06/27/13 CSA SHARE: What we got, what I will do with it, and miscellaneous comments

Here is what we got:
Fennel – 1 bun
Parsley – 1 bun
Red Romaine Lettuce – 1 hd
Green Boston Lettuce – 1 hd traded for kale
Toscano Kale – 1 bun
Baby Carrots – 1 bun
Garlic Scapes – 1 bun

I was kind of surprised because, when I went to trade two things from my box, I was told that there was a rule that each person could only trade one thing for one other thing. That was new to me – I’ve been a member of the CSA from the first year, and the rule has always been you put one thing in and you take one thing out, no limits. So…. I could not trade the lettuce *and* the romaine, and, once I had decided to trade the lettuce, I had to decide between taking the kale or the garlic scapes. I think that new plan is just plain mean, but I am not the people who are running the CSA, and they are they people who get to make the rules as they see fit. I do think that the rules should be published for all to know about, and I will post this thought on the CSA Facebook page (in case anybody watches that or cares what people think)
What will I do with all this?
I got about 4 fennel things (pieces? Fennel bulbs with stalks with some frilly leaf-like things), 1 little bunch of parsley, 1 hd of romaine, 2 bunches of kale, 1 bunch of carrots with greens, and 1 bunch of about 5 garlic scapes.
In addition, they let me take the carrot greens that some people had put into the compost pot.
I’m going to look into fermenting fennel – If I can’t find something interesting, then I’ll just chop it up and find a way to eat it with other vegetables (will let you know)
I will make dill garlic fermented carrots
The kale will go to kale chips – will describe the recipe once I decide
I will chop up the garlic scapes and use them as garlic for something.—maybe the fermented carrots (will let you know)
If I cannot bring myself to eat the romaine, I will dehydrate it along with the carrot greens and add it to my supergreen powder (I’ll let you know)
Things are tight here, right now. The CSA is about the only source of food I have, with my reduction in work hours. I am down about 20 lbs (down to 120 lbs @ 5’9”) living on what I get from the CSA, and what I can manage after my rent and utilities. So, I am svelte (and I do like the way clothes look on me), but wondering where I will go from here. (I’ll let you know more when I know more.)

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NEW YEAR, NEW RECIPES: marinated mushrooms, marinated dehydrated mushrooms, cheezy dehydrated broccoli bites, cheezy kale chips,

POST #875
I had big plans for today (editing a book I want to put on Kindle), but, when I finally fell out of bed at 7 a.m. (2 hours later than my usual wake-up time), I went to the kitchen, looked around, thought about what was in the refrigerator that should get used, thought some more about the mushrooms I marinated yesterday, and thought about what I could do with the portobellas and baby portabellas I bought yesterday. On a trip past the dehydrator shelf in the hall, I saw that, in addition to the 2 lbs of cashews I picked up yesterday, I have at least 3 C-worth of cashews on the rack over the dehydrator. Got lemons, jalapenos, bell peppers, onions, garlic, sea salt, and olive oil. So much for the day tied to the computer. I tied on my apron, and started digging around in my recipes.

MARINATED MUSHROOMS: Let’s start with those mushrooms I marinated yesterday. After I had already started pouring oil on them, I realized that I had accidentally picked up flax oil instead of sesame oil. Oh, well, I do like flax oil on salads. We’ll just hope. I added some garlic to try to make a more flavorful mix. Gave mushrooms to the room-mate guinea pig – she liked them even with flax oil. Still, this morning, I wanted that sesame flavor, and so I drizzled about 1 teaspoon of sesame oil (all I had left) over the mushrooms and tossed them well, to distribute the oil. Then, I decided that, since the carrots in my refrigerator were not getting any younger, I should shave some off a carrot and put that in the mushroom mix as well. Did that with the vegetable peeler – really thin, sheer, see-through carrot shavings, and I chopped them into smaller pieces to mix nicely with the mushrooms. Fed that to the room-mate guinea pig, and she liked it even better, and was excited that it looked like the marinated mushrooms that she can buy in her Japanese supermarket.

