Apple-Pomegranate Muffins

In my continuing experiments with new foods, today was the day for pomegranate. I remember eating the seeds as a child, with a spoon, right out of the halved fruit. Since then, I don't think I've had one except in the ubiquitous form of Pom juice - and my fresh pomegranate had the Pom label!

One of my sources recommended removing the seeds in a bowl of water, to eliminate mess and to allow any bad seeds or bits of pulp to rise to the surface - the seeds sink. I did that, and it worked pretty well, although it was still a fussy exercise and there were remaining bits of pulp to remove.

Pomegranate can apparently be substituted for berries of various sorts in recipes, so I used them in a recipe that was originally designed for cranberries. The recipe was Apple-Cranberry Muffins, from Once Upon a Tart . . . : Soups, Salads, Muffins and More, by Frank Mentesana and Jerome Audureau. The recipe calls for 6 large muffins, and I was making 12 smaller muffins, so I reduced the cooking time from 40-45 minutes at 400F to 20-22 minutes. The outcome was excellent - very pretty and tasty and the pomegranate seeds provided a nice crunch.

Pomegranates are also used in savory sauces, and I may have to try that next. I also have some dried mung beans on hand - that's the next experiment!

Thai Butternut Squash Soup

For lunch today, I had a lovely Thai Butternut Squash Soup - the recipe is from Allotment 2 Kitchen. The only change I made in the recipe was to just roughly chop the peeled butternut squash and roast it at 350 degrees for about an hour and a quarter - I figured since I was going to puree it the size of the pieces didn't matter too much. It was lovely, spicy and aromatic, and I served it over white Bashmati rice. What could be better - a nice bowl using butternut squash, broth, coconut milk, Thai spices and some tofu (pan-fried with spices) and spinach, garnished with coriander - the colors were beautiful too!

Beet Salad and Stir Fry

Lunch and dinner today were both improvisations. Lunch used up some leftover mixed greens, and some roasted beets. I peeled and sliced the beets, and topped them with some crumbled blue cheese, some chopped Kalamata olives and some walnut pieces, and squeezed some lemon juice over them, then topped everything with some oil and vinegar dressing. The sweetness of the beets works very well with the lemon and blue cheese, and the saltiness of the olives. I sometimes use feta cheese for this and it works very well. If you've only had pickled beets, I'd recommend roasting your own for a real change - you just take off the greens and the root end, rinse the beet without peeling, and wrap in aluminum foil and bake in a 350 degree oven for as long as it takes - tiny beets may take an hour, big ones and hour and a half or even more - you want them to be easily pierced by a fork. When you're ready to use them, just peel.

Dinner was the ever-versatile stir fry. I like to try to achieve a mix of textures and colors - some hard vegetables (broccoli and carrot here, sometimes celeriac or kohlrabi), some cabbagy things (here cabbage, sometimes bok choy or kale or another green) and some onion and garlic. This one had some sliced sweet red pepper, which adds nice color and flavor. At the very end, I add some soy sauce and a drizzle of sesame oil. Served over bashmati or other rice, it's excellent. If you prep some of the vegetables ahead of time (I always leave the onions and garlic to the last minute), the whole thing takes no more than a half hour.

Rustic Cabbage Soup

For dinner this evening we had a modified version of Rustic Cabbage Soup from 101 Cookbooks. The recipe is pretty simple - one pot, with potatoes, garlic and onion, stock, white beans (pre-cooked or canned - I used canned cannellini beans) and cabbage, with a garnish or olive oil and grated Parmesan cheese. I changed things by adding some leftover canned crushed tomatoes, and to balance the sweetness of the tomatoes, the juice of half a lemon. It was delicious and pretty too - we had it with a nice green salad - good for a chilly winter night:

Ribollita and Mac Plate

We recently made the Ribollita recipe from 101 Cookbooks. This is a delicious, substantial vegetable stew, with celery, carrots, garlic, red onion, tomatoes, kale, white beans and a touch of red pepper flakes and lemon, and thickened with bread. The garnish was chopped black Kalamata olives. It was very good, and just as good left over - the name of the recipe is "reboiled" which refers to how good it is left over! We served it the first night with a mixed green salad including arugula and the second night with some wonderful sourdough rolls.

