TBHQ and TV too!

Are veggies really that scary?  Aghh!  The radishpus!  The octoradish!  The, the, thing that has color and flavor found in nature!!!!  In case you missed it, TBHQ, a form of butane used as a food preservative, is bad for you!  So is eating nothing but chicken nuggets for 15 years.  I have a co-worker who's kid will only eat plain bagels with plain cream cheese every day for lunch.  I'm blessed my four year old had thirds of my mashed potatoes last night: wash and cut up local red potatoes, leaving skins on.  Boil until tender and drain.  Mash in butter, milk, herb goat cheese, and sprouts.  Maybe salt, depending on the cheese.  While my kid is used to getting green stuff on her plate, you can get your kids to eat healthier too.  Make a healthier version of something they already like.  Start gradually, if need be.  Cheese makes everything better for kids.  Stay with lower-fat versions.  Let kids food shop with you.  Turn veggies and fruit into faces on that plain cream cheese bagel.  Remember, you are the parent.

My newest recipe uses red lentils and is gluten-free and vegan.  Meanwhile, I'm off to the Winter Farmer's Market to film for my new TV show!

Gluten-Free/Low Sodium/Vegan

________________________________________________

Red Lentil Soup

Taste of Egypt

________________________________________________

Prep: 15 minutes  Cook: 40 minutes  Makes about 4 quarts

2 tbs. olive oil

1/2 medium onion, diced

1 large carrot, peeled and sliced into 1” half-moons

3 celery stalks, sliced thin

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. coriander

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ancho chili powder

28 oz. can chunky tomatoes

3 cups red lentils, picked over

Heat oil in large pot over medium heat.  Add onion, carrot, and celery, stirring and cooking until softened, about 5 minutes.  Stir in spices and cook until fragrant, 2-3 minutes.  Pour in tomatoes and heat another 2-3 minutes.  Add lentils and two cans of water (8 cups) and bring to a gently boil.  Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, until lentils are soft and soup is thick.  Puree in batches in a blender or use and immersion blender.  Serve as a soup with yogurt garnish and warm pita, injera, or sourdough bread.  Also a great side dish with eggs or as a sauce over oven-roasted potatoes.

New Year's Revolutions

Crazy, crazy winter it's been, mostly warm, with car accidents and computer kablooeys thrown in.  Still driving a rental after being rear-ended.  Luckily, the other guy's insurance is paying for it all.  Wouldn't it be nice if I could trade in my half-paid for Matrix for a hybrid?  Still installing updates after Safari got "fixed" and new fan was put in.  At least it stops quitting, the computer is quiet and cool, and I figured out how to get it to print again (selecting a beta version of my printer - go figure).

Anyway, much good is in the works.  My Eco-Warrior students grew basil plants as part of their community service, so on MLK day, I brought our 42 herbs to a local food pantry and did a quick demo for about 20 people on how to care for their plants and cook a tasty simple dish with canned white beans, including take-home care sheets and recipe cards.  We gave away all 42 plants and cannellini beans and many joyfully leaned in to smell the basil.  Some people set New Year's resolutions to do more volunteer work.  If you're starting seeds, grow some extra herbs to give to food pantries, nursing homes, hospitals, etc.  Share the green!

One of my other many projects is helping collect rabbit pellet for the New England Cottontail Project.  The NE native species is very threatened, with the introduced Ohio species in far greater numbers.  The introduced species has a white mark on its forehead, which may amount to a single hair, or sometimes no mark at all.  With the rabbit pellets, graduate students at URI will test for DNA to determine species.  Volunteers like me stake out areas using flags and a GPS and collect specimens in sterile tubes with silica after it snows.  

I set one site up on Sunday, finding the GPS center-point fairly easily and setting out to mark 25 meters in four directions.  Walking that far, even in uneven ground, is nothing for me.  I walk over a mile to the bus three times a week.  Keeping a line straight as I measure and tag specific points while navigating through brush, thorny bushes, grape vine, and saplings in 20 degree weather is not.  I got hit in the eye twice.  I kept thinking about Blair Witch Project.  It took me an hour and I was cold.  

