The Last Letter

Dear Reader,

After almost four and a half years, I think it is time for us to part ways. Yes, I am saying what you think I’m saying: I want to break up with you.

Oh, don’t cry! We have had our fun together, exploring new ways to save energy and water, harvesting and preserving all kinds of tasty food, riding our bikes along the sunny streets, bitching and moaning about this and that, but really, honey, it’s time for me to go.

No, it’s not you!

It’s me.

I need my space. I want the privacy to live my life without you knowing everything I do. I want the freedom to think outrageous thoughts without feeling obligated to share them with you. We both know there are times when I don’t pay attention to you for days on end; sometimes I don’t even think about you when I’m gone. This makes me feel bad in a way, but also secretly I've felt a certain relief when I've had these little breaks.

Don’t worry, you’ll find someone new. Someone exciting and different who challenges what you think you know and encourages you to broaden your horizons. And, you can always come back here to visit the memories we made together. I wouldn’t take that away from you as I hope they mean as much to you as they do to me.

If you really want to keep in touch, you can leave me a comment with your email address. I won’t publish it for all the other readers to see – can’t have you all making each other jealous – but I will make a note of it for myself. I won’t promise to write; after all, I do need some time to myself. I will continue to hang out with a few of you over at the “fat blog” and if any of the rest of you really, really miss me, you can wander over for a visit.

It’s been a blast, dear Reader. Enjoy your life, never stop learning, and keep your mind and heart open.

Love,
Chile

Don't Want to Wear a Bike Helmet?

Then you sure as shit better not ride in Africa! This is what helmets are for, boys and girls: those unexpected ambushes and crashes. You can't predict when you might have an accident so be smart and wear your helmet every time you ride, whether it's through the wilds of Africa, the jungles of the city, and even just the usually quiet streets of your town.

Pantry Challenge: Second Food Purchase

I did very well this week in not spending any money on food. As you can see from my food log, this doesn't mean we weren't eating wonderfully tasty meals. In fact, making baba ganouj yesterday morning inspired a Lebanese dinner menu.

It started out with the baba ganouj (eggplant dip) served with toasted whole wheat Lavash with a cucumber-tomato salad on the side served over baby lettuce. The tomato and mint for the salad came from our garden, although the tomato was not quite fully ripe.

The main part of the meal, which I forgot to photograph, was Lemon-Garlic Potatoes and a Lebanese Vegetable Stew with Chickpeas. The garlic in the potatoes was overwhelmed by the lemon flavor, probably because I substituted a piece of my pickled lemon rind in place of fresh lemon rind since I didn't have a fresh lemon. The lemon juice came from the freezer. The stew was quite tasty and I'll bet will be even better as leftovers after the flavors have really had a chance to blend.

Today we went to the weekly farmers market because I wanted more potatoes and sweet potatoes. When we got there, though, the signs of fall were in the air, er, on the tables. I could not resist getting some broccoli, cauliflower, and collards. I also picked up a red bell pepper and some cilantro.

Here is the farmers market bounty minus one broccoli bunch. It cost a total of $25.10.

I was a bit peckish when we got home so I whipped up a quick snack. Leftover boiled potatoes and steamed broccoli florets, topped with a "cheesy" sauce. Usually I use the recipes in Jo Stepaniak's Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook for these but today I just whipped it up from the basic ingredients.

To the blender jar, I added 2 small red peppers, 1/4 of an onion, 2 1/2 tbs nutritional yeast, a squeeze of lime juice (because I didn't feel like digging in the freezer for lemon juice), a handful of rolled oats (because I didn't feel like digging in the freezer for the whole wheat flour either), and water. After blending this up until smooth, I cooked it on the stove top over medium heat until thickened. Salt was sprinkled over the top of the dish rather than added to the sauce.

So far, so good on sticking to the challenge. But then, we needed to run into town on an errand and ended up deciding to get lunch at Sweet Tomatoes, a big salad bar. We didn't need to because I have leftovers from last night's Lebanese feast in the fridge and that was the plan. But, we wanted to and agreed to go ahead and enjoy a meal there.

I stuffed myself with plenty of healthy food, starting with a plate piled high with salad. At home, I forget to add some of the tasty things they have at Sweet Tomatoes that make me so enjoy a meal there: beets for sweetness, jalapenos for heat, garbanzo beans for creaminess and flavor, and toasted almond slices and sunflower seeds for crunch. Sometimes I also throw raisins on for sweetness. These extra little touches really enhance the salad which is important when you're eating a big ol' plate of raw veggies with plain rice vinegar in place of a high fat creamy dressing!

