food – Page 4 – Peaceful Reader

Weekend Cooking; Cooking for a crowd

{Yellowstone}

Now that summer vacation if finally here the weekends and the weeks begin to run gloriously together except that last week I’ve been assisting my husband with his Arts Camp. My husband (I have my bragging hat on) is a pretty talented director and he does an amazing job of connecting with children of all ages. This art camp is in its seventh year and it is a lot of fun. Kids are paired up according to age and rotate through 4 different classes of art, music, drama and dance. We feed all 70 + kids a snack, my job, half way through their time together. It is a two-week camp and as soon as we finish up next week we are headed out to Yellowstone and Big Sky, MT for a family gathering.

I’ve been working hard mentally trying to think of easy meals I can put together while there. I volunteered to cook the first night and planned to make Katie Workman’s enchiladas I’ve made about 100 times this past year because they are easy and my kids love them. I’ve made them for friends and family and church but not for my brothers, wives, and children so I thought it would be the perfect recipe until I talked to my mother yesterday. After our chat I’m not going to make that recipe but am going to turn it into tacos with all ingredients out on the table so everyone can make their own. I’m also going to serve these margaritas that I love and hopefully my family will also. If they don’t; more for me I guess!

The margarita recipe:

12 oz can frozen limeade
12 ounces of tequila
12 ounces of water
8 ounces of triple sec (2/3 can)
1 can domestic beer
Ice and Limes as desired

Use the frozen limeade can to measure
ingredients. Mix well in a gallon pitcher. If you would like to
blend them; don’t add the water and blend. Either way serve in a small
glass, with limes and salt. Perfect.

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I’m going to bring the ingredients to make sushi. Groovy Girl and I have been making these easy rolls for lunch and we love them. All you need are one package of nori, sushi rice, a packet or can of wild caught Alaskan Salmon, a couple of thinly sliced carrots, maybe a few sprigs of parsley or leaves of spinach will work and you can roll up a healthy lunch. Beats a PB and J for sure.

It’s hard to believe when we return from our trip it will be July already and my short summer respite will be more than half over. My new school district starts school mid-August.

Stay cool and out of the rain.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts.

Weekend Cooking; Salt Sugar Fat

Those are definitely three ingredients you use in cooking but I want to discuss the book by Michael Moss. I listen to this book back and forth from school on my phone. I often make faces in my car as I listen and I’m sure that I crack up my fellow drivers. The information in the book really disgusts me. I generally think that food has been ravaged more recently but the book relays how long this “manufacturing” of food has been going on.

I’ve heard all the big hitter names, Kellogg’s, General Mills, Post, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Unilever, and Cargill have all been mentioned and I’m only half finished with the book. Let me preface this with I know they are just trying to make money because they are a company but my answer back is do they have to make money on the backs of others (that would be us the guinea pigs). How much is too much money for CEOs and this goes for many businesses today.

I’m amazed at how all these food companies play with our food, adding more sugar, salt, and fat to appeal and pull us to buy their products repeatedly. It comes down to manufacturing the tastes that our body has adapted to crave because they’ve made you crave it. (crazy, yes) I’ve long been a consumer of a more organic and homegrown options and I don’t buy much processed food. My kids have long been taught how advertising works and to avoid believing even the most ordinary claims. They even know that the word “natural” does not really mean that anymore AT ALL.

But there is so much more to tell and it has a lot to do with psychology and how how our brain and our tastebuds work together. Food manufactured to taste like food. Makes you wonder why we don’t just let it be food. You know the fresh stuff that grows out of the ground and that we raise on farms. All in the name of progress; so women could work and get a meal on the table fast. The biggie food companies hired chemists to turn food into fast food. Jell-O, pudding, TV dinners, boxed mashed potatoes, anything that could be created anew and made quick. Progress.

I wish I knew how we could turn this back because we definitely have a problem with obesity in this country. Right about the time video games and other techno toys pulled kids to the sofa or bean bag chairs and grabbing quick and easy food from the kitchen to fuel their play they stopped playing outside and burning those calories.

My mom was a pretty healthy cook and we ate mostly homemade and homegrown. Going to McDonald’s was a huge treat and it did not happen very often. We had Kool-aid and popsicles in the summer time but we didn’t live on the stuff. Our evenings were spent playing kick-the-can, football, baseball, or other running around games. My mom even kicked us outside in the wintertime to “blow the stink” off us.

It’s a good book and I’m going to finish it as I begin my summer cleaning. I think we foodies have to band together to work toward change in this area.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts and recipes unlike this one which is really just a infomercial about the hazards of processed food. Stay tuned for fresh spring pesto, freezing leafy green veggies, and the rabbit that ate my garden.

