The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved

I just read a great book called The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. It is by Sandor Katz - the author of Wild Fermentation. This post is part of Fight Back Fridays.  How appropriate!

This book is about food activism.  Some of it more radical than others, but virtually all of it taking place away from grocery stores stocked with cans and boxes full of food.  This book is about real food - whole ingredients, unadulterated ingredients, grown in a way that is traditional and sustainable.  Increasingly, eating outside of the industrialized food chain is becoming an act of defiance.

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A field in Gettysburg

Yesterday morning, I got up a little late.  I considered not going to the farmer’s market since I still had some vegetables left over from the previous weekend.  But as I thought about it, I realized I could not go a week without quark, the creamy fresh cheese made from cultured buttermilk.  And so, I made the journey to the farmer’s market after all.  I ended up getting some sheep milk cheese, heavy cream, and berries in addition to the quark, so it was productive.   I’m preparing a post on quark.  It is something you can make at home, if you are so inclined.  In the meantime, here are a few links that I found interesting:  some local farms I love,  a coconut milk cooking contest, misconclusions drawn from studies, nutrient deficiencies,  supplies for preserving food, and why local food is awesome.  See below for all the links.

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Berry Breakfast

This post is part of Real Food Wednesday.  This breakfast just has 3 ingredients, all natural!

At the farmer’s market on July 4th, I purchased black raspberries and heavy cream.  Put them together and you have a wonderful breakfast!  It is also quite suitable for dessert.

It really couldn’t be more simple.  Take the organic, in season black raspberries, or any berry variety (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries), pick through them and discard any ones that have gone bad, and put them in a bowl.  Pour heavy cream over the top and serve.  No sugar needed.  I rounded out the breakfast with 2 pieces of humanely raised, pastured pig bacon.  No nitrates.  (I also do variations with 2 pastured eggs instead of bacon, but that is a topic for another day!)

What makes this breakfast so good?  Let’s break it down.

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Beet Root and Feta Salad

Salads are such great summer foods.  I don’t want to be chained to a stove on hot days, and all of that fresh produce really fits the bill when you just need something light on the hot days.  Granted, it hasn’t been that hot so far this summer.  Not at least at my house!  But the heat will come.  Eventually.  And I’ll be glad for this salad then!

Nothing beats beets in a salad.  Yes, I said it.  They add a different kind of texture and a lot of color.  I love putting cheese in a salad too.  It helps fill it up a bit and gives it more body.  It also turns a salad from a first course into a meal.  A strong, flavorful cheese goes best with beets, I’ve found, so when I saw some goat cheese feta at the farmer’s market recently, I knew what I had to get.  I also really like sprinkling nuts or seeds on my salad, so in went sunflower seeds.  To top it all off, a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  A simple salad dressing to let the flavors of the beets, cheese, oil and vinegar play off each other.

While I didn’t put it in this salad, tomatoes, dried cranberries, cucumbers and carrots would all work well.  And if you don’t have feta, switch up the cheese for maybe a bleu, or go the other way with a hard cheese like Parmesan.  Use my recipe as inspiration - use what you have in your fridge and pantry.  Use what is available at your farmer’s markets and CSAs.  Use what you like!  What are your favorite variations?

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Farmer's Market Haul, July 4th

The July 4th holiday is a big one. And like most holidays, it has its own food associations and traditions.  Strawberries, certainly, and cherries are two.  Both are patriotic colors and come into season around early July.  Pies, cakes and other pastries made with these red fruits or in combination with blue ones like blueberries are on the dessert menu.  Grills are fired up as summer is perfect grill season.  The problem is when these fruits come from conventional farms that use a lot of pesticides, when the meat on the grills comes from factory farms where the animals are fed an improper diet and kept in inhumane conditions.  The problem also manifests itself in the white bread hamburger and hot dog buns, the potato chips fried in vegetable oils, and all the rest of the processed foods that help fill out the picnic.

