Rational Jar of Honey bio picture

Bon Appetit!

Ashley and Joel Selby are the creative minds (and hands) behind Rational Jar of Honey, the culinary side of their studio, This Paper Ship. They live in a historic apartment in downtown Greensboro and consider themselves graphic designer-farmers, combining technology and nature in their every day lives.

What they lack in culinary education, they make up for by love of food, creativity, design skills, and (not to mention) hundreds of hours spent watching Food Network and poring over their cookbook library. They are inspired by the recent explosion of awesome food blogs and want to bring their own style and tastes to the mix.

Here's to good eating!

Sweet Eats: Sushi Republic in Greensboro, NC

For the majority of this blog, we’ve been documenting our adventures in home cooking and growing our own food (with the exception of our post on guilty pleasures in which we raved about cheeseburger-flavored Doritos & cake-flavored Fruity Pebbles), but we also LOVE eating out. We can’t do it all too often on a freelance budget, but when we do, we want to start sharing our experiences here in a post series called Sweet Eats!

This past week we frequented our (so far) favorite sushi place in Greensboro, Sushi Republic. After we left Shepherdstown about a year ago, we lost our favorite place to get sushi and pad thai, and we feel like we definitely gained an awesome sushi place when we moved to Greensboro. It’s got the feel of a slightly fancy, trendy urban place, but they won’t look at you weird if you come in and order a single roll and an appetizer, which we did this time. And oh buddy, they were delicious:

Shrimp tempura roll
Shrimp tempura sushi

Appetizer: Crispy ginger chicken with cilantro mayo
Crispy ginger chicken + cilantro mayo

Dessert: Cherry tempura bomb ice cream
Cherry tempura bomb icecream

They’re located on the little strip where Tate St. intersects Walker Ave, near UNCG. Check out their menu at sushirepublicgso.com.

Spaghetti & meatball (strawberry) cupcakes

Spaghetti & meatball cupcakes

My cousin Steph & her husband Jake (our best friends) came down from Johnson City, TN over the weekend to pick up their new kitten (we rescued from under our house) and visit with us for a few days. We had a blast riding our bikes around the city, picnicking, chatting, and baking while the guys were away. My mother-in-law, Tammy, who also shares the joy of gawking at all things cute, recently bought me the book “Hello Cupcake!” that’s filled with the most adorable and complicated cupcakes you ever did see. Steph and I chose to tackle the spaghetti and meatball one (with slight alterations of course). We had a blast making them and they turned out DELICIOUS and moist!

For the cupcake part we used the “Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes” book and followed the strawberry cupcakes recipe using about a pound of fresh strawberries from our local farmer’s market. It was a simple recipe (basically a plain vanilla cupcake with chopped strawberries folded in). The strawberries ended up making the cupcakes stay really moist after baking. They were so yummy we saved half of them as muffins and left the icing off completely!

For the spaghetti topping we whipped up some home-made frosting using confectioners sugar, butter, water, and vanilla suitable for piping on some nice solid noodles. We piled the stringy icing on the top and then rolled Lindor Truffles in strawberry jam (for the meatballs and spaghetti sauce). The original recipe called for Ferrero Rocher chocolates but Steph doesn’t like them so we opted for the truffles instead. The only problem with that is that the jam slipped right off of them! The Ferrero Rocher chocolates probably would have retained the sauce-like jam better. We still thought it looked pretty convincing! Then you just top them off with some grated white chocolate to look like parmesan cheese! Perfect!

They turned out very rich but oh-so-tasty! I highly recommend you try to make some with your own favorite cupcake recipe! They are so fun. Kids would love them!

Urban garden progress…

We love May and we love May gardens! Things are starting to grow more rapidly in our front garden and pots. We’re happy when we look out our window and see so much green!

Potted garden
We have a ton of tomatoes and we can hardly wait for them to start producing! We got another one today from CSA as well. Mmmm, summer. Tomatoes just may be the best part about it!

May CSA
The Urban Harvest CSA tomato plant and bok choy.

May CSA
Urban Harvest CSA lettuce and fava beans.

Ornamental Pepper, May
Ashley is especially excited about the progress of the ornamental pepper from her wedding bouquet. It has really taken off! It will be fun to see it finally produce!

We hope to begin planting in the community garden this month as well (as soon as we pay for our spot). We have some edamame that could use a good transplant so that it gets more sun and space. The community garden is really looking incredible these days! We’re so excited to be a part of it.

Community Garden
This photo was taken a few weeks ago (it’s even grown a lot since then)!

Spring radishes

Radishes

Our first tiny batch of radishes came up from the garden! More to come soon! Aren’t they beautiful colors?

Italian Strawberry Custard Tart

Italian Strawberry tart

I’ve been really needing to make a tart ever since I got my new tart pan. It’s hands down one of my favorite things to bake! We had gone to the farmer’s market downtown over the weekend and bought some strawberries so it was the perfect excuse.

This tart was based off of a sour cherry custard tart in my Dolce Italiano book. You can see my version of the recipe below.

