New posts, find em!

Hi Friends,

I just published two posts from the spring and summer that had been sitting around, unloved, in their rough state for months. They don't show up here because they're sorted by the month when I started them, so look for "Locavore Week" under May, and "Squash Blossoms: An Epic Tale" under June.

Thanks for reading!

xo
Julia

Three Sweet Rides

Today's surf was pretty short and sweet, and I got three pretty sweet rides. The water felt shockingly cold when I first got in, and after I got out I couldn't use fine motor skills, but in between it was okay. The waves were big and exciting for Bolinas, and I think I knowingly "dropped in" for the first time. Got on the wave a little far back, sortof shuffled to the front of the board, and was able to drop down onto the wave, without nose-diving. I think that's just a normal thing to do, but it's exciting for me!

It was really nice to get in the water today, since I missed going last week. Pelicans flew over my head, seawater went all through my sinuses, I was in the ocean! I thought I'd go deaf when a wave hit my ear. I love it though.


Note on 3/15/09: It has come to my attention that "dropping in" is not the term for what I was talking about, but rather a negative term for when one joins onto a wave that somebody else is riding, getting potentially in their way, and being a generally rude thing which I try not to do (but have been numerously guilty of as I am a beginner and I didn't know). All I meant was when you catch a wave but you're sort of behind the top of it, and in order to ride it you go over the top, and down the front, like snowboarding down a little hill. Then you're on the wave being pushed forward by it, whereas otherwise you would have just slid down the back and lost it. I was excited because this happened, meaning I wasn't just flailing through a few seconds in time and then later realizing what happened, instead I was somewhat in control. Nice!
But I haven't been surfing in a couple months now, man I miss it!
Anyway, it's possible that "drop-in" means both things, but I think "don't drop in on me" means the other thing, because there is graffiti at the beach saying that, which someone's name in particular to whom it is addressed. Politics!

Photo Gallery of Meals

There are so many photos of food on my computer now, I need to put them up! For awhile I was ambitious enough to take a snapshot almost every time I ate at home, but I've realized I'm so busy working various jobs, and making snacks for myself, that I barely have any time or energy to blog. Sooo...I'm just going to put up all the photos, and if you're reading this and one of them looks interesting, let me know and I'll tell you how to make it!

Barbecue Sunflower Seed Burger with Fresh Red Peppers
and Red Leaf Lettuce with Sauerkraut Salad, Carrots and Walnuts

Fay's Pasta Salad
She's my mom. This pasta is a little different every time, always good.

Rice with fresh yellow tomato salsa, peas, corn and cilantro.
Topped with nopales, cactus leaves.

Fresh Zucchini Lunch Pizza

Hot Delicious.

Tofu Veggie Burger with melted fake Mozzarella, Guacamole, mustard, lettuce, tomato, and onion on sprouted toast.

Purple, yellow and red potatoes, roasted with beets, carrots and garlic.

Green Salad with Sauteed Fava Beans and Marinated Portabella Mushroom

Little Mustard Buns
I didn't make these, they came frozen, but aren't they cute?!!!
That's really what they're called.

Chocolate Coconut Bliss

is amazing.

It's creamy, dark chocolate ice cream, made with coconut milk and sweetened with agave. No dairy, no soy, pure choco-coco goodness. Mmmmm.

I've tried some of their other flavors and they're all heavenly. Cherry amaretto, por ejemplo.

Last night I had little bowl of the chocolate, topped with fresh blueberries. The berries glistened after the rinse I'd just given them, and their spotty, bright blue and purple skin looked stunning with the smooth, deep brown of the ice cream. mmmm again.

This is definitely the best non-dairy ice cream I've had, even though I like a lot of them. If you live where they carry it, go out and get some!

xo

Squash Blossoms: An Epic Tale

Well the restaurant where I work is serving these curious flowers, stuffed, beer-battered, and fried, atop pesto sauce. Naturally, I'm jealous, so when I saw squash blossoms at the market this weekend I decided I was gonna "Ve-gan-iiize it!" (to the tune of "Le-ga-liiize it!"). I took pictures. It was epic, bro.

Squash Blossoms

There were four of them, and two of me. They look almost too small and delicate to be stuffed and hold together, but they're deceiving. They're about the length of my thumb, if you measure starting at the wrist. When I finally did stuff them it felt natural and satisfying. But before that, were the processes...

Pesto

I love pesto, as I believe every person in the world loves pesto, in some form or another. One of the best things about it, is that it is so deliciously flexible. Here in this post lies a pesto that rebels against many of pesto's traditional guidelines, while maintaining integrity of the basic nature of the sauce.

