Breakfast: Kickstarting my brain with grain

Hmmm, seems I'm talking about tasty stuff a lot these days, let's keep the trend going! I'm not doing a great job with the detox, but the beauty of this one is how forgiving it is. I feel like I can keep going and do the food aspect of it to create healthy habits and redirect my taste buds. Afterward, I can go back and integrate the yoga. In the meantime, I'm trying to remember to do all of it, just not beating myself up if I don't remember/can't find the time to do the morning routine of meditation and yoga.

Sorry for the pitiful picture...all I had on-hand was my cell phone.

This is pretty much what breakfast has looked like for the past week: baked apple quinoa (keen-wah) with a liver-cleansing beverage. Last week I started each day with a lemon drink that I grew pretty fond of: Juice from half a lemon, dash of cayenne, 2 ounces apple cider vinegar and a spoon of honey in 8 ounces of warm water. This week I'm supposed to replace the lemon drink with a detoxifying tea, but I had my lemon drink this morning anyway.  I don't know if it's that my tastes are changing, but I really enjoy starting my day with it!

I've used quinoa a handful of times in the past, but always as something of a rice substitution. Because it's protein-packed and full of fiber, it makes a perfect morning meal. I first tried this version which called for chopped apples, a few other ingredients, and dry grain all mixed together and baked.  It was good, but for texture's sake with the next batch I decided to partially cook the grains before mixing them up and baking them. I went with Gabby's Gluten Free Cinnamon Breakfast Bake, but instead of soy milk used apple sauce, didn't use quite as much maple syrup, and threw in a handful of chopped dates.

Using the whole hog, I mean hen

I wasn't raised in a particularly food-centric household, and in my late teens to late twenties was a vegan. This meant I didn't really know how to cook much besides dry pasta. I could heat up a can of beans or cook a mean tofu patty, but when I became a meat eater again I left all meat cooking up to Charlie. He knew his way around an iron skillet, mentally stores and adeptly cooks his dad's recipe for a burger with perfection every time.

When I was finally ready to "honor" the animal through cooking it, well, I had to learn from the very beginning.  I also keep my internet ears open to new ways to use up the whole animal, at least as much as I know how. If you're in a similar boat, I've listed a few of my favorite go-to recipes below.

My own drawing of Ally, our mean black hen

I use these recipes nearly weekly:
How to roast a chicken (Martha Stewart)
How to cook a chicken breast (The Kitchn)

Bone broth: My approach is different than others I see online, I'm not sure how I came up with the process, since I use the internet as a cookbook.
Roast the skin, bones, drippings, fat in the oven on 350 for 30 minutes, stir/flip everything as best you can and roast 30 minutes more.
In a slow cooker/crock pot, cover the bones, etc. with water, add 2 bay leaves and a handful of thyme. Simmer for 12 hours. After you strain out the solids, you will have a richly flavored, unsalted broth.

Floursack tea towels from Girls Can Tell

Keep it going perpetually if you want, like Nourished Kitchen does. I generally use it for a giant batch of soup and toss (or bokashi) the bones.

I most often use homemade broth for chicken noodle soup or chicken and dumplings. Sometimes I'll use it in place of water to cook rice or barley, which is fantastic.

For chicken noodle soup I loosely follow the directions my sister in law gave me: 

Boil some kind of chicken with bones in. Today I used chicken thighs but I usually do a whole cut up chicken. Remove chicken to cool and pull off the bone. Put chopped onions, carrots and celery in broth cook until just done, add meat back in ( no skin, : p ) add salt and pepper to taste. I scoop out a cup or two of it and puree it and put it back in. Then I make a roux ( 3 or 4 tblspn butter same amount of flour, melt and add some stock, then pour it all back in the pot. It gives it some thickness which we like. Then just add noodles or rice, (I use the Amish egg noodles, they are yummy) when they're done YOU EAT!

Mabel will drink the broth and call it a meal.  If we have extra broth left over, the dogs get it with their dry food. After all, they deserve a nutritional boost, too!

Monday Musings

A plaque I commissioned from Melissa Bridgman. As soon as the porch is finished it will find its permanent home. In the meantime, I love seeing it in our kitchen window.

