Finals ate me

It has been a month to the day since I last wrote anything. That is because I have been grading term papers and final exams and writing term papers and final exams for more hours than I want to think about right now. But that seems to be the problem--here it is, 3am, and I can't turn off my brain. So, I'm writing. Why not.

Cooking becomes less of a priority during finals, but we've still managed to experiment with a few new recipes. We tried making grass fed sirloin steaks, marinated in olive oil, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, garlic and black pepper and grilled--those were good. We also bought some raw cheddar cheese from a farm up north, sprouted mung beans for mung bean pancakes (a korean dish), and got a mushroom log as an early xmas gift--so I see a lot of mushroom eating in our future.

Thankfully, despite all the stress and madness of finals, I haven't been sick at all. Tired, yes, but not sick. I've been taking cod liver oil and bee pollen (almost) daily, and I think I owe it to that. As well as lots of grass fed butter. I'm not kidding. Eat butter.

Micael left for Mexico early on Saturday, so I won't be cooking much this week until Christmas, when we'll be braising--oxtail. Right after that I'll be leaving for Mexico myself--meeting Micael in Mexico City. And then we will eat.

I'm looking forward to the outdoor markets, beans, tortillas, molé, potato croquets, salsa, spicy peppers, fresh fish, molé, fruits I don't know the name of, street vendors, molé. I'm also excited for the music, the architecture, the anthropology museum, Frida Kahlo's house, the textile markets, the salsa dancing...I'll stop with the lists now, but you get the idea.

Fermenting Chickpeas

My Dad's birthday was coming up and he requested homemade falafel for dinner. So, I soaked chickpeas with whey for 24 hours, then gathered together cumin, corriander, cayenne pepper, parsley, garlic and onion to make the falafel dough.



Everything is mixed in a food processor then chilled for an hour before forming into patties. then fry in olive oil and serve in pita with tahini, tomatoes, olives, lettuce...whatever you like.



VERY easy to make and tastes really good. We had so much left over, we ate falafel all week--just fried a few up for lunch each day. I'd love to post the recipe here, but I can't because its copyrighted. So--go get Nourishing Traditions! It's only $17 and I love it.

Pate Number Two

So, folks, we tried making the pate again. Here goes...



First step: melt a stick of butter. A whole stick.


Here are the chicken livers, washed, dried and ready to saute.


A pan full of sauteing onions, butter, bacon and chicken livers.


Add in the white wine, parsley and rosemary...


Happy boyfriend :)

Food makes me crazy

In a good way, yes, food does make me crazy. I love it. Who doesn't? But also, recently, in a bad way--food makes me crazy. I'm careful about which kinds of pots to use, not to heat them up too quickly in case the glass cracks, not to cool the food down too quickly or to let it sit out too long and grow things. I never thought this much about what to do with food. And--I'll admit it--I'm a perfectionist. Despite all my efforts to come across as laid back and go-with-the-flow, I am, at heart, a perfectionist.

So I freak out. I freak out when I drop the dutch oven we just bought in the sink and the handle chips. I freak out when I don't know why my mushrooms aren't getting properly browned but rather steaming in the moisture they keep giving off. I freak out when I don't have parchment paper and when I don't know what parchment paper is, and then I decide that parchment paper is stupid and I hate recipes and I give up anyway. Yes, as well as being a perfectionist, I am also melodramatic. I freaked out the other night because we had been cooking black beans all afternoon and then needed to leave for a dinner party. The beans were just barely done and they were hot. Where were we going to put them? We couldn't leave them out to cool, right? We'd be gone for several hours. I poured them into a glass pyrex and then--freaked out--that the glass would crack from getting too hot too fast. So I poured them back into the (hot) dutch oven. Then I refused to pour them into a steel bowl because I didn't want to get ONE MORE thing dirty--ONE MORE thing to wash later. So I freak out and tell Micael to leave me alone so I can storm to the market and get a bottle of wine. Then I storm back. Then I have a partial realization that everything is going to be okay--somehow. The beans will survive. But really I owe this realization to Micael who is the level-headed one in all of this. I promise him that I will learn how to not freak out so much.

