2 Egg Yolks, 1 1/2C vegetable oil, 1T vinegar, salt and pepper.
-Wisk egg yolks with a pinch of salt
-Keep wisking, adding oil one drop at a time (We didin't have an electric mixer, but I hope you do!) until a quarter of the oil has been blended
-At this point, beat in the vinegar, and then return to wisking in the remaining oil.
-The mayo should be thick and creamy, and will ticken even more in the refrigerator.

Mak Kimchi

I can't believe it either, but I made kimchi!  Well not just "I," because Alyssa and George were the team leaders and we were instructed via video by the adorable Maangchi.  You can watch her too at http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/easy-kimchi.  This recipe is worth the couple hours, and the perfect project to have friends come help with, not to mention it's a great way to use up some produce from around the house (or farm, in our case).

Maangchi's recipe calls for the following (but we made some changes, according to what we had from the farm.)
10 pounds Nappa Cabbage (we used a mix of cabbage, bok choi, baby bok choi, and tatsoi)
1 Cup Salt
1/4 Cup Sugar
1/2 Cup Sweet Rice Flour
3 Cups Water
1 Cup Garlic
1 Cup Onion
1-2 Tablespoons Ginger
1 Cup Fish Sauce (about half for us)
Squid (which we ommitted)
2 Cups Leek (scallions instead)
10 Green Onions
1/4 Cup Carrot (or more, if you like it like we do)
2 Cups Radish (we had big, beautiful turnips)

So, here goes:

Cabbage
-Chop the cabbage into bite-size pieces, soak in cold water in a huge bowl, and sprinkle with salt.  Every half hour our so you need to toss the cabbage and add salt; the whole cup of salt should be used on the 10 pounds of cabbage which will pull most of the moisture out of the greens.
-After and hour and a half of this, rise the cabbage well to remove all the salt, and let drain.

Keep soaking; Keep salting!

Porridge

-Bring the 3 C water and sweet rice flour to a boil, stirring frequently.

-Add the 1/4 C sugar and continue cooking until translucent.

-Let cool

Kimchi Paste

-One at a time, add the 1C fish sauce (or less!), 2 1/2 C hot pepper flakes (we use about 2 C), 1 C crushed garlic, 1-2 T minced ginger, and 1 C minced onion to the porridge.

-Now add in the green onions, leeks, raddish and carrots (cut them how you like, thin slices or julienned) and mix it all together.

"Action! Mix the cabbage with the kimchi paste!" as Maangchi says.
-That's right, just mix it all together.  (If you're doing this by hand, please wear gloves!)
-Now store it in tupperware, or glass jars and wait for it to ferment... or start eating it as soon as your little heart desires.  It will ferment slower in the fridge, so you won't get that sour flavor so fast.

Our kimchi project yielded a total of 1.625 gallons from 8 pounds of cabbage, and now we can use our creation in fried rice, as a stew, served as a side dish, or the perfect condiment.

Better-Than-Bake-Shop-Bolivian-Banana-Bread

Banana bread was my first real success in Bolivia and quickly became a staple in our house.  Every Latin American country has their own version of banana bread, but more than the flavor, what I remember are the women selling it.

The women at Lago Atitlan, Guatemala are hard to forget.  They balanced trays of banana bread on their heads, while relentlessly howling "Pan de Banano" until you, along with your eardrums, had been pounded into submission and bought a piece.  I later lived with the wonderful Emily in Xela, Guatemala, who would call out "Pan de Banano" and other varriations in her scarily accurate impressions.

As for my Bolivian Banana Bread, I can say with confidence that the countless loaves it were better than those of the Mennonite-run Bake Shop in Xela (to my Xela roomates, this is not meant to be a brag, simply the truth.) 

