CABIN FEVER DINING: What I made today post-Sandy

POST #848
With no public transportation on the day after Sandy, this week is definitely a stay-cation.  Worse, everything within walking distance is closed.  Cabin fever city!  Back to the kitchen!

This morning I got up and made some kale/cashew cheeze in my much beloved Cuisinart food processor (it has already outlasted each of the two economy food processors I had before) to go with the sunflower seed crackers I meant to eat later.

Later, I made a “surf and turf salad.”
I had some leftover torn-up kale from huge bunch I’d bought on Sunday, so I chopped it up a little more, added some soaked wakame seaweed, also chopped up, about 1/4 C chopped red bell pepper, 1/2  jalapeno, chopped, some freshly-ground black pepper, 1/2 galangal (don’t ask why, I have no idea), 2 chopped garlic cloves, about 1/2 C lentil sprouts, and about 1/4 C sunflower seed sprouts, then some apple cider vinegar and olive oil.  It didn’t seem like enough, so I took a heaping soup spoon of the kale/cashew cheeze and mixed it with water to make a creamy dressing which I poured over the top.  Yumm!

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HURRICANE ALLEY: What do I do when there’s a hurricane outside?

POST #847
What do I do when there is a hurricane outside?

Well… first, I watch the weather for too long, and, then, when I cannot take it anymore, I get up and go to the kitchen and make stuff. Today, that was kale chips and sunflower seed crackers.

After I did that, I raced back to the computer, just in case the power might go off, and found a new cool site, Nouveau Raw, with great recipes, read them all, then sat around and thought about making something else. [I really really liked Nouveau Raw. It is almost like a raw food training. Who knew there could be so many things to address on such an attractive blog?  I’ll be going back there soon and often]
That brought me up to now.

Time to hop in bed. The hurricane can wait or go away.

BACK HOME & BACK IN THE KITCHEN

POST #846
I’m home at last! The hurricane was coming in, my family valiantly worked to get me out of the Outer Banks, into Virginia Beach, onto a bus to Newport News, VA, and then I had a 10 hr. train odyssey back to New York City (Luckily, I had an arsenal of books and magazines, and…the train had electrical outlets and wi-fi, so I didn’t get a wink of sleep on the all-day train!)

After a long night’s recuperative sleep, I woke up bright and early this morning, did some work around the house, ran around the neighborhood scoring batteries and flashlights and some kale (I figure 2 lbs of kale will make enough kale chips that I can live through any power outage). Everyone’s hurricane-crazed here (insane lines with people in stores talking to total strangers (me) while standing in interminable lines that kept seeming to get longer or else not moving at all, or else both.

This evening, I opened the last jar of kohlrabi/garlic/jalapeno pickles and the last jar of cabbage/jalapeno sauerkraut.

I’d been unhappy about the first jar of kohlrabi, but, after a week, the second jar turned out fine (we ate them up at the beach last week!), and I had left the third jar to see what would happen if they went 3 or 4 weeks. Opening the jar today, I was faced with some busy fizzing, and, when I tried the pickles, I was glad to know that longer works very well. These pickles are even better.

The sauerkraut was a very happy experience! The first jar did nothing for me, but this jar (at 3-4 weeks) turned out very tasty. Yumm!

Right now, I have a jar of lentil sprouts working, and jar of sunflower seed sprouts. Tomorrow morning, after I make up the kale chips and stow them in the dehydrator, I think I will make some sunflower seed crackers from a recipe in Rose Calabro’s book, Living in the Raw … haven’t had those for a while (hopefully, we won’t lose power, and I’ll be able to get them dehydrated for 12 hrs).