I celebrated my independence from the industrial food system by going to the farmer’s market bright and early and purchasing the bounty that you see in the photo above.  Going shopping is a pleasure rather than a chore if you have a farmer’s market or a farm that you can buy directly from.  I love talking with the people running the stalls - often times it is the very farmer him/herself!  And just seeing all of the wonderful food and thinking of all the possibilities with the ingredients fills me with optimism.  Cooking food isn’t so bad either.  In the summer you can rely heavily on salads which don’t require a hot stove or hours in the kitchen.  And even in the winter, roasts and soups provide delicious meals and many leftovers with very little effort involved.  And when I do rely on packaged foods or convenience foods, they can be purchased from ethical companies that source good ingredients and create the food in a way as to keep the nutrition in.

Want some examples?  Look no further than the rest of the posts on this blog, or read many of the food blogs linked on the right.  Or stay tuned as I blog over the next few weeks about some of these foods in more detail.  Below the jump you’ll see what I purchased on July 4th and a description based on what I know so far of these foods.

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zucchini bread

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays.

Today I picked up a CSA share for someone on vacation.  I was not prepared for the bounty of berries I was to receive!  2 pints of raspberries and 2 quarts of strawberries, plus other assorted vegetables and herbs.  I had been prepared to make a currant quick bread, and had prepped some wheat the night before (soaked it in yogurt and left it out 24 hours), but when I realized I could now make a raspberry currant pie, I had to switch gears and figure out something else to do with my soaked wheat.  I froze the raspberries and currants  so I could make a pie with them later this week.  The raspberries would not have lasted more than a day in the fridge, which is always the pity with raspberries.  So delicate that they must be used or frozen right away.

Since I’m getting a delivery of meat in 2 days, I figured I should use something from my freezer to help free up space.  Well, I did happen to have a little less than a cup of grated zucchini so I thought I’d make zucchini bread.  Besides, here in the northeast, the zucchini have arrived at the farmer’s markets, and soon we will be up to our ears in it!

Now, this isn’t a recipe that uses heaps of zucchinis.  It only uses about a cup of grated raw zucchini, or about 1/2 - 2/3 cups grated, blanched zucchini.   So this is a good recipe for when you have an odd zucchini.  Not enough for a meal, but you don’t want it to go to waste.  Of course, you could make multiple loaves and freeze them for later…

Soaking the flour overnight in yogurt is an essential step.  This neutralized the phytic acid present in the wheat.  Phytic acid is an anti nutrient found in nuts, seeds, legumes, and grains that can cheleate minerals from your body.  It can be neutralized by properly preparing these foods, such as soaking flour in yogurt.  The other reason the yogurt step is important for this zucchini bread is that it really helped to leaven the bread.  I would have used all soaked wheat in the recipe, but it would have thrown off the liquid to dry ingredient ratio.  Since I couldn’t soak all of the flour without making the batter too runny, I used sprouted wheat.  Sprouting will also destroy phytic acid.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, fresh out of the oven.  Recipe below.

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Cobble Hill CSA Haul

I want the recipes I create and post to be recipes that can be made by anyone.  However, I realize that a lot of the ingredients I use might not be readily available.  I would recommend that you purchase them if you can.  I put them in the recipe because they are nutritionally superior or important to the taste/texture of the dish.   Many are available mail order (such as sprouted wheat flour and coconut oil).   Others can be found at organic specialty shops if you have one in your town.  But if your shipment hasn’t come in yet or you can’t get to an organic grocery store, here are some substitutions.

Ramps - Ramps are small bulbs and leaves of a plant in the onion family.  To me the taste is somewhere between a garlic and a leek.  Depending on if you want your food to be more garlic-y or more onion-y, you could substitute with a clove of garlic, a green onion, or a leek at about a 1:1 ratio.

Rapadura/Sucanat/Evaporated Cane Juice - These are just types of unrefined sugars.  Any one of them can be substituted for another.  You could also use “Sugar in the raw” or even regular white sugar.  I prefer not to use regular white sugar because of the extra refining that takes place.  The unrefined versions will have a slight molasses flavor, but other than that, there is really no difference for the recipe.  You can replace at a 1:1 ratio.

Fiddleheads - Fiidlehead ferms are highly seasonal and not available everywhere in the country, so don’t fret if you can’t find them.  Just replace with an equal amount of chopped asparagus.  The flavor and color is similar.  They even have a similar texture.

Stinging Nettles - Any green leafy vegetable such as kale, chard or spinach will achieve much of the same flavor and texture.