Long Tom paste tomatoes (pencil for scale): Delicious, giant, and virtually seedless. I'm in love with these tomatoes, the plants are dripping with tomatoes. The harvest (below) is one day's harvest from 3 plants. I have to pick them just slightly earlier than ripe or the rabbits will taste every single one.

Temptation and a Coconut Averted

A mid week vacation day deserves a little celebrating, especially when the temperatures are sticking to the low 100s. Hi-C seemed to think so this past Tuesday and came home fully prepared for a coconutty blowout, armed with pina colada mix, fresh pineapple and rum. Since I'm back on the weight loss wagon, a calorie packed frozen drink was tempting, but out of the question. Instead, I made my own lighter, tasty treat, one I dubbed Rhuby Pome.

Are you familiar with Izze sparkling juice? They're fruit juice sweetened, no corn syrup, no artificial colors or dyes; effervescent and delicious, albeit a bit more expensive than your typical cola. We don't usually have sodas in the house, but I bought a 4 pack of the Pomegranate Fortified* a week or so ago and stowed it away in the back corner of the fridge, knowing some form of temptation would arise and I needed to be prepared. 


The recipe? Fill your glass with ice, pour 8 oz Izze Pomegranate and 2 oz Rhuby (this translates into 4 parts Izze, 1 part Rhuby). Also, it's imperative you let the glass sweat so your perspiration soaked shirt won't be lonely.

For a finishing touch? Make the drink super fancy looking by raiding the party supplies from your toddler's 2nd birthday: stripey straws make everything taste better. 

Take a picture, it'll last way longer than your Rhuby Pome will.

*I should add I generally find "fortified" products to be a marketing scheme, as they usually add little to no nutritional value to daily intake. I think these are probably a way to make Pepsi's Izze competitive with Coke's Vitamin Water and I bought them because I like Izze, not because I wanted extra nutrients. Sugary foods, even fruit juice sweetened, should be the occasional treat, and nothing can replace the way our bodies rely on whole and wholesome fresh foods for proper nutrition.

Pastariffic without the pasta

I'm still on the them of food, when I said our fridge was packed with freshness, I wasn't kidding. We currently have tomato salad, carrot salad and fruit salad at arm's length; tasty veggie packed goodness ready to grab whenever someone has the hankering for a snack.

Last year I posted some ideas for using up the summer rush of zucchini, and to this day zucchini "noodles" are my favorite. They hold the right texture of an al dente noodle, but no bloated gut from wheat overload. None of that crazy blood sugar roller coaster from carb overload either.

How do you make zucchini noodles? Find a baseball bat sized zucchini (or a bunch of reasonable sized ones) and wash and peel it. Run the vegetable peeler lengthwise down the zucchini, creating ribbons of the fleshy part. Stop when you get to the seedy core. Now you have a giant heaping of zucchini ready to lightly saute in olive oil. Do a bit at a time so you don't break or chop the ribbons into small pieces. You want them sturdy and as spaghetti-like as possible; only saute until the ribbons get just tender. Season as you go, I use salt and garlic but season according to your tastes.

Last night we used up a particularly large zucchini, topped it with tomato sauce and homemade meat balls. The meatballs did have a handful of oats in them, but generally the meal was veggie-heavy, meat-light, and very easy on the body.

Preservation Proclamation

Friday evening I made a big pot of sorrel and potato soup from MizTrail's Easy Growing. It was excellent! Part of the issue with growing non-traditional honky foods is that I have to figure out a way to cook them and use them. Especially when they start coming in by the truck load. Note to self: having 3 sorrel plants for a family of 3 is more than plenty. Thanks in part to the potatoes, the soup was filling enough that it provided dinner for 2 (Mabel wasn't feeling experimental that night), Saturday's lunch for me, and a big enough batch for the freezer that we'll have dinner another night.

I spent a couple hours in the community garden on Saturday morning, first teaching a class (of 2!), then attacking the weeds* that had taken over. Currently the garden consists of 20 mounded rows, each 8' wide and 25' long. We've consistently had 3 people there working on Saturdays and 2 stalwarts who make it out a couple times during the week. Suffice to say, the uprooting of weeds has been much slower than the growth of new ones.


I brought some clear plastic to the garden to begin solarizing a couple of the beds. In return, I came home with a plastic grocery bag full of lamb's quarters, a giant cilantro plant that went to seed, and a bin of red wrigglers. Later in the afternoon I gave my own herb garden some TLC by giving one of the rosemary bushes a trim, uprooting and drying catnip (for our own use as tea), and dividing a few of my plants-gone -wild in preparation of unloading (errr...) giving them away.

