Kale-White Bean Wraps and Tomato Soup

It is spring, and my basil, anise hyssop, lavender, black cumin, and other herbs are tiny seedlings in pots. But today it was cool and rainy, so soup was in order. I made tomato-basil soup (from canned tomatoes, vegetable juice, onion, celery, frozen corn, and my basil frozen last summer) and kale-white bean wraps. The kale was harvested from the back yard 10 minutes before it was wilted on top of the beans. The best way to grow kale without having to spray it or maintain constant vigilance for the cabbage worms is to over-winter it. Plant it in the fall so it has time to get 4-6 inches high before it freezes. It will go into suspended animation, wilting a bit in the bitter cold (as bitter as it gets here, in the teens Fahrenheit), but reviving in the sun and growing in the early spring. You can eat it gloriously before the worms can develop to do their thing and make you miserable watching your plants get swiss-cheesed. Wonderful, healthy stuff. Your eyes will thank you.

Semi-Local Dinner

There's a good probability of frost tonight, so I went out and collected tomatoes (2 lb 9 oz worth!), lettuce, radishes, and lima beans tonight by the light of the full moon, and the neighbor's motion sensors.

We had a completely backyard salad of radishes, lettuce, and a window-sill-ripened tomato. The grocery-store baked potato was topped with onion, mushrooms, and greens from the radishes sauteed in butter. The sweet-potato-pear salad contained our sweet potatoes and home-canned pears from a neighbor's yard, and pecans from the farmer's market (recipe: Peel and cube a few cups of sweet potatoes. Microwave in the sugar syrup from the canned pears until soft. Add the pears (cubed) and cook 2 more minutes. Add chopped pecans and dried cranberries or golden raisins. Pour off the syrup and sauce with unsweetened plain yogurt. MMM). The catfish was American, and probably from Mississippi, where much of it is grown in ponds near the river. The corn was from a grocery-store frozen bag. So dinner was as semi-local as I could make it.

It is fun to try and figure out how much you can do with what you have. I'm really glad I do not have to live on what I can grow, but it is fun to grow it.

I Love My Skillet

If you are going to do ANY Southern cooking, you need  a cast iron skillet. The skillet will become one of the things you would want if trapped on a desert island. You can make wonderful cornbread with a most delightfully crispy crust in it. You can fry everything under the sun in it. You can stir fry in it (much more awkwardly than in a wok, but it works). You can braise a cheap cut of meat in it. You can drop it on a cockroach, or use it as a weight to flatten flowers. You can season it for a non-stick finish that will not give anybody cancer or accumulate in the bloodstream of polar bears. You can scrub off said fat-based finish if it grosses you out, or starts getting sticky. If treated properly, the skillet will last your lifetime, even if it is given to you as a child and you live to be 120. Just hand wash it and keep it dry, and oil it once in a while. That is it. How many "consumer products" can we say will last your lifetime these days? Not many. So if you want to cook like Grandma, get a cast iron skillet. You'll never regret the purchase, unless you drop it on your toe. Just say the requisite expletives and cook. it'll be good.

Eating the Harvest

Tonight I harvested a zucchini! It survived the borers long enough to produce! Hallelujah! No picture- I was too excited about picking it. Awesome! We did eat some beets and carrots, boiled in a little water until done, with golden raisins and a bit of OJ added at the end (yum). We ate the zucchini in some potato-zucchini fritters based on a recipe from The Classic Zucchini Cookbook by Ralston, Jordan, and Chesman. I HIGHLY recommend this book for fans of squash, or the people who must be fed by them. Breads, desserts, main dishes (vegetarian or meaty), pickles, freezer recipes, every kind of recipe using the squash family seems to be represented. Lots of ways to make squash sweet, savory, or especially non-slimy. There's even a "zucchini bingo" at the end combining sauted zucchini and onion with vegetables, meats, sauces, a base like grain or spaghetti squash, and a topping like bread crumbs or cheese to form a casserole. My only complaint would be the preponderance of baked recipes. It is too hot here in the summer to bake! I can do the roasted winter squash with pleasure, though, so all is well.