Sour Milk - You can only use sour milk if you buy raw milk and let it sour.  If you cannot or do not buy raw milk, you can substitute with an equal amount of buttermilk, plain yogurt, plain kefir (they sell it in some stores now - it is similar to a drinkable yogurt), or 1 cup of regular milk + 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar.

Sprouted Flour - I purchase this from the internet, so don’t worry if you can’t find it locally.  You can order it.  If you don’t have it, you can substitute for an equal amount of regular whole wheat flour.  You will not be receiving the superior nutrition of the sprouted grain, however.

Masa Harina - This is a traditional corn meal made by soaking the corn in an alkaline solution before grinding into flour.  This helps release more of the nutrients in corn to be bioavailable to you.  If you don’t have this, you can substitute for an equal amount of corn meal or corn flour.

Coconut Oil - This is an ingredient I would recommend you purchase, even if you don’t get anything else.  It has such wonderful health benefits and is so good to cook with since it can work even in high heat.  If you don’t have it, you can replace with butter.  However, you cannot cook butter on high heat like you can coconut oil.  You will either need to lower the heat or cook with ghee.

Ghee - many Asian grocery stores or organic/gourmet grocery stores will carry this.  It is clarified butter, so it can withstand higher temperatures.  If you know how to clarify your own butter (I do not) you can use that.  Otherwise, use butter (and keep the heat on medium) or use coconut oil.

Are there any other ingredients that I use that you don’t have? Let me know what other substitutions you need to know!

hummus on a sourdough cracker

This post is part of Fight Back Fridays.

I love hummus.  Whether it is a dip for crackers or crudites, a spread on a sandwich, or an accompaniment to falafel, it tastes so good.  One day I came home from work and announced I was going to make some.  I’d never made it before, but I’d become disenchanted with the store bought brands as they had a lot of highly processed ingredients in them.

I figured it couldn’t be hard to make hummus, and I was right.  You just put the ingredients in a Cuisinart and let it do all of the work!  The best thing about making it yourself is you can make any style or flavor of hummus you like.  Add lemon juice, extra tahini, pine nuts, peppers, different spices, different kinds of beans - it is all up to you.

I served it on a sourdough cracker, but it would be a great dip for carrots or celery, or a spread on a sandwich, or a sauce for chicken.  There are so many possibilities with this one.

This is what I did for the basic hummus recipe that you can use as a jumping off point for your favorite flavors.

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Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

I love making crisps; if I were to have a “signature dessert” it would be crisps.  I make them so much because they taste great with the fruit and brown sugar combination, crispy topping, and fruity bottom and they are so easy.  I’ve never really exactly followed a crisp recipe, but if I did, it would be the one in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison.  By the way, I highly recommend that cookbook.  It is filled with lots of great information, tons of inspiration, and everything uses real foods.  I’m not a vegetarian, but her cookbook can be used for side dishes, meatless main dishes (for those of you, who like me frequently have “Meatless Meals” or days), and everything tastes great.

Crisps are great all year round.  Any kind of fruit can be put inside to make them suitable for spring (rhubarb and strawberries, tada!) to fall and winter (apple crisp, anyone?).  This recipe will work for all seasons and all fruits with a little bit of know how - really juicy fruits will benefit from the addition of some sort of a starch such as flour or tapioca in the filling to help hold it together a little bit, and the sweeter the fruit, the less sugar you need.

Strawberry season is in full force here in the northeast.  Almost every stand at the farmer’s market has pints lined up, and more to replace the ones that are purchased.  Rhubarbs are still hanging on, as they will until the weather gets too hot for them in another month or so.  I never grew up eating strawberry and rhubarb in combination, but it seems it is a classic, so I made it into a crisp.

This post is submitted to Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, Tasty Tuesday and Real Food Wednesday.

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Farmer's Market Haul

I got up early this morning and went to the Farmer’s Market at Union Square.  The Union Square one is the biggest around.  There are the most vendors, and it is definitely the most crowded.  I do not enjoy that aspect of it.  However, when you get there as soon as it opens, it is not crowded.  I was able to take my time.  I like being able to walk the entire market before purchasing something.  This helps me plan meals in my head and know what to get.  It also allows me to find the best source for each item.  I’m concerned about price and I want good quality.  Getting there early also means the vendors aren’t too rushed.  They can take their time and you can too.  Ask about the meats - are they grass fed?  Do they receive routine antibiotics, or only if an animal is ill?  Is the milk homogenized?  What sort of pest management do you use? Where is your farm located?  I ask these questions and so many more.  It opens up a dialog and helps me understand more about the food I’m purchasing.  It puts them in touch with their customers so they know what things are important to consumers.

