Category Archives: Food

Foodie Friday: Eating local in late winter

‘Tis the season for the annual, “What does a locavore eat in the winter?” post.  Quite a long list of things, actually.

We have our root cellared veggies: squash, sweet potatoes, and potatoes.  Then we have our canned tomatoes and tomato sauces, along with a small quantity of canned green beans.  Frozen garden goods include carrots, summer squash, eggplant, sweet (and hot!) peppers, beets, Swiss chard, kale, and sun dried tomatoes.  Oh, and let’s not forget the fresh carrots (from the low tunnels) and leeks (just out in the open) that we’re still harvesting!

We’ve supplemented our fresh and preserved produce with cruciferous veggies from farmers’ market: cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and some delicious Brussels’ sprouts.  Those items are on their way out though, so pickings will be a bit slim until spring.

We supplement the local food with onions and some store-bought frozen veggies, including peas and corn.

So, those are the raw ingredients in my kitchen.  Here are some recent creations:

  • Vegetable upside-down cake with our carrots, peppers, herbs, and garlic; local cauliflower; and frozen peas and corn
  • Farinata with carmelized onions and a side of roasted winter squash
  • Black bean soup with our sweet potatoes and peppers
  • Baked potatoes with tempeh and sides of canned green beans and roasted beets
  • Split pea soup with our carrots and potatoes
  • Masaman curry with local cauliflower, our carrots and potatoes, and frozen peas
Sautéing veggies for black bean soup
Sauteing veggies for black bean soup

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ll be attending a vegetarian potluck tonight.  The theme is “colors of the rainbow.”  I’ll be making a winter squash dish or a roasted sweet potato dish — or perhaps both.  Any way you slice it, my color will be orange!

Thursday thoughts

Reading more bike blogs
As part of my goal to share more here about the biking side of things, I’ve decided to seek inspiration by reading more bikey blogs.  No doubt part of the reason my focus here has shifted to include lots of food-centric posts comes from the fact that I read many food-centric blogs.

I don’t have a list of favorites yet, but there are a few that I’ve read from time to time.  My reading time is limited, so I’d like to pick a handful to read regularly.  Simply Bike makes the list of a [semi]regular read, and S’s blogroll contains enough suggestions to keep me busy for quite some time.

In the fridge
As of this morning, we had no less than four types of milk in our fridge: organic soy, almond, a new local cow’s milk, and breast milk pumped during Sir’s recent sleepover at Baba’s (the last has since been consumed).

I don’t really drink milk anymore, but occasionally I crave something other than water to wash down fresh chocolate chip cookies or peanut butter brownies.  In those instance, unsweetened almond milk hits the spot.

This weekend . . .
I’ll be attending our regular veggie potluck on Friday night and looking at a couple of house on Saturday.  One house in particular could be very interesting, but there’s a big IF in the picture related to garden space.  Due to time constraints, distance, and various other logistics, I’ll probably be making both those trips by car — compromises.

Kitchen lockdown

Well, your comments on this post inspired me to continue engaging Gabriel in the kitchen.  I like the idea of one of these, but the price tag seriously curbs my enthusiasm.  While standing on a chair poses some dangers, I feel fairly confident as long as I’m standing right there with him . . .

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. . . with my leg on the chair to keep him from scooting it away from the counter — somewhat limits my productivity, but better than him fussing on the floor.

Unfortunately, he REALLY latched on to the “chair in the kitchen” idea, to the point that he would [attempt to] drag a chair into the kitchen EVERY time I set foot in the room, even if I was just going in for a minute to refill my water or quickly check on something in the oven.

It was cute for the first three times or so, but it got old really fast, especially when he greeted each and every announcement that “it wasn’t time to have the chair in the kitchen” with serious screamage.  Sigh.

In addition to the basic annoyance of his compulsion to be right there ALL the time, there was the additional safety concern that he would climb up onto the chair and access the counter top at a time that I hadn’t cleared it of dangers, like sharp knives, cheese graters, and/or breakables.

