Daria Can Cook – and so can you!

Today’s post has a soundtrack. I recommend playing Drake’s** “Best I Ever Had” as you read.

You know a lot of [vegetables] be thinkin’ my songs are about them
This is not to get confused, this one’s for you

Baby, you my everything, you all I ever wanted
We can do it real big, bigger than you ever done it
[Butter] up on everything, other [spreads] ain’t never on it
I want this forever, I swear I can spend whatever on it

She make me [sautee] it till she give [her sugars] up
And I say the same thing every single time

I say you the you the best, you the you the best
You the you the best, you the you the best
You the best I ever had, best I ever had

see this the type of [breakfast]
You got to dedicate to somebody
Just make sure they that special somebody

So this one’s for you, squash. You the you the best.

Songwriters: Butternut Squash (lunch, consumed with pb and cinnamon); Summer Squash (breakfast, consumed with spinach oats, fried egg, lactose-free muenster, and Sriracha)

**Who else recognizes Drake from his days playing Jimmy on Degrassi: The Next Generation? I know I’m not the only one who loves that show.

… make a bean dip and a frittata.

It was a British-isles-type of cool, grey, wet day yesterday, so I mostly hunkered down with tea and books. The little time I spent in the kitchen yielded this:

The green one is a bean dip similar to this one. One cup of white beans, a giant bunch of basil, the juice of one lemon, a few glugs of olive oil, a clove of garlic, and some s&p played in the food processor for a few minutes. The white one is a slice of lactose-free muenster, crumbly from being frozen and thawed. Mmmm.

Dinner was inspired by this post at Tea & Cookies. We had a whole lotta amaranth leaves and kale on their way to spoilage and some CSA bacon leftover from Friday’s dinner, which was these amazing BLTs minus the L because we ate our two heads in two days (woohoo huge salads!):

So we sauteed up our CSA potatoes, leeks, amaranth leaves, and kale along with our fabulous bacon, mixed them with 8 eggs and 2 slice of lactose-free muenster in a casserole dish, and baked them until we got this:

Frittata-tastic! This bacon is out of this world. It’s simply pork, maple syrup, and salt. No nitrates or nitrites, no frightening preservatives. Pure love. I was worried that our frittata would suffer from our failure to add any herbs, but the bacon and the cheese provided more than enough flavor.

It’s still cloudy, but I’m hoping the sun will pop out so I can enjoy it when I go running. Gotta get that natural vitamin D while I can! How is your weekend going?

And on a sidenote, is anyone else having trouble with google reader this morning? Nothing will load in mine, and it’s totally cramping my style.

I’m so happy to be back! Vacation was lovely, but it’s always good to come back to familiar surroundings and to wonderful blog readers. I hope you guys enjoyed the running tips – I enjoyed your comments!

Food on the beach was rough. I was trying to be frugal and I was there with friends who aren’t so into healthy eating, so there were lots of hot dogs and bar food and beer and soft serve and other crap. I definitely could have done a better job making healthy choices, but c’est la vie. I’m so happy to be back to normal! I had steel cut oats for breakfast, an AMAZING salad at the most wonderful veggie restaurant in my area for lunch, and then the seemingly unhealthy but actually pretty nutritionally packed combo pictured below:

boiled CSA potato topped with an over-medium egg and lots of delicious ketchup. Potassium from the potato, sodium from the ketchup, and protein from the egg = perfect post-run dinner. I’m currently eating frozen peaches. Delish!

Veggie CSA pickup is tomorrow, so I should have some good eats to share in the next few days. Yay vegetables!!

I’ve done a terrible job taking pictures of my food lately. Trent brought me treats from Tartine Bakery, and they were as beautiful as they were delicious. But did I photograph them? Nah, too busy stuffing them in my face. For the record, if you’re ever in San Francisco, the chocolate hazelnut tart is orgasmic. The frangipani tart isn’t half bad either.

He also brought me a bar of Askinosie chocolate (77%):

Uh-maze-ing! No fillers, no emulsifiers, and they work directly with cocoa farmers, paying above fair trade prices for their beans. It has a lovely “green”-ish taste that less processed chocolate often has. As you can see, we’ve already gone through half of the bar.