This is actually a different batch of pesto than the cilantro pesto I made, 

but what can I say, it's Monday and I'm lazy.

To recap: we're now well stocked on rosemary infused oil, rosemary balsamic vinegar, cilantro oil, cilantro pesto, and coriander. I'm still deciding what to do with the lamb's quarters, we have a ton of lettuce to go through before I get to them.

All of this jabber is to get to the point of what my Mother's Day consisted of: preserving. Whether keeping herbs in oil, vinegar, or finding a way to freeze them, I've already got a nice stockpile and the summer growing season hasn't really started!

*Most of these weeds are edible, but we want more mainstream crops producing food for Friendship Trays.

Eat your weeds

Remember these? They were washed, blanched and peeled.  

Then pickled in white wine vinegar and honey with a sprig of rosemary.  They're so good I've already harvested another bunch to pickle. Next time, though, I might try a maple syrup and balsamic vinegar combination.

Pickled wild onions from this recipe.

Hard Working Hens

These nice spring days, we've got eggs out the wazoo. There will be quiche with foraged greens, there will be all sorts of homemade custard, the gardens will be amended with chicken poop and the slugs will be deterred with crushed eggshells. These girls *just might* work harder at keeping us all healthy than what we do for ourselves.

New Plots and Plants

Remember when I was braggin' on my bro's amazing gardening project? I don't know if it's the early emergence of spring that got him going, or the profusion of food-based documentaries available for instant streaming, but his front yard is quickly becoming a beautiful little farm.   Todd's been sitting down after work each night disassembling pallets to re-use as raised beds. The details give them a beautiful sort of craftsman style. These beds are his newest garden addition and equal about 1/2 of their total vegetable production space. The middle rear square bed has been planted with potatoes.

{In full disclosure, I stole this pic from his facebook account; I've been meaning to take some pictures. I was afraid if I waited til that happened I'd never get to share his handiwork, and I'm so impressed with what he's done.}

As far as my handiwork? I've been great at buying plants, but that's about it for pretty stuff. I've started 2 new compost bins and cleaned up a few areas that were knee deep in leaves so we can hang swings and make play areas for the little one. The changes, so far, are very unexciting visually.

I have gotten a few new food plants as you can see above, including kiwi, pomegranate and mushrooms. I've also gotten my first kiss of sun on my nose, ant bites on my arms and neck, and a few ouchy little blisters. Although I'm reluctant to say, it seems spring is really here. 

{The images are from the links included below. Angel Red pomegranate (though I got mine locally), Anna and Meader hardy kiwi vines from Willis Orchards; reishi, shiitake and wine cap mushrooms from Field and Forest.}

Family Dinner Traditions

Family dinner is a fantastic thing. Unfortunately (brace yourself, I'm about to let you down) we don't sit at the table and have them very often. Um, actually never. We did for a while, but for whatever reason we haven't found a dining table set up that keeps that role. Instead it's covered in fabric or another project. Right now it's just sitting in a room that doesn't heat very well, so that room stays blocked off through the winter. I know, weird. Whatever.

But the past 2 nights we've made dinner as a family. That, my friends, makes for some spectacular fun while working the kid's brain and forcing C and I to maintain a steady and heaping helping of patience.

Some ground rules: Mabel isn't allowed to get near the stove. She's not allowed to use knives, either. She's a great helper with stirring, kneading dough, and, when all else fails, sweeping the floor. Inviting a toddler in the kitchen makes for messy cooking--none of that clean-as-you-go stuff. The extra bits of time go into engaging her young, active mind.

Sunday we spent the day being lazy and doing whatever we wanted,randomly convening in the kitchen to work on the simmering from-scratch chicken noodle soup. Mabel's job? Take the pasta dough and roll it into little balls, then help roll it out through the pasta roller.

So she's 2 and she's already helped Mama make buttermilk biscuits, egg pasta, and turned masa into tortillas. Now that's a family dinner tradition I think we can keep.

Food Forest Example

A while back I posted a worksheet to plan a food forest garden. I've used it a couple times, but thought I'd share this one since it's time to start thinking about spring gardening.