After I’d done that, I decided I should do something about all of the other “baby bella” mushrooms I had sitting there. I glanced at a couple of recipes I had picked up from other people, and changed a couple of things here and there, and got to work.

First, I removed that stems and set them aside (I use them for “pulled” barbecue), then I sliced the mushrooms about 1/4 inch thick and put them in a large bowl. I ground a small jalapeno in Magic Bullet, then added some extra virgin olive oil, garlic, a little tamari, and some lemon juice, whizzed it again in the Magic Bullet, then poured it over the mushrooms in the bowl, and massaged it in. After that, I put the mushrooms in the dehydrator.

MARINATED DEHYDRATED MUSHROOMS
20 baby bella mushrooms, sliced 1/2 inch thick
3 T extra virgin olive oil
1 small jalapeno, finely minced
1 T garlic powder
1 t tamari (all of the recipes I saw called for much more, but I don’t much care for salt)
2 T lemon juice

Place mushroom slices in a large bowl.
Blend remaining ingredients, then pour over mushrooms in bowl.
With your hands, toss the mushrooms around with the oil mix until all pieces are well coated.
Spread mushroom slices one layer thick on teflex covered dehydrator tray (you could put them directly on the plastic screen, but the teflex is a lot easier to clean up)
Dehydrate for 4-6 hours

I was planning to dehydrated these mushrooms to a jerky consistency, but, after about 4 hours, I tasted them, and turned around and gobbled up about half of them. I decided I should put them in a container in the refrigerator at that point. (Later, when I called Mom to wish her Happy New Year, and I told her about all of the mushrooms, she asked if they tasted like sautéed mushrooms – it has been so long since I have eaten cooked things, I had to think hard – yes, these dehydrated mushrooms taste like well-sauteed mushrooms!) I liked them so much that I sliced up 2 portobellas, cut them into 1-1/2 inch pieces, marinated them, put them right into the dehydrator, so I can have more of these delicious mushrooms.

CHEEZY DEHYDRATED BROCCOLI: I dug some still-okay broccoli out of the refrigerator, and, remembering a recipe from Nouveau Raw I had seen a while back, decided that I could chop it up into about 2 C of florets , toss it with my cheddar cheese, and dehydrate it, so that was the next project. Man! It is really hard to cover broccoli florets completely with sauce. I got it done anyway. They are in the dehydrator as we speak.

CHEEZY KALE CHIPS: I got the idea for the broccoli since I had a lot of kale which needed to be used. (I figured that I could make one batch of the cheddar cheese and use it on the broccoli as well as the kale – it worked, btw). This kale was labeled “young kale.” I’ll say this about “young kale” – it does last longer in the refrigerator, but, if you are going to make kale chips, it is hard to get bite-sized pieces from those small, tightly curled leaves… I got a lot of “crumbs” along the way. Never mind… two trays of chips are in the dehydrator.

TRADITIONAL NEW YEAR’S GOOD LUCK FOOD, raw take

POST #874
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

MY TRADITIONAL NEW YEAR’S GOOD LUCK FOOD
I am from the South, and Southerners eat black-eyed peas, greens (collards or kale), and pork (usually a ham hock or a hog jowl cooked together with the black-eyed peas and the greens, for flavor. (In other parts of the country, they might eat the same thing – I don’t want to exclude anyone – I just can only speak for what we do in the South).

The foods Southerners traditionally eat on New Year’s Day have meaning:
BLACK-EYED PEAS SYMBOLIZE PLENTY AND PROSPERITY).   When you cook black-eyed peas, they almost double in size. I’ve heard a number of different stories about black-eyed peas – most of them stem from an event in the War Between the States, in the 1800s. I’ve heard that a city was burned down (some say Charleston, some Atlanta, some Savannah – that doesn’t matter – the Union army made a point of burning down Confederate cities ) The story I have heard most often was that the starving people, homeless because of the burning, found a warehouse with barrels of black-eyed peas, and, so, they were able to eat (and, possibly—now this is me thinking – plant a new crop). This morning, I learned that some people say that, in Vicksburg, VA, the Union army burned all of the crops, save the black-eyed peas, which they mistakenly believed to be only food for animals.

