Ask Obama to Reconsider!

President Elect Obama recently nominated Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa as the next secretary of agriculture.

Governor Vilsack has close ties to large agribusiness multinationals like Monsanto, not the small family farms that Obama claims as his priority. He has a record of aiding and abetting feedlots and factory farms, is a big proponent of unsustainable industrial ethanol production, and has a history of strong support for genetically engineered crops and animal cloning. In fact, he's been named Governor of the Year by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, the biggest biotech industry group!

This is not the right man to be heading up the Department of Agriculture. Obama promised to listen to the people - let's put him to the test! Click here to learn more and sign an Organic Consumers Association petition asking Obama to reconsider!
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Fermented Ginger Ale

I've become increasingly interested in lacto-fermentation. It's a major tenet of good nutrition as laid out by Sally Fallon of the Weston A. Price Foundation. I won't go into all the science here, but I urge anyone who's interested to follow the links above to get lots of good information about why this fermentation process is extremely beneficial for ones health. It's the same fermentation process used to make sauerkraut and also kombucha, which has gained an immense following in the past few years. I was intrigued by the science, but I really got sold on lacto-fermentation when I started drinking Kombucha and noticed how good it makes me feel. It gives me a wonderful non-caffeinated pick-me-up, and just makes my whole body feel good!

I'd been thinking that I wanted to add more lacto-fermented foods to my diet, and buying bottles of raw kombucha every day didn't seem financially feasible, so I decided to try a recipe for fermented ginger ale from the book Nourishing Traditions. This is a wonderful cookbook by Sally Fallon in which she points out that the sugary sodas of today are actually distorted versions of traditional lacto-fermented beverages. The two that are still common today are ginger ale and root beer. These both started out as lacto-fermented drinks that helped keep people well rather than destroy their health like soft drinks do today.

I've made three batches of this ginger ale in the past month or so, and I've become addicted to it! I really like how the the warm ginger spiciness warms me up on cold days!



The first step is to peel and chop 1/4 cup of ginger. Peeling it takes a long time but like anything else, you get better at it the more you do it. The ginger goes in the bottom of a 2 quart glass jar.



Next comes 1/2 cup fresh lime juice, 1/2 cup sucanat, 2 teaspoons sea salt, and two packages of kefir started. I've been using powdered kefir starter I got from the Co-op, which is a big no-no to Sally Fallon. Her recipe calls for home-made whey, which is the clear liquid you get from strained yogurt. I didn't have any yogurt or whey in the house, and I had a full box of kefir starter, so I decided to break the rules and try it for my ginger ale starter. It's just lactic bacteria and yeast with a little skim milk powder, so it seemed like it should work to start a lactic-fermentation process.



Here are all the ingredients in the bottom of the jar....



I fill the whole thing up with water and shake it up to mix everything together.



The jar sits out on the counter for three and a half days to give the bacteria time to do their thing, and then I put it in the fridge.



I've been drinking a small glass everyday as a tonic. It's really good! It gives me the same pick-me up as kombucha, along with a nice strong ginger kick and just a tiny bit of carbonation. There's still enough sugar to make it slightly sweet, and the lactic acid gives it a vinegar-like flavor which is kind of odd at first, but quite addictive one you get used to it.
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Squash Soup from the Fridge

Last weekend was a busy one with not a whole lot of time to cook. On Sunday night I decided to skip my usual elaborate meal and use up some ingredients that had been hanging around the fridge for a while in a quick squash soup.

I used the neck of the curvy squash in the picture above. We had roasted the body of it during the week for a quick dinner. The neck didn't fit in the roasting pan so we put it away in the fridge for later use.



Here it is in the pan. I roasted it in olive oil with a few small turnips that needed to be used up.



The vegetables roasted perfectly! You really have to use a hot oven to get beautiful results like this - 425 or hotter.



I loosely chopped the squash and turnips and combined them with a leftover half can of diced tomatoes that had been sitting in the fridge waiting to be used, a cup or so of lentils, and a few cups of water. I would much rather have used broth than water, but there was none in the house. I picked some sage from the garden and made a bouquet garni to add flavor.



While this was cooking, I cubed a half loaf of leftover homemade pumpernickel bread. It had been sitting around for a few weeks and was way to stale to eat in slices. I melted some butter, tossed it with the bread cubes and a little salt, and put it in the oven. I turned the oven down to about 375 and cooked them for about 15 minutes, stirring them every so often.



After about 45 minutes the lentils were cooked. I had some leftover buttermilk from my last batch of butter so I threw that in with a tiny bit of milk that was about to expire. I flavored the soup with salt, cayenne, and a tiny bit of nutmeg, and then pureed it all lightly with my hand blender.