Maybe writing about it is part of that process. I want to learn how to not freak out so much. I'm sure it will get better as I learn how to do what I'm doing with food. But it also means taking time to be aware of what I'm feeling and choosing to be the one to manage those feelings. Especially when I'm facing something challenging and I feel overwhelmed by it. Especially because I want to do it right the first time, and learning how to accept that that won't always happen is a more mature perspective.

The first time we made chicken liver pate, I freaked out. Because we didn't know how to time everything, we didn't know whether to wash the livers, we didn't know how long to cook them or how long to cool them or how to do anything, really. Yesterday we tried making it again. This time we talked beforehand about which job each of us would do, how we would time everything, what we wanted to do differently. We learned from that first experience. It was still tense in the kitchen as I was trying to decide what "opaque" chicken livers should look like, but I think, without doubt, that it was an all-around better experience. And the pate tastes better too.

Who would have thought--learning how to cook is turning out to be a growing experience for me...

My first braise

I mentioned on here that we'd be attempting a lamb braise--lamb provencal--in our new dutch oven. And we did!

We invited Deana and Brian over for dinner, and against the wisdom that says don't try a brand new recipe when you're having people over for dinner, I tried the lamb for them anyway. And--praises be--it worked.

I got home from campus at 4pm on Tuesday and right away started prepping for the recipe--chopping onions, measuring spices, dredging the lamb in flour for browning. I first browned the lamb in the dutch oven--a smoky affair with the extra flour burning in the oil--and then set the lamb aside while I cooked the onions, tomatoes and spices in the dutch oven, adding chicken stock and white wine to create the braising liquid. For those that don't know--and I didn't--to braise meat means to cook it very slowly (about 3 hours) in a stock or liquid of some kind. This makes the meat tender and very flavorful. I learned about this technique from a meatseller at the farmer's market and then followed up on it by searching the internet for a recipe. It turns out to be a really easy way to make delicious meat.

After I got the braising liquid ready, I put the lamb on top and...was almost ready to start baking. The way I cook is usually to have my laptop on the kitchen counter with me so that I can scroll through each step. This is probably not a wise choice, given the likelihood that I will spill white wine on it or get lamb tendons in between the keys, as well as the fact that you can only see so many steps at a time before you need to scroll again (thereby getting the keypad a little, mmm, grimy shall we say?). So this night, I was also using the computer and at this step I was ready to put the lamb in the oven and I realize, CRAP! I don't have parchment paper. What is parchment paper? Apparently it's supposed to go over the lamb while it bakes (but under the lid of the dutch oven). In a rush, I ask (or desperately cry out) for Micael to call the market around the corner. They have it! He runs over there while I stare at the lamb--I mean, what else am I going to do? sit down? I'm already behind schedule to get this thing in the oven, and am having a frightening vision of another 10:45 dinner. Micael calls me from the market--the parchment paper has silicone on it--is that ok? I have no idea. What is silicone? Is it something I want in my food? This has been a question that keeps plaguing me as I research cooking materials and especially, the food itself. Trying to find a pure, uncontaminated way to cook. He reads to me from the box that silicone is a naturally occurring, organic substance and that this parchment paper producer seems to have consumer and environmental health in mind. Ok! lets go with it.

He arrives with the parchment paper, we throw it in the pot, trim the edges and into the oven it goes. It now has 2 1/2 hours to cook.

In the meantime we prep the remaining ingredients--olives, parsley and lemon wedges--as well as get the potatoes ready to mash. The apartment starts to smell really good, Deana and Brian show up, and we have a glass of wine while we finish making dinner. The last half hour is crazy. The potatoes are cooking in 3 batches because we don't have a pot big enough for all of them at once, then after they boil they need to sit in a dry pot on the stove to let the moisture evaporate. Then Deana mashes with butter and cream while we chop kale, pull out the lamb, reduce the sauce, add the olives, etc, and try and find room for plates on the completely trashed counter.

At the last minute it all comes together--so quickly that I don't even have time for photos. We sit down, dig in, and it's good, really, really good. I definitely recommend trying this recipe out--or any kind of braise, for that matter. Try lamb shanks, lamb necks, pork chops, oxtail...

Micael puts on my Halloween glasses while he cuts onions. (It doesn't work--he still cries)

Isn't he handsome?