I made pepita, cilantro, thai basil pesto. I substituted nutritional yeast for Parmesan cheese, providing a nice rounded funky taste reminiscent of hard cheese, and plentiful in many of the same nutrients, minus the breast-feeding. (oops, did I say that out loud? It's late.) Okay pesto,

first, the ingredients:



this recipe was halved, and adapted, from my mom's, which is from somewhere...

1/2 cup pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
3/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup thai basil with
1/2 cup cilantro
1/8 cup nutritional yeast
1 clove garlic
generous pinch of salt

Grind the seeds and garlic in a food processor. Add basil, cilantro, and nutritional yeast and process until the mixture is pureed.

At this point you're supposed to add the oil "in a slow, steady stream" while the processor is going. I tried this tonight and had a slow steady stream of organic oil onto my counter. Perhaps you're better with your processor, but in my experience, pesto tastes good whether it achieves the texture of mayonnaise or not, so I opened the not-as-porous-as-it-looks lid, and dumped the remainder of the the oil in to process at awkward intervals of "chop" and "grind."


It smelled intoxicating when I was stripping the stalks of their cilantro and basil leaves. Herbs are intoxicating, have you noticed? Not just "herb," but lots of herbs. They have smells, I mean, that make your eyes water and your nostrils flare. Rosemary, sometimes, can make me feel like I'm in a pine tree filled with chopped onions, but yet I love rosemary for it. The fresh herbs today were tantalizing, torturing, and tickling me in the eyes, the nostrils, the finger tips, as I plucked leaves indiscriminatley, dirty and withered, and stuffed them into a measuring cup. Half and half, cilantro and basil pesto, with pumpkin seeds and nutty yeast.




So then it was pesto, whether Italy says so or not. I love pesto, did I mention that??! Anyway, refrigerate, and move on to next step.








Portobella Mushroom and Summer Squash Filling

1 portobella mushroom, stem removed, brushed with hand, chopped
1/2 half yellow summer squash, chopped
1/3 small white onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped finely
olive oil
earth balance




This steamy mixture could've run the meal, but tonight it's filling a flor. I sauteed first the onions, then added garlic, a minute, added mushrooms, sautee two minutes, cover and steam a minute or so, stir, sautee, smell. Add squash, stir, sautee. Cover and steam. Open when its steamin and throw it in the food processor, I thought it would fall outta the flores if I left it chunky, so puree seemed like the theme of the night.



Stuffing.







Stuffed.

Beer-battered and frying.

The final product!

Served with a pint of Arrogant Bastard Ale, which is in the batter, and a side of corn salsa and chips.

The verdict?
I'll level with you. They were gross.
"Saaad, really? After all that?!"
Yes.
Here's what I think went wrong:
a) I don't have that which to deep fry things, so the frying process was messy and ineffective. The blossoms should have been quickly heated through and the batter should have quickly cooked up crisp, but the insides were just warm and the batter cooked more slowly than is ideal.
b) Arrogant Bastard makes a gross batter. Beer batter should be made with a light but flavorful brew, I think. Arrogant Bastard is fine for drinking one of, but overall it is high in alcohol, too malty AND too hoppy (aka too sweet and too bitter), hence the name. It's Obnoxious American beer. My excuse is that the recipe I was using, taken from the the restaurant at Stone Brewery where A.B. is made, calls for this beer. The last time I made it I used Stone Pale, my fave of Stone's offerings, and I think that would've been better.
c) So I didn't "use a recipe" for the filling. At my restaurant the filling is summer squash, carrot, and ricotta, and to be honest that sounds gross too. Too many sweet things, and too much mush, and I've heard people comment that they are either "delicious" or "way too rich" so who knows.

If you'll notice, I didn't include the batter recipe or pictures, and that is because it didn't turn out well and besides, I was getting bored.

Anyway, wasn't this fun?! :)

What I would do next time:
-Try and emulate a more ricotta-ey filling by using a tofu base, but no carrots, eww (love em, but not here), maybe a lot of basil and lemon, garlic..I'm not sure. Ricotta-ey filling still sounds like a lotta mush to me....
-Dump a huge bottle of oil into a big pot and try to actually deep fry the things. OR! maybe I could bake them in a very hot oven.
-Use a pale ale for the batter, or maybe just use a non-beer batter.
-Eat those delicious mushrooms without stupid pureeing them. Sigh, what a waste of yummies.

By the way, don't worry, the pesto was great!

Locavore Week

Dear Reader, I started this post nine months ago, sorry I never finished it, I'll post it now.

I've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life," and this week it inspired an experiment. In the book, the author's family of four pledges to go a year eating only local food, grown conscientiously, and to grow or raise a lot of their food themselves.


Here in Oakland, my romantic roommate and I decided to go the whole week eating only from farmers markets. A much humbler promise.

