Lawns to Gardens

Another great piece by Mark Bittman.

Nutrigenomics

It seems to me that this is a supremely important conceptual revolution -

Beyond Calories: Food as Information

Food contains information that speaks to our genes, not just calories for energy. We are learning from research in the field of nutrigenomics, that good "talks" to our DNA switching on or off genes that lead to health or disease. What you eat programs your body with messages of health or illness.

Spicy Squash Soup

This variation on Squash Soup from Ann Gentry's excellent Real Food Daily Cookbook is simple and wonderful. Butternut squash finely cubed and simmered until quite soft - plus ample chopped fresh ginger, salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg and a finely chopped onion. You could put in all sorts of other things - sweet potato would be terrific. When the squash is soft you could blend it all in a blender but I just mashed it a bit with a hand potato masher. We had it with popcorn and squash pie for dessert (of course).

Another Vegetable Stew Variation

More vegetable stew... on a dark and stormy night. Put in pretty much everything possible. (Not the pineapple.) The sweet potato really made this interesting. Onion, carrot, rutabaga, radish, potato and sweet potato, mushrooms, tomato, beans, barley, kale, sprouts...

Blizzard Afternoon

A bit of comfort food before I go shovel & plow... chopped kale on top this time. Fast (if you have dough in the fridge) and wonderful on a cold day.

Christmas Dinner

We made a bean-potato loaf that was adapted from Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Our own dried Jacob's Cattle beans, cooked for an hour, along with grated sweet potato, chopped onion, some chili powder, salt, pepper, mustard... I wish I had used more chili powder.

Shredding the potato is sort of fun...

Saute the onion and potato with the spices. Add the mashed beans and form into a loaf (or make burgers, which I think I will do next time). Bake for 45 minutes at 350F.

Winter squash on the left. On the right: rutabaga, carrot, sweet potato and radish - bake for 1 hr at 350 in a bit of olive oil and salt. Everything just starts to carmelize. It is wonderful.

Frozen brussel sprouts - - right out of the garden! Had to tidy them up a bit but they were excellent.

I forgot to make cranberry sauce. Otherwise quite a perfect meal. Squash pie for dessert.

Malus domestica

"If you're not hungry for an apple, you're not hungry."   - Mark Bittman

Winter Tuber Soup

Potato, carrot, rutabaga, enormous radish, onions of both kinds, some left over squash and, astonishingly, kale picked out of the frozen garden. Salt, sage.

Barley cooked separately & added at the end. Served with popcorn. Very substantial. You know it's winter.

Black Bean Chili

Just a nice variation on one of the staples. These nice small black beans take about 35 minutes to cook at a moderate simmer.

When the beans are about ready, add tomato, onion, garlic, green pepper, chili power, cumin and some salt and cook at low simmer for another 15 - 20 minutes. Rice cooked separately can be added to stretch the chili. The whole thing takes less than an hour.

We had it with griddle bread (recipe here) and carrot&cabbage salad and some greens from the last farmer's market of the season, sadly.

Really, it's an awfully nice meal. And there's plenty left for tomorrow. The last of the squash pie for dessert.

The Virtues of Dirt

Dirt and soil are, properly, two very different things. We confuse them - and we say soil can make you dirty. But even a little real "dirt" in your food seems to be crucial for the development of the immune system. So the current American horror of "bacteria" and "dirt" turns out to be an over-reaction to the threats to health from the real pathogens. If you eat food from an organic farm, where antibiotics in animal feed haven't made the pathogens they carry resistant to treatment, you may be better off not washing your food so thoroughly.

Don't miss this article from the NYTimes, it will be a real eye-opener for a lot of people: "...public health measures like cleaning up contaminated water and food have saved the lives of countless children, but they “also eliminated exposure to many organisms that are probably good for us." - from A Little Dirt is Good for You. And then there is the psychology of it all: “The archetypal link between dirt and guilt, and cleanliness and innocence is built into our language — perhaps into our psyches.” from The Dirt on Clean reviewed in the NYTimes.

Squash and Spelt Soup

We use spelt (a species of wheat) as an occasional alternative to rice or barley. It's quite sweet. It takes a bit of cooking - about 40 minutes will do. We cook it separately and put it in with the squash soup: we used kabocha squash (Johnny's Seeds Scarlet Sunshine), potato, carrot, onion, salt, a bit of chili powder and a generous amount of chopped ginger. Cook the squash and carrot for 15 minutes before you add the other ingredients, then simmer another 20 minutes or more.

This was a really fine sweet and spicy soup if I do say so myself, and quite simple - though peeling the squash is a bit of a challenge. For dessert, squash pie.

Easy Pizza

This doesn't require any comment. The only trick is handling the dough - the same we use for griddle bread - recipe here. Be sparing with the tomato since you don't want to make the dough wet. Everything goes on at once, uncooked. Sprinkle just a bit of olive oil on top. You can put pretty much anything you want on it but we like it simple. Bake for 20 minutes at 450F. Eat.