Curry Friday

It's 11:45 on a friday night. Micael is in bed--he has to be at work at 5:30 tomorrow morning--and I'm winding down before I hop in bed myself. I had a good day. Spent most of it inside catching up on work and doing research--food research :) I read up on sprouting grains, making chicken stock and mashing yukon gold potatoes. I put together a shopping list for the provencal lamb I want to braise on Tuesday and also found a recipe for an easy curry to make tonight.

Micael and I have been buying jarred curry sauce at PCC for months now. It's simple, tastes good and we can put just about anything we want into it--beef, lamb, chickpeas, kale, carrots. But last trip to the store we checked the ingredients list and canola oil was right there at the top. Both canola and soybean oil are pretty hard to get away from--they've become the ubiquitous vegetable oil in most processed and prepared foods because they're cheap and abundant (Midwestern farmers are encouraged and paid by the government (and Monsanto) to grow soybeans and rapeseed). From my research on these oils, I've learned that the way they are processed leads them to go rancid quickly and also leads to many health problems when consumed. Soybeans are an anti-nutrient, can cause fertility issues in both men and women and can cause an over-abundance of estrogen for women, leading to hormonal issues, perhaps even cancer. The only way soy is safe to eat is when it has been naturally fermented (look for naturally fermented soy sauce). Canola oil comes from rapeseed, which has become such an abundant crop in our industrial food system that 80% of it is genetically modified to be disease and drought resistant. Hundreds of years ago, Europeans used rapeseed oil in their lamps and came to occasionally use it as a cooking oil. However it wasn't until the advent of steam technology that rapeseed really caught on, since it turns out to be an excellent lubricant. During World War II it was used to lubricate machinery. Recently developed industrial means of extracting the oil from rapeseed damage the nutrient properties and render it inferio r to other oils or fats for cooking, and the genetic modification of the plant is a red flag that this is not an ideal nutritional source. Canola oil stands in for other sources of oil or fat--such as butter, olive oil, coconut oil or lard (yes, lard! or duck fat) which are richer in the nutrients and enzymes our bodies need to be healthy and vibrant.

So, upshot of all of this is that we decided to make our own curry sauce. The recipe I found uses Canola oil, but I just replaced this with a mix of butter (from grass fed cows) and olive oil. I also mixed coconut milk (whole, not lite) in with the sauce to make it richer, tastier, and get all the good immune system boosting nutrients that coconut offers. This recipe has cumin, corriander, turmeric and chile powder, tomatoes, onion and chile pepper (we used jalapeno). We also added grass fed ground beef , carrots and purple kale to it. It was really good. I'm looking forward to eating it again tomorrow night after all the flavors have soaked together some more.

A final thought on all this food research and experimentation I/we have been doing (I include Micael because this really is a partner project). This takes a lot of life changes! I spent all afternoon reading, comparing, researching, just to understand how to prepare some of the building blocks of simple recipes--like sprouted grains, polenta, nut butter, and meat stock. In general, we're not trying any complicated, fancy recipes. It's taking enough effort just to get the basics because we're doing it all from scratch. But I'm having so much fun. Obviously the way I look at food is changing, as well as how I look at my kitchen, how I look at the people that grow and sell food, and how I look at people that cook food. I have so much respect for good chefs--especially those that are advocating for better food policy and food systems in the US (such as Sam Kass, chef for the Obamas). But also the way I look at how I organize my time and life is changing. I'm happily, eagerly spending time researching where food is coming from, what it does for our bodies, how people have used it for health, celebration, ritual and building community. I'm satisfied to spend a whole evening cooking one meal--feeling all the spices run through my fingers, chopping up shallots, carrots and kale, smelling browning butter while listening to some meringue or salsa (and if I'm lucky, seeing Micael dance).

I've been much more calm since we started cooking this way. I know this is because I'm getting more vitamins (like B vitamins) that help our bodies regulate stress. But it's also because my days, my life have become wrapped around food in such a way that it's the center of everything I do and it can't be rushed. Brown rice takes 7 hours to soak and 45 minutes to cook. I can't speed it up, I can't change it. No matter what, it will always take 7 hours to soak and 45 minutes to cook. So I relent. I allow food to become the conductor for my life and arrange the rhythms by which I live. It takes a lot of changes, but I know without a doubt that this is the way I want it to be.