And tonight, we had what we call a Mac Plate (McDonald's is nowhere involved in this), which is loosely based on a macrobiotic plate we have enjoyed at a local vegetarian restaurant, Blind Faith. This dinner had baked sweet potato, brown rice, small white beans cooked with garlic and sage, braised bok choi and a special addition - fried up slices of bitter melon (mentioned in this post). First, here's the bitter melon as I got it ready to fry up in oil - I peeled off the roughest bits on the outside, cut it in half lengthwise and scooped out the seeds and pulp, then sliced the halves. This is a photo of when I had completed one half and was starting the next:

Then I tossed it with some salt and left it to drain in a sieve. When we were about to eat, I rinsed off the salt and fried it up quickly in some vegetable oil. And here's the complete dinner plate:

It was an outstanding Mac Plate - the bitter melon added a wonderful touch, particularly when you took a bit of that with something blander, like rice or beans; the flavor of bitter melon is a bit like fried okra, but more definite. It was a great addition to one of our favorite meals.

Some Questions

RuckusButt asked two good questions in the comments on a recent post. I mentioned fennel as a vegetable that I've learned to love after disliking it. She asked how I poach it - I use vegetable broth or stock, although white wine or even water would work. I cut the fronds off, and cleave the bulbs lengthwise. I put them in a pan and mostly cover them with stock and simmer until tender. If you don't like the strong licorice flavor of raw fennel, the poaching also calms that down. Then, when we're ready to eat, I shave parmesan cheese over them and run them under the broiler until the cheese is bubbling. Yum!

She also asked about community supported agriculture. This refers to a financial arrangement where people in the community buy a "share" of produce (or in some cases meat or other farm goods) from a farmer, and pay in advance for a year's, or season's produce. Sometimes payment in installments is allowed. In our case, our neighboring organic farm has a CSA (they also sell at farmers' markets and to restaurants), where we subscribe at the beginning of the year for a full year's produce. This arrangement allows us to eat wonderful, local, organic produce, and allows the farmer to have the financing to buy seeds and other supplies for the farm year in advance. We've been very satisfied with it, and it's fun because we have to learn to cook whatever shows up in the box - the farmer selects it and so it's a surprise every week. Our farmer also provides a cheese and several different meat shares from other local farms, and there is also a fruit share that we participate in. It's really improved our eating, and it's a great way to support local farmers.

Trying New Things

Today, at the market, I decided to buy one vegetable and one fruit, and also pick up one grain or bean, that I was unfamiliar with. This is part of my attempt to expand my cooking to add a little bit of Adventure and Creativity/Self-Expression to my life. So today I got a pomegranate, a bitter melon, some mung beans and also some Thai red curry paste - not to use all at once!

Mung beans are small and green, and are widely used in Chinese and Indian cooking. They are also the most common bean used for sprouts. I'd like to try a dal with these, and possibly also some sprouts - I've been meaning to learn how to do this and it's a good opportunity. The mung beans I got are whole and unhulled - the hulled, split ones are yellow.

I've eaten pomegranate before, but not for a long time. One book I consulted had a good method to get the seeds/fruit out without too much mess - do the task in water - the good bits sink and any bad seeds float to the surface. Pomegranate can be substituted for other fruits and berries - I'm thinking of making some muffins, and eating the rest out of hand.

The bitter melon is new to me - it's a member of the squash family, related to the cucumber and zucchini. Many food cultures, including Indian, highly value bitter flavors. It is possible to salt the melon to remove the bitterness, but I think I'll try it in its full glory the first time. It's suggested to fry chips or use it in a recipe that involves sweet vegetables, like a sweet winter squash. I'm still figuring out what to do with this one.

I found some vegetarian Thai red curry paste - many of these include fish as an ingredient. I'm intrigued by Thai curries after my eating out experience next week. I need to plan out some to try.

I'm fortunate that my husband is very willing to try new things, although he freely admits he may not eat all of them. But he doesn't mind if I do, so some fun is coming up!

Farfalle With Gorgonzola, Arugula and Cherry Tomatoes

For dinner I made Farfalle With Gorgonzola, Arugula and Cherry Tomatoes, from Mark Bittman's blog. It was very easy - the whole thing, from the time you turn on the pasta water to when you sit down at the table is about 30 minutes at most. It takes some milk or half-and-half, some blue cheese and mixes those with drained pasta and arugula and cherry tomatoes - toss, add some ground black pepper and perhaps some grated Parmesan cheese, and you're done. It was very good, and substantial - perfect for a cold January night!

