Monthly Archives: April 2013

Umami tsunami: Three ingredients to try today

Over the past several months, I’ve enjoyed playing with some umami-boosting ingredients in various dishes.  Umami is sometimes described as a savory or meaty taste or, more simply, something that makes food taste good.

Despite its association with meat, it is quite possible to build umami flavor in vegetarian dishes — mushrooms or soy sauce are a quick and easy route (the title for this post popped into my head while eating a dish containing both mushrooms and soy sauce) — but there are other ingredients and methods.

1. Dal
I first started experimenting with dal (daal) back in August, when  my food swap with Nupur started an Indian cooking kick.  Dal describes any of a variety of split peas or beans.  I began my explorations with two four pound bags of dal: toor dal (split yellow pigeon peas) and moong dal (split mung beans).

I discovered that well-cooked dal, simmered with bay leaf and seasoned with various spices, makes a rich, savory vegetable stock.  I use the stock for a variety of soups and stews, and the dal provides a nice flavor and texture boost.  I also made one of my best batches of chili ever with a dal base.

Depending on the size of your soup recipe, and assuming you aren’t trying to make lentil stew, start with 1/4 to 1/2 cup dry toor or moong dal (or a combination).  Early in the day, cover the dal with water to soak.  When ready to use, rinse in a mesh colander, add a bay leaf, and cover with water to cook.  When tender, liquify with an immersion or traditional blender and incorporate into your soup recipe.

2. Nutritional yeast
Nutritional yeast is a fairly common ingredient in vegetarian cooking, providing a nutty or cheesy flavor.  As its name indicates, it’s also rather nutritious, a great source of B vitamins in addition to being a complete protein.

I add nutritional yeast to a variety of one-dish meals (grain + beans + veggies) to boost flavor and nutrients.

Look for nutritional yeast in the bulk bins at natural grocers or WF.  The price per pound (~$7-$8) seems high, but the yeast flakes are very light — one pound of nutritional yeast can enhance many meals.

To use, add directly to dishes, or mix with a small amount of hot water to make a sauce.  It also functions as a nice component of salad dressings.

3. Miso paste
Like soy sauce (another fermented soy product), miso paste possesses real umami-boosting power.  Think beyond miso soup and use this flavorful ingredient as part of a rich sauce:

Whisk two to three tablespoons miso paste with one cup of water and a tablespoon (or more, depending on desired thickness) of almond or cashew butter.

Serve sauce on top of a cooked quinoa or millet with sauteed or steamed vegetables for an easy, healthy lunch or dinner.

Mix and match
Try sauces, salad dressings, and soups that include a combination of two or more of these ingredients to really kick up the umami flavor in your cooking.

Gogogo, Mamama!

One of my favorite parts of biking with Gabriel in the IBert front seat is having him right there in between my arms, making for easy, constant interaction as we travel, both pointing out interesting sights to one another.

For the past ten months (since we first started using the seat), I’ve been chanting, “Go, Mama, go!” as we ride uphill, in an attempt to get him to pick up the chant and provide some motivation when my energy is flagging.  Little did I know that I would have a late talker on my hands.

The months passed, and aside from increased babble, we had nothing.  Around the nineteen-month mark, he said, “Gogogo!” while sledding, one of his first words.  I had to wait a couple more months for “Mama,” but my name is now a consistent part of his very small vocabulary.

Today as we biked to church, I helped him put the two words together, and, with a bit of prompting, he developed his own version of “Go, Mama, go!”

“Gogogo . . . Mamamama!” often followed by ringing the bike bell.  He can’t help pedal yet, but he might make a pretty decent cheerleader!

Oh, and another cool part of the ride — we spotted another cycling family.  A mom and her two girls, one daughter on a trail-a-bike and the other on her own bike, riding on Tower Grove Avenue, using lane positioning that indicated they were savvy cyclists.

While the number of families that use bicycles for transportation in St. Louis is growing, at this point it’s still a rare enough sight to be cause for excitement.  We exchanged waves and bell rings as we continued on our way.

In other news, gardening . . .

Our extra-special Sunday distracted me from other weekend-activity posts, including some stories from the garden.*

I joined Matthew again at the garden on Saturday.  With all the rain we got last week, it was too wet for planting, but we worked on moving/turning a couple of compost piles and laying out the irrigation system.

While relocating the compost piles, we were on the lookout for the friendly garter snake, which Matthew suspected made it’s winter home in the compost pile.  He hoped it would slither out as we started working on the pile and find a place safe from our pitchforks (snakes help control garden pests, so he is a welcome addition).

We saw movement, but instead of a snake-slither, we spotted a rodent that looked like a large mouse or a small rat, but with a fuzzy tail (rather than a naked tail).  Regardless of it’s exact identity, rodents in a compost pile near the garden are not ideal, so we Matthew embarked on a bit of critter-ridding.*  Not pleasant, but sometimes necessary.