Inspiration outside my door

Liquid Amber




Japanese Maple

Thursday lunch

I've just gotten home from campus for the day. Thursdays are my long days--I don't get home til after 4pm--which means I usually don't eat until closer to 5. I usually bring small snacks with me for my break in-between classes, but it's hard to bring a full lunch, because I can't cook anywhere, and I won't use a microwave to re-heat food. This is a recent decision (within the last few months) for me. Microwaves alter the chemical make-up of food and deplete the nutrients, compromising the worth of your meal.

So, for now, until I figure out better cold lunches, late lunches prevail! Today I'm eating pinto beans (soaked and slow-cooked last Sunday) with brown rice (soaked and cooked on Monday) with organic sour cream and salsa. I also added a pinch of gray salt. I am in love with this salt. I'd heard about this salt many times, and even bought it once for someone who lived out of the area and couldn't get to a grocery store that had it. But I'd never bought it myself. Until I read about the benefits of the mineral content of this salt. This salt is collected from the Northern coast of France. The water is allowed to evaporate and the salt crystals that remain are gathered. It is big and chunky, and like I said, gray. It's delicious. I've seen it used on the top of caramels and chocolate chip cookies to add a different dimension to sweets. I love using it on top of buttered bread so I can really taste its flavor and texture. We keep it in a little dish near the stove top so we can pinch it into our food easily--I love feeling the texture between my fingers.

The salt is $5 or $6 a pound--more then conventional salt, for sure, but worth it. And a little bit should last a long time. Another word on salt...Even if you don't get gray salt, do get natural sea salt (About $2/lb). Sea salt has minerals that your body needs to be healthy. Normal table salt is heavily processed and bleached--toxic for your body and has none of the good trace minerals. And it doesn't taste as good.

Fingerling potatoes

Look at those colors! I've been buying fingerling potatoes from the Ballard farmer's market for the last few weeks. The first attempt to bake them was a failure (cooked too long and smoked up the kitchen!) but try two was more successful. I'd recommend cutting them open, even thought they're small, because that will let in the olive oil, garlic and spice flavor into the flesh of the potato. So, cut them in half or thirds, shake with olive oil, fresh rosemary (you can find this growing in your neighborhood, most likely, if you live in Seattle) salt, pepper and garlic. Then bake in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes or so--keep an eye on them and decide when they're cooked enough for you.

It's important to get organic potatoes because conventional potatoes are grown in soil that is enriched with synthetic fertilizers, meaning that the soil has very few nutrients in it. A potato grown in organic soil will absorb the minerals and nutrients of the soil into its skin and flesh and then into your body when you eat them. Also, conventional potatoes typically have been sprayed with a sprout inhibitor to give them longer shelf-life. I still have to do more research to find out what this spray consists of, but typically, modern preservation methods are toxic and nutrient-depleting.

Fingerling potatoes at the farmer's market are $3/lb. (or $5 for 2 lbs).

Caribbean cookware

It's a half-sunny, half-grey, blustery Saturday afternoon. The last day of October. Well, yes, Halloween. Micael is out riding (his trials bike) and I'm staying in to get some homework done. I guess you can tell by now the homework-doing is not so successful. I'll get to it, I promise.

I have a pot of pinto beans on the oven, simmering with garlic, and am LOVING checking on them because it means I get to admire our new Le Creuset dutch oven. I think I'm obsessed with these pots because, first of all, they come in good, rich colors, and then they are so solid--they feel like they will last forever. And beyond that, I know it's a good pot. It's made of cast iron and covered with enamel and keeps its heat as if it were an oven itself. I've been doing a ton of research the past week or so on cookware, ever since I read in the cookbible that aluminum cookware is not recommended. I checked our pots and yep...aluminum. I did some searching online, and apparently, cooking with aluminum (even with foil) is thought to cause Alzheimers. Wow. Ok, aluminum is out. Which is a shame because these are nice pots that were handed down to me. What now?

I start looking at alternatives--stainless steel, cast iron, ceramic, glass. We were on the verge of buying a stainless steel set, but given my surprise about aluminum, I kept doing research to find out what could possibly be wrong with stainless--especially since most stainless steel cookware has aluminum in its base to distribute heat. Would that leach out eventually? I couldn't find any cookware that didn't have the aluminum base, and didn't trust the manufacturers to report everything that was in the cookware. After reading many reviews, I found out that stainless typically has chromium and nickel in it. I'm still unsure what the effects of these are, but it seems that many people (from reviews I read) were against the nickel. I still need to do more research on this, but I decided that if I could find an alternative, I would. So I kept searching.

