today was a good food day! i was asleep by 11 last night, so i ended up waking up when nate came home at 7:15. fine, fine, i’ll get up. rolled out of bed and promptly went to the strawberry farm where i picked 11 lbs. of strawberries. it was cool and had just rained, so there weren’t a ton of people there (but still a lot!). later today i’m going to make jam. after i brought the berries home, i went to the food co-op to get almond flour and almond butter for my macaron making tomorrow afternoon. while i was there, i picked up my first CSA box! woo! i got a half share because it’s just me and nate. or rather, just me, since nate sort of eats whatever whenever and will only occasionally eat what i eat. hrm. i think this is the red russian kale.
this i believe is arugula. and this is spinach! also got some garlic scapes and …. an egg share! woo!
ok, now i’m off to take a nap and then time for some jam making.
strawberry season is a couple weeks behind due to the cold spring, but it’s finally arrived! i picked up a quart at the farmers’ market today and made a strawberry-rhubarb crisp. on tuesday, the pick-your-own will open, so i’ll head over there and get some to make some jam. quick recipe for 8″ square pan
slice berries and rhubarb – about a lb of strawberries and a cup of chopped rhubarb. spread in pan and sprinkle with white sugar and flour – about 1 tblsp each
crumble:
1/2 c flour
1/2 c. oatmeal
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c melted butter
mix and sprinkle on top of fruit. bake at 350º for 20-25 mins.
this will be juicy!
ps – i’m tired of paying a premium to buy ice cream made with real sugar.
i asked my brother, charlie, to tell me about his produce box he gets since he moved out to portland. he wrote me an essay! i had to share…
We get our box once a week now and what’s in it changes every week. Usually there are apples, oranges, various other fruits depending on what’s in season. We get a pound of pork chops, bacon, and hamburger each week. There’s always a leafy green, usually kale or cabbage. We get onions or leeks with it. Some potatos, sweet potatos, or somethig similar. Lately we’ve been getting pea pods and green beans. They’re delicious. That’s the basic structure of what we get every week. Last week we got apricots, lemons, and plums. Today I had my first plum in ages. It was tart and delicious.
About two weeks after I moved here I realized that the produce box and cooking our own food was going to be the norm and it made me happy cuz the food is so delicious. Ive learned more about food and cooking in the past few months than I ever cared about in my life. For the first time in years I’m excited about food again but I was eating fast food every day for the last few months in indy and I realize now that it was grooooosssss. The other big thing is that I’m excited to cook the food. I’ve never liked cooking but cooking fresh food with friends to eat a delicious dinner is worth and I finally see that.
We have been a bit creative doing things like stuffed pork chops or pesto or somethig but for the most part our meals are a main dish and a side. Usually pork or chicken and roasted veggies. I’ve cut a lot of sugar out of my diet and am eating a lot less carbs. I feel better than I have in years and it delicious!! Tonight we’re grilling out some pork chops and sausage.
I think I like the apples the best. I’m realize how good an apple a day is for you. Now I have an Apple every day and its all organic. But I have tp admit, having a pound of substance free Bacon is big contender with the apples. All the fruit is so juicy too! We have to eat them over the sink because they drip everywhere.
Eating fresh, organic food just makes me feel healthier, I’m more regualr (not that you wanted to know that lol), and have more energy. I don’t need as much and I don’t feel like a fat slob. My portions have just naturally decreased but I have more energy than eating at mickey d’s every day. I’ve lost 20 pounds so far with the help of my produce box!
The thing that I didn’t realize until I moved out here was that food in general is amazing. The burrito house has the best burritos I’ve ever had for 4 bucks! And its a good two-meal burrito. The food is awesone and cheap! Last night I got and order of cheese fries, steak bites and four beers for 20 bucks! I still can’t believe it!
