news: more from planet green

Apparently, turmeric can kill cancer cells in the gullet in under 24 hours, which means there's more reason than ever to eat curry. And other turmeric things. And I think you can buy the whole root as an Asian medicine and make tea from it... I think. It was a while ago that I was reading up on intestinal things, and I may be remembering wrong.

Anyway, here's another lovely-sounding recipe, from Akasha Richmond:

Turmeric Seared Pears with Arugula with Goat Cheese, Goji Berries & Pine Nuts

A recipe from Chef Akasha Richmond

Tue Nov 11, 2008 09:45 AM ET

Planet Green

READ MORE ABOUT:
Cooking | Salad Recipes | Vegetable Recipes |Vegetables

Yield: Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:

For the salad:
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
2 small-medium Bosc pears, peeled, cored and cut into 1/2-inch wedges
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon turmeric
2 teaspoons wildflower honey
4 ounces arugula, washed and dried
2 ounces goat cheese, crumbled
4 teaspoons goji berries
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

For the vinaigrette:
1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons wildflower honey
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly ground pepper to taste

Method:
Heat the butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.

When the butter is melted and sizzling, add the turmeric, let sizzle for 5-10 seconds, (turmeric should darken), then add the honey.

Add the pear slices in a single layer, season with a pinch of salt, and cook turning once, until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Transfer the pears to a plate.

Make the vinaigrette by combining the vinegar, honey, and salt. Slowly whisk in the olive oil, season with freshly ground black pepper.

Toss the mache with some of the vinaigrette and the goat cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Top with the pears, pine nuts, and goji berries.

news: planet green wants to make sure we get all our vitamin d

And it offers this delicious-sounding smoothie recipe:

Stress Reducing Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie
2 organic bananas
1 tbsp organic creamy peanut butter
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tbsp local raw honey
6 oz organic vanilla soy milk
4 cubes ice

Blend until smooth and combined. Enjoy.

ingredient spotlight: asian-market fried red onions

Picture from http://celiac-disease.com because I'm too busy eating them to take my own picture when the Interwebs are right there with the very picture I need.

Anyway.

Somewhere along the line, I developed a severe addiction to fried onions. It started with some crispy little morsels from the salad isle of WalMart, and progressed to the big ol' jar you see above from the Asian Market, because it's a bigger jar for cheaper, and it has no weird stabilizers or anything. And because they're awesome.

See, a serving is a tablespoon, and they've got, like, 30 or 40 calories per serving, and they're loaded with flavor-- crispy, crunchy, sweet, oniony, fried-food flavor.

I throw them into everything. My Good Ramen (the kind from the Asian Market with, like, five seasoning packs that contain real soy sauce and little veggies and flavored oil as well as MSG-powder). My miso soup (which also has wakame, bonito, sesame and nori in it most days). On salads. On casseroles. Out of my hand. On savory sandwiches. On rice, with furikake of various flavors. On potatoes with butter, cheese, salt and pepper. On quiche.

I bet they'd be good in crackers or savory cookies and muffins.

They're so delicious, so much flavor for so little stuff!

dear friends

We just got an icecream maker from a friend who was moving. Expect the occasional weird ice cream recipe / experiment in the coming months. I'm continuing my seasonal eating to get all my research done before I write the book, so they should be really weird on occasion. But when they happen depends entirely on when I have decent days off and how well I manage to get myself organized again.

Here's what I'm thinking so far:

Orange-chocolate

Lemon

Lemon-lavender

Rose petal

Thai Tea

Violet

Caramelized white-chocolate

Green tea

Green-tea and rose

Persimmon

Apple pie

... I don't even know what all. I made a list of fudges I'd like to try once, and I think most of those flavors would do well for ice cream, too, but I can't find the scrap of register paper I had it all written on just now. I'm sure it's in one of the five or so catch-all boxes around my space...

Love,

Me

Updates of updatiness!

I'm now on CookEatShare, hob-nobbing with all the chefs! Come visit me.

d food: trout with sundried-tomato tapanade and orange-walnut salad

None of us had ever had trout before, but since it was in season and cheaper than salmon, which we all know we like, D decided to get it and cook it up. He left the skin on and oven-baked it with orange juice, olive oil, and a blenderized mix of sun-dried tomatoes, a few olives, toasted walnuts, and Mediterranean seasonings, salt and pepper. For the side, he mixed baby spinach, orange wedges, more spinach, and a home-made citrus vinaigrette. There was crusty Italian bread from the bakery.