Enter a benefit of a galley kitchen.  While I love the idea of an open floor plan, with [a big, fancy] kitchen open to the dining room, living room, and/or great room, I’m currently enjoying the fact that our cozy kitchen is a completely separate room with a doorway — perfect for a basic wooden baby gate.

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I’m also thankful that my long legs allow me to easily step over the gate so I can enter and exit the kitchen freely (though stepping over it while carrying plates of hot food and breakable dishes IS a bit of a gamble).

While Sir is not thrilled about the development, he has more or less accepted it.  I’m a bit bummed to be actively excluding him from something that I want him to (eventually) be part of, but it’s an acceptable solution for now, for this stage.

Persian cauliflower chickpea stew

Rest assured that while it’s been awhile since I’ve talked food, we have been cooking and eating.

A few nights ago, I concocted this one-dish meal (well, okay, two dishes if you count the pan for cooking the grain) from on-hand veggies (fresh garden carrots and garlic, canned garden tomatoes, and farmers’ market cauliflower) plus my desire to work chickpeas into the meal.

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Quite awhile ago, I bought a big bag of sumac, a spice commonly used in Persian/Iranian (and perhaps other Middle Eastern?) dishes in order to replicate the delicious veggie kabobs at Cafe Natasha.  I regret to say that my attempt at the kabobs fell short of the real deal.

Anyway, I’ve experimented with the sumac in other dishes since then, and it worked particularly well here, creating a dish that I would be happy to order at Cafe Natasha.

Ingredients
1 cinnamon stick
1 t. sumac
1-2 t. paprika
1/4 t. tumeric
3/4 t. salt
1 quart jar tomatoes and their juice
2 c. chopped carrot
3 c. chopped cauliflower
2-3 c. cooked chickpeas
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bulb of garlic, minced
1 c. dry medium-cut bulgur* or millet
Olive oil for sauteing

Directions

Cook bulgur or millet in tomato juice, adding water to make 3 cups of liquid, with a cinnamon stick.

Saute onion in a large cast iron skillet with some olive oil.  After the onion softens, add cauliflower, carrot, garlic, salt, and the spices, plus more oil as needed.  Stir to combine and saute for a few minutes on medium.  Add the tomatoes, plus a bit of water, cover the pan, and let simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until vegetables reach desired tenderness.

Serve over cooked grain.  Season to taste with salt and black pepper.

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I love the ease of [mostly] one dish meals, especially when cooking in cast iron.  I just use a spatula to scrape the pan thoroughly when putting away leftovers, and the pan is ready to use (in my book, anyway) for the next meal.

*Oh, yes, my other reason for making this was using up some ridiculously old bulgur in my pantry.  Mission complete.

Tastefully fueling active transportation

If you’ve really been paying attention, you may have noticed a change in this blog’s tagline last week, from “Normalizing green living,” to “Tastefully fueling active transportation.”

While I’ve been pondering a new blog title for months now (without coming to a conclusion), I settled on the new tagline almost immediately.  While there are many ways that I attempt to live “green,” replacing car trips with human-powered trips and eating a largely local (and homegrown) diet play a major role in my efforts.  Plus, I enjoy writing about said topics.

I chose “active transportation” instead of biking or cycling because, as much as I enjoy biking for transportation, walking is even simpler, and anything that gets you out of the car and moving under your own power works in my book.

The posts here have been skewed a bit toward the food side lately, but that doesn’t mean the biking and walking isn’t happening.  In many ways, biking somewhere doesn’t seem noteworthy to me — it’s just what I do.

That said, I plan to increase my bike-related posts, since I hope to encourage and inspire others to get out on two wheels (or three wheels, or two feet, or whatever works for you), and, despite the fact that I would like biking to be the norm, in this country, it simply isn’t, so there’s plenty of room for change.

Anyway, my hunt for a pithy blog title that captures the spirit of my writing may be put on indefinite hold, as I rather like the original title with the new tagline.  Happy reading, gardening, cooking, eating, and actively transporting yourself to a greener lifestyle!