We currently use a cast iron skillet that I got at Goodwill for 2 or 3 dollars. We also have a copper-bottom stainless steel pot that I got at Goodwill and figure I'll keep using for now. I got a recommendation for ceramic cookware from Xtreme (the name threw me off, but it looks like good stuff) and also for Le Creuset. We headed to the kitchen store to check things out, and ended up buying a Le Creuset dutch oven for half off ($155). We also got the stainless steel knob to go with it, because it comes with a plastic knob that is only good to 375 degrees--bad design. We also bought a pyrex corning ware glass pot from Ebay--vintage. As far as I know, they don't make these anymore. (There's a rumor that's because they crack--I guess we'll find out). We're thinking of getting another, larger cast iron skillet as well as a bigger pot--maybe in ceramic.

For now, I'm ecstatic about the dutch oven. It's a bright, turquoise blue, one of my favorite colors, which makes cooking that much more fun. And I know it's safe. It won't cause cancer or Alzheimers or any other degenerative disease somewhere down the line from unsafe materials. (I didn't even mention non-stick in here, but those materials are toxic-there was a major recall on all Teflon because it was found to be dangerous, but then non-stick replacements came out--I don't trust any of it.)

So, to recap, after all my research, here is what I would recommend: cast iron skillets, (our bodies need iron anyway) cast iron covered with enamel, (like Le Creuset) ceramic, glass, and possibly stainless steel, with as low a nickel content as possible.

Our next project for the dutch oven? Provencal lamb shank.

Silvana Meats, Marysville, WA

My mom invited me to go with her up to Marysville to check out a farm where we could buy pastured and naturally-raised meats. She'd heard about it from a friend who bought all her meat there. So, we head up North one Friday afternoon.

From Seattle, the farm is only about 40 minutes away. Actually, it wasn't a farm, but rather a collective butcher for all the farms in the area. You walk into their front store and can look past the counter to see lots of butchering go on behind them. Fascinating. There are refrigerators full of sausages, steaks, bacon, tamales (yes, even tamales) and all sorts of other animal parts. We signed up for our Thanksgiving turkey, then ordered, for me: calf's liver and a whole fryer chicken; for my mom: skirt steak and sausages.

I had some recipes in mind already. I wanted to make a Moroccan chicken recipe out of the Cookbible (Nourishing Traditions) which called for a whole fryer chicken, cut into pieces--which they did for me! (I was definitely not ready to do that by myself--but working up to it.) Then, for the calf's liver. I know, this takes some explaining. Since the pate experience, I've been having liver-related conversations all over the place. Not something I ever thought I would say. All sorts of people are coming out of the woodwork to tell me about how they like to cook liver--go figure. Then, even the New York Times gets on the bandwagon and shows me a calf's liver recipe. Sometimes there are signs you just can't ignore.

So, I just pulled the calf's liver out of the freezer and put it in the fridge to thaw. We'll be having it tomorrow night. The NYT recipe includes bacon, onions and radicchio, sauteed, then the calf's liver sauteed for just a few minutes in butter then placed on top of the bacon, onion and radicchio combo. I'm crossing my fingers I like this :)

I like goats

Bees and more bees

Honey. I love it. Especially now that I've discovered raw honey. It has tons and tons and tons--yes, those are scientific terms--of enzymes and nutrients. In fact, it keeps your immune system strong and can be taken as a vitamin. Pretty good for something that tastes like heaven.

Bee pollen. Another wonderful, super nutrient. Protein, enzymes, etc, etc, etc. I've read the list of things it does for you 3 or 4 times now. I can't remember because the list is so long. Basically it makes everything better. Google it--you'll see. But, you want pollen that hasn't been dried, is preferably kept in glass, and isn't refined or processed in any way. Basically you need the most raw stuff possible. Same with the honey. Raw is good. If you live in Seattle, go to the honey guy at the Ballard Market who has a grey beard and looks like he's been chewing tobacco for a long time. Talk to him--he's wonderful. If you don't live in Seattle, go check out a farmer's market and chat up the honey guy.