GREENS (COLLARDS OR KALE) SYMBOLIZE PROSPERITY: Green has long been the color of American money.

HAM/PORK SYMBOLIZES PROGRESS: The pig is the only animal that moves forward while it is eating.

MY RAW NEW YEAR’S GOOD LUCK FOOD

BLACK-EYED PEAS: I ate 5-day black-eyed pea sprouts with chopped red bell pepper, onion, garlic, and an olive oil and apple cider vinegar dressing.

GREENS: Most years, I eat marinated massaged collards or kale, but, this year, I had a batch of cheezy kale chips, so munched on those while I was doing things around the kitchen.

So, WHAT ABOUT THE HAM? Early on, I decided to resolve this issue by “intention”. I have a little pig figurine made of gold. I place it on the table when I am eating my New Year’s good luck food, and I think about it. I think about how the pig eats while it is moving forward, and I think about how the pig I have is made of gold, and how valuable my little pig is. Even when I have desperately needed money, I have never thought of selling my little gold pig. He urges me to find other ways to get money. That’s progress.

11/15/12 CSA SHARE: A perfect world: What I got

Post #861
My perfect world:  What we got, what I took home:

Leeks……………………….traded for kale
Watermelon Radish
Green Kale
Russet Potatoes…………traded for cabbage
Cabbage
Broccoli……………………traded for carrots
Baby Carrots

Yep, I wanted it and I got it all!  (I’m kind of worried, though. I hope my nemesis, the old guy who always gets there before I do, even if I get there before the CSA workers do, and always takes whatever I want from the trade  box, is okay.  He didn’t show up in all of the @20 minutes I was there.)

Curiously, the workers were watching me like hawks when I was doing my trades.  Okay, I do go to the trade box first and take what I want, because I want to get what I want before someone else does, and because I know that I will be bringing back certain things (you’ve seen my plans — I stick to them ), but I told them exactly what I would bring back, and I did so as soon as I dug them out of the box.  I took back the broccoli, the leeks (they were few and small), and the potatoes.  I also took the radishes because I thought that maybe something else I wanted would wind up in the box before I left. I went back for the radishes but  I only took three, although I had put in about seven (I realized that later).  

Nuff said about my “CSA experience”

I made up some kale chips last night, only I forgot to put the red bell pepper into the cheeze mix, although it was sitting right there on the table.  Du-umb!  I am here to tell you today that the red bell pepper really does make a difference.  The chips are okay, and I’ll eat them all, anyway, but I will never ever ever forget the red bell pepper again.

I have another large bunch of kale – I think I’ll halve it and make cheddar cheeze chips and smoked jalapeno chips, as well — that was the original plan, anyway.

Those cabbages are big enough to make up maybe 3 quarts of sauerkraut each. Flavor experiments here we come!  

The carrots will probably go to sticks again — those were good.   

CHEW-FREE RAW LIVING FOODS: Raw foods for the toothless

POST #859
There is one area of raw live foods that nobody ever looks at.

A number of my nutrition clients, and, also my speech therapy clients, have complained to me that raw food is often difficult for them to eat, the reason being that they either have no teeth or use dentures.  Some people just simply say that raw food is difficult to eat because they have problems with their teeth.

An interesting thing about “Mrs. Richter’s Cook-Less Book” which I wrote about a couple of posts ago, is that a section of the book is devoted to “Soups for the Toothless”.  I found that quaint,  odd, at first, and then I realized that Vera Richter was the first raw living foods author to address such an issue, and that no one has mentioned the situation since.

I do champion the “chewing challenged”, particularly since I am a lazy chewer (I simply don’t like to have to chew much). Many of my clients have dentures  or are toothless.  Most raw recipe books have recipes which are mostly inaccessible to people who do not or cannot chew well (too hard, too chewy).

Most raw vegan recipe writers/chefs assume that the chewing challenged can get by with blended foods, without considering that a liquid diet can get boring.

