Ypsi Cooks

My friend blogged about a Michel Pollan article about food rules. The article talks about how many cultures have different idioms for not eating to much, and eating a great variety of foods.
One “rule” I like a lot is “Eat food, mostly plants.” That is of course referring to real food substances not bad imitations.
I like to make sure the meat I eat is treated as it ought: fed appropriate things and allowed to live as nature intended.
In eating, I strive for nourishing, affordable, sustainable and delicious. But most of all, I think gratitude is really important, whether it be to the soil, the farmer, the store clerk, the seed seller, or God. I had help getting the food, so I try to take a moment to be thankful before eating it. And in my busy life, find a few deep breaths before I begin really help me pay attention, and that attention in turn (usually) helps the food taste better, and I consume less of it. What are some of your food rules? If you post to Pollan's article, would you copy the post and add it here?
Thanks.

I happened to post my facebook status as saying I had just processed some of our kale. Who knew that would draw the most response I think I've ever gotten (both online & in person, to boot). To process kale, or any greens for freezing, I pull the leaves off starting at the root end in order to discard most of the tough stem (I once saw instructions for cutting out the tough stem and was blown away by its major over-complication of a simple task. It is SO easy to just grab and pull, at least the red russian variety we grow). Then soak the leaves in order to clean them. Not that they really seem to need it, but I do it anyway. (I just have a big bowl of H2O in the sink where I swish each small batch, then let them sit in there for a min or 2.) Then they go into my big stock pot 2/3 full of boiling water, a little salt and about a tsp of baking soda (helps soften the kale). After 2-3 min (I occasionally plunge them down), I pull them out with tongs and put them in a colander sitting on a bowl that I've placed right by the stove. I repeat that process with a new batch, and while the new batch cooks, I transfer the original batch to the cutting board, let it cool a bit, then chop it up, squeeze out some of the excess water and put it in the container to freeze it.
In short: 1. Wash. 2. Boil. 3. Drain. 4. Chop.5. Squeeze. 6. Contain.
While it seems like a long process, it's really not, since each step only takes a few min at most. This morning I had kale in each phase, and I just kept making laps around the kitchen, and it went fairly smoothly, even with the interruptions of two small people.

But here's the real question: what to do with it once it is processed?1. Make veggie cake (see May 2009).
2. Make Quick-a-veggie-dillas (see previous post).
3. Add it to your tomato sauce in lasagna (or in your anything).
4. Stir the kale, finely chopped, in with bulgar and some other veggies and/or herbs & dome dressing (try cooked sweet potato, or parsley & tomatoes in a tabbuleh like incarnation, or feta, beets, cukes, bannana pepper for a greek salad type thing). These are most delightful summer salads.

For un-cooked kale:
5. Cook chopped bacon in a pan until rather cripsy. Remove the bacon to a paper towel to drain. Leave in as much of the bacon fat as appropriate. Add some minced garlic and cook for just a moment. Add *fresh* chopped kale (w/o the stem) and cook until soft (you may want to add a smidge of water and lid it for a bit). Put this on top of corn-pancakes, toast and cream cheese, pasta, whatever, and top with the crispy bacon! Oh, try a little avocado with this, too (esp with the toast and cream cheese). Sour cream and salsa with the pancakes. Cream, garlic and fresh chopped tomatoes with the pasta, maybe a little parmesan or blue cheese, too.

I like speed and cool temperatures to accompany my food preparation in the summer. A few days ago I went out to weed, but before doing so, I started some bulgar wheat soaking. Bulgar doesn't take long to cook in the first place, but I figure cutting 15 min down to 5 is nice, so there it was. When I came in, it had doubled in size and absorbed most of the water. I looked at it, and it was beautifully fluffy. A little research taught me that since it is cooked during processing, bulgar does not require a second cooking at home: a good soak will do it. I did 1 1/2 cups of bulgar, 2 1/2 cups of water and a little salt (1/2 tsp). Mine soaked for about 2 hours, but less might do it, especially if the water is hot. It is great in tabbouleh, but really can be used almost anywhere you would use quinoia, rice, couscous, etc. We mixed it with sweet potato cubes, garlic & vinegar seasoned kale, and a nice dressing. It was delicious with almonds sprinkled on top. Or use it in place of pasta in a veggie pasta salad. The style will be a very different, but still delicious, and all without turning on the stove.

I love looking out our living room window: the snap peas are climbing their fences (Eli runs outsde to pick them daily), the lettuce is in its multicolored glory, the spinach is going great guns and right outside the window grows our beautiful, burgundy peonies. They're perfect. But there are only so many meals one can create out of lettuce, spinach and kale (we have yet to have enough peas left over after garden consumption to actually have them with a meal). With the help of Lynn Rosetto Casper's How to Eat Supper, I have hit upon something our garden can provide us these days. While our basil plants are just a few inches tall, we've had chives since April. Chopping the chives with garlic, salt and pepper combines the flavors in a really delightful way, and allowing spinach to wilt in the heat of the pan & drained pasta really makes it “meltingly” soft. I really hadn't understood that term before today when I bit into lunch and found the spinach, well, melting.As is the case with this type of dish, measurments are approximate and eyeballing makes sense: this dish is mostly art, very little (if any) science.

