MY THANKSGIVING & BLACK FRIDAY

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.

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YOU CAN’T GET THAT HERE (at least not on every street corner, for sure)

POST #805
Living in New York City is very exciting, for sure! If you come here as a tourist, you can find all sorts of things that they don’t have back home, I’m sure (although, I’m sure, if you’re looking to dis us, you’ll find a lot of the same stores you have back home, too).

What we don’t have here is things that you take for granted. This evening, I went out to get some pickling spice, only to find that two local supermarkets don’t carry such a thing, although they have all sorts of exotic Spanish and Arabic spices. Neither could I find dill seed. (I’m going to leave home 2 hours early so I can go to the one supermarket that I think might carry pickling spice, and dill seed, and I am also going to carry a recipe for pickling spice, just in case even they do not have pickling spice. These green beans will not last forever while I search the world for pickling spice so I can make the recipe I want to try. Just in case, I have an alternate recipe that I have invented in my head, which should turn out okay – hope hope)

12/18/08 Winter CSA SHARE: what we got

In the share box, I got:
A lot of small potatoes– a lot!
6 fairly large/fat carrots
1 microscopic garlic head (about the size of two cloves of an average garlic head)
a lot of small broccoli heads with leaves
two big heads of cabbage

Everyone was commenting that they thought there was not as much in the box as last year, but I think that, weight-wise, the box was right (I carried last year’s box home on my back – this year, I got smart and took our grocery cart with me), and that it was just that there wasn’t as much variety as there was in the first box last year.

The fruit share was a bag of about 8 apples. (I think we got more apples last year). The good thing (since I am the coordinator) was that the apples came already bagged (since, for some reason, all of the CSA’s collected bags had disappeared). I remember that, last year, Liz, who was the coordinator, had to weigh all the apples and put them in bags for the members who had fruit shares. I was there but I wasn’t a volunteer, but I watched and I remember that they had something like 7lbs of apples in that first share. Oh, well. This is this year.

I signed up for two bottles of cider, so that was as expected. I just have to hurry up and drink it all, since it is fresh, and won’t last much more than a week. Yumm! I will drink some in the morning, and then again for dinner. It’s a plan.

I heard people planning cabbage/potato soup.
I think, since now I am in potato overload, I am going to go back to my old search for a way to prepare potatoes RAW.
I found a new one today, but I don’t like it.
I am going to try the idea that I remember seeing in my early raw on-line days, which I have not been able to find again.
If/when it works, I will document it here.

NIBBLES – what I did with the leftovers

Last night, I made spaghetti with zucchini pasta and a tomato/onion/red bell pepper/almond sauce. My sauce came out thick, but I like it that way.

After dinner, I looked at the leftover sauce and just knew I was not oing to eat it this week.  I had a leftover zucchini so I sliced it on the mandonline and then put a spoonful of sauce on each slice and everything in the dehydrator overnight.  This morning, I was amazed at how small the zucchini slices had shrunk, but I was very pleased with the taste of these little bites. My room-mate says they taste like pizza.  Next time, though, I am going to slice the zucchini thicker.

STORING FLAX SEED AND FLAX SEED CRACKERS

I have just seen this on Raw Living Foods:

• Whole flax seeds can be stored at room temperature for at least one year.
• Ground flax can be stored at room temperature for at least four months.
• Storing whole or ground flax in the refrigerator or freezer prolongs freshness.
• Whole flax seeds and ground flax are stable during storage. 

My information is slightly different:

Yes, you can store whole flax seeds at room temperature or below for up to a year.

Ground flax seeds are open to oxidation and are likely to go rancid quickly if they are not stored in the freezer (I would not take the chance. I usually grind my flax seeds as I need them.  If you  buy ground flax seeds: once the package has been opened, they should be stored in the freezer)

As far as flax seed crackers go, once they are dehydrated, you are talking about a dehydrated product.  Dehydration does extend the life of the product.  

I have kept crackers containing ground flax seed in an airtight container at room temperature for as long as 3 months with no noticeable change, but it is probably better, particularly if you might not eat them right away to  put them in an airtight container in the refrigerator

My crackers do not usually stay around much more than a week or two at the most (they are my favorite snack when I have them around).