I saw a lot of fabulous things - non homogenized, lightly pasteurized, grass fed, organic milk; grass fed buffalo, beef, sheep, and goat meat; raspberries; blueberries; strawberries; the first cherries of the season; piles and piles of greens of every size, shape, and shade of green; edible flowers; tomatoes…  Oh, if only I had an endless wallet and an endless stomach.  I would spend my days cooking and eating everything there is to cook and eat.

Here is what I got (as seen in the photo above, left to right):

• Apricot juice from Red Jacket Orchards
• Currants
• Purple carrots (with tops)
• Beets (with tops)
• Purslane
• Feta goat cheese
• Rhubarb
• Almost 2 lbs of ground lamb
• Lamb sausage

The apricot juice comes from Red Jacket Orchards that sells a lot of juice and fruits like apples.   I don’t drink a lot of juice, preferring to just eat the raw fruit,  but every now and then I’ll get some.  It usually goes into my smoothie, which is what happened to a little bit of this when I got home!

The currants excited me.  I remember my grandma once made a current pie.  I LOVED it!  I need to do some research with my cookbooks and the internet and find a good way to use the currants.  My only concern is that I might not have enough for a whole pie.  If that is the case, I could probably add some other berries to the mix, or instead make a quick bread or something else with the currants.  Any suggestions for my currants?

Purple carrots.  Purple!  Why buy regular carrots when you can buy purple carrots?  Did you know that carrots used to come in a much wider variety of colors?  And our familiar orange carrot wasn’t even the dominant variety?  In the 1500’s or so, the Dutch started selecting for the orange carrots because of the ruling family, The House of Orange.  Clever, isn’t it?  I want to be a food historian; I find this stuff so fascinating.  Purple carrots have more beta carotene than orange carrots.  You can usually look at the color of vegetables to find out how much they have - the darker/deeper the shade, the more beta carotene.  If you are like me and love reading about the history of food in addition to its nutrition, check out The Carrot Museum for more information than you knew existed about the carrot.

I love beets with the tops because then it is like getting 2 vegetables in one.  Beet tops are essentially chard and can be cooked like any leafy green.  The roots I’ll probably boil and put in salad.  I love a good beet salad.

The feta cheese came from a farm full of happy goats.  I got to talk to the lady running the stand and I got to see pictures of the goats.  Goats are actually not grazers if they can help it - they are browsers.  They prefer bushes, weeds, even tree bark to grass, though they will eat grass if they have to.  Sure enough, the goats in the pictures were on weedy pastures on the fringes of forested areas.  No wonder the goats looked so happy and the cheese tasted so good!  These cheese will go in my beet salad.

Purslane is back!  I got this once from my CSA last year and loved it.  It is a weed and is unceremoniously tossed from many yards.  But it is delicious and nutritious!  The flavor is herb-y and lemony.  Very moist and delicate.  For nutrition, it is one of the best source for ALA omega-3.  ALA is the vegetarian source of omega 3.  Purslane is great in stir fries or as an accent to soups, meats, and so many other dishes.

It is still rhubarb season!  I’m so happy.  I haven’t even touched on all of the rhubarb things that can be made.  Rhubarb pie, rhubarb bread, rhubarb sauce to put over yogurt or anything else really…  Any suggestions?

Finally, I stopped by Catskill-Merino Sheep Farm’s stand.  They sell wool and meat, and the occasional plant item that grows on the farm.  They have an online store and they ship, if you don’t live nearby.  The sheep seem to be happy, grazing on very green grass, just as sheep are meant to do.  I haven’t eaten lamb in a long time, so I purchased some ground lamb and a lamb sausage.  I figure I can just use lamb instead of beef when making tacos, spaghetti, meatloaf, stroganoff, or anything that calls for ground beef.

Any suggestions for any of the things I got?  I’m particularly interested in ideas for the currants and rhubarb.