Daria Can Cook

Hi, my name is Daria. I’m an adult, and I still have acne.

I have struggled with acne on and off since 5th grade (!). I’ve used anything and everything, including Accutane, to get rid of it. I don’t break out as often or as severely as I used to, but lately I’ve had some pretty annoying flare-ups that have sent me searching for non-medicinal cures.

At first I thought that I should just cut back on sugar, but a little research revealed that avoiding high glycemic foods (aka foods that make your blood sugar spike and then crash) and eating adequate amounts of vitamins E and A can help reduce breakouts.

Here’s the thing about high glycemic foods: I.love.them. A lot. I run a decent amount, so I’ve never worried too much about eating simple carbs on a regular basis. But the acne has got to stop, so I’m challenging myself to cut out simple sugars, pita chips, packaged cookies, and so on.

Although I try to primarily eat the whole foods we get in our farm shares, I rely on Trader Joe’s pre-packaged snacks a little too much. So far I’ve traded in the pita chips for nuts (TJ’s Thai Lime & Chili cashews are AMAZING and are helping me transition away from simple carb-y snacks), and I’ve upped my consumption of almond butter because it’s full of vitamin E. Oh the sacrifices I make for beauty!

Of course, I still crave the occasional cookie, so I decided to try my hand at making a low glycemic version of my beloved chocolate chip cookies. I used this recipe for peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, but subbed Nu Naturals baking blend, which they very kindly sent me a while back to try and review. I should have used a whole grain flour if I really wanted to make these low glycemic, but we didn’t have any. I also subbed coconut milk for cow’s milk because lactose and I don’t get along.

They look innocent enough, don’t they? They tasted ok too, for the first few chews. And then the aftertaste kicked in. Trent’s reaction a minute after eating one was “Oh god it’s horrible! Get it out of my mouth!” Have other people been bothered by the aftertaste of the baking blend? I know that most people (myself included) find that Nu Natural’s plain stevia doesn’t have an aftertaste, but this was a doozy. It basically tasted like diet food, which is not the taste that I was going for.

I will not be deterred in my quest for a homemade, low-glycemic, non-dairy cookie, however. This weekend I bought myself some brown rice syrup (which is low on the glycemic index), some whole wheat pastry flour, some unsweetened dark chocolate, and some vegan carob chips. Victory will be mine, one of these days!

Yet again, real life has interfered with my intentions to blog more regularly. I will be back soon, however, with some new recipes, some further thoughts on the place of cooking in contemporary American life, and a sugar-related experiment.

For now, I leave you with those promises and with a link to Snackface’s superamazing blog birthday giveaway. Check it out!

***I have some more thoughts on food culture and gender, but I’ll save those for tomorrow. Tonight I’d like to share a fellow blogger’s recipe with you instead.***

Last week Trent (my live-in boyfriend) and I found ourselves at an Indian grocery store, face to face with a giant bag of dates that was selling for a few dollars. Considering that dates are usually dearer than gold, we snapped up our bargain fruits and booked it out of the store before the sellers changed their minds.

I made my first date-based treat tonight, and it was superb. Chocolate-Covered Katie, you are a culinary genius. Your fudge babies are one of the most simple, satisfying desserts I’ve made in a while. Thank you for sharing your recipe with the world!

My version used cashews, dates, vanilla, cinnamon, and cocoa powder. Trent wanted a few non-chocolate treats, so I left the cocoa powder out for the first round.

Sorry, these pictures aren’t the best, but the fudge babies are delicious! They’re essentially a fresh Larabar, without the hefty price tag (assuming you can find bargain dates, of course).

As if Katie weren’t awesome enough, she’s giving away a Vitamix. In general I don’t think that you need fancy implements to have fun in the kitchen, but as someone who regularly pushes her food processor’s tiny motor to the limit, a Vitamix looks mighty appealing.

And now to end my post in the lame way that so many of my students end their papers:

In conclusion, Katie is awesome, as are date-based treats, and if you want a Vitamix, you should check out Katie’s giveway. 

Thank you for your excellent responses to my last post! You guys got me thinking about the parts that I left out of my little rant. Of course, the story of food in America is much more complicated than simply “big companies pushed crap food on us and we acquiesced.” Along with the corporate push for faster food in the 1950s, women started working outside the home more often and the pace of modern life did in fact increase. For many of us today, cooking really doesn’t feel like an option after a full day of work, time at the gym, laundry, family bonding, and a million and one other obligations. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten home at 8 or 9 pm only to stuff my face full of whatever is easiest to open (*ahem chocolate covered almonds ahem*).

(yeah…I don’t even own a kitchen table, let alone an apron…women’s lib FTW!)