3 cloves garlic
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp freshly ground pepper
3/4-1 cup snipped chives (1/4-1/2″ length will do just fine)
1/2 cup pistachios (walnuts, almonds and pine nuts would also work well)
olive oil
1 loosely packed salad spinner of spinach (4-6 cups??) coarsly chopped/torn
parmesan or asiago for shredding on top
(the first time I made this I did a slightly smaller amount of chives and one cube of basil pesto)
1 lb of pasta (we used a large penne) (12oz will do, but all the pasta we buy is 1 lb bag so it never makes any sense to me to make any less)

Put salt and pepper on the cutting board and smash the garlic with the side of a knife. Coarsely mince the garlic, add the chives and continue to mince until rather fine. Add the nuts and coarsely chop. Drizzle with olive oil and chop/fold a little more.

In the mean time, boil and salt the water to cook the pasta. Add the pasta and cook al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup cooking liquid and drain the pasta. Immediately add the chive pesto and spinach to the hot pan, stir allowing the residual heat to mellow the garlic and gently wilt the spinach. Add the pasta back to the pot and stir adding any necessary liquid. Add salt, pepper and olive oil to taste. Serve with cheese.

Some variations I might try:
Serve with slices of salami
Put 3 oz of cream cheese and 1/4 cup of cooking liquid (reserve 1 cup) in the pot while pasta drains. Mix on low heat until smooth. Remove from heat and add the pesto. Stir until starting to wilt, then add the pasta and stir some more.

Alternatively, food process or blend the pesto ingredients in the same order.

My mom makes “spinach brownies.” I never thought twice about this name until I mentioned them to a friend who responded, “spinach brownies?!?” with distinct disgust. Then I realized that the name doesn't really match the item. Yes, it's baked in a 9×13 and cut up like a brownie, but it has nothing to do with chocolate. So I started cutting them across the diagonal, calling them “spinach-cheese triangles,” but that conjures up ideas of layers of phyllo, herbed spinach and feta. Yet another misnomer. We still don't have a satisfactory name, but in the end, who cares what you call them, they are easy and delicious, and whenever we serve them everyone wants the recipe.We made them for my sister-in-law's bridal shower and she requisitely asked for the recipe. A few weeks later I still hadn't gotten her the recipe when I asked her what she wanted to make them for (we had alway made them for parties and such, not as an every day food). “Dinner.” Huh. It was a revelation: of course this is good dinner fare: cheese, spinach, flour, egg, what's not to love.

So where does veggie cake come in? Well, we had a crisper drawer full of local kale that needed to be used, but I had to cook it to mimic the frozen spinach we normally use, so why not caramelize some onions while I'm at it. I got out a really large onion, and chopped it up fairly small (Eli eats finely chopped, caramelized onions without protest even though he claims not to like onion) and threw it in a pan with a little olive oil and salt. Once it started to brown, I tossed in the finely chopped kale and let that cook down a good bit. While I was at it, I thought I'd put some thin slices of tomato on top. Heck, why not go all out and add a little shredded carrot to the batter, and the chives we just cut from the garden, some dried basil, plus a little brewers yeast for added nutritional value. So the “veggie” makes sense but “cake?” Well, Eli loves cake, and though he is not gullible enough to believe my concoction was dessert cake, I thought he might be able to get behind “veggie cake.” He ate 3 servings. What's in a name? Everything, apparently.

1 c flour
1 t salt
1 t baking powder
heaping 1/4 t cayenne pepper
2 eggs
1 c milk
3 TBS melted butter/margarine
_ c chopped onion
8-12 oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese
16 oz Package chopped spinach drained

The recipe is VERY forgiving, but I like to sift together the dry ingredients just to make sure the baking powder and cayenne are evenly distributed. Spread in a greased 9” X 13” pan. Add an extra egg if you're in the mood and bake a bit longer.
Bake 40 minutes @ 350º F

Some other things to try: replace some spinach with artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes, basil, oregano and replace the cheddar with parmesan or asiago. Or maybe try leeks and emmentaler.

I was checking out the Orangette (an award winning food blog by a bona fide food writer) and what was her most recent post about? Lentils and rice and the glories of caramelized onion. She serves it with feta, not yogurt, but still, I wrote about essentially the same food a few weeks ago. Sure, she goes into much more detail about it, and introduces the wonders of farro (which you can bet we'll be trying soon), but still, it is much the same. And I agree with her, I'd eat it every day, in fact, I had some today!