And it was awesome.

A little sweet, a little salty, very rich and flavorful, and different than anything else we've eaten-- and therefore outside the realm of our standards. D doesn't really use recipes, and doesn't really take notes as he cooks, but this is easily replicable.

revving of the engines

Hello! It's been far too long, hasn't it? I got into sort of a horrible funk compounded of poorness and bad health and a steep slide into unsatisfactory food at the end of last year, but there were glimmers of good, and I'll be posting them this week and next week to catch you all up-- and I'm back to paying attention to what I'm eating, and therefore I'll be taking pictures of the food, and that means I'll be posting more again! Yay!

So stay tuned!

oh, the lack of decent food!

You'd think that working two jobs would give me more money to get food with, but you'd inexplicably be wrong. The reason I haven't posted anything in so long is because we've been soooooooooooo poor that we haven't even been able to buy groceries, and therefore we haven't made anything in ages (well, we made fried chicken last night, but I forgot to take pictures because I was so unused to the idea by now).

I plan to scrape up money for the holiday baking I didn't get to before Christmas, but who knows if I'll be able to-- I also planned to make preserves and didn't.*

I want to bake cookies. This has been such a crappy year that I'm craving all things normal and traditional that will assure me that life is moving on and that things still flow as they should. ::sigh:: I want my mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies, Sugar cookies and Peanut Butter Cookies. And I want sugarplums, which I managed to make three years in a row, but couldn't afford this year. And I want to try new things, like fruit candies and new flavors of cookies.

So we'll see how the new year goes. I've got to save up for School and a Laptop and ICFA and running shoes and school loans and paying off the backlog of bills I owe my room mates, but maybe I can manage it... Flour and sugar are cheap, right? And I've still got all those acorns to make into flour, and there's going to be rowan berries as soon as the frost makes them edible...

* This is why I'm extending my Year of Living Seasonally-- to fill in the gaps I couldn't make work this time, and the hardness will work into the text. Also, I need to get all my research and interviewing done.

carribbean mash

Last night, we had porkchops cooked with one of those ready-made seasonings-- the citrus one-- in a roasting bag, and for a side, we had this amazing and original mash that D discovered in a dream:

He took red potatoes and boiled them with green plantains, to start, adding the plantains a few minutes after the potatoes because they don't take as long to cook. He said that they boil nicely, but they make weird black bubbles that are kind of alarming, though they drain away like any other boiling water.

While they were cooking, he sautéed peppers, onions and garlic.

Once everything was done, he mashed it all together with salt and pepper, and it was really amazing. The red potatoes already make a pretty smooth mash, but the plantains made it almost creamy, and gave it a little tang like they'd been made with buttermilk. The slight fruityness of it went really well with the citrus porkchops, and mellowed the onions and garlic so that all the flavors blended better than they do with just potatoes. And they tasted excellent with the citrusy meat-juice left in the roasting bag.

Keeper!

crisis food

You know how when things get really tough and then something breaks and you have the whole world tumbling down around you, all you want to do is eat? Well, I do. I'm totally a stress-eater, which is even worse of an idea than otherwise, because I pretty much lose my appetite and forget to eat when I'm lingering around hospitals and propping up others' wellbeing and not sleeping.

But last night, we had a lovely, hearty and sleep-inducing meal of rotisserie chicken, potato salad and mac and cheese, provided by the lovely E and her generous trip to the Publix Deli-- because she didn't have time to bake a casserole, and food is what you bring to a house with Bad Things Happening. And before that, it was midnight Steak-and-Shake with lots of fries and extra fat and salt. Does stress use up your electrolytes the way being sick does? Salt was the main reason for eating that night.

When I was living at home with my sister and my mom, crisis food was crepes with Nutella and strawberries. I've been craving it since we came home that day when Bad Things Started, and if I ever have free time again (or if I just can't handle trying to get the editing or the writing done between my two jobs), I think I'm going to plunder the fridge for some eggs and see what we can do... Strawberries aren't seasonal, but neither is crisis, and it's better to break an eating habit than to die because I forgot to eat or couldn't have the only thing I wanted.