That wasn't enough for me, though, so I headed to the hot food bar and came back with a baked sweet potato and small bowl of vegetarian potato-onion-tomato-spinach soup. I smooshed up the sweet potato on a big plate, topped it with more raw veggies (spinach, red onion, celery, zucchini shreds, green peas, and tomatoes) and poured the cup of soup on top. Yum! We told the server with the hot fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies to just keep walking. No cookies for me! (If you knew me, I mean, really knew me, you'd know how incredible that is...)

So how much more did we spend for this decadent yet healthy meal? Another $20.47 (plus tip).

Food purchases for this month so far are $38 at the farmers market and $20.47 at a restaurant. If you are eating out of your pantry this month, how are you doing?

Complete Use of Food

In my post about this pantry challenge on my weight loss blog, I mentioned that I hate food waste and therefore use various methods of food preservation to get every bit of edible content out of the food that I have. These various methods of food preservation include canning, drying, and freezing. Long time readers may remember the story I tell in that post about first juicing, then dehydrating, and finally grinding up pomegranate seeds, followed by making liqueur with the chunky bits sifted out. (See the linked post for links to those particular stories if I've piqued your interest.)

Why am I so obsessive about this sort of crazy attempt to squeeze more food out of what most people would throw in the compost pile? There are a number of reasons.

1. It's fun and it tastes good. I've always liked making food from scratch. For instance, one of the first condiments I learned to make myself was vanilla extract. It just fascinated me years (decades!) ago that I could produce something so heavenly in my own kitchen. Of course it helped that I grew up with a good example. My father gardened, as did my grandfather during his time living with my family, so my mother regularly canned and froze foods. When I left home for college and had to settle for storebought ketchup and grape jelly, I realized just how good I'd had it at home! Once I took up canning as an adult, I realized just how good I could have it again.

2. Making complete use of food saves money. This goes beyond just eating your leftovers and using a rubber spatula to scrape the last bit of muffin batter into the pan. This means rinsing out the pressure cooker after you've dumped out the cooked and mashed potatoes to get the last bits, saving the water for soup. If no soup is planned in the next few days, the rinse water can be frozen with similar water from rinsing other pans continually added to the container. (Just make sure the flavors will blend.) This means chopping up and using the celery leaves as well as the stalks, stripping the carrot leaves off the stems and using them, finely chopped, in a stiryfry, grating the lemon's rind before juicing and drying it for zest, and salvaging damaged or aging produce. I've written about these concepts before when I've discussed avoiding food waste.

3. Using it all saves resources. A lot of resources go into growing our food, even in our own gardens. Time, human energy, oil energy (to run gas-powered garden or farm machinery), seeds, water, soil amendments, fertilizers, and, if it's not grown in your own garden, transportation. Honor the use of those resources by fully using the harvest. I know most of my readers would not dream of wasting food, but perhaps you actually do waste more than you realize by simply not realizing some of what you have IS food. Making your own vegetable stock is just the beginning. With the vast resources of the internet now at our fingertips, it's incredibly easy to do a quick search on whether there is a way to make something out of a produce part usually thrown away, such as grapefruit pith or watermelon rind and seeds. Seek (using a search engine) and ye shall find!

4. Learning this useful skill may save us in the end. As anyone who's read much about the last Depression era knows, many people had to practice extremely frugal cooking skills to get by. If meat was available, tiny portions were stretched to feed the family, using it as a flavoring more than the centerpiece of the meal. Gardens then and during the second World War provided people with fresh produce they might not have had otherwise and food preservation through canning and pickling was essential. My guess, too, is that vegetables previously peeled, such as potatoes and carrots, may not have been simply to get every last bit of food out of them. By practicing frugal food skills now, we may just be learning those skills needed in the future if the economy continues to go downhill.


How does all this relate to my current pantry challenge? Well, because I can't just go shopping any time I want, and I'm trying to limit the produce I buy to what I absolutely need, I've got to be more frugal and creative with what I have on hand.

Luckily, I've still got a few items of food that I've previously canned, things like jelly, fruit syrup, and pickled vegetables. These can be used to enhance and flavor my dishes, and the fruit syrups can even be the base of quick dressings and sauces. (See my note on salad dressing in yesterday's post.) I still remember years ago trying to empty out the refrigerator before a big move. I had frozen eggrolls but no sweet and sour sauce. After looking up recipes in my cookbooks, I made an acceptable one out of what I had on hand: apricot jam, ketchup, and a little vinegar.

It also means using the produce that I get from my own garden, the place where I volunteer, and the farmers market appropriately, making sure there is no waste. I'm not always as good about this as I should be but this month's challenge is getting me back on track. While our garden at home did not fare well during this very hot summer, the pepper plants cranked out peppers at a good clip, albeit somewhat smaller than they should be. A few weeks ago, I harvested a good portion of them, intending to make a really tasty escabeche. I never made it because I wasn't sure if I could do it oil-free and the peppers, not being used up quickly enough, began to develop some brown spots.

