Today I decided to clean out my produce drawers. At times, I can get overwhelmed with too many good veggies and forget to use them all. That's not acceptable, especially when I buy or get them directly from the organic farmers growing them. I know how much work has gone into producing these edible bits of the plant and it is my responsibility to honor that by eating them.
To make sure I don't lose track of anything I prepped today for the next few days' easy meals (Assemble & Eat!), I jotted everything down on the dry erase board I keep on my fridge. I figure we'll have the fridge cleaned out by the weekend.
Food in Fridge (Cooked & Ready to Eat)
3 small roasted beets
1 head of broccoli, steamed
1 cup chopped steamed chard & beet leaves
6 ears of corn
1 roasted eggplant
1 1/2 cups steamed green beans
11 small-medium baked potatoes
2 small roasted yellow squash
What kind of dishes can I make with these cooked foods? All sorts of tasty possibilities come to mind, especially combined with the other raw veggies I have.
Baked potatoes with steamed broccoli, covered in a non-dairy "cheesy" sauce
Tossed salad with shredded raw carrots & zucchini and sliced roasted beets
Southwestern salad with corn, yellow squash, raw onion, grilled peppers, & tomatoes
Crackers with baba ganoush (eggplant dip)
Quick soup with baked potatoes, steamed green beans, carrots, onion, & chopped chard.
Dang, I'm making myself hungry. I'd list more ideas, but I really have to go eat something!
Edited to add: Dinner will be Basmati rice with spicy tomato chutney (local tomatoes & garlic) and saag without paneer (local chard & beet greens & garlic). Can't wait for the rice to cook - I'm starving!
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Dusting off my Bike
It's been so hot here - frequently over 100 during the day - that riding my bike has not held much interest for me. You may remember in the past that the electric bike assist on my Xtracycle really helped out with riding in the heat. Unfortunately, my Xtracycle lives in a storage unit away from home at this time because we still don't have a shed and haven't figured out a weatherproof and secure way to store the bike here. I do, however, have my regular hybrid "comfort" bike here.
One of the reasons I joined the gym was I needed to be able to exercise during the hot months without getting heat exhaustion. Unfortunately, my feet just don't do well with a treadmill, something my chiropractor confirms is not an uncommon problem. The elliptical machine is even worse for my feet. The only two cardio choices this leaves at the gym are the upright bikes used for spinning and recumbent bikes. My knee sometimes fusses about the recumbent and my, um, lady parts don't like the seat on the upright bike. I cannot adjust the angle of the seat nor replace it with a saddle with a cut-out in the right place like the one on my bike.
It finally occurred to me that I should just ride my own bike for the cardio part of my exercise. The tough part about this, of course, is that I have to get up at O'dark-thirty to avoid the heat but wait until there is just enough light to avoid the potholes and rocks in the road. (Roads around here get really beat up with the monsoon rains, forming potholes quickly. Overflowing washes and run-off leave large amounts of sand and rocks deposited on the roads, too.) However, since my sweetie has resumed his running, he is already getting up at O'dark-thirty so it's not that difficult for him to shake me and tell me it's time to get up, too.
I've really enjoyed being back on my bike! Thanks to the lower body strength training I've been doing, along with the miles I logged on the treadmill until my heel started hurting too much, I don't feel like I'm starting utterly from scratch. Of course, there is the normal seat numbness that comes with taking up riding again but TITS (Time In The Saddle) will take care of that. If I keep this up, I'll be ready and able to use my bike for midday errands again when the temperatures cool off this fall.
One of the reasons I joined the gym was I needed to be able to exercise during the hot months without getting heat exhaustion. Unfortunately, my feet just don't do well with a treadmill, something my chiropractor confirms is not an uncommon problem. The elliptical machine is even worse for my feet. The only two cardio choices this leaves at the gym are the upright bikes used for spinning and recumbent bikes. My knee sometimes fusses about the recumbent and my, um, lady parts don't like the seat on the upright bike. I cannot adjust the angle of the seat nor replace it with a saddle with a cut-out in the right place like the one on my bike.