Anywho, I love the food and having fresh organic food is def a lifestyle changer. If you want to know more, let me know! I could talk about it all day 😀
i have recently found the “galette”, which is a really fancy looking dessert that is easy peasy to make. i was looking for a way to use some pre-made pie crusts my grandma gave me like 3 years ago (seriously, those things were probably 5 years old – but frozen so not rotting). martha stewart came through, because i saw the fancy galette in her mag and decided to give it a go. it looked way easier than a pie.
roll out your pie crust dough and place it on a cookie sheet. i used parchment underneath so it would be easier to get off when it was done. pile on some fruit in the middle (you could also make this savory and put some mushrooms or meat in the middle). i also put a tablespoon or so of sugar/honey and a couple pats of butter.
fold it up around the edges and egg or milk wash the outside so when you sprinkle some sugar on it, it will stick. throw that bad boy in the oven at 350 for about 25-30 mins (check it – should be browned on the edges)
tada! fancy!
i asked my sister liz to write a guest post! here it is!
omg, this got long. i hope you actually read it. i try not to be boring.
kate wanted me to guest blog on her blog. i tend to blog about boring stuff that happens in my daily life that only those who know me could possibly be interested (and sometimes not even then). i needed a prompt. it’s only fair; she’s been using prompts for awhile now (note the awesome semicolon action – meee oowww). so she suggested i write about how her quest for a corn syrup free life has influenced mine.
thus, a blog post was born…
prior to kate’s anti-corn agenda, i was on my own anti-partially hydrogenated soybean oil (henceforth known as phso) agenda. why, you ask? well, it all started back in middle school when i was visiting extended family…
the daughter of kate’s and my crazy aunt (of whom kate has referenced many a time) is a nutritionist. she bent the ear of my dad and me over b-fast one day about trans fats and cis fats. this was back in the day before trans fat became a buzz word and everyone knew about it. cousin was telling us that phso has trans fats and it basically mutates human cells to become more susceptible to cancer and other crap. that didn’t sound good to me.
so i started reading ingredient lists and worked to avoid phso. it’s hard to do that when you’re not buying the groceries. when i was old enough to do so, i avoided phso at all costs. i would put things back on the shelves. i’d look at different brands. i was crushed to find out crisco is basically all phso… that was the one exception to my vendetta since a lot of baking calls for crisco.
but saltines! for ages i thought i couldn’t eat saltines because of phso. until i started looking at other brands. lo and behold, other brands didn’t use it! thank you zesta! i could still eat saltines and cream cheese!
oh, you haven’t tried that? you should. it’s delicious. nom.
so when kate started her anti corn syrup agenda, i paid attention. i like having a nerd for a sister who will do all the research work and tell me just the pertinent parts. saves me a lot of work.
i already knew hfcs was bad. regular pop makes me sick. literally. i have a can of pepsi, and i need the bathroom pronto. gross.
so i was onboard with paying more attention to what had cs and hfcs and cs solids (can i just say that the idea of corn syrup solids sounds really really gross?) in it.
since i had experience reading ingredients, it wasn’t a hardship to pay attention to whether or not there was cs in it too. but my oh my, cs is waaaaayyy more prevalent than phso.
phso mainly shows up in packaged food items that need a longer shelf life – cookies, crackers, etc. it’s in food in all those aisles you’re not supposed to shop in anyway.
cs is in eeevvveerrrryyyyythiiiiinnnngggg. omg, it’s so annoying to avoid.
we had to buy andouille sausage the other night. the only stuff available at target has cs in it. we bought it anyway.
i will read labels, i will avoid it where i can, but if it’s the only option and i really want it, i will get it. but i try really hard to avoid it in my groceries.
eating out, however, is whole different ball game. i still eat sandwiches from mcdonald’s. i really should not be eating there. i know this. but sometimes, it’s an easy, quick option. especially since i’m not the cook in my house. and when my cook is working at school or asleep because his schedule is crazy, i will sometimes splurge and get mcd’s. it’s cheap, they have coke zero (NOM), and they have drive through which is extremely handy when you have a 3 1/2 month old as long as she’d not crying.
i don’t read ingredients lists of the restaurants i frequent. i probably should, but i don’t.
i did have to change my bread habits. there is cs in a lot of the bread on the market. i bought a fresh loaf of italian bread from target the other day without reading the ingredients. it’s fresh! it should be okay. today i looked at it and found out there are corn syrup solids in it!! wtf?? that’s annoying. i’m still eating it. it’s a perfectly good load of italian bread and makes great french toast.
okay, this blog post has become ridiculously long. kudos to you if you’re still reading this. 🙂
omg i haven’t written in a while! and i’m going to fargo for the weekend, so i won’t be posting again until monday at the earliest! ack!