If you are looking for more substantial food, i.e foods that fill your stomach while, at the same time, addressing your taste buds, as well as your subconscious food ideas), which can be eaten with no teeth, or plastic teeth, consider pates,  kale chips, A while back, I wrote a mainstream recipe book for chewing-challenged people.

Since the beginning of my new interest in cultured vegetables, some people have written complaining that their teeth come loose when they eat cultured foods.  Now, that is interesting.   Something in the probiotic is dissolving whatever adhesive people use to secure their dentures.

As a result, I have decided that, when I make up a recipe, I will note ways that it can be converted to “chew-free”  (actually, most of my recipes are, in fact,  chew-free, simply because I am a lazy chewer).

Meanwhile, in the case of the fermented/cultured vegetables,  100% of my denture-wearing clients have complained of the denture-loosening effect.   I plan to eat my fermented vegetables either before I insert my dentures, or after I am at home and don’t need them anymore.  (Of course, you can always just carry adhesive with you and use it if your food loosens your dentures) . If you have removed your dentures and you want to eat a cultured vegetable, please consider blending or food processing it into a paste – you will have the taste, and, at the same time, be able to manage the food in your  mouth.

GARLIC KALE CHIPS & GARDEN OF LIFE RAW MEAL

POST #849
Sometimes you have to try something new, and today has been that day for me.
Today’s new experiences:
Garlic kale chips
Garden of Life Raw Meal powder

GOOD NEW EXPERIENCE
I found garlic kale chips on the RawNouveau site, and decided to try them out last night. What was interesting to me was that, in contrast to the cashews which from the base of most kale chip “coating”, this recipe uses sunflower seeds, and I just happened to have a surplus of sunflower seed sprouts from making my sunflower seed crackers on Monday. I changed the recipe a little, because I’m me, and, also, because I only had one bunch of kale.  I ended up making one-fourth of the recipe, with changes here and there.

RAW GARLIC KALE CHIPS
1 bun kale, washed, stemmed, blotted dry
1 C sunflower seed sprouts
2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 T nutritional yeast
10 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 med. jalapeno, finely minced
1/2 t sea salt
1-1/2 T raw agave syrup

• Tear the kale into bite-sized (2-3 in.) pieces and place in a large bowl.
• In a food processor or high-speed blender, blend the liquid ingredients, then add the remaining ingredients, and process to a smooth, creamy consistency (with a food processor, the consistency will be a little grainier)
• Pour the cashew mixture over the kale in the bowl.
• With you hands, toss and gently massage he kale with the cashew mixture until each piece of kale is evenly-coated top and bottom.
• Spread the kale pieces evenly in one layer onto dehydrator trays covered with a teflex sheets.
• Dehydrate at 115 degrees for 8 hrs. or until dry and crispy.
• Store in a glass container with an airtight lid.

(notes on my changes to amounts/ingredients: I like garlic so I stayed with the original 10 cloves even though I was using 1/4 the amount of kale and other ingredients. I don’t like sweet normally, but this was my first time with this chef and this recipe, so I dug out the bottle of agave syrup I had, only to find out I only had 1 T left — I added a heaping t of the palm sugar I just got. The original recipe did not call for jalapeno, but I like spicy, so, there you have it.)

I took the garlic chips out of the dehydrator this morning and have eaten a couple of handfuls of them. They are good. I’ll do this recipe again.

NOT SO GOOD NEW EXPERIENCE
Now, about the Garden of Life Raw Meal,:
I bought this at Willner’s, on Park Ave., because they have better prices, and because it had such an impressive list of ingredients.
I had tried it once before, following the instructions to use 2 scoops of powder to 16 oz of water, but it turned out so thick and nasty-tasting that I decided to try it with half the powder and a huge handful of blueberries I had in the freezer, and I put 3 heaping teaspoonfuls of palm sugar in it..
Yuck. This stuff tastes like dirt. Despite all the palm sugar in it (and I normally do not use sweeteners of any kind), it just tasted like sweet dirt with a dirt aftertaste. This stuff was not cheap, so I will use it up, but I will never buy it again.