Gregor and his last bite

I finished book five in The Underland series, Gregor and the Code of Claw, by Suzanne Collins. This has been quite an accomplishment as I read the whole series with 3 fantastic 5th grade boy readers. They’ve loved this series, reading each one in a quick span of about 2 weeks, which is an excellent triumph. Along the way each young man created a plausible character would they be lucky enough to exist in the Underland world. At our last meeting they were so animated about discussing the series and that there is not a sixth book that I charged them with appealing to Suzanne Collins to continue the series with just one more book. Like a dying man to water they all agreed how it would help them to know how Gregor is faring and if Luxa and Ripred are holding to their bond.

As a teacher and a reader I am overjoyed by their display of emotion over the book. I love that they get to know Suzanne Collins through this work as well as The Hunger Games. We’ve discussed such deep topics through this series; war and peace, what it means to be a warrior, how does this compare to our war-plagued world today, and the mind-set of a soldier during battle and after. Whew. These conversations have spilled over into guns and why we need to have guns in our homes. One of my three shared that his mother almost shot him one night as he came in late through the front door of their trailer. Guns. But this blog post isn’t about guns so much as it is about cookies. Not to {ever}make light of guns but honestly we need cookies more.

In one poignant scene as Gregor is preparing for battle, one in which he believes he is doomed to die, he eats one last cookie made by his kind neighbor Mrs. Cormaci. It’s an oatmeal raisin cookie and that cookie got me to thinking about last bites. Not a last meal, mind you, but just a taste of one last thing-what would it be? For Gregor he was very excited to have that cookie in hand.

I’m going to make these oatmeal cranberry cookies (cuz if it were my bite I would prefer cranberry over raisin) and Martha does it best. I’m going to bring these to book club this week as we have our final conversation about The Underland Chronicles, we find a way to mail our letters to Suzanne Collins and we pick our last book of the year.

The quote:

“They settled themselves down to wait. Gregor passed Ares (his bat bond) a cookie and ate the other. If he did end up dead, he was glad the last taste in his mouth came from Mrs. Cormaci’s kitchen.” {339}

Happy Saturday! This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads weekly cooking meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts.

Easter Blessings

{Egg decorating 2014 w/ Groovy Girl}

Once again I’ve inadvertently let a week traipse right by without a bit of writing. It’s been a busy week and that excuse is ever present yet this week there was an added snafu. My lithe little MacBook Air died or so it seemed. It did some kind of strange fake death worthy of a Shakespearean play. I could get it to make the sound and the white apple would appear but then before you could say Macbeth the screen would go black. Stupidly I kept trying it whilst pushing button combinations. After 4 days of that nonsense I sent an emergency text to my friend and co-worker, Al, who embodies the word super techie. Thank all the powers that be for people like Al, including Al, as he always been able to help me out. MacBook Air is back up and running as of yesterday. Don’t ask me what he did as I prefer to think that he waved his magic wand three times right over my silver baby and viola!

Now let’s talk food. While everyone around me talks about their Easter ham we are bucking tradition, pretty normal here, and making a large Alaskan wild caught salmon. Groovy Girl loves fish and she can pretty much finish off an entire plate of fish herself so I bought extra. Added to the fish we will have copious amounts of roasted brussels sprouts, baked sweet potatoes, a little green salad, and strawberries and chocolate for dessert. Nothing on the menu that even needs a recipe other than what’s already in my head. A deliciously simple meal to celebrate Easter, leaving me lots of time to relax with my family.

I was going to make this yummy carrot-ginger soup for dinner. A friend made this soup for our last book club and I’ve been waiting for this holiday to make it. I thought the Easter bunny would dig it! Instead I mopped up water in our basement. I guess while I was carpooling for Groovy Girl’s theatre rehearsal my husband, while doing some Spring yard work, inadvertently created a huge water leak in the basement. I came home to huge ~~puddles~~ lakes in the three rooms of our basement. Not nearly as much fun as making soup. We ate Jimmy John’s after a trip to the hardware store to buy a wet-dry vac. Last time we had water in the basement we borrowed a friend’s and felt that this was an important purchase for us though we hate buying things. I could put bunny ears on the wet vac as this present is better than any other Easter basket I could have surprised my husband with this holiday.

No matter how you celebrate have a lovely day ushering in Springtime. Feliz Pascua!

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads weekend cooking meme. Click her link to see many other food-related posts.