Italian Strawberry tart

Sweet Tart Crust (I use this for every tart recipe. It’s a staple!):

2 1/3 cups all purpose unbleached flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
freshly grated zest of 1 lemon
1 1/2 sticks of unsalted organic butter (cold & cut into 1/4 inch cubes)
1 large egg from roaming/cage-free/local hens
1 egg yolk from roaming/cage-free/local hens
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup heavy cream (I had to use coconut milk cream because it’s all I had this time)

Blend flour, sugar, salt, and lemon zest in standing mixer bowl or food processor. Add cold, cubed butter to bowl and process until it reaches a sandy constancy and has no butter lumps.

In another bowl whisk together the egg, yolk, vanilla extract, and heavy cream. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients in mixer (preferably with a dough hook) until the dough comes together.

Remove from bowl and form and smooth with hands. Make a ball, flatten into a disk, wrap in saran-wrap, and place in the fridge to chill for 2 hours.

Strawberry Custard Tart:

Sweet tart crust (from above)
4 large egg yolks from roaming/cage-free/local hens
1/2 cup granulated sugar (and more for sprinkling)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
pinch of kosher salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup heavy cream (again, I had to use the coconut milk cream instead)
About 1 pound strawberries (preferably local)

On a floured board roll out the dough until it’s slightly bigger around than the tart pan (about an 11-inch circle). Transfer to tart pan (with removable sides and bottom), press into sides until flush with top of pan, and trim as needed. Chill the tart while making filling.

Preheat oven to 325 F and position rack in the center of the oven.

In a bowl whisk the egg yolks with the granulated sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Add the vanilla extract and beat in with the heavy cream.

Cut strawberries length-wise in half and arrange attractively in a circular pattern in the tart shell. Make sure they touch and fit snug. Pour the custard over the strawberries and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

Place tart pan on a large baking sheet to prevent dripping into the oven. Bake tart for 30-45 minutes or until golden brown throughout. You may have to form a pie crust shield out of foil to prevent the sides from getting more brown than the middle.

Allow to cool for a little while before removing from tart pan. Stuff face repeatedly! Great with a nice warm cup of tea and incredible the next day chilled!

Enjoy!

—Ash

Garden Updates

The last couple of weeks have been insane for us as a studio, but we’ve still somehow managed to take advantage of suddenly warm temperatures in the NC Piedmont and work on our early Spring 2010 garden! We’ve continued to monitor our container radishes, strawberry, carrots, and broccoli rabe, as well as plant container tomatoes, eggplant, and bell peppers. We also finished preparing the soil in the flowerbed out front and planted a good variety of veggies and flowers, some that we picked up pre-started from the gigantic NC State Piedmont Farmers’ Market out on Rt. 40. And, of course, we can’t stop planting herbs.

Radishes
Sprouting radishes in a container (earlier this spring).

Lettuce mix
Container lettuce mix (our gram bought for us in New Bern, NC).

Lavender
Potted Lavender (because it takes forever to flower and we don’t want to leave it behind if we move).

Mint
Potted mint (growing rapidly).

Ornamental pepper (from Ashley's wedding bouquet)
Ornamental pepper in a tea pot from Ashley’s wedding bouquet. Crazy! If this thing survives we’ll have an heirloom wedding flower from a Shepherdstown, WV farmer!

Mixed radishes
The radishes now.

Yellow brandywine tomato
Yellow brandywine tomato plant.

Our front garden
Our front garden (just below our porch). There’s surprisingly a lot of space!

Our potted garden
Some of the many potted plants we’ve started all around our porch and front steps.

Artificially Delicious

As anyone who has been reading Rational Jar of Honey for some time would know, we at This Paper Ship are passionate about good, fresh food and supporting local food economies. However, lest anyone should have the grounds for calling us elitists, we decided to start highlighting our “guilty pleasures”: food that you know probably isn’t good for you but you just don’t care because it’s just so good.

Today’s post is dedicated to that modern miracle of food science, artificially-flavored foods. Yes, you read that right; we admit that we not only eat, but actively enjoy, food flavored with artificial chemicals that trick our brains into thinking that we’re tasting something we’re not eating.

Why? Because Cheeseburger Late-Night Doritos and Cupcake Fruity Pebbles taste delicious. That’s why.

Cheeseburger Doritos

Cupcake Pebbles

Sprout Where You’re Planted

The weekend is here, and we at This Paper Ship are leisurely enjoying some fun studio time, as well as taking advantage of the temporary break from winter weather to go outside and plant some early spring crops. Today’s post on Rational Jar of Honey, however, reveals one of our methods of eating healthy, organic, and “local” during our insanely busy weeks: sprouting.

As you’ll see, sprouting is thankfully the quickest and easiest way of producing your own vegetables any time of the year. At roughly $3–4 per week for a household of two, it’s also one of the cheapest. You can find different versions of these directions in just about any “urban homesteading” book or site out there, but this is the method that’s worked best for us over the last year of tinkering with it.

