As an aside to my Thanksgiving Take 1 post, I’d like to share my ongoing struggle with finding a simultaneously tasty and local cranberry recipe. In the past I’ve mixed anything from pineapple to mandarin oranges to pecans and raisins into my cranberry sauce…and with a lot of sugar, this has always been tasty. But sadly, oranges are not part of Wisconsin’s tasty produce.
There are some leftovers left in my fridge (not for long...), but this white dish is such a prettier backdrop than my tupperware
This year I made a cranberry relish (two cups Wisconsin cranberries, two Wisconsin apples, and one orange borrowed from my roommate put through the food processor until roughly chopped). And with the obligatory cup of sugar, it was quite tasty. But does anyone out there have a good cranberry recipe that doesn’t rely on the (delicious) food-mile-rich flavor of citrus?
Also known as: The one with the bird.
My nuclear family is entirely vegetarian. So our Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t feature a turkey (check back next weekend to hear what we do cook up though!). But for the past three years, my roommate and I have hosted a “friends Thanksgiving.” This one does have a turkey…it’s called Turkey Party.
Turkey Party was Saturday this year, and it was a pretty big success. Together, my roommmate and I cooked up a 20 lb. turkey and gravy, green beans with carmelized onions, stuffing, cranberry relish, stir-fried sweet potatoes, roasted carrots and beets, and two pies (pumpkin prailine and caramel apple). It was quite a day – especially considering we took two and a half hours to go to the bar near our apartment to watch the Badgers play horribly.
As food ethics go, I think I’d give us a C though. I let my roommate make the judgment call on the turkey. And while we got a lot of our veggies at the market Saturday morning (sweet potatoes, onions, beets, carrots, among others), we ended up getting a cheap and easy bird rather than a local one. We got a Butterball and the grade that bird gets seriously lowers our average.
While none of our guests seemed to mind “eating misery” (as my mother puts it), they didn’t get a chance to compare it to. And since I don’t eat turkey myself, I won’t get a chance to improve on this dish on Thursday. One of these years I’d like to see what a real turkey looks like, but for now I’m thankful that I get a chance to make some of these delicious dishes again on Thursday…and try some new ones too!
Not "literally" a hop, skip and jump...but pretty darn close.
This Saturday I went to my first Farmers’ Market at the Monona Terrace. Although the weather outside wasn’t frightful at all, the Dane County Farmers’ Market has moved indoors for the year. It was an odd setting for the gourds and goat’s milk soap (and my favorite bakery apparently doesn’t make the move to the smaller venue…they rank their treats from very healthy – scones with whole wheat – to healthy schmealthy – frosted cookies!). But I was still able to buy my weekly staples: cabbage, potatoes, kale, apples, eggs, cheese and brussels sprouts (you can make delicious meals with these ingredients and not a whole lot more through the fall and much of the winter…check back later this week to see what I end up concocting).
I’ll miss strolling around the capitol square, but at least I don’t have to worry about where to get my favorite local snacks. And after some cursory investigating yesterday, I’ve already scoped out where I’ll be getting ingredients next weekend for the cooking holiday of all cooking holidays!
This is coming a little late (midterms, I’m sorry!) but better late than never I say. A little over a week ago I made a pact with my sister to have a candy-free halloween. That’s not to say we didn’t have our share of treats though.
My trick was turning the ingredients into the treats!
Apparently, Halloween candy has a lot of scary ingredients like GMO sugar. And while I don’t know what the magnitude of GMOs threat actually is (it seems like no one has a good handle on this yet. I don’t know if my treats were GMO free themselves, but they were delicious. Mini pumpkin cheesecakes. Fudge brownies with mint cream cheese frosting. Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. And a recipe I’m trying to come up with a better name for…”Magic in the Middles.” They’re like a Reeses Peanut Butter cup in cookie form. And they’re sooooo good.
I know Halloween is the last thing on people’s mind now, but delicious fall desserts probably aren’t. Try playing around with some local, organic and/or fair trade ingredients next time you want to satisfy your sweet tooth.
As a vegetarian, I have to think a little bit more about how I can get enough protein to keep me going. One of my favorite sources of protein since childhood is eggs – and they go in everything. I’ll crack them over some veggies I just scrambled together, I’ll mix them into cookies, and I use them every morning when I make pancakes.
But like pretty much any food, eggs have a dark side (that’s been getting some time in the spotlight in recent years). As this Mother Earth News article points out, it can be hard to determine what a label actually means. I like to look for something like this:
I think my favorite part of this picture is that the farmer crossed out "Trader Joe's" in pen
Buying your eggs at the farmers’ market is a safe way to guarantee they’re coming from a local source and a small enough operation that the chickens are getting the love and attention they deserve! And apparently happy chickens (which probably don’t come from California either…just saying) make healthier eggs. Who knew eating right could taste, and be, so good.
Last week I was busy, so I made sweet potato pancakes and butter-glazed brussel sprouts.
My fast food dinner is ready to go. And I'm back to studying.
This week. Busier. So I developed an even more low maintenance meal. Cumin-scented delicata squash and a reprise of those brussel sprouts. This meal literally involves chopping the squash in half, brushing it with some sunflower oil and throwing it in the oven for a half hour. And while it cooked, I wrote my Biocore paper (or I should say one of my Biocore papers…for I have several).