This particular food forest/guild will be planted in a Charlotte, NC community garden and will be about 20-feet in diameter. The plum tree will be the center, the outer circumference will be planted with daffodils, garlic, chives, and crocus and act as a deterrent to deer and squirrels.*** The other layers of plants that will benefit the tree and each other mutually, including gathering nutrients and attracting/deterring insects.  The idea is to have a garden that provides it's own nutrition, mulch and soil building, while providing an assortment of food to those that tend the area. It's a commonly used permaculture technique to provide larger yields and require less work; just the way I like it.

Filled with herbs and fruit, this could be quite a tasty garden!

***Though I don't think there's actually true squirrel or deer deterrent!

Coconut Pumpkin Custard

Here's another sneaky way to get some veggies and vitamins into your diet: Coconut Pumpkin Custard! This post by Susy Morris, aka Chiot's Run, sparked an interest in custard, but I wanted a recipe for something not too heavy on the dairy. Miss M has dairy sensitivity, and easing up on the dairy keeps us all happier. After a little bit of searching for something close to what I had in mind, I found Gluten-Free Pumpkin Coconut Custard. Though I'm not sure custard usually has gluten, am I mistaken?

I roasted the cheese pumpkin I had on hand, and made a puree from it. Then went to work on the custard. I stuck pretty close to the recipe, which is unusual for me. I used closer to half a cup of sweetener (about 1/4 maple syrup, 1/4 molasses) and added about 2 teaspoons of grated, fresh ginger. While the custard was cooking I toasted some unsweetened coconut flakes and cashew pieces for a crunchy topping.

The result? A not-too-sweet, flavorful dish I can give the little one instead of sugar-loaded, organic soy yogurt!

A bonus? I saved the seeds from that delicious pumpkin to grow my own this coming summer!

Vacation, all I ever wanted

Pardon the disappearance,we made it to the beach and had a lovely vacation. In fact, we came back so well rested we spent the past couple days doing some intense cleaning including, but not limited to: the refrigerator and steam cleaning all the rugs in the house.

Cleaning is not a normal pre-vacation activity, but I knew I'd be much happier coming home to a clean house than a messy one. Then spending a week in a house without stacks of papers and clutter made it hard to come home to a clean yet cluttered space.

With clean spaces all around and a well rested body and spirit, I'm finally ready to really tackle a few personal goals: really digging into Beautiful You, a book introduced to me by Amber Karnes. I meant to do the book club but didn't get my book until too late and excuses and more excuses.

Now I feel ready. What about you? Do you feel as beautiful as you actually are?

No one wants to be that parent with the screaming kid.

This weekend I had my eyes opened for me and realized the experience of food doesn't begin or end with the ingredients. We do a lot of our shopping at the farmers' market, but there are things that we can't get there, so we make supermarket runs.

Yesterday I had my first Trader Joe's experience.

Yep, I've been resisting for a while and we needed to go grocery shopping, so off we went on a family trip. C fearlessly navigated the parking lot, secured M in a buggy and went on in; the music was blasting 80s new wave/industrial and M was dancing in her seat. Things were looking good.

Starting counter-clockwise and working our way through the store, we got as far as the cheese cooler (2nd stop past the checkouts then the beer selection) and the dancing turned into a toddler's desire to explore the saturated colors lining the shelves, temptation solidly and frustratingly within reach. Pulsating fluorescent lighting lent its oddly colored hand to the total sensory overload experience.  M was strapped into the buggy seat, unable to grab the colorful packaging; temptation turned into tantrum.

I called the shopping trip finished, asked C to check out and took M outside to run around and decompress. Outside we walked down the sidewalk of the strip mall, 2 doors down and she was back to her giggly, curious, actively engaged self.

Yes, I understand toddler fits are a natural part of growing up. I understand they happen out of frustration, emotion, and limited communication skills. Some parents think discipline is the way to stop a fit, but I don't see every tantrum as the same. I try to look at the situation (much easier to do with another adult around to give feedback) and assess: is the tantrum simply to get their way? Are they being tempted beyond their still-developing rationale?

Sometimes a temper-tantrum toddler is too much, and stepping back to look at the situation is an exercise in futility. No one wants to be that parent with the screaming kid.