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But the point I’d like to raise is that cooking is not an all or nothing proposition. Sure, cooking seven days a week is improbable for most of us, but it’s not necessary to cook that often in order to eat better. Trent and I cook meals two to three times a week, but we make copious amounts of leftovers each time (this week we made about 5 pounds worth of veggie-stuffed meatloaf – we froze some and we’re eating the rest now). I also usually make a giant batch of hummus at the beginning of the week for lunches and quick snacks, and I prep all of our vegetables as soon as we pick up our farm share. This means that we have washed greens ready for salads and peeled carrots ready for snacking so that when hunger strikes after a long day we have options that consist of real food rather than takeout or prepackaged stuff. Does this take time? Yes. Do I get tired of it? Absolutely! There are definitely weeks when I just don’t want to wash any more greens or pan-fry any more chops – I’m not superhuman, and I’m definitely not a paragon of virtuous eating. But that’s ok – as long as in general I’m supporting small farms and eating mostly whole foods, I’m pretty happy. Again, it’s not that we have a choice between super convenience or total housewifery when it comes to what we eat. There’s no sense in totally shunning modern conveniences, but there are many reasons to think about the consequences of those shortcuts. I don’t want to make anyone feel guilty or inadequate; I just hope that this blog can get a few more people to think about the large-scale, global consequences of what they choose to eat.

Yet another piece of this complicated modern food puzzle is the gender question, but that’s a huge can of worms that I’ll save for another post.

How do you deal with balancing life and food? Or am I daft for worrying so much about the ethical implications of eating?

A few days ago, Michael Ruhlman posted a blog entry that caught my eye. Entitled “America: Too Stupid to Cook,” it argued that we’re constantly being sold the message that cooking is too complicated for our tiny, spastic modern brains.

This post resonated with me because I’ve been intrigued in the dumbing-down of American cooking since I took a college class on suburban American culture in the 1950s. In the class we read Laura Shapiro’s Something from the Oven, which is a fascinating account of how American views of food and cooking shifted dramatically during the middle of the century. Shapiro’s detective work shows that it took a great deal of advertising muscle and money to convince the average American cook that in fact she needed corporate help in the kitchen. Food companies had been churning out massive amounts of prepackaged convenience food for soldiers during WWII, and when the war ended, they found themselves faced with factories and technologies that no longer had an audience. This is when they began touting freeze dried foods and boxed mixes, which didn’t catch on for a surprisingly long time. It seems that having been used to real food, Americans couldn’t get behind the tastes and textures of mass-produced mush.

In time, however, advertising wizards managed to convince home cooks that they desperately needed to cut down the amount of time they spent in the kitchen. This trend has simply picked up speed since then, to the point that we have “cooks” like Sandra Lee convincing us that an acceptable dessert can consist of Walmart cookies on top of a sheet cake from a box (I swear I saw her make this once. I almost died).

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And now, Caitlin Flanagan has tried to make the case that whole food adherents like Alice Waters are in fact misguided snobs. [Flanagan is very thoroughly rebutted, I believe, on Civil Eats] Flanagan seems to believe that the only measure of the good life is financial success, which of course means an absence of physical labor and no interaction with the farms which feed us. Don’t rising obesity levels and ecological disasters show us that this supposed good life is rotten at the core?

How is it that farming and cooking, once the humblest of humble activities, have come to be associated with leisure and intellectual snobbery?

What do you think? Are we told too often that cooking is hard? Are we too far separated from our food sources?  Obviously I think so. When I was younger I thought that most food was too complicated to make at home and had to come from factories. I didn’t learn until I went to college that you could make whipped cream from scratch, for instance. Advertising at its finest!

******* We just joined a new CSA for the winter months, and I’d like to share with you our reasons for doing so. I hope you enjoy! ***********

Like many people in recent years, I’ve listened with interest to advocates of local food. It doesn’t take much thought to realize that our current food distribution systems weren’t built for sustainability. Instead, we’ve chosen to support large farms that produce very few varieties of crops because you can feed more people more cheaply that way. In my home state, for instance, which has some of the richest soil in the U.S., you’d be hard-pressed to find a commercial farm that produces anything other than corn or soybeans. Growing only one or two types of crops in the same field depletes the soil’s nutrients, which is why corporate farmers dump chemical fertilizers onto their fields. The corn is mostly either fed to cows and pigs, which are penned in overcrowded lots where they must be pumped full of antibiotics to keep them from dying from the unsanitary conditions, or turned into high fructose corn syrup, which is likely contributing to our obesity epidemic. We know that humans are healthiest when we include a wide variety of plants in our diets, and we know that the environment does best when we try not to add too many pollutants to it, and yet the way that we feed ourselves ignores both of these basic facts.

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This is one of many reasons why Trent and I joined a meat CSA and a produce CSA last summer. (Don’t know what a CSA is? Check out this simple explanation.) Each week since June, we have picked up a share of produce from a small, local farmer, and once a month we’ve picked up a cooler full of hormone- and antibiotic-free meat from a small livestock farm. There’s just one problem with this solution: winter. Although our meat CSA runs year round, since animals obviously grow throughout the year, our produce CSA ended last week. Even with season-extending greenhouses and other measures, it’s tough to grow vegetables and fruits in a New England winter.

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Faced with the prospect of returning to the subpar, questionably sourced produce at a chain supermarket, Trent and I looked for other options. We’ve found a compromise that works for us: a CSA that uses the concept of a “food shed” (analogous to a watershed) to bring produce to our frigid region throughout the winter. This means that our produce comes strictly from the east coast. We get kale, potatoes, turnips, and other hardy vegetables from Massachusetts and Vermont, and lots of other foods, including citrus, from North Carolina, Florida, and other eastern states.