Yesterday I looked at them and decided I had to salvage what was left. Suddenly an old memory surfaced, one of shaving bits off a frozen block of jalapenos as needed from the family freezer. I don't recall whether my dad froze the jalapenos whole, in water, or maybe blended up in water, but it seems like it was a solid block. Since the peppers I have are hotter than my sweetie enjoys, I haven't been putting much in the food I make for our dinners. However, if they were frozen, I could just use some to accent my food or make a hot spicy lunch for myself.

I carefully cut away the bad spots and seeded the peppers. I figured out that if I cut a little higher on the stem, I wouldn't waste the "collar," that rounded top part of a pepper where it attaches to the stem. (The little pile of minced pepper on the right is from the collars of the peppers in the bowl; not a lot of food but every bit counts.)

I minced the peppers so they would be ready to use straight from the freezer. Here they are, all ready to go. 'Course as soon as I finished that, I headed out to the garden to harvest the next batch of red peppers...

The founder of the Tucson CSA used to mention occasionally that he uses minced hot peppers in place of black pepper. I plan to try that with some foods and also use these frozen peppers in some of my kimchi recipes that call for dried red pepper. Alternately, I could put some of the red peppers I just harvested into the dehydrator. There is something very satisfying about using red chile powder made from peppers you have grown, dried, and then ground yourself.


What unusual parts of your produce have you used or preserved?

Easy Salads

I really love salad. That's good because salad is quite healthy, or it can be. Vegetables are full of nutrients, fiber, and antioxidants, and with the notable exception of avocado, are naturally low in calories. I like going to Sweet Tomatoes, a restaurant featuring a huge salad bar, because somebody else has done all the work of prepping the vegetables (and they wash up the dishes afterwards, too). However, it's obviously not practical to go there every day so I've been looking at ways to make salads a little easier at home.

Prepping veggies for a salad ahead of time doesn't always work well. Some vegetables exude too much moisture and are limp by the time I'm ready to put the salad together. Others brown on the cut edges. But, I don't want to go to all the effort  - and clean-up - of chopping for a salad every day. Here are a few ways I've been easing the burden.

Mushrooms - I buy my mushrooms whole. I don't like the stems in salads so after wiping the shrooms clean, I break off the stems, chop them, and put them in a container in the fridge to use for a cooked dish. I slice the caps and put them in another container. They seem to keep pretty well for a few days. If they start browning more than I'd like in a salad, I just use them with the stems in a cooked dish.

Carrots and daikon radish - these harder vegetables keep well when shredded. Carrot can have a tendency to dry out somewhat but daikon has a tendency towards being a little too moist. By combining them, I've found a happy medium that also keeps several days in the fridge.

Zucchini - this keeps well after shredding, too. I'm lazy and have been combining it with the carrots and daikon. If kept separately, it would be easy to toss some in the freezer if it looked like I had grated too much to use up in a reasonable amount of time. Frozen shredded zucchini can be thawed later for use in quick breads and muffins.

Cucumber - the only way I've found to keep sliced cucumber in decent shape for any length of time is to seed it first. I hate to waste any edible part of a vegetable so I eat the "hearts" when I do the prep work. The seedy interior can even be chopped up and tossed with a little vinegar and salt & pepper to nibble on while working.

Red onion - this keeps well when diced, but like the other vegetables, only for a few days before it starts losing its crispness.

Tomato - does not keep well at all. If I have fresh tomatoes on hand, I slice one up right before serving the salad. If I have too many fresh tomatoes on hand and they are threatening to go bad, I either make tabouli (bulgur salad with garlic, lemon juice, tons of tomatoes, and tons of parsley) or I chop them up and freeze them. I like the idea of dehydrated tomatoes but quite honestly, I forget to use what I already have so I rarely bother to dehydrate them anymore.

Lettuce - two ways I've found to keep clean and torn lettuce in fairly good shape are leaving it in the salad spinner in the fridge (spun dry, of course) or placing it in a closed container or bag wrapped in a dishtowel (the lettuce, not the container). The crisper lettuces, like Romaine and iceberg, keep better this way than leaf lettuce. I have also found that making a traditional tossed salad without the lettuce is still good, and I may very well be doing that soon when I run out of the little bit of greens in my fridge.


When I am ready for a salad, I just pick and choose from the prepped veggies above, adding tomatoes at the end if I have them.