Delicious! It's really amazing what you can do from seemingly disjointed leftovers!
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Lamb Fesenjan

While I was in Portland last weekend a friend who works for an organic produce distributor gave me a whole lot of beautiful organic fruits and veggies. Among them were these four humongous pomegranates. He suggested I dry them - just let them sit out looking beautiful till they're completely dry sometime next year. I've never done that, and I wanted to try, but I also wanted to cook something with them.

They had some nice looking local lamb stew-meat at the Co-op, so I decided to try my hand at a traditional Persian lamb and pomegranate dish: Fesenjan.

Pomegranate is a fruit I'm not too familiar with. They're beautiful, but they intimidate me with their intricate pattern of extremely messy red seeds. I saved the biggest most beautiful one to dry and started to try getting the juice out of the other three.

The seeds make a beautiful five pointed star pattern. Getting them out of the rind wasn't too hard. I cut each half into five pieces, following the star pattern, and then took the seeds out with my fingers. It made quite a red juicy mess in the kitchen, but was relatively easy to do. I wasn't too worried about getting a little bit of the white membrane into the pot since I would need to strain it anyway.

Here's the leftover peels. Good thing I compost!

I cooked the seeds down slowly in a little water, hoping they would release their juice.

After about 2 hours simmering at a low heat it looked like the seeds were still holding some juice, so I strained them using this Black Futsu squash to weight them. I got about a cup and a half of juice, which was exactly what I needed for the recipe.

While the pomegranate seeds were straining, I started cooking onions in olive oil and turmeric. I followed the red theme and used a big local red onion from Ed at Earthly Edibles.

When the onions had cooked down and were translucent, I set them aside and added the cubed lamb pieces to the same pan. Once they were browned, I sprinkled on some flour and these chopped walnuts.....

...and then a bit of powdered cardamom and cinnamon. The turmeric, cardamom, and cinnamon were a very interesting and very delicious taste combination!

Finally I added the onions back in, plus the pomegranate juice and a little water, and let it simmer for about an hour and a half. I seasoned it with salt and pepper, but the sauce still didn't have quite the rich tangy sweetness I had in mind, so on a whim I added a tiny bit of aged balsamic vinegar. This definitely didn't conform to the Persian recipe, but was exactly what it needed.

I served it with couscous and a green salad. Sometimes I really impress myself with the things I come up with - this was one of those times!
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Thanksgiving '08 - Bacon Brussles Sprouts and Pumpkin Cookies

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, mostly because it's the only one that's all about food and mandates that people get in the kitchen and cook things from scratch for a change! Uncharacteristically, I didn't cook a Thanksgiving meal this year. Instead I visited a friend in Portland and she cooked, which was fun for a change. I still managed to do a lot of cooking leading up to the holiday however, and created a few dishes that I was pretty proud of:

On the day before Thanksgiving (which is always the busiest day of the year,) the Co-op has an annual Thanksgiving themed employee potluck. The Co-op provides the turkeys, and everyone brings side dishes and desserts. One of our cashiers was convinced that he didn't like Brussels Sprouts, but I was certain that he just hadn't had them cooked deliciously enough, so I challenged myself to create a Brussels sprout dish that he would like.


I started with maple syrup and minced ginger heating in a saucepan.


I mixed some pecans around in the maple syrup to coat them,


spread them out on a pan, and put them in the oven to crisp up.


Meanwhile, I started cooking some bacon.


I cooked an entire package, which was two batches in the cast iron skillet. I thought it might be too much, but it ended up being perfect since I accidentally burnt quite a bit of it - I really need to work on my bacon frying skills!


After being in the oven for about 10 minutes, the maple syrup kind of poofed up a little and became very sticky. I made the mistake of letting this cool down too much and the syrup solidified and it became completely impossible to scrape the nuts off the pan. I put it back in the oven to rewarm, and then quickly scraped them off onto another pan without so much residual maple syrup on it.


Here's what they looked like when they were finally cooled. They were delicious! This would make a wonderful sweet crispy snack on it's own.


Here are the Brussels sprouts washed, prepped, and ready to go into the oven. I poured on the bacon grease from the skillet (all of it!) stirred it around to coat the Brussels and put them in a hot oven (425 degrees.)


Here they are after about 20 minutes. Perfectly roasted!


I mixed in the bacon bits and nuts, let the whole thing cool, and put it in the fridge overnight. I brought it in to the Co-op cold and heated in in the breakroom oven till it was sizzling. It was a hit! The only bummer was that it disappeared so quickly that I barely got to eat any of it. The combination of the salty fatty bacon and the crisp sweet pecans was perfect! The cashier I'd made it for said he liked it, but he still didn't think he liked Brussels sprouts....oh well, I guess you can't win them all.

I wanted to bring something with me for my Thanksgiving in Portland, so I decided to use up the last of my Winter Luxury Pumpkins in some pumpkin cookies. I loosely followed a few recipes that I found on the Internet, but mostly just made up my own recipe.


I started with lots of fresh minced ginger.