Freshly Shelled Peas Bounce Higher Than Frog Eyes

Strange things run through your mind during veggie preparation when you used to be a seventh grade school teacher. Boys will try to bounce anything remotely ball-like, including the eyes of preserved frogs. Maybe they would eat more peas if they helped shell a few, and could do some comparative bounces!

You Really Can Eat Every Part of the Beet

And it tastes good, too. With today's cool weather (a low in the 50s in late May in TN is a Gift from God- we're often AC-bound by now), I decided to roast some chopped sweet and white potatoes at 400 degrees F with olive oil, freshly-ground black pepper, and freshly-picked rosemary, and added one of our small beets, also chopped. What wonderful beetiness! It had red and white concentric bands on the inside. It was only an inch-and-a-half in diameter, so peeled it was small and good. To prevent waste and use the good leaves, I chopped the leaves and stems (like red celery) with some button mushrooms from the store and sauteed them in the pan after I finished frying the salmon patties. Quite good, and a very fresh, beety meal with roasted vegetables, purple-hulled peas from last summer, sauteed mushrooms and greens, and salmon patties. For dessert we had some of the season's first peaches (Flavor-Rich they were, just like their name) with strawberries. No sugar necessary! Beautiful.

What Do You Do When Feeling Blue

I do not shop, or watch trash TV, or eat donuts by the dozen. I've learned that when I feel bad (like this afternoon when I went to work, and all of the flasks of cells for the week were contaminated, and had to be disinfected and trashed), I should do one or more of the following:

1. Take a nap. I may be sleep deprived, and could wake up seeing a new side to things.

2. Take a walk, or do more vigorous exercise like jumping rope or taking out some more bushes. Endorphins are cool!

3. Cook a really good-for-you meal. This is good for stressful times balancing work and home, because the nutrients give you the fuel to try to meet expectations.

I came home and found a low-sugar recipe for whole wheat blueberry muffins from Eat Right America(good hot with a glass of milk), and prepared them. I used 100% whole wheat flour, not half-and-half. Yummy. I'll be clearing the boards to start an asparagus-bok choi-chicken stir fry here soon. Cooking lets me demonstrate competence at SOMETHING, even when something at work didn't pan out. AArgh. Let the chopping begin.

First  harvest report tomorrow, with masses and everything! Today I wanted to point out where to go for good recipes.

When you grow your own food, shop at a farmer's market, or join a CSA, suddenly you have lots of veggies to deal with. This is a good thing, but it sometimes necessitates learning new and creative ways to deal with beets or greens. What to do?

1. Your public library is an Awesome Resource. You can check out that book on Italian or French or Indian or Chinese cooking without spending a fortune, only to find out you really don't like that style of cooking very much. Ours is building its vegetarian/ vegetable-based section to a magnificent thing.

2. Blogs galore exist with recipes for every cooking style imaginable. Here are some cool ones:

http://simplyrecipes.com/

http://www.101cookbooks.com/

http://cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com/

These are a tiny sampling of the ones I have bookmarked- family style, Californian, and New Yorker. You can find Indian cooking videos from Manjula's kitchen on You-tube (these are especially helpful, because a lot of Indian cooking is passed mother to daughter, and thus is difficult to get from a written book), and even blended styles in some blogs. 

3. Do not discount the farmer's groups (Northwest Cherries, Sweet Bytes (for sweet potatoes),  The Mushroom Channel, Pulse Canada), which often post recipes to encourage people to purchase their food. I hate to call food a "farm product", though it is, simply because I consider that an inadequate description. Food is ideally something grown with care, nurtured through spring floods, bug onslaughts, and summer droughts, and finally brought to the table in triumph and joy. This beauty a "farm product"? I think not. Go fishing online- you might come up with something good.