On the homemade side of things, I’ve been putting lemon curd in everything. For instance, it went in my banana-peach-chia softserve:

and in my almond butter-chia oats:

Lemon curd in oats is a revelation. It takes oats to a magical dimension that I didn’t know existed. And have I mentioned that lemon curd is stupidly easy to make? All it takes is a little forearm strength – you’ve got to man a whisk for about 10 minutes, and then you’re rewarded with pure lemony sunshine.

There have also been some savory eats. Yesterday we did a crockpot dinner. It’s a little weird to prep dinner at 8 in the morning, but it’s fantabulous to come home from a workout to find dinner ready and waiting. This dish consisted of a cut of beef (I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it’s the kind you use in London broil), an eggplant, a bunch of potatoes, tarragon, rosemary, tomato sauce, red vermouth (makes a great substitute for cooking wine!), and water. It was great, but I again failed to take a picture.

Trent has been on the photography ball, however. He made me document the sandwich he had for lunch the other day, which was pretty awesome.

Our direct-from-the-farm eggs, jalapeno cheese, and sauteed CSA spring onions on Trader Joe’s flourless wheatberry bread. Well done, T!

Today is veggie CSA pickup day, so I should have some good photos and recipes coming your way soon.

In blogging news, Chocolate-Covered Katie is giving away a spiralizer! Check out her giveaway here.

Have you ever made a recipe that calls for part of an ingredient? Say, a few egg whites but no yolks, or lemon peel but no lemon flesh? The wonderful thing about culinary history is that thrifty cooks throughout the ages have come up with wonderful ways to use these castoffs. So when I decided I wanted to make macaroons, which require egg whites, I knew exactly what symbiotic recipe I wanted to use to keep my surplus yolks from getting lonely: lemon curd.

As you may or may not know, lemon curd is a delightful concoction made from egg yolks, lemon juice, sugar, and butter. It gets cooked into a creamy spread that is heaven on scones, toast, muffins, or anything else you can think to spread it on. It’s just tart enough to balance out the heaviness of the yolk and the butter, and it’s the most delectable shade of yellow this side of a daffodil.

I used this recipe from My Kind of Food and this recipe from Joy of Baking for my curd. The first gave me the basic ingredient proportions and the second told me how long I had to cook it. I ended up using the juice of two smallish lemons, 3 egg yolks, 7.5 tablespoons of sugar, and 4 tbsp butter. I whisked everything but the butter over a double boiler for 10 minutes until it took on a thick, creamy, sauce-like consistency, then took it off the heat and whisked in the butter one tablespoon at a time. Then I licked the whisk and almost cried. Yes, it was that good. I’m glad I went with 7.5 tbsp of sugar – it’s just the right amount for a tart-but-not-too-tart taste.

I’m afraid my poor camera won’t do it justice, but here it is:

I was pretty full when I made this but I needed to eat some fresh, so I spread a bit on half a slice of bread.

I kind of love that it looks like mustard gone wrong.

And what about those macaroons? Well those, my friends, were an abject failure. I make the mistakes so you don’t have to.

I used this recipe from Elana’s Pantry, but the failure was certainly not Elana’s fault. I realized as I was beating my whites that it had been some time since I’d done anything with egg whites and I wasn’t sure that I would recognize “stiff” egg whites when I saw them. It was too late to do my research though, so I just beat until I thought they were stiff. In retrospect it wasn’t nearly long enough. I also realized too late that I didn’t have enough agave, so I subbed in honey, which is much thicker than agave and more difficult to fold into fluffy egg whites. Fail, Daria, fail.

This isn’t what macaroons should look like. They should not be shiny or flat or oozing. They should be covered in chocolate though. At least I got that part right:

So now my homework for myself is to read up on the chemistry of egg whites. I’ll report back on my kitchen dictionary page soon. Because no one should have to eat flat macaroons.

Oof. That’s how good tonight’s dinner was, folks.

The challenge: use up baby bok choy, spring onions, shitake mushrooms, and eggs. The recipe:

Cooked Salad (serves one)

1) Heat up a glug of sesame oil (use more or less as your diet dictates – I’d say I used about a tablespoon). Sauté 2 small cloves of garlic and one small, chopped spring onion until until just softened.