Weekend Cooking; Julie's Falafel-Stuffed Pitas

A few years ago my friend Julie copied this recipe for me after she’d told me how delicious and easy it was to make. I tucked it away in my recipe box until last week. During Spring Break I cleaned a few cupboards out including the three different locations of cookbooks. I was going through a recipe box looking for one from my mother-in-law for her pie crust. I didn’t find that card but I did organize the box better and I pulled this one out to make. My thoughts were “why haven’t I made this already?”

I made it tonight. Sometimes it takes me all week to gather ingredients. Even though I thought I had everything my husband had to stop and get a lemon and a cucumber to complete the list. Crazy.

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{Super Easy}Falafel-Stuffed Pitas

1/4 cup dry breadcrumbs
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 1/2 t. ground cumin
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. ground red pepper
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 egg
1 15-oz can garbanzo beans, drained

Cumin is one of my favorite spices. I love just the smell of it. I was bold and added 2 heaping teaspoons. I only had red pepper flakes so added just one teaspoon of that. I try not to buy cans of beans anymore preferring to make them myself. A few weekends ago for fun I cooked two bags of garbanzos and then froze them in two cup bags. I unfroze a bag and a half for this recipe. Love garbanzos too, especially freshly-made.

Toss all those above ingredients into your food processor and mix until smooth. Divide into small patties. {This was a very sticky step} Heat a nonstick skillet (I used a cast iron Lodge) with olive oil. Cook 5 minutes on each side until slightly browned.

Prepare sauce:

1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 T. lemon juice
2 T tahini
1 garlic clove, minced

Mix together. Serve falafels with whole wheat pitas, curly lettuce leaves, tomato slices, cucumber slices and pile all together.

My husband and I both thought Feta cheese crumbled on top would have made a wonderful addition. Next time that will be on our serving platter as well. They were tasty but too much for Groovy Girl who created her own sandwich with her pita bread.

Thanks Julie! We loved them. Next time it won’t take me two years to make them.

Tonight at 8:30 all the lights in my house will be turned off in celebration of WWF Earth Hour. Find out more here. We participate in this worldly event every year and love how it reminds us of how important our earth is and how our resources are truly limited. Use a flashlight to read by, light a soy-based candle, hold hands, or just look outside. It was a gorgeous day outside today and I’m excited to end my evening with Groovy Girl this way.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. All invited to participate. Click her link to find many other food-related posts.

Peace out. Happy eating.

February; Weekend Cooking

We went out of town this weekend to attend a Bluegrass Festival in Des Moines. I do love to travel and going anywhere requires finding a few good restaurants to try. On this trip our main foodie experience was Gusto’s Pizza near downtown. This place does not have just your average pizzas plus they do gluten-free crusts for any of their pizzas. I didn’t snap any photos because I was too busy eating. With names like Buffalo Springfield, Vincent Van Goat, Francesco, and the Fromage A’Trois it was very hard to make a choice. With all the menu choices we somehow missed the special of the day which was a spicy Thai pizza.

{Gusto’s Pizza-just NOT the pizza we ordered}

After much deliberation we voted to get the Francesca which featured an Alfredo sauce, mozzarella, Roma tomato, artichokes, cremini mushrooms, and spinach. It was divine. We ate almost the whole thing. There is one lonely piece waiting for me in the refrigerator for lunch or dinner. Groovy Girl got to design her own small pizza; shrimp, fresh basil, Roma tomatoes, and extra mozzarella. She was in pizza heaven and she had a wonderful cream soda to make her smile.

My friend and I both tried 2 different salads from the menu as well. Mine was the Fromage Bleu featuring apples, spiced walnuts, mixed greens, red onion and balsamic vinaigrette. I wished for more bleu cheese crumbled on top-after all the name features bleu! My friend ordered the quinoa continental and it was by far the winner! A small amount of quinoa mixed with mixed greens, goat cheese, roasted butternut squash, dried cranberries, and balsamic vinaigrette. I am going to re-create this salad at home! All in all it was an amazing trip to Des Moines. Oh, and the Bluegrass Festival; it was fantastic as well.

We made it safely back yesterday afternoon just in time for Groovy Girl’s school fundraiser. Last night at about my bedtime I realized I needed to make something for our church potluck. I whipped this vegan curry dish (from allrecipes.com) in about 40 minutes and it was a huge hit. The bowl was scraped clean. Surprising as it was pretty spicy. No leftovers. I’ll have to make more. It’s been a good food weekend for me!

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads weekly foodie meme. Click her link to find many other food-related posts.

Cold, Cold, Cold Days…turn the oven on high and bake.