Craving Beans and Rice

Years ago, I was a single teacher on a tight budget. That AFT 50,000+/year average salary does NOT apply to rural Southern counties. That's close to the maximum, with a Ph.D. and 20 years of experience, in one county in which I worked. Anyway... money was tight. I was paying for orthodontic services out of pocket, and other debts, and wearing the braces, so I could not eat hard, chewy, or sticky foods. Broke with teeth in braces, I did beans and rice in a very limited way: plain rice, canned beans, frozen mixed vegetables, and enough turkey ham cut in tiny, swallowable pieces to make it "edible".

Now I know how limited that approach was. I have two shelves of spices, vinegars, and oils in the pantry. I'm learning to grow my own herbs. I'll try drying them this year. You can do so much with beans! There seem to be endless variations on the rice 'n' bean theme- Caribbean, Mediterranean (Italian, Greek, Middle Eastern), Indian (and they have almost infinite local and regional variations), Asian (Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Korean...), African (seasoned with peanut butter and spices, full of nutritious greens), and even Native American (substituting cornmeal pudding or corn pone or potatoes for the rice). You can add a bit of highly seasoned meat for flavor, or not. Herbs and spices vary, vegetables or fruit added vary, cooking oil varies. You can have a lot of fun with it. Try it sometime on Google. If your money is tight, you may even find recipes including items you can forage from the wild in your area- just don't forage for mushrooms without an experienced, preferably elderly guide who knows what's what. Cooking from scratch with new recipes can be a relatively cheap way to treat yourself well without breaking the bank, using ingredients in season and dried beans and unprocessed rice (no precooked stuff in pouches. YOU CAN  BOIL WATER!). Try it!

Rediscovering "Peasant Food"

If you go back far enough, your ancestors probably lived on pretty simple fare- beans, grains, vegetables, fruit, and whatever meat could be had and cured. The meat may have been common or rare, depending on their circumstances. The diet of the very wealthy- white flour, abundant meats and fats, and plenty of sweets- has become our everyday fare now in America, but it hasn't been that way for very long.

All the nutritional research in the world seems to indicate that Daniel and his friends were right, that a "peasant diet" in which vegetables and whole grains predominate is much better for health than the rich fare of the king's table. It doesn't require a nutrition degree, or a pantry full of rare and expensive ingredients, to cook like they did. Dried beans, brown rice, and some veggie seeds (or frozen vegetables or a big head of cabbage and a bag of potatoes) are dirt cheap. Add a few herbs in pots, and a bit of meat to flavor the pot (or not), and you've got it. It's not elitist, or racist, or any other form of "-ist" a partisan would try to bring to the discussion. 

A hunk of cornbread and a bowl of soup on a cool and rainy day can be beautiful. 

Once in a while you have to rhapsodize about lunch.

Spending Less and Getting More

I had to get groceries tonight due to a marathon cutting off all convenient routes south tomorrow from my neck of the woods. I loaded up with frozen mixed vegetable blends, potatoes, sweet potatoes, oranges, and other good-to-eat sale items. Cabbage was 55 cents a pound (albeit they were small ones), so I got one of those, too. Peasant potato soup, here we come! Must soak some white beans for it tonight. Well, I spent less than usual (though $90 for basically a week's groceries plus some stocking up is still crazy for two people), and I got more quantity. Paying attention to sales is good. 

I was saddened to see a woman in front of me making a WIC purchase- except for juice, it was almost ALL junk food! WIC and food stamps (now EBT) cover Cheetos, Soda, white bread, and ice cream? I can understand a little ice cream once in a while, but several half-gallons? The only veggies she had were turnip greens, the only real fruit some oranges. The contents of that cart would give ME diabetes before long.  I hope we get some real nutrition education and reform in the system, so poor kids can get some real food and a real chance at a better life. It costs a lot to eat healthily in an urban area (low salt and low sugar items cost more than regular. Real is more expensive than fake), but it costs more, long term, to neglect your body. Above is one of my harvests from summer. That's good eatin'.