2) Add 1 cup of chopped shitake mushrooms and cook until softened.

3) Add about 2 tsp. of soy sauce, 1-2 tbps. sake (you could also use rice wine), and 1-2 tsp. of sambal oelek (garlic chili paste, made by the Sriracha people). Sauté everything together for about 1 minute.

4) Add about 1.5 cups of chopped baby bok choy and sauté until just wilted.

5) Transfer the bok choy/mushroom dish to a serving plate. Fry one egg and place on top of the veggie mix.

6) Enjoy!

The half-finished dish:

and the whole shebang:

I really enjoyed the farm-fresh eggs that I scrambled the other day, but this was UNREAL. It was like the yolk was on steroids, which is funny because it’s precisely the lack of steroids that makes it taste extra yolk-y and rich and decadent. I think I’m going to be having lots of over-medium eggs for meals in the next few days. Huzzah real food!

Happy weekend, blogworld! Does anyone have exciting plans? I spent the day swimming and enjoying the giant, fluffy summer clouds while I backstroked. I’d say that’s a pretty good start to a relaxing few days.

Garlic chives. Sweet potato greens. Baby bok choy. Lettuce. Green beans. Asian cucumber. White carrots. Cabbage. Spring onions. Sweet corn. Eggplant. Green Peppers.

HOLY CRAP our CSA share this week is SUPERabundant! I honestly don’t know how I’m going to make it through all of this since Trent is on tour, but I’ll do my level best.

I think I’m most excited about the sweet potato greens because 1) I didn’t know you could eat them and 2) that means CSA SWEET POTATOES later in the season!!! Also they’re really pretty:

I stir-fried these along with some green onions, sweet corn, non-CSA shitake mushrooms, and farm fresh eggs from our meat CSA farmer.

Fantabulous!  I love eggs, and, like almost everything, they taste a million times better when they’re right off the farm.

After dinner this happened:

Banana soft serve with unsweetened dried coconut, cocoa nibs, and a wee bit of agave syrup. Heaven in a bowl.

And now I’m happily plotting tomorrow’s eats. I’m thinking there’s a huge plate of fresh veg with hummus in my future. Yes!

Today’s CSA eats were simple and scrumptious. For lunch I made this:

Half a head of lettuce, half a cucumber, some invisible shaved white carrot, and a non-CSA avocado mashed with the juice of half a lemon and salt and pepper. This become a goopy, avocado-y, delicious mess post-photo.

I made my dinner plans while I was making lunch. Good thing too, because when I got back from the gym I wanted FOOD NOW! I chopped up some onion and some of this:

sweet, sweet CSA sweet corn

I tried a bite raw because honestly the thought of raw sweet corn weirds me out to the Nth degree and I had to see what raw foodists taste in it. I’m from the land of corn, and it’s not a raw food. Then again, I’m also from the land of fried things on sticks and high fructose corn syrup, so what do I know. Turns out raw sweet corn (at least stellar CSA sweet corn) is delicious. It tastes sweet and crunchy and only slightly “green,” if you know what I mean.

I browned the onion and sweet corn in a bit of butter, then added two eggs and a crumbled piece of Trader Joe’s jalapeno yogurt cheese (lactose free!). I also reheated some of last night’s veggies and got this:

This. was. so. GOOD. The picture does it absolutely no justice. The sweet, crunchy corn and onions combined with the kick from the jalapeno cheese…I wish I could eat it all over again!

T was kind of horrified that I was using corn in a recipe. “It’s just so good on the cob,” he said. “I could never do it!” I understand – sometimes the simplest preparations are the most appealing. But since we’ve had corn on the cob for two weeks straight, I figure I could afford to switch it up. And I’m so glad I did.

Have you used standard ingredients in a new way lately? Was it a success?

First, a disclaimer. I started reading food blogs because I was in a cooking rut and needed new recipes for inspiration. I started writing one because I liked the community of people interested in healthy eating that I found in the blog world, and I wanted to be part of it. One of the things that I love about this community is that people try new things together – almond butter, breakfast cookies, banana soft serve – but this can also be a drawback. I think that it’s easy to get caught up in blog trends and to feel bad when  one isn’t a part of them.