Of course, there are many skeptics of the local food model, and it has been shown that sometimes the organic apple from New Zealand actually requires less fossil fuel than the locally grown variety. But my concern when it comes to produce is not merely how close to home it was grown. Instead, I want to know that my money is supporting small farms and farmers who are committed to finding a way to fix some of the problems inherent in our food production system. I personally know the family that raises the meat that I eat, and it means that I sleep a lot easier at night. I know that they aren’t feeding their pigs garbage, like corporate farmers literally do, and that they aren’t forcing their chickens to live in a crowded cage without sunlight. Best of all, I know that they’re committed to helping their customers eat better and live healthier, happier lives. Money is not the bottom line; instead, they are committed to doing something small to make our food systems better. And I’m committed to helping them do it.

Have you considered joining a CSA?

Merry Christmas Eve, to those of you celebrate it! For me, Christmas is synonymous with cookies. Although I pledge allegiance to simple chocolate chip cookies for 48 weeks of the year, I love to experiment with different recipes around Christmas time. I first tried my hand at these last year, and they’ve become a seasonal favorite.

As the wonderful CakeSpy points out, these cookies are masters of disguise. They have more aliases than the entire population of the witness protection program. CakeSpy lists a few: “Snowballs. Russian Tea Cakes. Greek Kourambiedes. Bullets. Mexican Wedding Cakes. Viennese Crescents. Moldy Mice. Armenian Sugar Cookies.” Phew!

Whatever you call them, they’re delightfully festive, gluttonously buttery, and satisfyingly nutty. I used this recipe, but I’m intrigued by all of the varieties found at CakeSpy. I can’t think of a better Christmas Eve activity than trying out one (or two…or three…) of these varieties.

luscious golden-brown butter bombs, pre-sugaring…

during sugaring…

and post-sugaring. Delectable!

And now, a Christmas present from me to you: a picture of the elusive Daria, at work in her kitchen!

Are those some serious Paint skillz or what?

What is your favorite Christmas cookie?

Last week we found ourselves slammed with both snow and veggies. Our summer/fall CSA had its final delivery, which happened to coincide with our new winter CSA’s delivery. Thus in addition to getting 10 inches of snow, we got what felt like 10 million pounds of vegetables. When we were invited to a dinner party, we knew we had to bring a dish that would help us get through some of our roughage.

This root veggie mash was a huge success. It was incredibly easy, delicious, and pretty. Well, pretty if you think baby-food-like purées are pretty. Which I do.

Roasted Root Veggie Mash

Ingredients:

3 medium potatoes

7 parsnips

3 LARGE carrots

olive oil

salt and pepper

nutmeg

almond milk (you can of course use cow’s milk, but we’re lactarded in our apartment)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Prep veggies (wash, peel, chop into roughly equally sized cubes). Toss the veggies with a glug or two of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Spread in a baking dish (we used a 9×13 Pyrex) and roast until the veggies are soft and browned.

2. After veggies have cooled, blend them in a food processor in batches along with a few tablespoons of olive oil, a cup or so of almond milk (to taste, depending on how thick you’d like your mash to be), and a teaspoon-ish of nutmeg.

3. Reheat the mash in a 350 degree oven for a few minutes if desired. Enjoy!

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Unpictured step 4: devour.

What are your favorite winter side dishes? I won’t lie, one of my favorite winter side dishes is a giant plate of Christmas cookies. But when I can overcome that craving, I’m a pretty big fan of anything involving roasted veggies.

I am snowed in!

I was supposed to fly home today to visit family, but it turns out that flight won’t be happening for a few days. So I did what any rational person would do: I made pancakes.

I used a pancake recipe that has been magneted to our refrigerator door so long that it’s barely legible. It’s maybe Mark Bittman’s? We’ll just call them mystery pancakes for now.

While I did the pancakes, Trent made coffee in one of his Christmas presents.

He got a Chemex! It makes some seriously delicious coffee, and it’s pretty.

How are your travel plans panning out? And what’s your favorite pancake recipe?

I meant to write a post today about our new winter CSA, but I’ve been grading papers, which means writing extensive comments, which means that I’m all written out. So I’ll save that post for later and share dinner with you.

I made cooking an event tonight, just because I’m adult and I can do whatever I want. I put on some Billie Holiday, made myself a cocktail (vermouth + seltzer = delightful!), and whipped up this little number:

pork chops with tarragon, garlic, and s+p with vermouth sauce (I deglazed the pan I fried the chops in with a little vermouth and let it cook down until it was nice and concentrated), plus a side of baked carrots with olive oil, paprika, and s+p and a little arugula with balsamic. I got distracted and cooked the pork a little too long, but it was still a lovely dinner.

What are your favorite things to do just because you can? I also enjoy crumbling cookies on my oatmeal every now and again. I still feel good about myself because you know, oats, but also, cookies for breakfast!