minor freakout over, i made some cheese yesterday. well, i attempted to make some cheese yesterday. we’ll see how it tastes later on when i make my pizzas for tonight. i used a recipe from “animal vegetable miracle” but it called for liquid rennet and i used a tab. that may have screwed things up. either way, it looks really weird – kind of a translucent white – when it’s supposed to be just plain jane mozzarella cheese. on top of that, i bought the milk from the farmers’ market, and it tastes really cow-y. actually tastes more like powdered milk than anything. the recipe said you could use any milk that wasn’t ultra-pasteurized, so i might try to do this with regular milk from the store. we’ll see! i’ll report back with taste tests on a pizza. EDIT: it did not taste bad. it was a little chewy, but i figured it was probably how a hard cheese would be consistency wise on a pizza. i also put feta on the pizza, so that probably helped :/
thanks huff-po for the image! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/02/corn-syrup-sales-sour-as_n_597257.html
i never imagined i would move my month-long experiment to a lifestyle change. from eating mcdonald’s and drinking regular pepsi on a weekly basis and not caring about a loaf of bread’s ingredients to being an ingredients-list speed skimmer. what do i miss?
trolli britecrawlers, sourpatch kids, gummy bears 🙁
pasta-roni angelhair pasta
mcdonald’s drive through (this is probably a good thing…)
ritz crackers
not caring what don’t i miss?
regular pepsi (mostly because cane sugar pop is soooo good)
fake maple syrup
the chemical aftertaste of corn syrup. some things taste 100X better made with alternative ingredients (case in point: special K bars)
giving money to big corn
not caring (it’s a catch-22!)
last easter, i told the story of how i made cheesecake. i think, however, that i didn’t take any pics. so here are the pics! but first, the recipe, from the joy of cooking, which, i have found, i use quite a bit. The Joy of Cooking Creamy Waterbath Cheesecake – from The Joy of Cooking
Have cream cheese at room temperature, 68° to 78°F. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
Coat the bottom and sides of a 9-inch spring form pan with 1 tablespoon unsalted butter. Sprinkle with
1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs.
Tilt and tap the pan to spread the crumbs evenly over the bottom and sides.
In a large bowl, beat just until smooth, 30 to 60 seconds: 2 pounds cream cheese. Scrape the sides of the bowl and the beaters well. Gradually add and beat until smooth and creamy, 1 to 2 minutes:
1-1/3 cups sugar
Beat in 1 at a time, just until incorporated, scraping the sides of the bowl and the beaters after each addition:
4 large eggs
Add and beat on low speed just until mixed:
¼ cup heavy cream
¼ cup sour cream
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
2 teaspoons vanilla
Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top. Set the pan on a length of wide heavy-duty aluminum foil. Fold the foil carefully up the sides of the pan without tearing it.
Set the pan in a large baking dish or roasting pan. Set the baking dish in the oven and pour in enough boiling water to reach halfway up the sides of the cheesecake pan.
Bake until the edges of the cheesecake look set but the center jiggles slightly when the pan is tapped, 55 to 60 minutes. Turn off the oven, prop the door ajar with the handle of a wooden spoon, and let the cake cool in the oven for 1 hour. Remove to a rack and let cool completely in the pan before unmolding. Cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours, preferably 24 hours, before serving.
I started off with the crust – i know i have a fancy food processor, but it was just easier and less time consuming to crush that little graham crackers with the rolling pin. i also might add that the only non-organic graham crackers that are devil’s syrup free is the honey-maid low-fat version. rubbed butter all over and threw in the crumbs. mmmm. look at that filling. it tasted great. pre-waterbath! foil is there so the water doesn’t seep into the springform pan. last year i used regular sized foil and i still got water in the cheesecake. this year, i specially bought the heavy-duty stuff so i’d have the correct size.
mmmm, look at that! it’s still in my fridge like that right now. gorgeous! tastes delicious. and cheesecakes are not that difficult to make, so don’t be intimidated by them.