Cooked beans are another tasty addition to salads. I'm partial to red kidney beans and garbanzo beans for salad. They add a bit more fiber, protein, and calories but also add satiation. I rarely add nuts or sunflower seeds to salad mostly because the higher fat content isn't worth the flavor to me; I also have some sensitivity to tree nuts so I try to avoid them. Fresh or canned jalapenos add a delicious bite to a fresh salad while raisins can add a sweet touch.

I also enjoy adding some cooked vegetables to tossed salad, usually leftovers so they are chilled. Some of my favorites are green beans, grilled bell peppers, corn, peas (barely cooked), and Yukon gold or red potatoes. The nice thing about the cooked vegetables is they add moisture, reducing the need for dressing.

When I first tried eliminating added oil, salad dressings was one of the areas where I really struggled. I was a ranch dressing and Bernstein's Italian dressing fan, both very high in fat and calories. Trying to buy a dressing in a store that has no oil, no cheese, low salt, and low sugar, without a bunch of nasty chemical substitutes, is very challenging. I've got a large file of homemade salad dressing recipes, many of them untried because by the time I've finished making the salad, I don't want to spend a bunch more time making a dressing, too.

Luckily, I've found an easy way to whip together a satisfying dressing. In Dr. Esselstyn's book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, there is a recipe for 3-2-1 Dressing. It is 3 parts vinegar, 2 parts mustard, and 1 part maple syrup. Any type of vinegar or mustard may be used. I take this a step further and change the last part to any sweetener I want to use, plus I use about equal portions of the three components. It's also very easy to add some herbs to this or a sprinkle of Mrs. Dash Table Blend, a good all-purposed salt-free flavorful blend of herbs and spices.

Some dressing combinations I've made lately:
balsamic vinegar + stone ground mustard + raspberry-chipotle sauce
peach-plum vinegar (homemade) + stone ground mustard + maple syrup
rice vinegar + stone ground mustard + hot pepper jelly

If the dressing is too thin to stick to the vegetables, I might add a pinch of cornstarch and microwave it for 10-15 seconds to thicken it.


An easy way to make salad a part of the meal without being on the side is to just dump it right on top of the main dish. Whenever I make bean burritos, it's hard to see the burritos under the mountain of lettuce and salsa on top. A tossed salad over hot mashed potatoes, with or without gravy on the spuds, makes a nice juxtaposition of hot creamy food with crisp cold raw vegetables. Any way you like it, adding salads to your meals is tasty and good for you.


Edited to add: The Just Bento Cookbook by Makiko Itoh has some interesting vegetable side dishes. To make them a bit more healthy, I will omit the oil from any that I make and probably reduce the salt. One technique for softening vegetables not meant to be cooked is massaging them with salt and then squeezing out the excess moisture. If sodium is a concern for you, it is simple enough to rinse off the salt before squeezing out the moisture. Some salt will remain but the total amount will be greatly reduced. These can be served with a bowl of (unsalted) cooked brown rice for a tasty lunch.

Pantry Challenge: First Food Purchase

One of the reasons I made the exception to this month's Pantry Challenge allowing us to purchase local produce was that this was supposed to be the last week that a local guy would have dates at the farmers market and I wanted to be sure we could pick some up. I was going to actually buy more than we could eat in the month he says they will keep in the fridge and try dehydrating them.

He wasn't there! We walked through the farmers market twice to be sure we didn't miss him. I'm so disappointed because we did not buy nearly enough last week. I'm not sure if it's worth the long drive into town tomorrow to see if he shows up at the Sunday farmers market but I'm seriously tempted.

Anyway, while we were there, I wanted to get a tomato as the organic garden where I volunteer is struggling with a virus or disease on their tomatoes. At the stand, I noticed white-fleshed sweet potatoes, too. Yum! I didn't know anyone was growing those in Arizona. I purchased four of those. Another farmer I like had bags of mixed potatoes: Yukon gold, purple, and red. We bought one bag of those (probably about 2-3 pounds) and a medium bag of green beans. We picked up a few of his plums, too, but are not crazy about the particular variety. I may try making stewed plums to see if we like them better that way.

All told, I spent $12.90. Unless I drive down to the other farmers market tomorrow, that will probably be my total food expenditure for the first week of October.

If anyone is interested, I can write about what we are eating from the pantry, fridge, and freezer. Some items are recent acquisitions (fresh produce), some bought in bulk at U-pick farms or from local farmers (freezer), and others purchased in bulk or on sale over the past few years (pantry). Would seeing my menu using those things be of interest or help to you?

Update: I am back to logging all my food in my other blog so that anyone following this challenge can see what I am actually eating. I'm giving more detail than usual, as well, to include the ingredients. See the Food Log.