Veggies are Important for mice, too

As part of my research (of professional as well as personal interest), I look at things that cause cancers and why they do. So I found a paper from the journal Carcinogenesis from 2001 (H.L. Newmark, et al.) in which normal, wild type mice were fed an altered chow that imitated the normal American diet (lots of fat, little folate and fiber, deficient in vitamin D and calcium) instead of their usual high-veg chow. These mice, without radiation or chemicals, spontaneously developed colon cancers (12/17 mice) after 18 months! Folate seemed to be important in this study. Cells growing improperly were found in the colon, breast (females), prostate(males) and pancreas in previous, short-term studies with low vitamin D and calcium.  

If a medication caused these problems, we would ban it. If living under power lines or near a chemical plant caused them, people would be out marching and writing letters to Congress. But it comes from the way we EAT, so we just settle in with our doughnut and coffee for breakfast, fast-food lunch, and pizza for dinner and wonder if we'll be able to afford enough pills to keep us alive as we age. 

That's why I buy A LOT of veggies, fruit, and whole grains, and we do consume dairy products.No, I'm not a supplement fan. Studies seem to be showing that getting your nutrients from real food, in the package God gave us, is best. When we eat what our bodies need, they respond with health and vitality. Your grandmother was right- eating your veggies is good for you. And your pet mouse, if you have one.

Eat Your Greens

Tonight I made a BIG pot of potato-turkey-kale soup, with emphasis on the kale. Green leafy veggies are VERY important to reduce the risk of the three major causes of blindness in the elderly:
1. Cataracts- I know we can have surgery for them, but look: A June 2008 article by KV Tarwadi, et al. in Clinical Nutrition stated that dietary deficiency of vitamin C, folic acid (as in foliage), and other antioxidants could explain 59.7% of the differences between the patient group and the control group (no cataracts). Intake of fried food and animal food was higher in those with cataracts, while fruit and veggie consumption was lower than in people without cataracts. Food for thought.
2. Glaucoma-In a study by A.L. Coleman, et al., in the American Journal of Opthalmology from June 2008, at least one serving of collards or kale a month could reduce the risk of glaucoma by 64%. More than 2 servings of carrots a week or some canned or dried peaches once a week also reduced risk considerably.
3. Macular degeneration- In people with the highest level of consumption of lutein and xeoxanthin (from leafy greens), risk of AMD was 35% of the risk in people who ate less greens. Zinc was also protective. This in a study by J.S. Tan, et al. in Opthalmology, February 2008.
So add some greens to soups and stews, or as an underlayer (steamed first) on pizza. You don't have to eat them bare unless you like them like that. As your mother told you to do, eat your greens!

Spot Likes Turkey, and I Do, Too

Lunch today was a big success. We ate the menu mentioned before. I put the 13-lb (minus the ice in the cavity) bird in the oven after completing the thaw (it was supposed to be fresh, according to the package) at about 4 AM. It was done by 10. I use a probe thermometer to make sure the meat gets up to 180 degrees F. We don't roast ours; it is oven braised, half-submerged in chicken broth and the liquid that cooks off the turkey. Soup material after the broth is strained. We don't carve our turkey; it falls off the bone. Mom and Dad came in just as I was removing the dressing and the sweet potato casserole from the 2 ovens. Brussels sprouts went in, veggies went on the stove, and we ate a little after 1 PM. I gave Spot a leg with some meat adhering to one end, and she was licking her lips over it when I went back inside. She did not run away when Mom and Dad were outside! She's a tame kitty after all, though she would not let Dad pet her.

Family's Coming!

My parents are coming to see us for Thanksgiving! First time in our house here. It will definitely take some time to get ready. I'll have to wash some of the "nice" dishes, cook, clean, etc.

Here's the menu:

Jerk Turkey (Turkey with a marinade/rub of Jamaican spice so you don't miss the salt)

green beans

corn 

sweet potato casserole (the one with the brown sugar-pecan topping- NO MARSHMALLOWS!!)

roasted Brussels sprouts with mushrooms and caramelized onions

whole wheat-brown rice dressing with apples and cashews (husband is allergic to sage, and likes cashews)

cranberry sauce

peach-blackberry crisp (from farmer's market products frozen over the summer) with home-made vanilla ice cream.

