MOVING: to WordPress and a sweet new house

http://escapefrombk.wordpress.com/

Moving this piece over to WordPress. Change your bookmarks if you were silly enough to bookmark me!

Also moving into this awesome new house! Many more details to come on the WordPress page.

New Year, New Resolutions

The holidays have come and gone once again. We managed to take three family visit trips in the course of three weeks...and I only took one extra day off of work. We've been to the north Georgia mountains, northeastern Pennsylvania, and Augusta, Georgia; and I can't be happier about doing absolutely nothing this weekend. We got a bit of snow in Knoxville this week, and if all goes well I won't leave the house again until Monday morning.

I've never set a serious New Year's Resolution for myself, but this year I've got a good one going. By the end of 2010 I want to buy a house. And more ambitiously, I want to do it by the end of April to qualify for the $8k tax credit for first time home buyers. If we still lived in New York, it could easily be another ten years before I could even consider buying a home, and the definition of "home" would be a questionable one bedroom apartment in south Brooklyn. Knoxville is an incredibly affordable place to buy real estate. The prices are shocking to people from the northeast. A nicely updated small house in a nice neighborhood is attainable for under $150k.

It's intimidating to make a decision of this scale, but more than anything I'm super excited. I can't wait to live in a place I can be proud of. The rental house we live in here is fine; it's a roof over our heads, and it's about twice the square footage of our last apartment. But there's no motivation to make it better. I'd like to think that in a house of my own, I'll gradually work to make it great. Imagine having a home that's filled with only the things you love, painted in the colors you choose, and every corner is yours. I can't really imagine it yet. But it's fun to.

I'll leave you with some highlights from the holiday festivities. In preparation I made my first batch of perogies (a.k.a. pirohi, pirushki) from scratch:

Some delicious sugar and spice nuts packaged up as gifts in recycled jars:

Our Christmas trees for the last two years have come from this strange little farm that's less than 2 miles from our house. You walk up the hill and choose your little tree, then a man with a chainsaw comes and cuts it and throws it in the back of his gator to take it down to your car. Good family fun to be had.

And after about two years, I finally finished another knitting project I'm happy with. Here's the colorful Noro striped scarf I made in December:

Happy new year, friends!

Care of the Earth CSA

This fall I stumbled upon a new local farm called Care of the Earth Community Farm that was offering a fall season CSA farm share. I've always been interested in the CSA concept, but it always seemed like such a big commitment of time and money. But since this farm just got up and running this year, they decided to offer a partial season from September through November. So it was only a 12 week commitment, thus significantly cheaper than a full season. So I did it...and it was GREAT.

I went with the half share, which turned out to be just the right amount each week. A typical box from early September might have been 3 summer squahses, 2 green peppers, 4 jalepeno peppers, 2 large tomatoes, one small head of lettuce, one bunch of swiss chard, one bunch of herbs, a few small potatoes, a bag of green beans, and maybe some other little things too.

By the late fall there was a lot of butternut squash, carrots, beets, brussels sprouts, cabbage, and dark greens (so much damn kale!) I found myself cooking a lot of different things that I would never buy at the store, because I had to use it all up. I learned that roasted beets are amazing, and that I don't much care for turnips or radishes (especially that evil daikon radish).

They had a little open house one Saturday afternoon at the farm. It's just outside Knoxville to the east side of town. They have about 30 acres total. For this first short season, one young woman did ALL of the work herself. Everything. She fed 50 people for three months. I think that's an admirable job.

The last CSA pickup was the Sunday before Thanksgiving. And now, two weeks later, I'm really missing it. The freshness of this produce was like nothing else I've ever had. I guess I got used to it, because after a weeks worth of Kroger produce again, it's just not the same. I was wavering on whether or not to make the investment for their full season next year, but the last week or so has completely made the decision for me. I can't wait until it starts again in April.

Fall Saturday

Yesterday was awesome. We had absolutely nothing to do. So I decided it was time to stop mourning the passing of another summer and embrace the fall. Pretty much the best way to do this is to cook things that contain pumpkin, cinnamon and/or apples. So I did.

Seamus, don't you dare.

These pumpkin muffins were really good. I made them as soon as I woke up...somewhere around 10:30. You really can't beat that. Then with the rest of the can of pumpkin, I made this pumpkin apple butter recipe, courtesy of Nicole. It's pretty delicious, I was impressed with the texture, and how easy it is to make. Next time I think I might add more pumpkin than apple, since it basically just tastes like good apple butter. I used a honeycrisp apple because Kroger manipulates my eating habits by putting things on sale.

