MY WONDERFUL KALE/SAUERKRAUT DINNER

So, I got a bag of organic kale from Trader Joe’s.  Once home, I grabbed an onion, a red bell pepper, a head of garlic, Trader Joe’s 21 Season Salute, a jalapeno pepper and a box of Calamata olives I’ve been waiting to use.

My first mistake was buying a bag of torn kale. (After this, I will go to stores where you can get whole kale, because it is so much easier to remove the center stem and then chiffonade (and chop down further if you like).  Trying to chop up the kale pieces and remove the big stem pieces is tiring! Never mind! I got it done!

 I chopped up half of the kale and tossed in a big bowl.  I then  de-seeded the Calamata olives, chopped them up, and added them to the kale, for salt and also flavor.

You need salt or something salty to make massaged kale! I learned to make massaged kale at Raw Soul, a place we used to have in Harlem, and they showed us how to make it with the salty Kalamata olives, so that is my usual go-to (you also get this interesting flavor in your salad.

So, I have this big bowl, and I filled it up with the kale I’d chopped and I threw in the minced olives, and I went to work mashing around.  You mash and mash and mush and mush for a good bit, to get the kale to go juicy.  It is not like you’re going to have water, like when you’re making sauerkraut, but the kale is going to reduce in volume to about a third of what it looked like when you started.

Then I added my finely-chopped  red bell pepper, jalapeno pepper, and some minced onion and garlic.  Mashed around some more. Then, ) and I added about 1 capful of apple cider vinegar, 2 caps of olive oil, and mashed around some more.  Toward the end, I tasted it and decided it needed a little bit more something, so I added about a tablespoon of Trader Joe’s 21 Season Salute.  It was all good at that point, but I still had about a half-cup of the jalapeno pepper sauerkraut, so I mixed that in.  AMAZING!

I think that the next time, I would add in sliced or minced mushrooms towards the end of the massaging.

 

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SCORED SOME CORN ON THE COB AT TRADER JOE’S TODAY!!!

April 30, 2020

I’ve been “on a “food diet” as punishment!  Last week I went to Trader Joe’s and bought everything that appealed to me.  The only thing is, I was never hungry enough in the week to eat all of the food, so I put myself on restriction, meaning, I could only eat food which was already in house (okay, sauerkraut, red bell peppers, and nuts.  Okay, I added in a raw protein shake, with bananas and oranges that I had.

So, today I broke the grocery-shopping fast, sort of.  I went to Trader Joe’s to get some LaraBars, because I know I will eat *them*. Then I wanted kale (and I have some kalamata olives, so it’s not like I don’t have the ingredients to do a massaged kale salad.) then, I got some corn! I mean, real ears of corn that you have to peel the leaves off of!  I’m a little nervous, because I know I have to de-kernel the corn, and I am famous for attempting finger amputations when I do such things.  Never mind! I will survive!  I want a corn salad.  I got some red bell peppers (since I am not going to cook with them, I go with the folk info that red bell peppers destined for salads should have “three bumps” on the bottom.)

I will make a raw massaged kale dish tomorrow morning, with kale, kalamata olives, raw garlic, onion, red bell pepper slivers, and whatever else occurs to me when I open the refrigerator. I might end up throwing some Trader Joe’s 21 Seasoning in there at the end, but I kind of think not, because, in the end, I will add olive oil, and vinegar, and I’ll already have added kalamata olives and garlic.

After all is said and done, I may likely add in a couple of spoonfuls of the last of my sauerkraut batch.

I am rather excited that I will finally be using up what’s left over from the last shopping trip.

 

10/03/2013 CSA SHARE: What we got, what I took, & what I will do with it

HERE IS WHAT WE GOT AND WHAT I TOOK:

Baby Beets- 1 bun
Swiss Chard- 1 bun
Boston Lettuce- 2 heads(green or red)       Red Peppers
Tomatoes- mixed variety
Arugula- 1/2 lb. bag
Toscano Kale  – 1 bun
Long Red Peppers -3 pcs

The first major question I heard from other CSAers was “what happened to the beet greens”? Someone figured there was a CSA out there somewhere which had only beet greens and no beets!

With the Swiss Chard, it was me doing the “I will/I won’t” dance. In the end, I did come home with a bunch of chard – just not the bunch I had put in the trade box. What will I do with it?  I am not real sure just yet, but I am thinking wraps with the leaf halves and a ferment with the stems.

Beets?  I just haven’t decided  yet.  Thank heavens beets will stay in the refrigerator for a while, giving you time to think things over.

I ended up bringing home some arugula – I tried it on a sandwich but it was most unpleasant for me. I tried it in a marinated greens recipe, but it was grim.  Dehydrate it and grind it and add it to my super-greens jar?  Sounds like a plan.

At least half of the (sweet) red peppers I came home with will go into a hot ajvar. I know it. I have been radically protecting my Monday night event with New York Ferments, and I’m taking the ajvar with me.  This won’t be a traditional ajvar (you cannot keep me away from garlic – it will be in there, I will likely substitute chili powder for the red pepper needed, and I will probably feel the need to put some onion in it)

The kale? Ah! The kale! Kale cheeze and, probably kale chips!  I do love kale!

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.)

KALE – I love Kale!
(got this from rawforbeauty.com)

KALE UNIVERSITY RECIPES

POST #898
Do you like kale and want more kale recipes?  Toot on over to Kale University and pick up their free KALE UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY COOKBOOK KALE RECIPES  The price is right and the recipes are righteous.

KALE CHIPS FOR DAYS

POST #895
NOUVEAU RAW’S KALE CHIPS
I’m a sucker for kale chips. I mostly just make the same ones over and over again, but here and there, I try new ideas to see if there might be another “same one” to add to my repertoire.

Enter Nouveau Raw’s Kale Chips bank of recipes. I say bank because there at least a dozen different recipes, for whatever kind of taste you fancy.  You’ll find Mexican, Thai, Jamaican, chocolate (yes!), and more traditional-sounding vinegar-dill, sour cream and onion, and barbecue flavor ideas.  The ones I’ve tried have all been good.

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.