Note: I read a review on Amazon, in which the reviewer said his Raw Meal was moldy. I wouldn’t know how to tell it was moldy. It didn’t taste moldy, it just tasted like dirt, which some other reviewers mentioned. (I’m not unused to protein powder tasting like dirt—I used to use Nature’s Life Pro 96 Super Soy Green Protein, which tasted like dirt, until they changed the formula and added sweetener. With the original formula, a banana could disguise the taste.)

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.

TRAIN FODDER: What I am taking on the train

POST #843
This is going to be a big adventure. I will be on the train for 10 hours with no personal refrigerator.  Since the first few of the hours will be night-time (I get on at 2am), I will probably sleep.  Still, knowing me, I will want food since my refrigerator is not handy (Have you ever experienced that? If your refrigerator is just in the other room, you don’t get hungry, but if there is no food that you can control, you are starving?  I used to feel that way on transpacific flights, so I always traveled with a big food bag. Now you can’t do that on planes, but you can still do it on trains!)

I have made kale chips and sunflower/flax seed crackers, along with some cheddar cheeze to dip the crackers into.  I am also going to bag about 4 days worth of Garden of Life Raw Meal powder (This is not the world’s best tasting stuff — sort of a cross between dirt and grass, but it is filling …. I’m assuming that water will be available, but I’m still going to carry a couple of bottles with me).  In addition, I am carrying some of my latest vegetable ferments (pickles) for my parents to try — if I get really desperate, I can dig into those.  If I were at home, all of this would be enough for at least 4 days. … I guess I will make it to my destination without starving to death.

KALE CHIPS AGAIN!

POST #841
I made kale chips last night for my trip.  Gosh! They came out good!  Only problem was I ate almost one whole tray (of the three I put in the dehydrator).

I am going to try to score some more cashews tonight so I can make some more for the trip.  That would be good. 

VACATION TIME! I’m going down South to the Outer Banks of North Carolina!

POST #837
I’m going on vacation at the end of next week — yea!!!!!

I will be taking a 10-hr train trip down South, to meet up with my parents in Virginia Beach and then continue on to the Outer Banks in North Carolina (where I’ll be is just down the road from the road from where the Wright brothers made their historic first airplane flight — there’s a cool museum there.  It is also down the road from the largest sand dune in America.  Then, too, it is a few miles away from that wonderful house that starred in the Richard Gere movie, Nights in Rodanthe
which was based on the lovely book, Nights in Rodanthe,
by Nicholas Sparks.

I am planning to to pack a food bag with some fresh sauerkraut, and some of the other fermented vegetables I have in the fridge from last week’s bout (I hope I have some left when I get there, so I can show them off to my mom).  I want to make some kale chips because they are so good — again, I hope some will last so I can show them to my mom.  I’m ready – I have the red bell pepper, the cashews, the garlic, the chili powder, and, I think I have the onion powder (hope hope) — I do need to fetch some lemons.

Traveling raw requires a bit more pre-thinking than just packing.  I’m also thinking of making some crackers (haven’t done that in a really long time). Almond/corn/flax crackers are always my favorite, but I might make some sunflower seed crackers as well, from my first cracker recipe (gosh! I haven’t made up that recipe in years, but now it calls to me)    

Sounds like I’m going to be a bit busy this weekend.

Will I have space to pack clothes?

It’s all good! I’ll be on an island 25 miles out to sea. (It looks like there are no hurricanes to interrupt my idyllic vacation).  If it’s warm enough, Mom and I will spend some time on the beach.  If it isn’t, I’ll just spend some time on the beach by myself, looking for shells and stones and sea glass to make jewelry.  I’ll get up early in the morning to watch the sun rise over the ocean  from the veranda (yes, we have a veranda!) That is my favorite part of this vacation that I take every year with my parents.  At some point, Mom and I will probably go shopping at the outlet mall.  We might also work on a project for Mom’s church’s pre-Christmas bazaar (past projects have included making and decorating creche scenes and making sea glass jewelry with sea glass that my mother collected in Cuba).