I also thought that this might be a good day to drag out this old bread board that used to be my grandmother's. It's a big flat wooden board that kind of latches onto the countertop so it doesn't slide around. I discovered that the back edge of it has our last name scratched into it, but uh, spelled wrong. Missing the "k":

So I didn't really feel like making bread, per se. Too much waiting and not enough instant gratification. So I decided to try my hand at some scratch made noodles. I guess you could say pasta, or spaghetti, but they didn't really resemble any kind of actual pasta, so let's call them noodles. I used this method.

Now there isn't anything particularly autumnal about this dinner. But c'mon, I made my own noodles, that's impressive, right?

Please excuse the ugly dishes. I've been eating off of these for close to 20 years and I'm not buying new ones until they all break.

The noodles came out a little rubbery. I'm thinking that this could have been caused by either 1.) overworking the dough, or 2.) overcooking them in the water. I have absolutely no way of telling, and nothing else to compare it to. So maybe I'll try it again sometime and do something differently. Or maybe I'll get the Kitchen Aid pasta attachment and they won't look like rubber worms next time. Either way, it was a delicious fall Saturday.

The Finest Bacon Money Can Buy

It's time for the world to know about Benton's. Benton's Smoky Mountain Country Hams. Benton's bacon. It's an authentic delicacy. It's only made in East Tennessee. It'll change your life.


This little hole in the wall on highway 455 near Madisonville, TN is a real deal smokehouse. It's every pig's nightmare. They smoke and cure country hams and their bacon is really something else. It's like no bacon I've ever had before. Think about that expensive thick cut applewood smoked bacon you can get at Whole Foods or Fresh Market, but ten times better. It's really meaty, and the hickory smoke is amazing. This stuff smells delicious before you even start cooking it. Open up the white butcher paper and the whole kitchen already smells good.


Foodies and chefs are obsessed with it. They ship bacon all over the country. But not many make it to their actual store. It's staffed by a crew of Tennessee good ol' boys who will answer any question with a smile. And...it's cheap. It's really a great deal. We got 2 lb of fresh cut slab bacon for less than $8. (They'll ship 4 lb of it for $21.) Yet another perk of living in Knoxville.

We finished out the order with 3 huge, beautiful NY Strip steaks, one of which he gave to us for free for some reason. Plus a little packet of Benton's prosciutto. "What? Rednecks in the holler making prosciutto? How do they even know what that is? Only Italians can make prosciutto." Don't underestimate a man who smokes pork for a living. It's effin' delicious.

Tomato City

Garden update: stuff grows. I've gotten at least three pints of cherry tomatoes already, and I'm about to go out and pick another bowl full of 'em. The first two big tomatoes are starting to turn now, and there are about a dozen more green ones. Bell peppers are growing, even though the plants never got very big. Not the poor little eggplant though...he never made it.

The neighbor just brought over 4 massive English cucumbers from his yard. Now I need to go figure out what to do with those. Tzatziki anyone?

Homespun Neighborhood Fireworks

I didn't realize until yesterday that Tennessee is the first state I've ever lived in where fireworks are completely legal. It's a new concept- you can buy colorful novelties filled with gun powder and shoot them off on the city streets. The kids squeal, the drunk rednecks sometimes burn and blind themselves, and the rest of us get a damn good display. It's 100 times better than going somewhere crowded and waiting in the hot sun for six hours before it gets dark for a 15 minute show. (Ever been to the DC mall on Independence Day?)

We were lucky enough to have our two immediate neighbors spend about $200 on the best stuff they could find. One even had the Pyromaniacs Discount Card from the Fireworks Supermarket. I'd say it was worth every penny of someone else's money. Enjoy these blurry, yet fascinating pictures, all taken from our front stoop.

Hot Springs, NC

Three day weekend, how about that! We took this one to Hot Springs, NC. I found this crazy treehouse village campground on the dang ol' interweb called Creek Ridge Camping and thought we'd give it a try. I heard some people at work talking about Hot Springs and it's claim to fame, some really...uhh...hot springs. Most people go there, stay in a cabin, and take a soak in these hot tubs that you rent by the hour and they fill up for each party with actual hot mountain spring water. But you know how we like pretending we're homeless on the weekends and "roughing it"? Well, I just had to choose the most rugged organized campground in the area, and go there instead. So let's preface this by saying that I think the next time we go to Hot Springs we're renting a cabin and relaxing in hot tubs. But I'll have to report on that later.