How To Eat, How To Cook

I've been doing a lot of thinking about how I live my life, in all its aspects. As my husband and I become empty nesters, I feel it's a good time to reexamine how we live our lives and begin to make some decisions about where to focus our time and energy going forward. If you're interested in more of my preliminary thinking about this, see this post.

After mentioning Michael Pollan's Food Rules a few days ago, I thought I'd put down my own thoughts on the subject, starting with where we are today - this basic framework is good, but I want to make some adjustments, which I'll talk about towards the end of this post. These aren't really rules, they're more guidelines. I used to be a pretty unhealthy eater, but over time I've learned to eat differently, and I now weigh about the same as I did at 20 and I feel better than I have in years. I've been eating this way for years, and it's doable, although there is some effort involved. I don't count calories or follow a diet plan, I just eat, and live, in a way that I think promotes health, including a healthy weight - but that doesn't mean that I'm skinny nor do I aspire to be, and I don't even own a scale.

To me, eating food, good food, means that I think of food as a pleasure, a necessary pleasure, and not as a source of nutrients or calories. By eating a wide variety of foods, I ensure that I meet all nutritional requirements. My first rule is very similar to Pollan's main theme in his rules - I don't eat anything that comes in a package, with very few exceptions. I do eat frozen vegetables and fruit - if there are no other ingredients added, canned tomatoes in different forms and canned beans - again with no added ingredients and no processed spaghetti sauces. I also use both low-fat milk and low-fat plain yoghurt (unsweetened) and unsweetened plain soy milk, and I do use several of the Cascadian Farms cereals with minimal added sugars. There are many packaged organic and "natural" foods, but I don't buy any of them with those few exceptions - they're still packaged.

This rule alone cuts out almost all of the stuff that is an issue, including packaged sweets, sodas, and snack foods. No pre-made salad dressings - they're very easy to make at home. If I don't buy it, it isn't in my house and I don't eat it. If I want something sweet or special, I make it myself. I'm fortunate that I really don't care all that much for sweets - my husband isn't so fortunate.

I buy and eat many types of fruits and vegetables. When my CSA (community sponsored agriculture) share from our local organic farm is available - from May until mid-December, that is my first source for real vegetables and fruits, then there are our local farmers' markets, and then there are supermarkets - Whole Foods (which is about a 30 minute drive away) has the best selection, followed by my local supermarkets. One interesting thing about the CSA share is that it has taught me to use and enjoy a number of vegetables that were new to me - fennel, tat soi, celeriac and others - it took some experimenting to find the best ways to use these but they're now all favorites (I love poached fennel bulbs that are then sliced and run under a broiler with parmesan cheese on top, tat soi as the basis of a salad made with a soy/toasted sesame seed dressing, and celeriac in a stir fry or soup). To me the priorities are fresh, in season if possible, local if possible and organic if possible, in about that order.

In order to eat healthy, there is nothing more important in my opinion that to make your own food, using real ingredients. You determine the amount of sugar and salt added, and there are only real foods as ingredients. But you might say - where can I find the time to cook? There are ways - many dishes only require a limited amount of time - a simple pasta sauce, a simple soup, a stir fry, a main dish salad, an omelette with a green salad, and many other dishes, require only a short time to prepare. Even bean dishes from scratch and home-made bread or pizza dough can be done in stages if the timing is planned correctly. With a chest freezer - not very expensive to buy or operate - when I have more time I can prepare larger dishes to divide and freeze.

You will notice that there is nothing in this set of rules about diets, or dieting, or counting calories, or feeling deprived. I don't eat between meals, except for a piece of fruit, and I don't eat large portions, so I'm hungry by the time I eat my next meal, but that feeling is a good one - it makes eating the next meal more pleasurable.

I haven't mentioned meat, because I'm a vegetarian. If I did eat meat, I would look for locally raised meat and poultry rather than the factory-farmed meat and poultry that is mostly all that is available in the supermarket (and "natural" means nothing). Factory farming, to me, is a contradiction in terms - animals, even those designed for consumption, should never be treated (often inhumanely) as items in a factory or fed the things they are fed (including foods they were not designed to consume, and antibiotics and hormones).