Here's the thing: this is California, and it's late May. There are four farmers markets a week that are easily accessible to us, and plus it's spring and gardens are starting to flourish. It should be obvious that most or all of our food would from the beautiful local bounty within a hundred miles of where I live.

In or near my neighborhood, there are also two Safeways, a Trader Joe's, and various other places to get food that may or may not be local, or actual food. Although we frequently take advantage of farmers markets, we don't make a point of it, and we eat out quite a bit. This would mean no grocery store, no lunches out during work days, and no "I don't feel like rooting around the fridge for some healthy shit, lets just grab a beer and a burger down the street."
And speaking of beer...what would we do about that? There are a lot of things besides vegetables you can get at the farmers market, but beer isn't one of them. This lead to some other discussion as well, what about tea and coffee, respectively? They sell coffee at the market, but is it grown locally? Well, we said, if its at the market that's fine. But they don't have tea. Should one of us get our fix and not the other? That didn't seem right.

Here are a handful of exceptions we came up with to the "Only Farmers Markets" rule:
-Beverages (I mean, do we really want to think about kicking drug habits at the same time we try buying food conscientiously? Nah, that sounds hard.)
-Free staff meal at the restaurant where I work, 'cause it's free food.
-Those who find themselves accidentally stranded on a desert island (aka workplace) with no farmers market food are allowed to seek other sustenance. We're trying to do something good, not punish ourselves.
-Whatever we already had in the kitchen, we could use. Sweet, we have a bit of canned goods, condiments, rice, spices, etcetera.

Perhaps at this point you're thinking this is a weak promise, but these caveats make it so the plan might actually work. Besides, you've gotta start somewhere, and it will be interesting to learn how it will pan out, how life will be different this week.



This is a picture of all the farmers' market food we had on the Wednesday of Locavore week. In a vague zig-zag, from left to right are: crackers, caper hummus, eggs, broccoli, fava beans, red potatoes, soy milk, romaine lettuce, braising greens, fennel, tomatoes, cactus leaves, onion, limes, garlic, marinated tofu, tamari almonds, dill, samosas, cilantro, tofu, zucchini, lion's mane mushrooms, cherries, cookies, herb rolls, seed bread, olive bread.

It doesn't look like a bad lot to be dealt, and it isn't! What a georgeous spread. The problem is, we'd have to prepare it all, which means making time, doing it, and planning ahead.

Here are some meals we (I) came up with.

Shredded Tofu and Cooked Greens Sandwich with Red Potato Dill Salad












Rice and Nopales,

with homemade yellow tomato salsa.
and.....that's where I stopped writing.

Summary, if I can remember since it is now February of the following year:
-It's hard actually "preparing your own food" all the time.
-Romantic Roommate found himself stranded on an island several times; once he discovered that a can of vegetable soup does not a sustaining lunch make, and had to run out for supplemental calories, and at least one other time he didn't remember to bring lunch at all and went out for a burrito.
-I honestly can't remember if I had any emergency breakings of our goal, but I know my buddy was mostly the one, and we both did pretty well overall.
-We were relieved when the end of the week came because we could relax our rules once again, but we have tried to keep up with at least buying most of our produce from farmers market, and supplementing with other goods from stores. This past fall we decided we were on a budget, so we've been bringing our meals to work and eating in, though not necessarily locally. Since I live in California now, however, I have definitely emphasized seasonal produce in my life to a degree that I never did before in my life. It is sometimes hard to eat squash at all, let alone all winter, but it feels good to go many months without basil and tomatoes, since they really are meant for summer and tomatoes are generally not worth eating in winter no matter where you live. Plus it makes them all the more delicious when they do come into season because it's a treat! Same for any other yummy thing that doesn't grow all year. Eating somewhat locally and seasonally has made me feel much more in tune with the planet. Plus, if you're only buying what's in season, not only is it cheaper, but you don't have to think so hard about what to eat!!!

Strawberry Almond breakfast sandwich

On the mornings when I have to get up and go, I usually try to bring a sandwich. More often than not it's bread and nut butter, with or without other things. Tonight's sandwich (I make them the night before, or else stumble through store-buying a meal) was a zag away from the intended, frenzied zig of a smoothie. I needed to use up my strawberries, as they were growing duller and more mushy by the second. I realized I could make a delicious smoothie of the berries, rice milk, and almond butter. I was all excited, getting out the fruit and my portable beverage bottle, when a smoky light bulb ignited over my head, and I spun around to rearrange my ingredients.

"Sandwich" I thought, and made this:


Ingredients:
-2 slices whole grain bread (Ezekial in this case), toasted
-Raw almond butter
-3-4 strawberries, sliced

Spread almond butter on both pieces of bread. Arrange strawberries on one slice of almond toast, tessellation style.

Cover with other toast, slice and serve, or refrigerate over night for a portable breakfast.

Hope it's good!