For my bread, I would buy bottles of honey corked with a worn down nub of corncob, and half-rotten bananas stacked up like Lincoln logs on crates.  At home, my cooling rack was a spare refrigerator rack, and I used a serrated knife to grind the nutmeg.  After picking seeds out of my suppodesly seedless rasins, and chopping Brazil nuts (which Bolivians confusingly call almendras) I would follow this well-tested recipe:

1/3 C Vegetable Oil

1/2 C Honey

1t Vanilla Extract

2 Eggs

2 C Smashed Banana (I like it with a bit more, or to substitute some of the oil)

1 1/3 C Whole-Wheat Flour

1/2 t Salt

Cinnamon & Nutmeg to taste

1 t Baking Soda

1/4 C Hot Water

1/2 C Chopped Nuts

-Preheat oven to 165° C

-Beat together Oil, Honey, Eggs; then stir in Banana (I mix in the Cinnamon and Nutmeg when I smash the banana) and Vanilla

-Add Flour and Salt

-Add Baking Soda to hot Water and add to batter

-Blend in Nuts

-Bake 50-55 minutes is a greased 5"x9" pan

-Cool 30 minutes before serving

So there you've got it folks, and here's one important note to keep in mind: I strongly believe in eating local and have officially given up bananas since leaving Latin America.  So please think about it before you buy something such as bananas that are grown with pesticides, shipped from so far away, and grown/harvested by underpaid and undersupported workers.  Not to be a downer, but this is important, so maybe hold out for an upcoming carrot or zuchinni bread recipe!

Food, where it comes from, how we eat it, and why we love it.

Well, a big "Welcome Back" to everyone who hasn't read the blog in a while, including myself!

Writing Worms Make Dirt during my Latin travels was almost torturous. I didn't feel like I had the knack for telling travel stories; life was far more interesting and exciting than I could portray it. And lets be honest, I wrote about food more than anything else anyway. So from now on I am staying true to myself and writing about just that: Food, where it comes from, how we eat it, and why we love it.

Each of my posts will be inspired by a favorite recipe; and fortunately for all of us, most recipes are linked to a specific memory, come with a family story, or were an unlikely success. Some entries are linked to my bake-craz-days in Bolivia, many from my current life on a farm outside of Montrose, and others from my Nana. So, with a more enthusiastic, enlightened, and hopefully mouth-watering approach, I am re-entering the world of blogging, and Worms Make Dirt.

Do, Welcome Back, and I hope you enjoy!

Hay Campo

Trekking in Bolivia is an incredible mix or rivers, mountains, farm land, fossils, rock paintings, small pueblos, and incredible views, but getting to all of these wonderful places requires transport...

We call if a flota; a truck cab with a 20 foot flat bed behind it which holds an average of 75 people. The sides are wooden beams up to my chin, with a few slots to look through towards the top and with small, low doors that swing open and have narrow metal ladders at the sides to climb in.
Once inside you're submerged in quite the overwhelming scene: wrinkled old women showing friends their new chicks and kittens wriggling in woven plastic bags, children eating boiled corn and potatoes out of their baseball caps, women breast feeding, and young boys dodging low branches as they sit along the edges holding onto the metal bars that arch across above our heads. Corn, potatoes, alfalfa, clothing, and possessions are all wrapped in brightly striped, hand woven awayus and stacked along the roof of the truck's cab.
The abuelitos and abuelitas seem impossibly resilient with their scarcely-toothed grins, work-stiffened hands, darkly wrinkled skin that has seen more sun that I ever will, and feet strapped into sandals made of recycled tires. The men chew coca leaves that they keep in a woven chuspa or empty milk bag, stripping the leaf from the veins. It stains their teeth a somehow pleasant light green and leaves a thick, dark film on their lips. The earthy smell of coca permeates everything and mixes with the mildewed scent of wool, wet from the rain. Below their white felt, or cowboy-reminiscent leather hats women gossip and visit in Quechua. The language is noticeably different from Spanish, most distinctly in the throaty pronunciation of the letter q and the vowels a, i, and u. These vibrant conversations mix with radios hanging from neighbors necks, and the moan of the engine to haul everyone up the steep switch-backs.
Throughout the trip open stares of elders, wide eyes of young children, and questioning glances of shy neighbors imply a short-lived interest in us. The ride is rarely comfortable and generally longer than expected, but you would be hard pressed to find a more genuinely Bolivian experience.