It finally occurred to me that I should just ride my own bike for the cardio part of my exercise. The tough part about this, of course, is that I have to get up at O'dark-thirty to avoid the heat but wait until there is just enough light to avoid the potholes and rocks in the road. (Roads around here get really beat up with the monsoon rains, forming potholes quickly. Overflowing washes and run-off leave large amounts of sand and rocks deposited on the roads, too.) However, since my sweetie has resumed his running, he is already getting up at O'dark-thirty so it's not that difficult for him to shake me and tell me it's time to get up, too.
I've really enjoyed being back on my bike! Thanks to the lower body strength training I've been doing, along with the miles I logged on the treadmill until my heel started hurting too much, I don't feel like I'm starting utterly from scratch. Of course, there is the normal seat numbness that comes with taking up riding again but TITS (Time In The Saddle) will take care of that. If I keep this up, I'll be ready and able to use my bike for midday errands again when the temperatures cool off this fall.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Fresh, Local, Organic Produce
Back when I was doing the CSA thing, I used to occasionally post pictures of what I brought home. I realized recently that I haven't ever done that with the new volunteer gig I have at Our Garden.
A few weeks ago, I intended to post a picture of the tasty produce I brought home with comments on what I was going to do with it. Time got away from me and I never did that. I will, however, share the photo with you now.
Mid-June goodies from their garden
You can compare what was in season then with what is in season now.
Early July goodies from their garden
Besides the watermelon, cantaloupe, rainbow chard, zucchini, onion, garlic, and corn in the picture, other things are available at Our Garden currently. I didn't bring any home either because they'd run out by the time I left or they aren't among my favorites. Other tasty goods include fruit (grapes, blackberries), greens (arugula, amaranth, purslane, radicchio), beets, other summer squashes, eggplant, tomatoes, and fresh herbs (such as basil, bay leaves, oregano, parsley, rosemary, and thyme). I'm sad that no arugula, eggplant, or tomatoes were available to come home with me today.
One of the problems with working around fresh produce for hours on end is the tendency to dream about ways to prepare and eat it. This was an issue at the CSA, one sometimes solved by throwing together sample dishes with whatever was available so we could all snack.
Some memorable dishes include a very simple and tasty arugula salad made with arugula and sweet green apples (diced), dressed with fresh lime juice and salt/pepper. That is still a salad I enjoy today. For a while, too, someone would always bring a baguette for we volunteers to eat. I'd make sandwiches with roasted green chiles, tomatoes, and any available greens.
At the garden, though, I don't have the kitchen set-up to do this sort of thing, so I just drool all over myself thinking about what I can make later. The cantaloupe and watermelon will be wonderful for chilling and then eating just as is. I was pleased to see this is a seeded watermelon as the seeds have tasty uses, too.
As I wrote three years ago in a post:
"Roasted watermelon seeds are sold as snacks in other parts of the world, sometimes already cracked open to make it easier to get to the tasty meat inside. While looking for instructions on how to roast them, I found a skillet method used in Egypt. Ultimately I settled on roasting them in the oven. First, rinse the pulp off the raw seeds. An optional step is to soak them in salted water for about 20 minutes. With squash seeds, this is supposed to make it easier to crack open the roasted seeds. Next, drain and dry them while preheating the oven to 350 degrees. Roasting only takes 10 minutes. Stir to prevent burning.
The Indian recipe I was following required ground seeds. I used the electric spice grinder as I seem to have misplaced my metate. I put the ground seeds in a fine sieve and sifted. The shells did not grind as finely as the meat inside and remained in the sieve so pouring boiling water through the sieve extracts all of the good flavor from the shells. According to this recipe and another site, the ground roasted seeds were an efficient way to add fat and protein to the diet during lean times when meat may have been hard to come by. Handy tip in case we face hard times in the future.
I created a soup after cooking the beans. It was wonderful, with the seeds adding a nice nutty flavor to the beans."
Lately, I've been simply blanching my chard and/or beet greens for a few minutes in boiling water and then draining and chopping them. I add the chopped greens to pasta, put them on top of mashed potatoes, or toss them with a little soy sauce and seasoned rice vinegar. The stems are, of course, saved for this spicy pickled stems recipe from Bon Appetit.