As the weather warms the grownups in our house are craving baby lettuces a fresh peas. Unfortunately for us, the ground won't yield such treasures for some time. We did plant our peas, lettuce, spinach and kale today, and I personally am dreaming of a wilted baby spinach salad and maybe some lovely lemon cookies for dessert. That dream will have to wait at least until Easter.
We're forever trying to get our kids to enjoy their veggies. Today Eli planted the peas in the little holes we made for them. He also helped with the greens, but their seeds are so small it can be difficult for little hands. In any case, he seems a lot more excited about spinach and kale than ever before and we're all plotting how to enjoy and savor the fruits of the forthcoming season!

I am, at heart, cheap. Sure, call me thrifty, frugal, whatever, but I'm cheap. Sometimes this is a fault. I'll unintentionally end up with someone giving more than I had intended because of my aforementioned “frugality.” Sometimes, however, my cheapness is a boon. The other night I wanted to make brown rice for dinner. Brown rice and ________. I didn't have a clue. Eli is not a big fan of stir-fry, and we don't usually do meat as a main dish, and it just didn't occur to me to make a great saucy/stew concoction. But there was a jar of lentils sitting on top of the stove. And I've been pumping up my use of onion as a vegetable, not just a seasoning, and magic went to work in my kitchen.I sauteed 2 medium onions on med high in 1 1/2 tbsp butter and a little salt, allowing them to brown (browning is key), after they were fairly well cooked I added 3/4 cups brown rice and sauteed until translucent. Then I added 3/4 cups lentils and a few cloves of minced garlic and sauteed about a minute longer. Then I added 3 1/2 cups hot water (I have an electric tea kettle, it's fine to use cold H2O) and 2 teaspoons of Better than Bullion (the amount to make 2 cups of broth). First I grabbed my veggie bullion, but it has tomatoes in it and the acid slows lentils cooking time, so I pulled out a new jar: turkey bullion. Who knew there was such a thing! But it was on clearance at the co-op, so I went for it. Anyway, I brought it all up to a boil, reduced to a simmer, put a lid on it, and let it do it's thing for 35 min. the result: amazing mejadra like lentil-rice pilaf.I served it with broccoli and pickled beets. The rice and lentils is a complete protein and we had orange sections for dessert to make the iron in the broccoli more accessible. The whole family thought it was great. I felt like a queen having fed my family a very healthy, delicious dinner. That's another point for frugality.

We had pasta with squash and spinach “sauce” tonight. Eli pulled a little chunk of spinach off his pasta and said, “I don't like this.” (Tom put slasa in the mac and cheese yesterday…) We told him to try it and explained that you can't really taste it, and it's really good for him… He needs more convincing. “Spider man eats it” (that's how he gets so strong, duh). So Eli chimed in that his little friend who lives down the street does too. Yep Eli, Spider man and your friend both like it. A few minuets later he looks up, unprompted, “Thank you mama for making such good, healthy noodles.” Then I felt like a superhero. Success.

For some reason, my mom's “Fudge Nut Bars” have stuck in my memory, though she hasn't made them in YEARS. 2 years ago I asked her for the recipe, and she sent it to me. I was fun to learn that it came from my middle school home-ec teacher in 1984: she must have gotten it when my oldest brothers were at good-old Wylie. I didn't make the cookies until now because they make an 11×14 pan of deliciousness. Yipes, thats a lot of cookies. But this weekend I had an excuse: the 8th annual Euchre for Toques party. They were well received. A good thing to keep in mind when you need a whole mess of easy treats but want something a little different than a drop cookie. I made a few modifications. I think next time I'll try only 1 1/2 c. brown sugar, but 1 3/4 definitely works well!Fudge Nut Bars

Filling:
12 oz chocolate chips, or bitter sweet chocolate, chopped
1 T. cocoa (optional)
14 oz can sweetened condensed milk (previously listed as 1 cup)
2 T butter
1/2 t salt

Cookie:
14 T butter
1 3/4 C Brown Sugar
2 eggs
2t vanilla
2-1/2 C Flour
3 C oatmeal
3/4 t soda
1 t salt
1C chopped nuts (walnuts are ideal), optional

Preheat oven to 325.
Filling: Melt all ingredients, set aside to cool.
Cookie: Beat butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy, aprox. 3 min. Add eggs, 1 at a time, and vanilla. Separately, mix flour (I used whole wheat), oats, soda and salt. Mix into butter mixture. Press 2/3 of cookie mixture into a large 11 x 14″ greased pan. Pour chocolate mixture over. Add nuts to the remaining cookie mixture and crumble on top of chocolate. Bake 20-25 min. until golden.
Cut once cooled. I like to cut them into 2″ squares, or a little smaller, then cut in half on the diagonal. Yes, I have a thing for triangles.