Back to reality

My oh my, a lot has happened in the last couple days. First of all, I started my summer classes on Monday, launching me back into the real world where I have more to worry about than just food and blogging. Additionally, I am happy to report that I will also be starting a new part-time job next week at Georgetown University! Although it will add 20 more hours of work to my schedule, I am committed to my new life of homemade and unprocessed food. I think the key will be making larger quantities of food on the days I have free time so that I won’t have to work as hard to come up with meals on the days that I’m particularly busy.

The second exciting event of the last few days was a trip to a Virginia farm with a couple friends, one of whom has a share in this particular farm. It may sound trite, but actually seeing how the food was grown along with all of the planning and labor that is involved in making a small family farm successful really made me appreciate the produce I’ve been eating these last few weeks. Not to mention we got some freshly picked salad greens, eggs right out of the chicken coop, seedlings for my home garden, and saw a beautiful peacock hanging out on top of a greenhouse!

Finally, my cooking skills continue to improve and my confidence in the kitchen is growing. I made a batch of whole wheat pasta all by myself (although Kevin was only a few feet away in the living room answering my questions), which I combined with onion, asparagus, and rainbow chard in a creamy white wine sauce.

Also, I made a super easy flatbread from a recipe provided by my lovely Leah: combine 1 cup flour (I used whole wheat), 2/3 cup milk, 2 eggs, pinch of salt and your favorite seasoning (I chopped up fresh rosemary); cook at 400 degrees for 20 minutes; take out of oven, add toppings, return to oven until toppings are hot and cheese is melted.

Cheese sauce saves the day

After yesterday’s “fowl up”, I was a little nervous to step back into the kitchen today and at a loss as to what to make for dinner. Lunch was easy: a great big salad full of veggies from the farmer’s market and chicken from last night. However, I had no clear idea of what to make for dinner; my farmer’s market haul is starting to get a little low and I’m not super experienced in the kitchen. So I spent a little bit of time googling, looked through my fridge and pantry and tried to channel my mother’s inventiveness (no matter what we had on hand, she always managed to make something work).

Finally, I found a basic cheese sauce recipe that called for butter (check), flour (check), heavy cream (check) and havarti (nope, but I do have Mountaineer, an “alpine-style cow’s milk cheese” from a dairy in Virginia – that will work). I used the last of my store bought pasta, asparagus, bacon and chicken breast to make a pretty yummy pasta dish. Paired with a glass of chenin blanc (I thought it was from VA, but just realized it’s from California… Oops – I invoke the drinking exception) it was quite tasty.

I also got started on some homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream. A good friend was kind enough to let me borrow her ice cream maker, so I started the process by heating up some heavy cream, whole milk and sugar with a big bunch of fresh mint from our yard. I’m letting it sit in the fridge until tomorrow to really infuse it with mint flavor. Looks good so far, I’m pretty excited!!

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble

Its day 2 and my confidence continues to grow; I successfully made a strawberry rhubarb crumble and homemade whipped cream. I think I burned enough calories whipping the cream by hand to justify all the sugary goodness of the crumble. The recipe for the crumble can be found at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Rhubarb-Strawberry-Crunch/Detail.aspx. I only had about 2 ½ cups of strawberries and even less rhubarb, so I made mine in an 8x8 baking dish and it worked quite well. It’s a little bit juicy when you cut into it, but I think it tastes great. The rhubarb is especially nice because its tanginess cuts the sweetness of the strawberries and crumble topping perfectly. As for the whipped cream, I just used 1 cup organic heavy cream and then added in a tablespoon of powdered sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract just before the peaks began to form.

Overall I’m finding it fairly easy to stick to eating local organic food and I haven’t purchased anything with more than four ingredients. Since the point of this whole experiment is to use what is close by, I have been using the non-organic/local ingredients that were already in my kitchen including pasta, bacon and raisin bran. Here is an outline of my meals yesterday and today (the asterisk indicates an item already in my pantry and the “o” is for things that are organic but NOT local):

Day 1

Breakfast: 3 scrambled eggs with green onion and tomato, homemade bread, strawberries, coffee(o) with half & half(o)
Lunch: whole wheat pasta* with bacon*, rainbow chard, tomatoes and parmesan*
Snack: 1 slice homemade bread with peanut butter* and strawberry jam*
Dinner: leftover lunch pasta
After dinner: several glasses of chardonnay which led to my abuse of the restaurant exception because I was hungry and sitting in Kevin’s restaurant waiting for him to finish his shift. I couldn’t drive home to get food, so I ate some Rueben eggrolls and spring rolls.

Day 2

Breakfast: raisin bran* and milk(o), coffee(o) with half & half(o)
Lunch: homemade bread sandwich with melted cheese from Mountaineer Meadow (a dairy in VA), lettuce, tomato and cucumber; salad with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and goat cheese from MD and balsamic vinaigrette*
Snack: strawberry rhubarb crumble with whipped cream!!

Also, I bought:
organic powdered sugar – 3.99
organic toasted oats – 2.89
organic heavy whipping cream – 3.19
cow cheese from VA – 12.39
goat cheese from MD – 13.99

With a .10 bag credit and tax my total was: $37.26

Life and Death

Have you ever wished that someone was dead? No, I’m not talking about a certain leader of a well-known terrorist organization; although considering recent events I would imagine that is the first thought that pops into many people’s head when posed with this question. So let me rephrase: have you ever wished that someone you loved dearly would die? It’s a bizarre statement to make and perhaps even more surreal to read it as I type, but I must answer in the affirmative; watching a loved one suffer is horrible.

The last week has been a whirlwind of emotion and surprise. I knew my trip back home to Oregon would not be the usual fun vacation I’m accustomed to, but I don’t think I realized the degree of loss and sadness I would ultimately experience. I boarded a plane at Regan National Airport last Saturday, near my current residence in Alexandria, VA to return home to visit my Uncle Bill who was admitted to a hospice the day before. In a surprising and upsetting turn of events, his twin brother (my Uncle Jim) died in his home sometime the following day on Easter Sunday. Maybe it was some weird cosmic twin connection, but needless to say it has been a rollercoaster week.

I don’t mean to be a “Debbie Downer”, but I think it’s important to bring up this week’s events because they have prompted a major lifestyle change as well as this (narcissistic?) jump into the blogosphere. I don’t know how your family mourns, but I can tell you that we mourn through food. Eating familiar comfort foods somehow makes life seem a little better and eases the pain. Perhaps this because it’s extremely difficult to cry while shoving gooey homemade lasagna into your mouth, or blow a runny nose while simultaneously blowing piping hot chicken soup. Whatever the reason, for me food is a method of coping and based on my current figure, I’ve been dealing with a lot this year.

With that said, and inspiration from Barbara Kingsglover’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I’ve decided to attempt to alter my relationship with food. Mainly I’d like to break up with processed foods and begin a serious relationship with locally grown organic fruits, vegetables and meats. As a chronic dieter, I know that restricting what I eat will only lead to late night binging and inevitable defeat, so the goal of this project is not to lose weight (although I’d be lying to say I don’t want that to happen as a result of this experiment), but rather to eat a healthier more well-rounded diet that consists of foods whose origins are known to me. More specific rules to follow... Here goes nothing!