I’ve had an exciting day. Too cold for school. I don’t think the blizzard was as bad as predicted but I am not one to complain about a 3-day weekend. I had some time to myself while Groovy Girl went bowling with friends. I cleaned the house. I watched an episode of Parenthood. I read more of Cuckoo’s Calling-love it! I would have read more of Insurgent except my Kindle is acting up; I’m 52% finished and bada bing…no charge. Good thing I have plenty of “real” books around my house.

I made chocolate chip cookies with G.G. late in the day. And while the oven was on I whipped up this amazing dish with a butternut squash from my garden; it’s been in my basement pantry waiting for the perfect dish. One of my NY’s resolutions is to clean out my stacks of magazines and I found this recipe in an old November 2008 Cooking Light.

Savory Butternut Squash

2 medium peeled and cubed butternut squash
1 T olive oil
1/4 cup golden raisins
1 T. honey
1/2 tsp Madras curry powder
2 T minced fresh cilantro

Directions: Preheat oven to 500*. Toss squash cubes in oil, and season with sea salt and pepper. Place squash in a single layer on a jelly-roll pan. Bake at 500* for 10 minutes or until tender. Remove from oven; toss squash with remaining ingredients. Serve immediately. Yield: 5 cups.

My squash was smaller so I used less ingredients and after snapping a few key photos I tumbled it into a to-go container for my lunch tomorrow. Tomorrow we have a late start (so far) and already I’m looking forward to lunchtime. Last week I finished my lunchtime book, Palace Beautiful (review soon), and can’t think of what book is next on my pile.

Weekend Cooking; Alice Waters and The Art of Simple Food II

Our holiday break includes two untraditional traditions; a shopping trip to Goodwill to find excellent second hand sweaters, flannels, etc. and an extended trip to Barnes and Noble to use gift cards and explore new books. I had a gift card from last year begging to be used. I love gift cards so much that I tend to hang on to them until the perfect book is found. Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food II is just such a masterpiece that I didn’t mind trading gift card for book. I’ve been a fan of hers for years and am happy to add this book to my collection. I’m sure my mother will want to borrow it as well.

Alice Waters is a chef, author, owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, CA. She is an American pioneer of a culinary philosophy of good, fresh ingredients that are produced sustainably and locally. In 1996 she created The Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School; a one-acre garden, a kitchen classroom, and a curriculum to pull everything together. She is also the Vice President of Slow Food International, a nonprofit that celebrates local food traditions and boasts 100,000 members. (adapted from Chez Panisse’s website)

The first thing that drew me in is this list from the inside front cover:

Treasure the farmer, Nurture the soil, plant wherever you are, learn from nature, cultivate your palate, make your own, eat whole foods, share the harvest, teach children the art of simple food. These are all a part of my belief statement as well.

I haven’t cooked anything yet from this book but I’ve read through the herb section and have selected several recipes to try. Most of all it makes me hungry for Spring!

Look at the chapter headings and try not to get hungry for warmer weather…

1. My Kitchen Garden (growing what I love)
2. Fragrant and Beautiful (herbs and herb flowers)
3. Tender Leaves (lettuce and salad greens)
4. Hidden Flavor (garlic, onions, leeks, and scallions)

It is not categorized into seasons as many locavore cookbooks are yet she does have seasonal chapters. The recipe format is also unique as Waters’ writes them as she might to a friend with the ingredients integrated into the recipe not set apart. An example:

Basil Mayonnaise (15)
makes one cup

Pounded basil makes a beautiful green mayonnaise. Serve it with a gilled fish or a tomato salad.

Pick the leaves from
   1/2 bunch of basil (about 1/2 cup lightly packed)
Coarsely chop the leaves and pound them to a paste in a mortar with:
   salt
Add:
   1 egg yolk
1 tsp water
Whisk the yolk, water, and basil together.
Into a cup with a pour spout, measure:
   1 cup olive oil
Very slowly dribble the oil into the egg yolk, whisking constantly. As the egg yolk absorbs oil, the sauce will thicken, lighten in color, and become opaque. This will happen rather quickly. Then you can add the oil a little faster, whisking all the while.
If the sauce is thicker than you like, thin it with a few drops of water. Taste and add more salt, if necessary.

The bonus for this style of recipe is that it forces me to read the ENTIRE recipe to get the ingredients and to look at the recipe as a whole not as just a list of ingredients.

Other interesting recipes:

Rocket (arugula) Pesto, Corn and summer squash soup, Roasted brussels sprouts with sesame seeds and ginger, Lime syrup, Summer squash pizza with marjoram and fresh ricotta.

