Author Archives: Melissa | Growing Green Nutrition

New flavor

A couple of weeks ago, I made my inaugural visit to Penzeys Spices, a chain that happens to have a location here in St. Louis.  I prefer to buy most of my spices and herbs at Golden Grocer, a small, locally owned, natural foods store that sells a variety of spices and herbs in bulk.

I favor this option because 1) bulk containers mean I can bring my own bags (plastic, yes, but I’m reusing them) and then fill my glass spice jars at home; 2) I can buy a 2-3 month supply and avoid buying a too-large amount of some obscure seasoning that turn to sawdust long before I use it; and 3) I haven’t done any official price comparisons, but I’m pretty sure I come out ahead financially with this option compared to buying prepackaged jars in a regular store.

Anyway, over the past couple of years, we’ve heard good things about,  and seen some interesting recipes featuring, smoked paprika (which Golden Grocer does not carry).  When we found ourselves in the neighborhood of Penzeys after a visit to the Maplewood Winter Market, we walked on over to investigate.  We came out with smoked paprika, szechuan peppercorns, and one other item that I don’t remember right now.

Sadly, Penzeys does not have bulk containers that you can use to fill your own bags, so we left with some unnecessary packaging.  We asked the cashier if they had ever considered offering bulk jars, and she acted like it would be nigh unto impossible.  Sigh.

Anyhow, we put the Szechuan pepper to use as soon as we got home, incorporating it into our lunch stir-fry.  We were enjoying the flavor, until, a few bites into our meal, we noticed that we couldn’t really feel our tongues.  It wasn’t that it was spicy hot, it just had this disconcerting effect.  Apparently this is a “normal” effect of this pepper.  We ended up picking out most of the peppercorns because the tingly numbness was just weird and made the dish less enjoyable.  I’m not sure what we’ll end up doing with the remaining 4 oz. of the pepper.

Later that same week, I experimented with the smoked paprika.  I made a super simple smoked paprika cream sauce as a topping for polenta with sauteed mushrooms and asparagus.

To make the cream sauce, I toasted the smoked paprika (~2 t.) in a bit of olive oil on the stove top — about 5 minutes on low heat.  Then I whisked in a half cup of cream and left it on the heat until just warmed.  I added salt to taste.

The result?  Delicious!  I resisted the temptation to eat the smoked paprika cream sauce by the spoonful (well, mostly resisted), because it went fabulously with the mushrooms and polenta.  This sauce would taste good on a variety of things — pasta, scrambled eggs, other veggies — let the experimenting begin!

The photo evidence of my creation suffered from poor light conditions — I’m sharing anyway, but be forewarned, the photo does NOT do justice to the deliciousness.


Winter fun

Despite the scary road conditions for our trip to Iowa on Christmas Eve day, the snow made for a lovely white Christmas . . . and some fun sledding.

When we arrived at the sledding hill, I was surprised to find that we were the first to make tracks there.   Our sledding hill is in a cemetery — if you look closely, you can see the headstones in the background.

Train tracks at the bottom of a sledding hill?  Not dangerous at all 😉  Just remember to bail (and don’t wear a white coat because it might get grass stains if the snow is only a few inches deep).

The return of the itchies

They’re baaaaaaccckk.  The mysterious winter skin itchies, that is (also here).  Maybe they’ll come around every year now, kind of like Christmas, but less fun.  And they don’t go away when we put away the Christmas decorations (okay, who am I kidding, we didn’t even put up a tree this year, but OTHER people are putting away decorations now).

Anyway, I’m trying coconut oil and olive oil again, along with some almond oil, but after some reading and research, I’m curious about both cocoa butter and shea butter.

I stumbled across the Chagrin Valley Soap Company when I was researching no poo regimens a couple of years ago, and they have both a whipped cocoa butter body butter and a whipped shea butter body butter that look interesting.  Unfortunately, they looked significantly less interesting after I calculated the price of the products plus shipping.

Fortunately, the ingredient lists for both products are wonderfully short and simple, and I found this video on how to make your own body butter.  Come Friday, I’ll be out hunting for shea butter and cocoa butter — if I fail to find them locally, I’ll order the raw materials online.

I’m cautiously optimistic that this will be the ticket to not scratching my skin to shreds over the next three months — we shall see.

In with the new

By the time we dropped off the old couch at it’s new home, the precipitation was turning icy.  We drove across town to pick up the new couch and slid down part of the road near our destination, somehow managing to keep the pickup on the road and avoid running into any parked cars.

We carefully covered the new couch under our giant tarp and loaded it in the truck bed.  We faced driving back up the hill we slid down.

Now, I must admit that both Matthew and I get a certain pleasure out of seeing peoples’ large four wheel drive vehicles that they thought were invincible in positions that prove them wrong.  Four wheel drive does not make everything better, and it does not mean that you can go out in any kind of road and weather condition and drive like you do on any given day.

That said, as we sat in the pickup, contemplating the icy ascent, we noticed a little switch on the dash — the control for the optional four wheel drive.  I’m not sure what would have happened if we hadn’t switched to 4WD, but with it, things were good.  We really only needed it to climb the hill.  After that, we switched back to 2WD and took a nice easy pace back home.

After a bit more fun negotiating a tight staircase with a large piece of furniture (this couch was actually much easier to move than the old one), we were in business!

Ironically, our “new” couch is older than the “old” couch.  However, it’s in great condition.  The new couch is long enough for Matthew to lie on it stretched out, and it’s more comfortable for sitting.  We need to center the picture above the couch (we may actually be printing a new picture for that spot), and it looks like it could use some pillows.

Couch upholstery close-up

Now that all the craziness of moving couches is over, I’m quite happy with the decision, especially when I’m cuddled up in a nest of blankets with a good book 🙂

Out with the old

We’ve talked about getting a new [to us] couch for awhile now, but we weren’t actively looking.  So imagine my surprise on a lazy Saturday morning two weeks ago when Matthew announced he’d found an estate sale couch while browsing Craigslist.

Rather annoyed at the interruption in my morning, I agreed to go check it out with him.  One thing led to another, and we left the estate sale down an eighty dollar cash deposit, with the promise of a new couch as soon as we could get a truck to transport it.  I realized on the way home that we really could not get the new couch until we found a home for our old couch — this proved more difficult than I would have expected.

Craigslist, ReUseIt St. Louis (formerly FreeCycle), Salvation Army . . . nothing was working.  No one wanted to buy it at $85, and no one wanted it for free.  In the meantime, we moved the old couch out of our apartment (no small feat with two people, a second-story apartment, and a relatively tight staircase) and into the backyard, anticipating a quick turnaround with the free listing.

When that did not come to pass, and with rain looming in the forecast, we moved the old couch back inside.  Unfortunately, it would not fit in the basement door, so we faced the unpleasant prospect of moving it all the way back up to our living room.  In the end, we brought it partway up the front staircase, where it stayed for almost a week, sitting on end, with just barely enough space for us to squeeze by and get out the front door.  Fun times!

As much as I hated the idea, I was beginning to see how perfectly decent, usable furniture could  just end up in the dump.

In the end, we lowered the price on Craigslist to $35, and made a sale, provided we could deliver, which we agreed to, since we would have a truck anyway to get the new couch.  All the stars for borrowing a pickup truck and arranging for drop-off of the old and pick-up of the new finally aligned last Wednesday night, the night we got freezing rain . . . .