I had some maple pecans left over from the Brussels sprouts, so I chopped those to add some crunch to the cookies.


Then it was time to mix up the batter. I mixed two cups of Sucanat with two eggs and then creamed in a cup and a half of homemade butter.


Then came four cups flour (I use whole wheat for everything,) 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and a sprinkling of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.


Finally, I added the ginger, 2 1/2 cups of pumpkin puree, and the pecans.


Is anything as good as cookie dough?


Here they are baked and cooling. They were very cakey textured cookies, but really good none the less. The fresh pumpkin flavor came through and was complemented really well by the maple pecans and the ginger.

It's really a shame how many people use canned pumpkin on Thankgsiving. It's really not that hard to cook pumpkins and puree them, and it tastes so much better. Canned pumpkin isn't really pumpkin at all, it's butternut squash. How sad that people don't know the flavor of real fresh pumpkin!
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Acacia's First Borscht

My friend Acacia tried another first at our house last weekend - Borsht. Her Dad spooned some of the bright red broth into her mouth, and she loved it! It makes great lipstick too!
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Persimmon Pie and Lamb Steaks

Aren't these persimmons sexy? They're local Hachiya persimmons from Willow Creek. This is an astringent variety that's basically inedible until ripe, but once they are they're simply delicious. These sat on the dining room table for about 10 days and were perfectly ripe by Sunday. When ripe, they feel just like a water balloon, and the pulp is ooey and gooey and sweet and oh so delectably persimmony. The texture freaks some people out a little, but I like to just suck the flesh right out of the skin.

Persimmon pie was on the menu for Sunday dinner, along with local lamb steaks and Brussels sprouts. Here's how I put it all together:

I bought this tapenade at the farmer's market on Saturday. It's nothing but locally cured olives from Orland, salt, walnuts, garlic, rosemary, and olive oil. Some of my very favorite things in the world all blended together - it doesn't get much better than that!

I processed some of the tapenade with fresh garlic, rosemary from the front porch, olive oil, and a little black pepper.

These are the local lamb chops. Beautiful!

I spread the tapenade mixture onto the chops and let them marinate in the fridge for most of the day.

Then it was time to make the pie.

I squeezed the persimmon pulp out of the skin and easily mashed it into this delicious puree. For the pie, I started with 2 local eggs beaten with 1/2 cup Sucanat, some cinnamon, cloves, and a dash of salt. I added 1 cup of persimmon puree to this, then two cups of half and half, and a couple tablespoons melted butter. The recipe was very much like a pumpkin pie, with persimmon in place of pumpkin.

Here's the pie going into the oven. The crust is homemade, but the making of it was not picturesque enough to document. I need lots more practice with pie shells before I put them in a blog post. I baked the pie at a high heat (425) for 10 minutes, then turned the heat down to 350 and cooked it about 40 minutes more, until it was set. It cooled, then went in the fridge to chill.

Roasting is about the best way to cook Brussels sprouts as far as I can tell. I used to hate these veggies when I was a kid - I remember learning to plug my nose in order to choke them down. I love them now - especially these local ones from Willow Creek. They get sweeter as the weather gets colder, so this time of year they're at their most delicious.

I trimmed them, cut them in half and mixed them with local sliced red onions and some local carrots that had been kicking around the fridge for too long. I heated up some bacon grease that had also been sitting in the fridge for a while with the little bit of leftover melted butter from the pie and coated the veggies in it. They went in a hot (425 degree) oven for about a half hour. You have to be careful not to burn veggies when cooking them this way. If you don't stir them every 5 minutes or so they start sticking to the pan.

While the sprouts were roasting I cooked the lamb. I browned each side, then added some sweet vermouth and chicken stock and let it cook slowly, turning the steaks every so often. I have a bottle of vermouth left over from my Dad's visit this summer, and I've discovered I much prefer cooking with it to drinking it.

After the lamb was cooked through, I took it out of the pan and made a sauce. The combination of the lamb drippings, tapenade marinade, vermouth, and stock made a wonderful black sauce that I thickened with a little flour.

Here are the finished Brussles sprouts. The one thing better than roasted Brussels sprouts are Brussels sprouts roasted in bacon grease!

Here's the sauce. It was so thick and black - if I didn't know what was in it I might have thought it was a black bean sauce.

I cut the chops into four pieces and reheated them. We saved two pieces for another meal.

Here's dinner. The picture could have turned out a little better - it sure was good! I was glad that there was no starch included in the meal since we had a delicious pie to eat afterwards, and that provided plenty of carbs.

And here's the pie. I whipped some cream and sprinkled a little cinnamon on top for color. Delicious! It tasted amazingly like a pumpkin pie. I think if I hadn't known it was persimmon, I probably would have assumed it was pumpkin. If you closed your eyes and really tasted it though, you could taste the persimmony goodness!
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