I was really struck by April’s comment on Kailey’s post (about food combining not working for her) that she feels guilty for not trying food combining since it’s taking over the blog world. I sometimes feel this way too – all these other people are eating high raw diets…maybe this means I’m not a “clean” or “good” eater! But the more I think about it, the more I realize that any pressure to be a “better” eater is coming from myself, not from any of these other bloggers. I’m always amazed and impressed by Gena’s approach to raw foods. When I first started reading her blog I unfairly assumed that she would see non-raw lifestyles as bad, but she continually stresses that you need to eat what works for you. She is consistently non-judgmental and open to other people’s lifestyles, which I find really impressive and inspiring.

I’m realizing that it’s my own hangups that cause me to worry about eating a “bad” diet, and that thinking in terms of good/bad when it comes to what I eat is pretty insane and destructive. Yes, there are moral questions related to diet – is it ok to eat animals? how can I promote more ecologically sound farming practices? – but it doesn’t make me a bad person if I don’t eat high raw or if I do occasionally eat an entire box of cereal in two days.

So long story short, I decided that I would give food combining a shot. I didn’t make this decision because everyone else is doing it or because I think it will make me a better person; instead I thought I’d try for curiosity’s sake.

The verdict? I have to try again later. ;p I tried to start the day with a beautiful bowl of fruit:

This mix of cantaloupe and peach was delicious, but I think I waited too long to eat breakfast. I was feeling a little shaky and lightheaded by the time I got to this, so it wasn’t enough. I tried to have some almond milk to hold me over, but I still felt bad so I had a big cup of cereal. Some mornings I can get by on smaller breakfasts, but some mornings I can’t.

I did successfully combine lunch. Giant salad of spinach, CSA lettuce, carrots, avocado, salt and pepper, and balsamic:

and the rest of the avocado mashed on toast with more balsamic:

Dinner was yet another CSA scramble:

I don’t know if this is properly combined or not – I’m not sure where eggs fit. At any rate, since I didn’t properly combine breakfast and since this was a shared meal with T, who is not interested in food combining, I didn’t worry too much about it. It was one of our best scrambles yet, thanks largely to the CSA bacon, which is nitrate and nitrite free, consisting of humanely-treated pig, maple syrup, salt, and hickory smoke. Stellar.

The result? I don’t know if I felt any real difference, but then again I didn’t combine properly all day. I’m also still out of whack thanks to jetlag, so I’m not so in tune with what’s making me feel good and what’s making me feel crappy. I think I’ll try again in the future, once I’m solidly back on east coast time.

More travel recap soon! For now I need to read. Oh so behind, as usual!

Oh. Mah. Lourdes. The produce this week is beyond beautiful. Just look at this stuff!

well, don't look at the filthy toaster oven or the knives or the bag of scones on the filthy toaster oven...the CSA share didn't include those

We got: magnificent purple kale

PEAS!!!!!!

There is nothing in the world like a pea fresh out of its pod

Bok choy

and, saving the best for last, garlic scapes and beets!!!

(there’s also some spinach and lettuce in there). Aren’t those scapes amazing? I’ve been dying to try them since I heard about them a year ago but never had a chance til now. I love their smell, their little curlicues, their subtle garlicky taste…heaven! I’m also in love with the color of those beets on the right. I can’t wait to roast them up!

I’m afraid that dinners on CSA delivery nights will be a bit boring – by the time we get our haul home, call up our CSA partners and split it all up, we’re usually starving and just want something simple.  Tonight we scrambled up some eggs (sound familiar?) with a few of the scapes, some of the spinach, and some parmesan. It was AWESOME. If you haven’t tried scapes yet, get thee to a farmer’s market asap!

We also welcomed a few ladybugs, slugs, worms, and aphids into our home. Yes, there is a downside to farm fresh organic food, but it’s a downside I’m willing to deal with (even if I have to deal with the slugs because T has a pathological fear).

Question: How do you deal with washing and storing your greens? We’re getting so many leafy greens in our CSAs, which is awesome, but I’ve always found them difficult to clean. Is it worth investing in a salad spinner? Or should I stick to washing a portion each time I want to eat them and trying pathetically to dry them in clean dishtowels?