The last large section in the book is about gardening and that will be read and reread before Spring so I can be ready. I’m sure she has some new tips and strategies that I can use.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads weekend cooking meme. Click her link to see many other food-related posts.

Weekend Cooking; Working it all in.

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We are still consumed with Junie B. rehearsals with only a week to go before opening night. In order to try to fit so much into the week we’ve actually eaten out twice. My tribe loves Jimmy John’s and on Thursday we ate there and another night we ate at the deli at our local grocery store so I could fit in a little grocery shopping. I love Jimmy John’s but am overwhelmed by the loaf of french bread it is served on until I discovered their lettuce wraps; now I just get a #6 (vegetarian) as a wrap and am happy.

I’m not a fan of the deli food either so I got a small package of sushi from the cooler + a cup of broccoli soup and again I was happy. Two times of eating out for us though is a lot so Saturday I took the time to really make a meal again. Six sweet potatoes resting on my counter inspired me to recreate the black bean and sweet potatoes burritos I’ve made in the past except I already had a refried bean mixture from earlier in the week when I made a quick meal of quesadillas. I reused that instead of the black bean mixture and it worked just fine. Served with a fresh green salad it was a perfect meal for the three of us.

This past week my husband made pudding for dessert and Groovy Girl loved it and wanted more. He’d made his from a box but I wanted to make it from scratch (typical me). I used the recipe below and it went together nice and easy but then it did not set up. Arghh. It’s still in the refrigerator like chocolate milk in fancy parfait glasses. Hmmmm. What went wrong?

Chocolate pudding recipe.
Sweet potato burritos.

Groovy Girl loves calzones and wants to take them in her school lunch. We are going to experiment with making them this week (probably next). Does anyone have a great recipe? I found a few but she doesn’t want it to fancy; just tomatoes, sauce, and black olives. I might be able to sneak a little spinach into the sauce. Calzone recipe; they all have meat in them and many start with purchased dough. We want to make the dough. I think I will just experiment with my pizza dough recipe and stuff it with what she likes. I also want them to be medium sized as I think that’s all she has time to finish.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Click her link to read many other food-related posts.

In reading news I just finished The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman (enjoyed it!) and I’m trying to think of what to take to our book club buffet that would be Australian-inspired food. The book doesn’t mention much about food to help me out.

Weekend Cooking; Deep thinking about food.

Last night my husband and I went to an unusual play at our local university. The play based on the book, The American Way of Eating, by the same title by Tracie McMillan. The book was chosen as the school’s in-depth everyone reads book choice and the theatre department head decided that in celebration of that; they should workshop it into a play. From a very unorthodox beginning the play came together and was an amazing display of team work and artistic talent plus the audience members learned a lot of interesting facts.

Even though I haven’t read the book which is about Tracie’s journey to uncover what happens to produce from field to store to restaurant I get it. I’m the proverbial choir. I shop at the farmer’s market, I don’t shop at Wal-Mart or eat at chain restaurants or fast food. I did however not know enough or think about it enough what happens in the farm fields where undocumented or immigrants work. In Iowa I am familiar with disgusting meat plants that pluck workers from other countries in order to create an “affordable” work force. It is criminal how little they are paid for a long day’s work; back-breaking work and they are afraid to stand up for better conditions for fear of losing the little income they get. The play also touched on women’s rights and how easily those in charge take advantage of them.

I don’t know how to solve it beyond talking about it, writing about it, and encouraging folks to read her book and many others with similar themes about our broken food system. We want cheap food but at what cost and on who’s back are we stepping on to get garlic at a “rock-bottom price”.

Be aware. Be thoughtful. Investigate a lot. Question more.

This post is loosely linked to Weekend Cooking hosted by Candace at Beth Fish Reads. There you will find other foodies who love exploring recipes.

Other food-related news:

I created this delicious zucchini soup this past week for a quiet dinner for my husband and I. I plan to make this soup this week to use up swiss chard and zucchini. I made a mole sauce yesterday for a pumpkin enchilada dish I’m making this week for friends that I’m going to hear Bonnie Raitt with in concert. I made mini raspberry muffins for my book club kids-they asked for seconds.

Overall it has been a good food week here at our house.

And in preparation for winter I’ve been cleaning out the gardens by making two more batches of pesto with basil from my mother’s garden; it is beginning to freeze here at night and neither one of us wants to lose any basil. I think I’m also going to freeze mint leaves in cubes. I’m watching my zucchini and butternut squash plants carefully as I have several there to bring in.

Have a bountiful week!