On Monday I set out with helpers to survey site number two.  After half a mile through steep pathways and over and under trees, we found our pathway blocked.  800 meters to go.  Getting back to the car, we drove to the back of an industrial complex and tried again.  Trash.  600 meters.  A third try down a narrow winding road with nice houses, 179 meters.  Then it was time to pack up for the food pantry.  I guess I will try again on Saturday, when it's supposed to snow.  But working full-time does not give me much "light" time.

Meanwhile, my producer and I discussed our upcoming tv show: The 100 Mile Lifestyle.  I may just do a parody of Blair Witch when we cover this.  That is, if we can get the camera out in the snowy woods.  2012 appears to have many changes in store.  Chinese New Year is early, January 23rd, the year of the Black Rain Dragon.   In China, dragons are not horrific monsters but wise protectors, especially of water and rivers.  I thought of the rain dragon as I gazed at the protected lake I was exploring, now icy in a single day.  The water I cross going to work often stinks and is posted with warnings not to fish there.  This new area I am surveying is reintroducing fish.  We need more rain dragons to make this happen.  (A great movie that shows this is "Spirited Away".) 

We all want prosperity, whether it's for ourselves, our loved ones, or the Earth.  Eating local foods is one way to encourage this, supporting the local economy, reducing our carbon footprint, and eating healthier for a better life.  This recipe can be made with pine nuts of sunflower seeds, with slightly different (but tasty) results.  If you're short on time or want a thinner wrapper, use refrigerated wonton wrappers in the specialty section of supermarkets or from a local Asian market.

Gluten-Free Option

________________________________________________

Money Bags

Taste of China Meets Greece

________________________________________________

Prep: 20 minutes  Cook: 20 minutes  Makes 48

Filling:

1/4 cup dried Asian mushrooms, reconstituted in boiling 

     water 10 minutes (reserve liquid)

6 oz. frozen spinach

1/4 cup pine nuts or sunflower seeds

1-2 tbs. oil

4 tsp. butter

1 tsp. dried thyme

1/8 tsp. pepper 

2 scallions, or onion, chopped fine

4 oz. local feta (such as Narragansett Creamery’s Salty Sea)

Celebrate the New Year, Chinese or otherwise, with this appetizer of prosperity.  The spinach in  these dumplings represents cash, with feta, pine nuts or seeds, and thyme adding a punch of flavor inside. You can by-pass using a bamboo steamer by placing a cookie rack on the bottom of a large stock pot with lid.  Use wax paper pierced with holes and brushed with oil to keep wraps from sticking.  You can even tie bags with a thread of green scallion for a nice little detail. 

Chop mushrooms very fine.  Sauté pine nuts or seeds in 1 tbs. oil, until lightly toasted.  Add spinach and mushroom liquid as needed, cooking down, about 10 minutes.  Stir in mushrooms, butter, thyme, and pepper.  When all is incorporated, stir in scallions and feta.  Remove from heat and let cool.

Dough:

2 cups flour (or Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour)

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 egg

1/2 cup water

1 tbs. oil

Sift dry ingredients.  Beat egg, water, and oil in bowl.  Add to dry ingredients and knead into a stiff dough.  Cover bowl with a damp towel and let rest 10 minutes to activate baking powder.  Form dough into two foot snake and cut into 48 slices.  Roll each slice into a thin round, add a tablespoon of filling, gather dough edges, and twist to seal.  (Use a drop of water if money bags do not stay closed.)  Place dumplings in oiled bamboo basket or oiled, pierced wax paper on a cooling rack over simmering but not boiling water, 12-15 minutes.  Serve immediately.

Back from Tour and Green Uses for Trees

My family and I just got back from a 4 hour tour of local foods and recovered resources. First, we went to the Resources (Recycling) for Rhode Island Education, where teachers and members can buy industrial cast-offs for 40¢ a pound.  I loaded up on 20 felt sheets for a dollar special, as well as some odd foam and cardboard pieces, plastic sheeting, embossed paper, wallpaper, and several handfuls of felt/cardboard hybrid circles.  Some of these materials will become characters in my upcoming show: "The 100 Mile Lifestyle", which will air on Cox local access channel 14 starting in April.  I'm on the look-out for bubble wrap so I can recreate the octopus costume from "Love, Actually" and plan to make some reusable sandwich wraps for our "Waste Free Lunch" segment in our second show.  Two bags of materials: $3.80.  Educating the world?  Priceless!