Learning to eat well, and enjoy food, as a vegetarian, has been an evolving challenge. It takes more planning, I think, to eat a healthy and sustaining vegetarian diet - at the beginning we fell into the trap of packaged convenience foods and excessive fatty foods (I called this our "cheesatarian" stage) - partly driven by the fact that we were also feeding children who were hard to please (although vegetarian themselves by choice - they did it first). We had to learn to use more beans and legumes and whole grains - my lifestyle is very active and without that I just wasn't eating well or feeling satisfied. We're still learning to use tofu and tempeh, but more experiments are in order. We do not use packaged meat substitutes - no fake bacon, sausage or meat - these are heavily processed foods and if I wanted to be eating meat that's what I should be eating.

I'm pretty satisfied with what and how we eat, but there are some changes I'm exploring making as a result of my new themes of Adventure and Creativity/Self-Expression. My husband and I tend to be fairly repetitive in our cooking and eating - same recipes, same restaurants, and even ordering the same dish every time at the restaurant. I made a conscious decision when we ate out at lunch yesterday at a Thai restaurant to choose a dish I was unfamiliar with and not sure I would like - a green curry made with coconut milk. It was very good, so I was rewarded this time - I won't like everything I try but I bet I'll like a lot of it.

In our home cooking, I have always been primarily ingredient-driven - I love to see the vegetables and fruits and cook based on what I see. I'll continue to to that, but try to consciously select new things to try, and do some experimentation with different styles of cooking and different cuisines. I love spicy food, and my husband will tolerate it, so we'll be trying some of that too. My goal is to try new foods, new recipes and dishes and just have fun experimenting, understanding that there may be some disasters in cooking along the way. I'd also like to spend more time experimenting with the beauty of food - the mixes of colors and the way the food is presented. More variety, more taste, more beauty - this will be fun!

Hearty Brown Lentil Soup and Some Dals

Last night and again today, we had the Hearty Brown Lentil Soup out of Love Soup by Anna Thomas. My husband commented while he was cooking it that "she knows what she's doing" - by which he meant that the recipe was clear, well-ordered and written, and the techniques, ingredients and proportions were just right to make everything work. So far this book has been a great success for us - everything we've tried out of it has been delicious.

The recipe uses lentils, a variety of vegetables, garlic, cumin, cilantro and parsley - it's somewhat spicy - a wonderful warm feeling. She's good on garnishes to "pop out" the flavors - she suggested good olive oil or a nice salsa - swirl in a bit. My husband did the olive oil and I did the salsa and we were both very happy with the results.

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My husband commented that "this is just like a dal". And he was right, it was somewhat like a soupy dal, and dals can be soupy. Mark Bittman had a nice set of dal recipes in the New York Times a few days ago - here they are - but what is it with him and coconut (an ingredient that I'm only learning how to like)?

Garlicky Swiss Chard on Bulgar

Tonight we had Garlicky Swiss Chard Saute on Bulgar, from Main-Course Vegetarian Pleasures by Jeanne Lemlin. This is one of those wonderful winter recipes, filling, warm and slightly spicy, but you can make it from beginning to end in about 30 minutes, if you use canned beans. It involves bulgar wheat cooked in vegetable stock, and sauteed garlic, red pepper flakes and Swiss chard. It couldn't be easier, and we had it with some nice bread:

Article on Food and Farming

Here is a an interesting article by Russ Parsons in the Los Angeles Times, on food and farming - thought-provoding and well worth reading.

Review: Food Rules

I just finished Michael Pollan's Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. It didn't take long - the book is the size of a 5"x8" index card and has only a few more than 130 pages, and there's a lot of white space on many pages. Even though it's slight, it's not inconsequential, and is sometimes pretty funny as well.

In the book, he expands on his own formula from In Defense of Food - "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." The book takes each of those sentences and gives a number of food rules under each category. If you're interested in healthy eating, it's worth reading this book - even if you don't buy it and read it in a bookstore. He makes the good point that our diet-obsessed nation now has among the world's most unhealthy eating habits and highest rates of obesity and obesity-related diseases. Healthy eating isn't about nutrients, or "magic" ingredients, or "good" and "bad" foods, it's about real foods, eaten with enjoyment.