"The Mountain that Eats Men"

Our trip to Potosí may have been my most serious/though-provoking experience so far in Bolivia. We read about it in school, occasionally hear about it in the news (maybe), and are told by all other travelers to go, but being there is another world!
Potosí is considered the highest city in the world (1,400 feet) and was at one point the richest city in the world (but very obviously not anymore).

So, here's the story:
In the 1540s Conquistadores discovered for themselves the silver in Cerro Rico, the hill looming above the city of Potosí. They wasted no time in the mining process or the exploitation of indigenous and African-slaves, nor did they waste time in sending the riches back to Europe. Very little of the estimated 137 million pounds of silver extracted from the Cerro remained in Bolivia; and it is also estimated that in 300 years, 8 million workers died in the mines. In the 1800s the depleting silver resources led to mining for inexpensive tin and minerals, and to the decline of Potosí.
The nickname, “The Mountain that Eats Men” leaves little room for interpretation of the current working conditions. The tour we took is considered to be very non-touristy and more of the real deal, and our guides were former miners. We first saw a small plant where they extract some of the metals, using techniques and materials that made all of us cringe. Then we headed up the Cerro to the functioning Candelaria Mine in our boots, headlamps, bandannas, and other gear, to start out several-hour journey in the mines. There are still about 8,000 miners working today, ranging from 10 to 70 years old, and all with a life expectancy of about 40 years. If they don't die from silicosis, accidents are still very common... The workers say in the mine for up to 24-hour shifts, and seem to live almost exclusively on coca leaves (we took them gifts of drinks, coca, and dynamite- but not alcohol or cigarettes!).
About five minutes into the mine we were told to turn around and run, and then jumped up to a niche in the side, to avoid a cart (without brakes) coming out on the tracks. From there we continued on, meeting workers along the way and seeing the different steps of the process. It's hard to describe exactly what the inside of the mine is like, so imagine that everything is much worse than I explain it to be: we went up and down spinning ladders, steep and slippery vertical tunnels, and very narrow passages, avoided touching any of the pipes that were said to be “dangerous”-although we didn't know why, sweated and froze depending on where we were in the mine, and always left our bandannas on to avoid breathing in the thick dust.
It was an incredible experience, and one I don't really desire to re-live, although I want to meet more of the miners, as some of them were incredible people. I do partly credit our survival to the “Tio.” “Tio” is literally “the devil,” and each mine has one. He is believed to be responsible for accidents, etc. in the mine and offerings of coca, alcohol, and cigarettes are made to ask him for protection.

Please take the time to watch this documentary and take a look for yourself (the mine we went to is very similar to this one):
http://www.thedevilsminer.com

Bo-Diggidy-Livia

I love La Paz!!!
Witches Market- Dried llama fetuses, candles, jars full of good-luck charms and unrecognizable organic materials, ceramic figures, and all sorts of offerings to Pacha Mama (mother earth).
Black Market- Endless blocks of literally anything you could possibly need to buy, we got to know the fish women and the hardware/plumbing streets pretty well (more on that later).
NáMasté- Possibly the best veggie restaurant I've been to this year!
El Alto- Technically another city that borders (and towers high above) La Paz. It has incredible views of La Paz and a never-ending market.
Museums- Highlights being a poster exhibition dedicated to an incredible Japanese artist and the mask section of the folklore museum (I tried to take pictures of myself imitating the masks- scary!).
Coca Museum- Coca isn't a novelty down here folks, it's a prominent and important part of daily life!
Robots- The “Fancy Dress Party” was more than a good excuse to spend about 20 hours (not in a row) working on ROBOT costumes! An Aussie friend and I went to the hardware/plumbing section of the market for supplies, and got to work. Lots of laughing throughout the process and a great time at the party! Plus we won Best Costumes!