i tried my hand at an almond filling. ground up some almonds with powdered sugar, a little vanilla, and egg white. then mixed in some honey. it was gooey and looks like oatmeal, but tasted good. so, after a failed first attempt (i had unwittingly used year-expired yeast and after 3 hours, it had risen maybe 1/4), i finally got my dough ready to go. the only recipe i have for the b-kuchen is one in grandma’s church cookbook that she published it in. there are a couple questionable things (a rolled out thickness of ONE INCH??), but so far it seems to be the same recipe 🙂 but first, let me wax eloquent about the smell of lemons. the kuchen recipe calls for lemon rind, and this was the only time growing up that we actually bought a lemon. so it stands to reason that the smell of grating a lemon, or cutting into a lemon, always brings up memories of spring and eastertime. it’s such a fresh scent. now let me wax eloquent about my microplaner. if you do not have one of these, GET ONE NOW. not only do they grate fruit rinds better, but it will also serve as a whole nutmeg grater as well. hard cheese (parmesan) is also served well with the microplaner. it’s useful and handy and easy to clean. ok. time to roll that bad boy out and cut into squares! insert homemade filling, pinch, pinch, pinch and pinch. rising pre-oven. got my post-oven setup ready to go. note silicon brush: only useful thing i found in a pampered chef catalog. and done! since my parents aren’t eating these, i pull my kuchen out when they are BARELY done. bottoms are barely golden, dough is nice and chewy (but not raw). i had some tops flip up, as you can see. no real exploding kuchen with the poppyseed, but the almond filling just went kaflooey all over. oh well. better luck next time. and i was actually surprised there were no exploding kuchen, because you can see that i packed it in there pretty good.
A NOTE ON THE FILLING: tasting just the filling proved to be sweet enough, but after baking, it seems that some of the sweetness was lost. not sure if this is due to the poppyseed being ground, raw, or what, but if you want the filling sweeter, i recommend upping the sugar content in the recipe from yesterday. next year i’ll up it to 1 or 1.25 cups of sugar. not that this is bad; it’s just not as sweet as the solo filling.
when easter rolls around, it’s the tradition in the wallace (derry [fuchs {schleppenbach<etc.>}]) household to churn out some boehma/bohema/behma/whateverkuchen. i actually tried googling it this year under many spelling variations to see if anyone else out there makes these kolache-type breads under that name. nothing. my favorite b-kuchen filling is poppyseed, and the last few years i’ve been dietarily lenient with the easter treat…but no more.
this year marks the 3rd anniversary of avoiding corn syrup, and as such, i thought it was fitting to finally give homemade poppyseed filling a go. (the FIRST ingredient in solo poppyseed filling is, ahem, corn syrup.)
after much googling, the answer lay in making a custard and mixing in ground poppyseeds. easy peasy! i went to the food co-op where they sold the seed in bulk and paid $3 for a pound (srsly a steal – would have paid $3 for a little jar of mccormick in the grocery store…food co-ops are awesome).
time to grind! every recipe said to use a coffee grinder – even a food processor won’t get the seed small enough. grind up 8 ounces of poppyseed. ok, so i was over .3 oz.
I tried to get a closeup to show you the difference between the whole seed and ground seed. it certainly smelled good when i dumped out the ground seed!Time to start the custard.
In a pot, combine:
1 c. milk or cream (of COURSE i used cream!!)
1/4 c. butter
3/4 c. sugar (edit: after actually using the filling in a baked good, i would increase this to at least 1 cup, 1.25 if you like it really sweet)
pinch salt
cook that until the butter is melted, sugar dissolved and the milk is a little frothy (but don’t boil – cook over medium-low).
beat 2 eggs in a bowl, then temper those bad boys – slowly drizzle in half the hot liquid from the pot while you whisk like a madwoman so the eggs don’t cook. after half is in the eggs, dump the whole shebang back in the pot. tempered eggs
cook until it’s thick like you’re cooking pudding. then time to stir in the poppyseed. those little clumps are from where it stuck under the grinder blades.
stir that all up then cook over low for a couple more minutes to make sure it’s nice and thickened. I added some honey and lemon juice still, just to make it taste like it traditionally does. i tasted a little bit, and you wouldn’t think it was pudding mixed with it – the poppyseed flavor is so overwhelming, that you would think it’s just a classier brand of solo filling. it’s actually a lot more earthy tasting – really pulls out the poppyseed flavor because it’s freshly ground.
part two to come tomorrow when i bust out my dough hook!
ETA: thought it was important to point out that this took less than 20 minutes to do. the only out-of-the-way thing you’d have to do is find some bulk poppyseed.
after i brought the berries home, i went to the food co-op to get almond flour and almond butter for my macaron making tomorrow afternoon. while i was there, i picked up my first CSA box! woo!
i got a half share because it’s just me and nate. or rather, just me, since nate sort of eats whatever whenever and will only occasionally eat what i eat. hrm.
i think this is the red russian kale.
and this is spinach! also got some garlic scapes and ….
an egg share! woo!
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