POST #865
On Wednesday night, I dehydrated some maitake mushrooms (I made them up in the marinade I usually use when I am going to use mushrooms as a meal inclusion – 1/4 C olive oil/1/4 C tamari – I won’t do that again – the mushrooms get smaller but the tamari doesn’t—maybe next time 1 T tamari) Still, they are not that bad, and people who like salt like them.
I didn’t feel like making Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. My room-mate is moving out after 12 years (no, not like that, and I am very happy that she has found a job at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, after getting fired for being culturally incompatible with her boss), and I felt I needed to clean the kitchen (her job, which she hasn’t ever done). So, there I was on hands and knees, with my buddy Mr. Clean, scrubbing with a heavy duty sponge (a scrub brush wouldn’t do enough. Actually, I am feeling like I am in that Kafka story where the guy cannot clean enough – every time I turn around, there is grime!)
I’ll confess – I don’t like to work hard, and I can come up with a couple of thousand things to do that would be also useful.
SO…. I now have a jar of cranberry-orange relish fermenting, another jar of jalapeno sauerkraut, and a jar of mushrooms (wow! They really do shrink down! That jar was packed full yesterday!), and a jar of garlic/jalapeno squash working.
This morning, I got up to scrub the kitchen some more (you can’t imagine!). I was supposed to go to the Union Square Holiday Bazaar with a friend at 10, but she bowed out, so I stopped to juice some cranberries (woo! tres tart!) which I mixed with half again as much apple cider (still tart, but I liked it).
I went to Union Square, and looked around (most of the things I looked at would be good for my 25-year-old niece, but I have to get her take on colors and other stuff ; she is very different from the way I was at 25—yes, I do remember!). Then I went across the street and looked, for maybe 10 minutes, in DSW, but I couldn’t get past the rudeness of people who would stop in rafts across the wide aisles and not let me past, so I left, and took a cross-town bus to Sixth Ave. in Greenwich Village. There, I went into the LifeThyme organic store in search of Zukay salad dressings (Zukay’s answer to my inquiry as to where I could buy their salad dressing had assured me that LifeThyme carried them – WRONG!). No problem! Right next to LifeThyme is Bigelow’s Pharmacy, which carries an amazing assortment of essential oils, as well as homeopathic remedies.
Then I went to the Barnes & Noble which has always been there on the corner (but which, I learned today, is leaving the Village on 12/31/12), to see if they had anything I wanted to buy with the gift card I got for my birthday (no go! Maybe because they are going out of business? I’ll have to check out the Union Square location for raw recipe books—what if there are no more bookstores? How will we be able to look at books and decide if we want them?) I did find some interesting books for someone I know (can’t say here… she might be following my blog or something)
Anyway, I am headed for the kitchen again now. I am going to try using the pulp from the 3 C of cranberries, which I used to make the1/2 C of cranberry juice, to make some more cranberry/orange sauce (I expect I will need to add some more cranberries to fill the jar).
If the portobella mushrooms I have in the refrigerator are still viable, I am going to put those to ferment also.
If I have time, I will put up some carrots with ginger, garlic, and dill.
PRETTY SMART RAW FOOD IDEAS 