Yummy. And made with lots of fruits and vegetables. We'll have gravy for the meat, too. I like cooking like this once in a while. It will be fun.

Coming Home

Early, when possible, is highly recommended on a sky-blue, breezy, crisp-leaf day. We had a magnificent walk this afternoon, and a pork chop casserole is in the oven now (with onions and potatoes, to be accompanied by veggies presently). City life has its disadvantages, from the bars on the windows to the sirens wailing woe to the loud airplane conventions at night, but those fall walks on sidewalks instead of in leaf-mucky ditches sure are nice. You can shuffle through the leaves proudly, and we do.

And I picked three green tomatoes, a small handful of green beans, and four lima beans today. After mid-November. All-season gardening here is looking more and more plausible. Wish I had more land...

Back to Business

Spent a few pleasant days with Husband and his family, to celebrate his Dad's 80th birthday. Lots of traditional Thanksgiving food and sweets were had by all. 

We're going to be doing Veggie Penance for a while. What's veggie penance?

Veggie penance simply makes up for the lack of balance in our diet during those over-indulgent holiday feasts. But I still try to keep it tasting good, so it really isn't penance in the truest sense. Anytime we go out to eat with friends or to someone's house and have an overly indulgent, salty, or meaty meal, we eat a bit MORE carefully than usual afterward for the next few days, to get back on track.

I saw some ornamental kale growing outside the hotel window before we started back this morning. One more day and I would have been out there sampling it! It looked really good! Anyway, the rice is ready. See you later!

Home Cooking

I cook a lot. Husband prepares oatmeal on weekdays (kindly) for breakfast, but except for a few week-end meals, I cook everything else. Today we came home from church to some Farmer's market (frozen and thawed) pork chops sauteed and braised with onions and apples, green beans (from the backyard), fresh-sliced tomatoes (ditto), and corn (from freezer, from grocery store). The pork chops were fabulous, and I credit that to the guy selling them from a freezer in the back of his truck. He seemed really proud of them. I buy frozen veggies in the winter, because they are frozen at the height of freshness, so nutrients are preserved. Many times they're better than the veggies you buy "fresh" which have been slowly decaying on a water-sprinkled shelf for a few weeks.

Tonight we had spinach-mushroom-black bean enchiladas (how to make THAT low sodium? Cook your own beans. Use Frog Ranch salsa (low sodium and really GOOD). Use low-sodium cheeses and wraps. It works. We also had tomato-basil soup with corn (yes, my tomatoes and basil). Good stuff. No pics tonight- I do not have good luck uploading on Sunday nights.

Gardening-and Eating in the Dark

Night comes earlier than it did just last week. And the beans keep right on producing. It is an amazing and instructive phenomenon- can I be productive even when I've been nipped a few times, or even damaged? 

I tend to get home now around sunset, even if I leave work a bit early. The air is cooling; the cats are crunching their evening meal and getting the wild-eyed hunter/ huntress look of a cat at dusk. I wish I had cat-eyes, to see what I want to harvest. What I miss can dry on the plant until tomorrow. For now, it is time to fix dinner.

How do we eat? We eat a low-sodium version of the DASH diet (from a study done in 1999 called Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension). Husband's BP is 20 points lower eating like this, with no drugs. Put simply, eat as many colorful vegetables and fruits as you can, with whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, lean meats, and dairy to round out your carb/protein needs. Those may vary by individual, but the advice to eat a rainbow of color and flavor every day, mostly vegetables and fruit, is sound. In winter I tend to go for more soups and stews, in summer the salads and stir fries. Viva veggies!

Here is a sample meal: Mrs. Dash mesquite grill braised chicken, microwaved broccoli, sliced tomatoes, roasted beets, red potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and a butternut squash-brown rice risotto. Kind of starchy, but it is winter and we need the energy. It works for us. And we do eat from the salad-sized plates.