When I’m feeling really exhausted (and let’s face it, that’s gonna be me for the rest of the semester at this point), I like to cook “Whole Foods” meals. No, I don’t mean food from the popular…and expensive…organic chain. I’m talking about simple meals of vegetables that don’t take much cooking or prep. Last night I discovered a new favorite.
The best way to turn a healthy food into a delicous food? Butter.
Sweet potato pancakes. Ingredients: Sweet potato, butter. Steps: Grate the sweet potato (you can do this with a cheese grater), heat a few tablespoons of butter in a pan, place a small handful of sweet potato in pan, press down and let cook for about 5 minutes (until the side gets crispy) and then flip.
And they’re delicious! Seriously, these could almost be a dessert. I had butter-glazed brussel sprouts on the sides and they too were amazing. If you’re not a brussels fan, give them one more try. By them fresh at the farmers’ market, and steam them in a little water, butter and salt. It’s totally different from the frozen variety.
And when I eat whole food – the unprocessed, fresh from the farm variety – I’m giving myself the best nutrients available. This dinner was an all-around win.
Side note: For those butter nay-sayers out there, I say thee “all things in moderation.” A little butter won’t kill you. And it. tastes. fantastic.
After having to say “it’s all local ingredients…except for the olive oil” with each meal I prepared, I have finally found a local source of oil with which to cook my food!
I’ve seen it at the farmers’ market before, but always been leery to try Sunflower Oil. Last weekend, I threw caution to the wind and bought myself a bottle. (It’s available at numerous stands, but I bought mine from a personal favorite, Driftless Organics, up by King Street.)
And it’s working great. I haven’t noticed any weird tastes associated with it yet, and I’m using it in everything I cook. I don’t know that I’ll be dipping fresh baked bread in it any time soon, but now I can really whip up some 100% local dishes.
My medal stand for oils. The cooking spray comes in third...out of three.
Move over olive oil. Take a hike Pam. There’s a new lipid in town.
I thought I’d take a minute to talk about a way to eat that’s good for the environment and doesn’t involve a recipe. If cooking your own meals still seems a little daunting, try cutting down on using plastic bags to pack your lunch or snacks for the day. Plastic bags are bad for the environment in their production and their disposal (check out this blog for some more details), so instead try using plastic boxes.
I'm not quite sure where I got these plastic boxes, but they work great every day
Major brands like Ziploc make pretty flimsy ones that actually last for quite a while, but that you can’t use in the microwave. I’m probably not supposed to use my slightly sturdier boxes in the microwave either, but I do from time to time (I’ll worry about that when my children come out with two heads). The ultimate in individual lunch containers is Pyrex. It’s glass so it’s a little heavier, but you can put in the microwave…and the oven!
But wait, you’re saying. There’s a ziploc bag in this picture of my lunch. I use baggies when I have no other choice (I’ve yet to find a box that’s a manageable size AND can hold a quarter of head of cabbage). But I also make a point of using them over and over until I have an unavoidable reason not to. Try cutting down on waste from your lucnh. Lose the single-use plastic bags.
It’s been a crazy week for me – only one midterm, but studying it managed to eat my whole week. So while I’ve been trying to synthesize lecture notes, readings, podcasts and all the different media my professors have decided to use to get information to me, I’ve been trying to figure out quick, healthy and environmentally-friendly study snacks.
My personal favorite homemade treat is Oatmeal Pumpkin Chocolate Chunk Cookies (a long name because I’ve been adding on to this recipe since high school). I usually use canned pumpkin, but since my recipe only calls for one quarter cup of pumpkin, I usually end up wasting the rest of the orange-brown goo that I’ve never found that appetizing on it’s own. This week I thought I’d try something new. Fresh pumpkin.
Pumpkins are hard to cut into (think back to carving them when you were a kid), so make sure you have a good knife...or hatchet...
Turning this decorative fall gourd into food takes a little bit of work. I’d guess that I spent about an hour last weekend chopping the flesh (descriptions of preparing pumpkins can get kind of gruesome) and then removing the skin (see). Then all you do is boil the pumpkin chunks until they’re tender, drain them, and mash them with a fork.
Pulling the seeds out can get a little a messy. But here’s the great part. You can make a delicious snack by toasting the pumpkin seeds. Seriously, they are very good. And you can skip a lot of the steps in most recipes – there’s no need to let the seeds dry overnight or “constantly” shake the pan to prevent burning. Just wash them, toss them in a skillet, add the seasonings of your choice, and keep an eye on them.
Despite the effort it took to prepare this pumpkin in the first place, I’ve already used it to make two (three if you count the seeds) delicious snacks/meals…and I still have a quart bag of pumpkin in my freezer. I just discovered a quick and tasty dinner using some of the mashed pumpkin. Essentially, I chopped an onion and put it in a saucepan, added some of my favorite Indian spice, baharat, put in a can of kidney beans and then about two cups of pumpkin. I served this over a little rice mixed with yogurt, and voila, a new dish – Pumpkin curry.
Pumpkins are a nutritious food, and buying them at the farmers’ market helps you get the best Wisconsin has to offer. For more on the nutritional benefits of eating local ingredients, check out this Web site published by Harvard Medical School.