The basic deal with this crazy place is that that have a handful of really sweet campsites along this little creek down in a holler. You can't park your cars anywhere close to your site, so you hike in from the cabin at the top of the mountain and the guy who runs the place drives you gear down about 3/4 of the way on his little 4-wheeler. This would be awesome, except when the guy is gone for the whole afternoon and his hippie teenage nephew isn't allowed to drive the 4-wheeler. This resulted in more trips up and down that damn hill than I care to remember. Just in case you ever go here- pack like you're backpacking not car camping. Here's the trusty Cherokee at the top of the hill-


But the good news is that these little sites they have down by the creek are just lovely. Each one has a covered deck structure they call "peekas" or something made-up like that. Some of them are more treehouse-ey than others, and ours - "Birds Nest" - was kind of close to the ground. But cool nonetheless.


The sites were nicely separated and fairly private, which they ought to be for all the effort involved. There was a thick understory of fraser magnolia trees (according to the eastern forests book). And being right on the side of the creek, it was really pleasant to sleep to that sound. Nice rock fire ring, with which to burn all the firewood I had the teenage nephew carry down for us.



It was actually a good thing to have the covered deck at the site, because it rained for a good part of the weekend. Seamus hid behind the tent. He's our lil' dumbass.

Little Spring Garden

Well it's been a long, mild Knoxville winter, but in between thunderstorms the sun's out and things are looking up. For the past 8 spring seasons, I've lived in apartments with no sunlight, balconies, or backyards. This is the first chance I've had to plant anything close to a garden. There was a lot of talk all winter about tilling a huge plot in the back yard and growing rows of vegetables. Not so much action on that front, though. The yard's not flat, we rent this house, and it just wasn't really worth all that effort this year- particularly since I'm not even totally sure how to grow vegetables anyway.

So my 2009 container garden was born:


Now there are certain things that you can't really grow in a little pot, that I would have wanted to plant, but they're going to need to wait until next year (namely squashes and corn). I ventured down to the enormous Stanley's garden center in south Knoxville, and picked out some plants: yellow bell peppers, "sweet olive" grape tomatoes, "big rainbow" heirloom tomatoes, skinny eggplant, sweet basil, purple basil, sage, and chives. I rounded out the party with a big honkin' dill plant from a dude in a truck at the farmer's market this morning.

I'm pretty sure that the full size tomatoes aren't in big enough containers to really grow to their full potential. I'll be surprised if they take off. But the herbs are looking really great. The purple basil is the scene stealer. It's doubled in size in the first two weeks.


I have high hopes for the little eggplant though. And the grape tomatoes have taken off like crazy in two weeks. All the rain has helped I'm sure. Also, I think shoving three plants in one planter might have been overdoing it. But I have a feeling that it'll be a huge bush soon, and in a few weeks start shooting out more tiny tomatoes than I know what to do with.


I promise to take more pictures, especially when delicious food starts growing on my back stoop. Happy spring.

Puppy Goes to the Mountains

This weekend we took our new puppy, Seamus, on his first little outing in the woods. We packed up and headed out to Paint Creek Campground near Greeneville, TN on the northern edge of the Cherokee National Forest. Paint Creek turned out to be a nice little campground very far off the beaten path. I can't believe that anyone actually makes it out that far, but lo and behold it was filled up by dusk. The only method we have for finding these campgrounds is a guidebook. But it looked like many of the other folks there were locals. Particularly the burly ladies I borrowed a can opener from (terrible packing oversight).

The little bugger was a pretty good boy, save for some unnecessary barking at neighbors, and a 2 AM out-of-tent rest stop. He liked the falling leaves and his first sighting of a large body of water (no swimming lessons yet). He's only about 5 months old, but soon enough, he'll get his own backpack and be ready to hit the trail for real.

pizza! pizza!

I'm fully aware that with my decision to leave New York I have also forsaken the best pizza in the world. From what I understand it's futile to try and find great pizza in Knoxville, but on the other hand I've never met a pizza I didn't like.

My earliest pizza memory is sitting in the back seat of my mom's minivan after picking up two lovely cheese pizzas conveniently packaged together with paper and cardboard from the Little Caesar's across from Dobbin Center. It was my favorite, and damn was that ride home a long one.