What did I learn at Trader Joe's? There will be flying pigs in a frozen hell before I take Mabel to Traitor Joe's. The odds of me taking her by myself? Let's just say they're are even slimmer--the environment bred a need for 2 adults present: one to entertain while the other shopped.

That experience is exactly why I love the farmer's market--I walk there (no parking fiascoes for me!), shop at my leisure, have no buggies to battle, and generally no stopping mid-aisle to read labels, because you look at the food and know what is in it. Amazing concept, I know.

We made it out of TJ's and home again, home again. M and I sat in the shade and watched C build a boat. We ate cantaloupe, egg salad, and stacked blocks (aka architectural Corian samples I rescued from the trash at work). We enjoyed the air and the freedom to run around. Yep, even made it through a few of those toddler fits, but I have to say, in the fresh air they're much more manageable.

Anyone else out there with a similar experience? How do you handle shopping trips with an active little one?


I'm sorry for not getting around to posting on Friday here, but I did post on Modish.

140 characters of deliciousness

Have you ever tried to write a recipe on Twitter? The 140 character limitation of Twitter makes it a great platform to share concise recipes condensed to the essential.

What better way to enjoy all the fruits of summer than to keep it all so simple?  What's your favorite summertime fare? Share your recipe in Twitter form!

The most beautiful plant. . . in that planter. . .

Seems we're going to be well-stocked on the New Zealand spinach this summer. I've never grown this edible perennial before, but planted a whole packet of what I thought were seeds. Turns out the "seeds" are actually the fruit of the plant, meaning they have multiple seeds in each pod. Planting the whole packet means I now have something like 150 little seedlings, all thriving and glad to be green even though I didn't soak the pods before planting like everyone suggests. Could you imagine how many would've popped up if I'd actually followed directions?!

If plants thrive with music, I'm thinking it's time to break out the Flight of the Conchords. You know, remind the little buggers of their home country.

New Zealand Spinach. . .you're the most beautiful plant. . . in that planter. . .

representative of who I am

As my interest in food (fresh and pure), art, and the activism innate to both intertwine with more complexity every day, I often wonder what that means as far as the direction of my art. I feel like my work needs to be representative of who I am; at least, that's the type of art that I keeps me most self-assured.

The thing is, there are lots of people with similar styles and that makes me question my originality. Enter Communal Table. A zine cookbook with illustrations so awesome they make me want to just go ahead and give up now.

I bought tickets to hear Built to Spill play at the Neigh- borhood Theater Monday night (with the Meat- puppets, which is weird, right?). They're one of those that's been on the top of my list of bands to see for, oh say, 10 years.

At 10:30, Charlie remembered the tickets. By that point I was already snug under covers and halfway to dreaming after cooking and completely porking out on vegetarian enchiladas.

I felt too old to get up and go out at that point--when did everything change? I used to start getting ready to go out around 9:30 or 10.
I need some sunshine, birds chirping, and soil to till. That's about as revitalizing as it gets for me these days.

I'm ready to know where my seedlings are going to end up.

(built to spill as seen in the gallery on their website; the flower image is the newest print in the shop, and I'm in love with its, so I had to share; also, illustration friday's theme this week is "garden"--you're aces in my book i.f.!)

Let me tell you about those enchiladas, too.

Roast 1 Carnival Squash (seeds saved to plant, too), 1 onion and 2 cloves garlic--either chop them up into uniformly small bits or throw them in the food processor to dice them up. Add 1 can of rinsed and drained black beans, sauteed fresh spinach (as much as you please). Sautee beans, spinach, and diced, roasted veggies, seasoning as desired (I added salt, pepper and cumin). Stir it all together with 1/2 cup Monterey Jack cheese.
Spritz 4 tortillas with water, cover in a pan and steamed for a few minutes in the oven (I had the convection going at 300, left them in there til everything else was done).
Then the sauce: 3 T flour, 1 teaspon garlic powder, 1T cumin, pinch of salt, 1 teaspoon cocoa, 1 teaspoon ground red pepper, small can tomato paste, water. The actual recipe called for Oregano, but I was too lazy to get any from the front yard, so I added a little bit of dried basil. Mix all the dry ingredients, add 1/2 cup water, mix, add tomato paste. Heat on stove in sauce pan slowly adding water to get the desired consistency

Aside from the roasting, the whole thing took maybe 30 minutes?