Zucchini is so versatile that I have not yet decided how to use it this week. In the past couple of weeks, I've had it sliced thin on pizza (both raw and roasted slices), shredded raw in salad, diced in soup, and shredded and sauteed in spaghetti sauce. I found a zucchini chocolate muffin recipe I want to try this week, and may also make some regular zucchini bread. Even if zucchini gets overwhelming, it's easy to freeze shredded zucchini in bags to pull out mid-winter to make a tasty bread that will have you praising this productive summer vegetable all over again. This lemon-zucchini relish is also really good.
I have some digestive trouble with corn so most of the corn I bring home goes into my sweetie's stomach. He's happy to have it boiled just until tender and then salted. When I do eat a little, I really enjoy it with smoked salt but I am not currently sure where my stash of smoked salt is hiding. Sadly, I did not see any for sale at Penzey's and the other spice place in town that had it seems to be gone now.
These onions are so sweet that I've been using them raw in salads of all sorts - tossed, pasta, and potato. When I cook with them, I don't cook them nearly as long as I normally would saute an onion as it isn't necessary with their natural sweetness. A good many of my dinner recipes start out with "dice and saute an onion until golden" so it is impossible for me to ever have too many onions!
Lately, I've been enjoying a lot of the garlic, too. Just this week, I've had some minced in homemade hummus and added to pasta sauce. Roasted garlic cloves are a wonderful addition to mashed potatoes and homemade pizza will sparkle when sprinkled with minced garlic before cooking.
I've still got a couple of beets left in my refrigerator so this week's eating will include roasted beets. They are so simple to prepare yet so tasty. Simply clean the beet well, trim the stems off to about 1/2" above the top of the beet, and toss on a baking sheet. Roast them until tender in a 350-400 degree oven. Large ones can take an hour, but start checking smaller ones in 30-45 minutes. Once cool enough to handle, the skins slip right off. I like to slice them and serve with horseradish sauce and salt.
Once I get my hands on some tomatoes, I'll probably defrost some of my few remaining frozen roasted green chiles and dice some of those onions to make fresh salsa. That with some quick pickled cucumber, when they are ripe, will be just lovely with bean burritos. And perhaps this will be the year when I finally find an authentic, but not impossible to make, recipe for spicy eggplant. If not, I'll stick with this Indian spicy eggplant dish. It may look like dog food but the taste is awesome!
For additional ideas on how to use fresh, local, organic produce, either from your garden, a CSA or farmers market, produce stand, or u-pick farm, check out my recipes and the recipe database from the Tucson CSA. The latter one is organized by type of produce, which makes it a great resource.
A few weeks ago, I intended to post a picture of the tasty produce I brought home with comments on what I was going to do with it. Time got away from me and I never did that. I will, however, share the photo with you now.
You can compare what was in season then with what is in season now.
Besides the watermelon, cantaloupe, rainbow chard, zucchini, onion, garlic, and corn in the picture, other things are available at Our Garden currently. I didn't bring any home either because they'd run out by the time I left or they aren't among my favorites. Other tasty goods include fruit (grapes, blackberries), greens (arugula, amaranth, purslane, radicchio), beets, other summer squashes, eggplant, tomatoes, and fresh herbs (such as basil, bay leaves, oregano, parsley, rosemary, and thyme). I'm sad that no arugula, eggplant, or tomatoes were available to come home with me today.
One of the problems with working around fresh produce for hours on end is the tendency to dream about ways to prepare and eat it. This was an issue at the CSA, one sometimes solved by throwing together sample dishes with whatever was available so we could all snack.
Some memorable dishes include a very simple and tasty arugula salad made with arugula and sweet green apples (diced), dressed with fresh lime juice and salt/pepper. That is still a salad I enjoy today. For a while, too, someone would always bring a baguette for we volunteers to eat. I'd make sandwiches with roasted green chiles, tomatoes, and any available greens.
At the garden, though, I don't have the kitchen set-up to do this sort of thing, so I just drool all over myself thinking about what I can make later. The cantaloupe and watermelon will be wonderful for chilling and then eating just as is. I was pleased to see this is a seeded watermelon as the seeds have tasty uses, too.