The artichokes and garlic are the two prominent growers in the garden right now, the artichokes having survived a Missouri winter in the low tunnel.

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The artichokes are the crazy huge plants in the foreground, and you can see the garlic bed in the background.

After his nap, Sir drove pedaled up in his tractor.

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As far as harvest, we’re continuing to get a bit of fresh spinach, as well as some asparagus.  Peas, lettuce, carrots, beets, broccoli, cabbage, and potatoes are all in the ground and growing.  As are the perennial fruits: strawberries, red and black raspberries, and blackberries — can’t wait!

Back at the apartment, we have some crazy huge tomato plants (too big to be called seedlings, I think), waiting to be transplanted into the garden.

What’s growing in your garden?  Or, if you don’t have a garden, have you started getting local produce yet?

*As for the bed bugs, I am currently hoping that Sir eliminated them with his particle thrower.  That could happen, right?

**A bit of internet searching that evening revealed that the rodents in question were probably voles, which, as herbivores, actually cause more garden damage than carnivorous moles.

Bed bugs!

As Matthew was making pancakes on what was a normal Sunday morning, things took a turn for the worse.  Around nine-o’clock, I got this call from our landlord:

“Hi, I just wanted to let you know that [the people downstairs] found bed bugs in their apartment.  An exterminator came out and treated it yesterday.”

It felt like someone had just punched me in the stomach.

First, bed bugs?!?!?!  BED BUGS???  Those which are very hard to get rid of, can go to ground and hide without a blood meal for months, only to resurface later, and are increasingly resistant to pesticides?  Those bed bugs?

And second, someone came in and chemically treated the first floor of the building I where I live, with my toddler, and you’re informing me AFTER the fact?  When it’s too late to pack a bag and spend the night elsewhere???

So, yeah, bed bugs.  I spent most of Sunday in a serious funk, researching bed bugs, trying to get Gabriel outside as much as possible, and airing out the apartment.

At that point, we had not noticed any obvious signs of bed bugs in our apartment (no bites or stains on the sheets or mattress), but I feared it was only a matter of time.  At the very least, I felt I would be constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Turns out I didn’t have to wait too long.  This morning, not ten minutes after I peeked at the bed bug info from NYC’s health department and noted with surprise that adult bed bugs are relatively large (about the side of an apple seed), Matthew spotted something on our wall.

He commented that he was going to try to catch it because it looked “unusual,” though probably “too  big to be a bed bug.”  Um, yeah, except for the whole being as big as an apple seed thing.

At the moment, Ms./Mr. Potential BedBug is hanging out in a container, and we’re waiting to hear from our landlord, who asked an exterminator to come take a peek at our little friend (and inspect our apartment in general, which they really should have done when they were here dealing with the downstairs apartment on Saturday).

So, yeah, fun times over here.  It’s not the end of the world, but, uck! I feel like I should walk through a decon unit every time I exit our apartment to avoid inadvertently sharing our little friends with the world (though the odds of them spreading this way are actually fairly slim) and perhaps walk around with a large scarlet “B” on my chest.

I’m not sure that we’ll be able to avoid treating with pesticides, since that is the most common method (and much cheaper, and perhaps more realistic for entire buildings(?), than heat treating).

No matter what happens at this point, I feel like I’ll never be convinced that they’re completely gone and aren’t waiting to resurface at some point in the future.  Le sigh.


Further reading:
Preventing and Getting Rid of Bed Bugs Safely, NYC Health Department
Bed Bugs: Integrated pest management in and around the home, University of California
Bed Bug FAQs, CDC

An Earth Day reminder

With most places having Earth Day celebrations over the weekend, I lost track of the fact that today, April 22, is officially Earth Day.

As perhaps a little reminder from the universe to not take natural resources for granted, I turned on the kitchen faucet this afternoon to just a tiny little trickle of water that quickly faded to nothing.

With dinnertime fast approaching, I grabbed some leftover bean cooking liquid to cook the lentils and set to chopping veggies.  Over the next hour, I probably attempted to use the sink no less than ten times — to wash hands, rinse off a dish — you name it, it felt like every time I turned around I needed water for something, and I just couldn’t get it through my head that turning the faucet was not going to yield water.

I’ve had this same experience when we’ve had power outages — go into a room and flip a light switch, just expecting the light to turn on as usual, but, nothing.

Clean, running water, power at the flip of a switch — so many things that I take for granted on a daily basis . . . .

Ironically enough, we ended up buying bottled water on Earth Day.  My MIL swung by the store and grabbed a few gallons for us on her way to drop off Gabriel.

With no warning on the outage or obvious cause, I was prepared to be without running water until morning at least.  Instead, it felt like no sooner had I popped the top on the gallon of water and poured glasses for dinner, whoosh, we had water from the tap again!

It’s hard when we live in a country that has seemingly plentiful resources, but every now and then, we are reminded to be grateful, and, perhaps, to renew our attempts to use those resources carefully, in a manner that sustains the planet we all share.