Category Archives: Food

Pre-Valentine’s cupcakes

We celebrated the great thaw by biking all around the town on Saturday morning.  We started at the farmers’ market, where our haul included spinach, Napa cabbage, green onions, arugula, and turnips.

My take on turnips: Turnips are one of the very few vegetables that we don’t like (in fact, I can’t think of any others off the top of my head).  We’ve tried them a few times, with various preparations including roasting.  However, they say you should try a new food ten times before deciding you don’t like it, so here we go again.  These were advertised as mild, sweet turnips.  Any favorite turnip recipes you want to share?

The streets still had some icy spots, but we carefully avoided them.  The fenders were essential with all the melting and run-off.  Matthew sported his “3 Feet Please” jersey, shown next to our icy bike lock-up.

After we dropped our produce off at home, we headed back out to the Orchid Show.  I really loved the ancient Maya civilization theme they used this year — if you’re in the St. Louis area, you should definitely check it out.

Our next stop was an apartment possibility that turned out to be not a possibility at all.  Despite my very clearly asking on the phone if the entire 4-family building was smoke-free, and being assured that it was, our noses don’t lie, but the landlord did — waste of our time!

We made a quick exit and headed to lunch at Sweet Art.  Of course, the highlight of lunch at Sweet Art is the cupcakes.  We ordered four, and shared half of each at the restaurant and took the other halves home for later enjoyment 🙂  (I brought containers so we didn’t need any disposable packaging.)

Refueled and renewed, we visited one more apartment before heading home.  Probably another no-go, though nothing blatantly atrocious, unlike the other.

Sunday brought more gorgeous weather, and I followed up on Saturday’s bike fun with a bit more biking on Sunday.  I usually don’t mind winter, but the almost constant covering of ice on the sidewalks and smaller streets was really getting to me — this thaw couldn’t come soon enough!

Eating garden fresh in February

I’m always delighted when I look at my plate and realize that a large portion of the food on it came from our garden (or local sources).  A couple nights ago, we tossed together a relatively quick meal, almost all home grown.

From the top: roasted, shredded beets with butter and salt(actually from my father-in-law’s garden), a veggie saute made from frozen green beans and corn, plus roasted winter squash (sauteed in olive oil and seasoned with fresh ginger, horseradish, and soy sauce), and noodles with canned sauce from our garden tomatoes.  Yum 🙂

Two for two

Sauce Magazine, my favorite StL foodie mag, scores high points for the recipes in its February 2011 edition.  On Sunday night, we made Acquacotta, a delicious and hearty soup, though it left us wondering what kind of Italian peasants can afford 10 oz. of dried porcini mushrooms.  We made it with our homegrown celery, herbs, leeks, and tomatoes, plus some local dried mushrooms — though we did not have 10 ounces!

Last night, Matthew made Navratan Korma, an Indian vegetable dish.  We both enjoyed it and think the leftovers will be even better, as the flavors have more time to meld.   Matthew dug into our freezer for garden/local green beans, carrots, yellow squash, and cauliflower, plus potatoes from our crop and our canned tomatoes.

This is the time of year when all the work of chopping, blanching, and canning, plus Matthew’s work in the garden really pays — in delicious dividends!

Biking before the storm

Given the prediction for more winter precipitation headed our way, I made the most of the balmy temps (in the 40s) and improved road conditions to make some trips by bicycle over the weekend.  Over the course of three days, I visited the Y, the library, the farmers’ market, Meskerem Ethiopian restaurant, and church.

I’ve been riding Bub much more than Baby Jake this winter.  Bub’s slightly wider tires and overall geometry feel a bit more stable when riding over questionable patches, and the regular pedals allow me to comfortably wear boots or my Birk clogs, which keep my toes much warmer than the cycling shoes.

I didn’t want Baby Jake to feel left out, so I pulled him out for Saturday’s excursions.  Strangely, the ride didn’t feel that much faster to me than Bub, though the speed, or lack there of, may have been due more to the operator than the machine.

In addition to biking, I filled Friday with yogurt-making, tortilla-making (post on this coming soon), and ice skating.  When I told a coworker earlier in the week that I was planning to go ice skating, she replied, “Can you do that while you’re pregnant?”  And so it begins — and she knows nothing about the biking 😉

Sushi shortcut — the purists will cringe

I enjoy sushi, and since we don’t go out to eat all that much, it’s something that I’d like to make more at home.  My first attempt awhile back involved buying and cooking the special sushi rice, only to read in the instructions that the sushi rice, once cooked, cannot really be saved for another day — it becomes hard and inedible if refrigerated for any length of time.

Now, if I’d read this instruction ahead of time, I would have simply prepared less rice, and it wouldn’t have been a big deal.  With the rice already prepared, however, we over-stuffed ourselves with sushi to avoid wasting any.

The other day, I was flipping through a cookbook, looking for something else, when I spotted a sushi recipe that used brown rice.  Not only is brown rice healthier than sushi rice (which is white rice), it’s something we often have on hand, already cooked.  No special rice to mess with?  Sounds good to me!

Easy Vegetarian Sushi

  • nori seaweed sheets
  • rice vinegar
  • seasoned rice vinegar
  • cooked brown rice
  • avocado
  • carrots, cut into matchstick-sized pieces
  • tofu, cut into small strips and lightly browned on stove-top
  • soy sauce and wasabi for dipping

Start by mixing the cooked brown rice with some seasoned rice vinegar.  If you don’t have seasoned rice vinegar, make your own by adding some sugar and salt to regular rice vinegar.  Set aside, and prepare carrots, avocado, and tofu.

Lay out a nori sheet, shiny side down.  If you have a sushi mat, you can use it here, but it’s not essential.  Cover most of the nori with a thin layer of the seasoned brown rice, leaving a one inch gap at the top.  Place the other fillings in a line across the sheet, an inch or two from the bottom of the sheet.  (I didn’t take a photo at this stage, so instead you can enjoy my awesome drawing.)

Make a mixture of [unseasoned] rice vinegar and water in a small bowl and dip your fingers before rolling the sushi.  Roll the sushi, starting from the bottom of the sheet — moisten your fingers in the vinegar and water as necessary.

Let the rolls rest, covered on a plate, for 10-15 minutes before cutting them.  To cut, dip a sharp knife in the water and vinegar mixture and cut to desired size.

Dip sushi pieces in soy sauce spiced with wasabi.  I made this sushi to go with the Asian dumpling soup last week.

Notes:

  • You can use almost anything you want to fill the rolls, just don’t try to stuff too much in there, or they won’t stay together well.
  • Many wasabi pastes have scary ingredient lists, including unnecessary food dyes.  I found powdered wasabi with a simple ingredient list: horseradish plus tumeric and spirulina for natural coloring.  Just mix a bit of the powder with a bit of water to reach desired consistency.