YOU’LL NEED:
clean glass jar with lid
hammer and one nail
1/2 cup organic grain or bean of your choice (lentils are great for beginners)
clean water

(Note: getting organic grains/beans is actually a must for this. You don’t want to risk your sprouts having been treated with chemicals, since you’re probably going to want to eat at least a portion of them raw.)

BASIC DIRECTIONS:
1. Clean your jar and lid. (I’ve read about eating raw sprouts being associated with the mild threat of contamination, since the conditions in which you grow them are also ideal conditions for growing bacteria; making sure your materials are clean helps reduce that risk.)

2. Poke holes in the lid with hammer and nail.

3. Place about 1/2 cup of grain or bean in the jar and fill to the top with water. Leave to soak for 8 hours or overnight. Drain. (See note below for how to drain.)

4. Rinse 1–3 times daily: fill the jar with water and drain. You want the sprouts to be wet but not sitting in water, and changing out the water daily makes sure they don’t start to rot.

5. When your sprouts have grown to your liking (usually takes about 3–7 days depending on the grain/bean and the room temperature), place them in a different container and refrigerate. I usually try to eat them within a week.

Diagram for Sprouting How-To Guide

A NOTE ON DRAINING: To get the water out of my jars quickly, I unscrew the cap and hold it tightly to the mouth of the jar as I turn it upside-down. Then return it right-side up and tap the top of the jar a couple of times to get stragglers to fall back down. (This is especially useful if you’re like me and you’re using a lid with holes in it rather than a mesh screen or fancy plastic sprouting lid.)

Diagram for Sprouting How-To Guide (Fig. 2)

The reason we’re not sick of sprouts yet—and believe me, we eat them a LOT—is because they’re so versatile. So far we’ve added them to salads, the top of veggie pizzas, stir-frys, and eaten them for breakfast with fried eggs. We’ve also mixed them in with salmon & tuna patties, and—believe it or not—they make an incredible addition to meatloaf. If you’re inclined to eat “health food” that makes others turn up their noses, they’re also delicious as a snack mixed in with plain yogurt and honey.

What can you sprout? Popular stuff includes beans like adzuki, mung, lentil, chickpea, and soy, as well as grains like wheat berries and rice. Other sprouts people eat include the ones from your typical vegetables like broccoli and radishes. We have yet to do much exploration, but we’re proceeding with caution, because there are risks involved, such as the risk of eating too many legumes like kidney beans messing with your system. Before you embark, just make sure you read up on it. It’s totally worth the research and effort; sprouting is a LOT of fun, and it’s a GREAT way of getting a lot of nutrition when you have very little money and/or access to good, fresh vegetables.

—Joel

P.S. If you don’t have a good natural food store nearby and you’re at a loss for where to find organic seeds, grains, and beans, you can order them online! A good Google search will point you in the right direction, or you can check out larger online retailers like Amazon.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a sprout!

Our first sprout of the year!

We just started a bunch of early seeds indoors and within two days we discovered a sprout already! It’s a happy little lettuce seed and we hope to have a lot more soon. Seeing this little guy gets me excited for spring, warm sun, bustling farmers markets, wildflowers, and baskets full of colorful produce! It’s just around the corner now…

—Ash

Soup du jour

Lately a lot of Joel’s and my meals have been inhaled as he flies out the door to work from 3:00-11:00 PM (usually meaning he doesn’t get home until 1 in the morning on a good night). As a result we’ve been in a strange sleep cycle where we don’t go to bed until 3 in the morning and then oversleep the next day. I managed to document today’s quick meal, a good comforting soup, complete with heart pasta (from the Valentine sale section of World Market). We made ground chicken meatballs and added in carrots, onions, spinach, seasonings, and parmesan at the end. It was a good “hit the spot” kind of lunch. We found ourselves wishing that he didn’t have to go to work the entire time we were eating it… soups have a way of making you want to bundle up and watch a good movie instead of working.

Soup of the day

By request of our good friend Pang, here’s the recipe:

You will need:

1 cup pasta (any kind)
1 lb ground chicken
handful of quick oats
1 egg
32 oz chicken stock (one box)
1 cup water
1 TBSP butter
2 carrots
1/2 of an onion
handful of fresh spinach
block of parmesan
parsley
salt & cracked black pepper
garlic powder

The concoction:

Mash up ground chicken with quick oats, egg, parsley, salt & pepper, and garlic. Roll into mini meatballs. Melt butter in a medium sized soup pot and add meatballs, browning and sealing them (so there’s no pink left). Add in chopped onions and carrots and saute for a few minutes until they become softer (but not fully cooked). Pour in just enough chicken stock to cover the bottom of the pan and drop the spinach on top. Stir until spinach has wilted but is still vibrant green. Pour in the rest of the chicken stock, water, and pasta. Bring to a boil. Turn down heat and let simmer for 10-15 mins (or until noodles and carrots are soft). Season with more parsley, garlic, salt & pepper, and anything else you desire! Fill bowls and grate fresh parmesan on the top. Slurp and enjoy!

—Ash