For years I've been under the impression that Little Caesar's all but went under, existing only at the checkout of select K-Mart locations. Upon arrival in Knoxville, I found out that I was wrong. Little Caesar's still thrives in the American South! They've got a new gimmick now, you don't have to buy two pizzas at a time any more, but you also don't have to call ahead. They just constantly make pizzas, and they do enough business to have them "hot-n-ready" for pizza lovers with no foresight.


We got a pepperoni pizza, crazy bread, and even crazy sauce for $8.18. What a crazy meal it was. For the most part the actual pizza was just how I remembered it from childhood. There's sort of this thick shelf of cheese above the sauce, and it's prone to big burnt bubbles on top. So to all those I've discussed the extinction of Little Caesar's with, rejoice in the fact that I was wrong.

Grainger County Goodness

So one of the first things that I've grown to love about Knoxville in the summer is the Grainger County tomatoes. Grainger is the next county to the north, and they know how to grow 'em. So we decided to go to the source last Friday and head up to Ritter Farms about 45 minute drive north of Knoxville. They grow and sell wonderfully fresh produce, and cook up delicious meat and three lunches on weekdays.

The lunch we had there was the best. I had been craving some serious southern style meat and three since we got here, and this place serves the best for 5 bucks a plate (plus a dollar extra for the sweet tea). And on the way out we picked up a bunch of those tomatoes, some pickling cucumbers, half a dozen ears of corn, and some homemade apple butter. With a giant lunch for two and three grocery bags full of produce and preserves, it only set us back $27.


So what to do with this beautiful, perfect produce? Well, I'm in research and training for doing some real canning and preserving this fall, so with the cucs I decided to make some refrigerator pickles. I had done this before, but with a recipe from Roy Finamore's book that turned out too sweet for my taste. So this time, I had to turn to homemaker extraordinaire, Martha Stewart for a recipe. This one didn't have any sugar at all, so we'll see how they turn out. Only 5 more days to wait. I did half of them as spears and half as slices to see which work better.


As for the tomatoes, I've never made a real sauce before from real live fresh tomatoes. But I figured it couldn't be all that different from using canned whole tomatoes, especially if you simmer the hell out of it for a few hours. So I winged it and made a marinara sauce from the best fresh tomatoes I've ever had. It was absolutely delicious; I've never had a red sauce that actually tastes like all the vegetables that are in it. And I've got a freezer full of it.

Before the ol' blender stick went in:


And after:


Let this be the official beginning of my list- "Why living in Knoxville, Tennessee is the best" 1.) Grainger County Produce

First Weekend out in the Smokies

So here we are in Tennessee, and the Camry's official!


We got the first chance this weekend to head out into the hills and do some camping in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Our first choice was Big Creek Campground, a quaint little 15 site walk-in joint. Alas, it was already filled by Friday afternoon. So it goes, and so we headed the 12 miles over the mountain to Cosby campground. Of the big national park campgrounds, Cosby is supposed to be one of the best. And it was nice, they were right. The trees were tall and it really was situated down in the holler between huge peaks. And plenty of room for pancake cookin' on the new stove.




The sites were a little packed-in and close together. But it turned out to be a pretty friendly tent campground with nice flat tent pads. If they had filled up every site, it would have been uncomfortably cramped, but as it were there were a lot of open sites. Some Texans moved in across the road from us, and aside from their pickup truck-mounted shower, they weren't too bad for neighbors.

On Saturday we took a nice hike from the campground to Hen Wallow Falls, about 5 miles round trip, 3 leisurely hours. The trails in the national park so far are really heavily used, but thus really well maintained.

Tree roots paved the trail.


Danny and the falls.


Catchin' crawdads.


Don't have to get your feet wet.


And the best part of the whole weekend? Not having to drive through Staten Island traffic to get back on Sunday night. Here's to many more!

A Permanent Departure

Yes, it's been a while since anything new has been posted up here. But, something substantial has been in the works. It's been too long now that we've been living unhappily in New York, and it's time to do something about it. It's now 100% official, we're moving to Knoxville, TN at the end of this month.

We found a little house in the North Hills neighborhood to rent from a super cool landlord (who's not out to rip you off like every landlord in NY). Here it is, 2454 Amber Street:



And so now that we won't be "escaping" from Brooklyn every weekend, but permanently, the nature of this blog will have to change. I'd like to keep posting updates here about our outdoor endeavors in the Smoky Mountains and little highlights of life outside of the Northeast. Cheers!