The first category - eat food - simply boils down to: don't eat foods (or as he refers to them - "edible food-like substances") - that come in a package and were made in a factory. This includes foods served by fast-food and many chain restaurants - much of this looks like real food but in fact is highly processed and full of ingredients you might not choose to eat if you knew they were there. Eat real things - real meat, poultry and fish (if you eat those), real fruit, real vegetables. There are a lot of sub-rules in this category, but they all boil down to the same thing - don't eat processed food, or "enhanced" food that makes health claims, or foods that are sweetened. He makes the good point that "lite" and low- or no-fat foods are often a fraud - they often contain extra sugars to make up for the lower fat and often are just as high-calorie. The one exception I would make on this point is low- and no-fat milk - although low-fat milk products like yoghurt often contain extra sweeteners.

The second category - not too much - is just as important. Portion control is the critical issue there, and there are lots of ways to learn good habits - only eat meals, no day-long grazing (which not only often leads to more calories but also may predispose us to insulin resistance since the body is always in eating mode), eat only when you are hungry and stop before you're full, don't have seconds, and if you snack, eat real foods and not something out of a package.

The third part addresses what foods to eat. His advice isn't about deprivation - it's about enjoyment of a wide variety of foods. Again, avoiding or limiting processed foods - including such things as white flour, sodas - whether sweetened or artificially sweetened (there's evidence that shows that drinking no-cal sodas can actually increase total calorie intake) - is the critical thing. Shifting diet towards more fruits and vegetables - particularly leafy vegetables - and whole grains, is desirable.

A couple of my favorite rules:

No. 20 - It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car.

No. 39 - Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself. This makes something fried, or a pie or sweet, something special and something you're unlikely to make every day - and it will contain only real ingredients. These days, it's too easy just to open a package, which makes these foods ordinary instead of special.

No. 52 - Buy smaller plates and glasses. This is about appropriate portion size.

No. 57 - Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does.

No. 64 - Break the rules once and a while. And don't feel guilty if you do!

The great thing about his approach is that it isn't about dieting, it's about eating well.

Some Recipes For the New Year

101 Cookbooks has just posted this list of some of her favorite recipes, with an emphasis on lots of vegetables and fresh, bright flavors. I've made the Miso Soup before, and I'll certainly check out the others - this blog is one of the best out there for excellent recipes. Check it out!

Split Pea Soup and Food Rules

Last night it was very cold (again) and we had a wonderful split pea soup with some hot bread - perfect for a cold evening. In my experience, split pea soup can often be dull, heavy or glutinous - this soup was bright, fresh-tasting and delightful. The recipe was Old-Fashioned Split Pea Soup from Love Soup by Anna Thomas - this cookbook is rapidly becoming a new favorite of ours. In addition to split peas, carrots, celery, onion and thyme, this soup also includes regular peas and hot paprika - we use hot pimenton - which I think helps to explain the brighter flavor. Here's dinner (perhaps someday I'll learn how to properly photograph food!):

Tonight it's a Red Onion Frittata with Parmesan and Thyme from Jack Bishop's The Complete Italian Vegetarian and roasted potatoes. I'm fond of frittatas - they're quick and easy and can be served at any temperature, which makes them ideal for busy afternoons.

This afternoon, I need to go to the library to pick my copy of Michael Pollan's Food Rules, which I've been eagerly awaiting.

Hoppin' John and Cornbread for New Year's Day

We had a fun New Year's Day dinner, somewhat of a traditional one - a variation on hoppin' John, a traditional New Year's dish of black-eyed peas and rice, and cornbread. The recipes I used were Hip Hoppin' John from Low-Fat Soul by Jonell Nash, which is a fun book for both vegetarians and non-vegetarians, with lots of good, spicy, soul food without all the fat, and Fresh Corn and Cheddar Cheese Cornbread from Love Soup by Anna Thomas.

The hoppin' John recipe is black-eyed peas, cooked from scratch, rice, chopped green pepper, black pepper, red pepper flakes, sauteed onion and garlic, bay leaf and thyme. We've had it before and it's delicious - I reduce the black and red peppers a bit as some in my family are not so fond of very spicy food - I just add more at the table!

The cornbread includes both pureed and whole frozen corn kernels, buttermilk, eggs, and the usual flour and cornmeal with a bit of melted butter, but also some grated cheddar cheese, chopped green onions and fresh thyme. A little bit different and a little bit nice!

All in all, a great start to the year!