This is Nancy's organic, whole milk yogurt with raw honey (honey hasn't been filtered or heated and still has bee pollen and honeycomb in it) with more bee pollen added on top. I also added some turmeric--I found this spice in the bulk section of PCC (natural foods store). Turmeric is a standard spice in curry and is good for strengthening the immune system, depleting cancer cells and reducing inflammation. It also adds an exotic taste to the yogurt. Don't go overboard--1/4 teaspoon will do. As for the honey and bee pollen, get the best quality you can. Bee pollen should be kept in glass and frozen to maintain freshness--try to buy from a bee farmer. The honey I bought through a buyer's club, which is basically a lot of people getting together and buying in bulk directly from the farmer. Check out the Weston Price Foundation web site to find a local chapter that does this, or else look in the ads at a local natural grocery. (If you're in Seattle, I can get you linked in to the buying club here!)

Choke the Priest

Strozzapreti--choke the priest. But not literally. It's a type of pasta. Written about in loving detail in the Encyclopedia of Pasta, by Oretta Zanini de Vita (what a name). I saw this recipe in the Dining section of the New York Times--which comes out every Wednesday, I get giddy on Wednesdays--and decided to make a go of it.

I have never made pasta. I actually don't eat that much pasta. Micael was born in Italy and he has never made pasta. It's about time we try this out--I probably will like to eat pasta more when it's made with fresh eggs and flour, and especially when it has a name like choke the priest. (thanks to Rafaella for the translation-you weren't messing with us, were you??)

We decided friday night was a good time. Well, really we had nothing to do on a friday night, and so we decided that that was the best thing we could do--not like we set aside friday nights to make pasta or anything. We bought plum tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic and pecorino cheese for the sauce, and had some farm eggs and flour for the pasta. The recipe calls for cutting the tomatoes in half, shaking them with olive oil and garlic and roasting them in a 300 degree oven for 45 minutes. Meanwhile we chopped up basil, garlic and pecorino cheese in a miniature food processor and started in on the pasta. I have to admit--I'm intimidated. I've always heard pasta is challenging, time-consuming, and you probably need to have Italy running through your blood to really get it right. In fact, Oretta learned how to make pasta in her convent school as she was growing up. The Sisters would tell them that their tortellini dough was only thin enough when they could hold it up and see through it to the Sanctuary of the Madonna of San Luca, out the window. Now that's pressure.

So I make a pile with my flour, carve out a space in the middle and crack 3 eggs into it (I added to the recipe so we could have more pasta). I start folding the flour into the eggs, which then run off the side of the cutting board/rudimentary pasta-making board, and must scoop/scrape them back in while trying to keep more of the pas te on the board than attached to my hands. This stuff is sticky. The recipe seems to recommend avoiding extra flour, but the dough is so sticky, I can't get it off my hands, much less roll it out. I add more. Then roll it out using a jar, because our kitchen is still too basic to have a rolling pin, and jars are much more fun anyway, and then cut into strips, roll the strips around a bamboo skewer and voila! pasta. Ok, it wasn't so voila-ish . The pasta kept sticking and I had to use a lot of extra flour, which meant it wouldn't stick to my hands or to the skewer, but then it wouldn't stick to itself, either, which means it wouldn't form the nice rings that I saw in the picture. I got close enough and then scooped all the semi-deformed rings into boiling water, let them cook for a few minutes and voila! cooked blob-like strozzapreti!

We mash the roasted tomato, basil, garlic, pecorino, olive oil combo onto the pasta and wow...mmm. good. The pasta could definitely be thinnier, but it was still really tasty-chewy and fresh, and the sauce was incredible. I could eat the sauce on anything. The best part is that it took us a total of 45 minutes--total--and was really inexpensive.

So, looks like I'm going to have to keep trying this one until I get my strozzapreti dough so thin I can see through it to the apartment complex parking lot out the window :)

ps. My only caveat with this recipe is that the flour we buy at the grocery store is typically not very fresh because ground flour goes

rancid very quickly--I never knew this before. So, the best thing to do is soak grains yourself and then grind them up fresh for flour whenever you need to use it in a recipe. I'm working up to this myself--I'll need to get a grain mill, whatever that is--and I'll start writing about it as soon as I can figure it out!