After that, we drove down Elmwood to 1577 Westminster to finally check out the local food supermarket Fertile Underground.  The store is alive and kicking, with a coffee/sandwich bar, fresh and mostly local produce, and a pantry that looks like they raided my house.  So yes, stuff I like.  The murals look great, also done by local artists including my friend Mac.  There's also a kid's play area that is visible from most of the store, so I was actually able to have an adult conversation while my daughter played with the blocks and moving parts pull grasshopper.  I picked up a turnip, rutabaga, carnival squash, dry navy beans, and Narragansett Creamery's Atwell's Gold.  I  will be making a frittata with the squash and cheese later this week.  The coffee was exceptional.  I picked up a bottle of Mrs. Squibb's ice tea which I first tried at a Festival Fete event.  Yummy stuff.  They also carry Yacht Club sodas (with returnable bottles), Trappist Monk jams, many local value-added products (more jams, honey, sauces, etc.) and Farmacy products.  I was able to stock up on mullein for Ryk's asthma. 

Then it was off to the winter farmer's market.  It was PACKED!  More cheese.  Granola.  Brussels sprouts.  We tried some gluten and sulfite free sausage.  My daughter picked out bok choy.  Ryk picked out squid.  I'll be making my "Baby's Got Bok Choy" this weekend, trying the squid instead of the shrimp this time.  The exciting thing was to see how much the market has expanded since last year.  More vendors.  More variety.  More people shopping there.  Now you can get kits to grow your own microgreens or oyster mushrooms.  If you still have a Christmas tree hanging around your house, New Urban Farmers will take it: they are recycling the trees into compost, mulch, and a substrata to grow the oyster mushrooms.  The stumps will be used for raised beds, tomato supports, and other landscaping projects.  Smithfield even brought all their curbside pick-up of trees to them.

Finally home, I noticed it was beautiful outside.  I got one shot of a nuthatch in the tangle of forsythia and bittersweet before the cat decided to join me.  Finding ice in my daughter's sand and water table, I popped it out and we played "Block of Ice" on the deck.  (Think "catch", but using your feet like hockey sticks.)  Surprisingly, the garlic chives are still out.  Then it was swing time and looking for critters under rocks.  We found slugs.  

Well, I have lots of cooking and sewing to do.  I'm close to having a low-income recipe for the recipients of the basil plants my after-school Eco-Warriors grew.  It will be garlicky and full of beans, with fresh basil mixed in.  Meanwhile, there's "Mercy Brown Bread" and fish tacos to make and chicken and worm puppets to sew.  Later.

Gluten-Free/Low Sodium/Vegetarian Option

________________________________________________

Baby Got Bok Choy

Taste of Thai

________________________________________________

Prep: 15 minutes  Cook: 30 minutes  Serves 4

1 cup vegetable or chicken broth

2 tbs. mirin or local white wine

2 tsp. corn starch

1 tbs. sesame oil

1 lb. shelled, de-veined local shrimp or firm tofu

1 small yellow onion, diced

1/2 cup chopped white mushrooms

8-10 washed baby bok choy, chopped into 1/2” pieces

1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro*

2” peeled, minced ginger**

2 tbs. lime juice (about one lime), plus lime for garnish

Spice it up: 1 tsp red pepper flakes or Sriracha sauce (found in Asian markets) (optional)

Whisk broth, mirin or wine, and corn starch.  Set aside.  In a large sauté pan with lid, heat sesame oil on medium-high and stir-fry shrimp until cooked through, 3-5 minutes.  Set aside.  Sauté onions and mushrooms 2-3 minutes.   Add bok choy and pour broth over all.  Cover and cook 6-8 minutes, stirring up from the bottom occasionally.  Reduce to simmer.  Add shrimp or tofu, lime, and ginger, stirring well.  Heat 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.  Serve with jasmine rice and lime wedges.

* I find it easier to cut cilantro with kitchen scissors I only use for herbs.

** Ginger can be easily peeled around its unpredictable curved using a spoon.