As I wrote three years ago in a post:
"Roasted watermelon seeds are sold as snacks in other parts of the world, sometimes already cracked open to make it easier to get to the tasty meat inside. While looking for instructions on how to roast them, I found a skillet method used in Egypt. Ultimately I settled on roasting them in the oven. First, rinse the pulp off the raw seeds. An optional step is to soak them in salted water for about 20 minutes. With squash seeds, this is supposed to make it easier to crack open the roasted seeds. Next, drain and dry them while preheating the oven to 350 degrees. Roasting only takes 10 minutes. Stir to prevent burning.
The Indian recipe I was following required ground seeds. I used the electric spice grinder as I seem to have misplaced my metate. I put the ground seeds in a fine sieve and sifted. The shells did not grind as finely as the meat inside and remained in the sieve so pouring boiling water through the sieve extracts all of the good flavor from the shells. According to this recipe and another site, the ground roasted seeds were an efficient way to add fat and protein to the diet during lean times when meat may have been hard to come by. Handy tip in case we face hard times in the future.
I created a soup after cooking the beans. It was wonderful, with the seeds adding a nice nutty flavor to the beans."
Lately, I've been simply blanching my chard and/or beet greens for a few minutes in boiling water and then draining and chopping them. I add the chopped greens to pasta, put them on top of mashed potatoes, or toss them with a little soy sauce and seasoned rice vinegar. The stems are, of course, saved for this spicy pickled stems recipe from Bon Appetit.
Zucchini is so versatile that I have not yet decided how to use it this week. In the past couple of weeks, I've had it sliced thin on pizza (both raw and roasted slices), shredded raw in salad, diced in soup, and shredded and sauteed in spaghetti sauce. I found a zucchini chocolate muffin recipe I want to try this week, and may also make some regular zucchini bread. Even if zucchini gets overwhelming, it's easy to freeze shredded zucchini in bags to pull out mid-winter to make a tasty bread that will have you praising this productive summer vegetable all over again. This lemon-zucchini relish is also really good.
I have some digestive trouble with corn so most of the corn I bring home goes into my sweetie's stomach. He's happy to have it boiled just until tender and then salted. When I do eat a little, I really enjoy it with smoked salt but I am not currently sure where my stash of smoked salt is hiding. Sadly, I did not see any for sale at Penzey's and the other spice place in town that had it seems to be gone now.
These onions are so sweet that I've been using them raw in salads of all sorts - tossed, pasta, and potato. When I cook with them, I don't cook them nearly as long as I normally would saute an onion as it isn't necessary with their natural sweetness. A good many of my dinner recipes start out with "dice and saute an onion until golden" so it is impossible for me to ever have too many onions!
Lately, I've been enjoying a lot of the garlic, too. Just this week, I've had some minced in homemade hummus and added to pasta sauce. Roasted garlic cloves are a wonderful addition to mashed potatoes and homemade pizza will sparkle when sprinkled with minced garlic before cooking.
I've still got a couple of beets left in my refrigerator so this week's eating will include roasted beets. They are so simple to prepare yet so tasty. Simply clean the beet well, trim the stems off to about 1/2" above the top of the beet, and toss on a baking sheet. Roast them until tender in a 350-400 degree oven. Large ones can take an hour, but start checking smaller ones in 30-45 minutes. Once cool enough to handle, the skins slip right off. I like to slice them and serve with horseradish sauce and salt.
Once I get my hands on some tomatoes, I'll probably defrost some of my few remaining frozen roasted green chiles and dice some of those onions to make fresh salsa. That with some quick pickled cucumber, when they are ripe, will be just lovely with bean burritos. And perhaps this will be the year when I finally find an authentic, but not impossible to make, recipe for spicy eggplant. If not, I'll stick with this Indian spicy eggplant dish. It may look like dog food but the taste is awesome!
For additional ideas on how to use fresh, local, organic produce, either from your garden, a CSA or farmers market, produce stand, or u-pick farm, check out my recipes and the recipe database from the Tucson CSA. The latter one is organized by type of produce, which makes it a great resource.
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