Dandelion Greens, Goat Cheese & Ham Sandwich

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Cassandra

The best foods come not from hours spent perusing cook books and roaming the aisles of specialty markets, but rather from free ranging in your own refrigerator and using up what you’ve got on hand. Such is the story behind this oddball sandwich, which I concocted moments ago. That half cup of leftover sauteed dandelion greens called to me, and then when I found the forgotten Chive Chevre hidden behind the eggs, it all came together. The wonderful bitterness of the greens melded perfectly with the creamy goat cheese and the salty ham. It was a lovely synchronicity that I pray will be repeated in my refrigerator in years to come.

I emphasize dandelion greens here, because I recently picked them in Hubbard Park. Every day brings new surprises in the woods and paths of the park this spring; with jack in the pulpit following trillium alongside trout lilies, following the wild leeks (also known as “ramps”). It all led up to the dandelion greens, still tender before the flowers build up, which I gathered just like a verdant bouquet during my daily walk. There’s nothing like gathering up one’s food from the places where one roams. It’s free; it doesn’t even cost work; and there’s no better taste nor nutritional value to be found. I receive this manna with thanks, and fervently believe that the receiving of it is as much of a gift to the Great One as His giving it is to us. To think! While people ramble on and on about food supplies, there is free food to be found along our roadways and in our meadows.

OK, backtrack here, I realize one cannot live on dandelion greens alone, which is why I did go ahead and add some protein and bread to the mix, but still; I wallow in the glory of these understated little greens, and admire them to no end. In fact, before I end this rant – shame on those of you who mow down those bobbing yellow flowers that populate our lawns! Have you never driven past a Vermont field glowing yellow with dandelion blooms? Have you never tasted the spring “tonic” in those bitter leaves or had a fried dandelion flower, sipped of your neighbor’s dandelion wine, or saved the roots for tincture or to grind up into a powder as a coffee alternative? Glory be to the dandelion.

Now that that’s out of my system, here’s the recipe:

Dandelion Greens, Goat Cheese & Ham Sandwich

(note: I happened to have had a bit of Onion, Garlic and Chive Chevre from Willow Moon Farm that I picked up at the Montpelier Farmer’s Market last week. I’m sure any spread could sub for it, including but not limited to artichoke heart spread, cream cheese or avocado.)

Step 1 Ingredients:

Dandelion Greens
1 thinly sliced onion
1 T Olive Oil

Instructions: Wash and roughly chop greens. Heat skillet with oil. Add onion; saute lightly for 1 – 2 minutes; add greens; salt to taste. Stir until softened and reduced by about half. Eat plain or save for sandwich.

Step 2 Ingredients:

2 slices whatever type of bread you like
1/2 – 1/3 cup sauteed dandelion greens
2 – 3 T grated cheddar
2 T goat cheese
2 thin slices deli ham.

Instructions: Toast bread in toaster oven. When halfway done, add the cheese, topped by the greens to one slice of the bread. Return to toaster (or oven) and toast until cheese is melted. When the second slice of bread is toasted completely, spread the goat cheese on. Quickly heat up the ham slices in the same skillet in which you sauteed the dandelion greens (to save on dishes!); top goat cheese with ham. Put the two sandwich halves together and voila! The creamy, cruncy, bitter, smooth flavor of a dandelion, goat cheese and ham sandwich! The only way to improve on this is to cut it in half, and share with a friend.

Wild Leek and Duck Egg Scramble

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Cassandra

In honor of today’s opening of the Montpelier Farmer’s Market, spring, Green Up Day and the fact that I have both duck eggs and wild leeks kicking around, I have started off my day with a combo of the wild foraged and locally raised. Consider this a preview, with more duck egg recipes to come, thanks to my new Cooking with Cassandra column in the Montpelier Bridge.

Tomorrow I’ll be visiting Melissa Pierce – Union Elementary School 5th grade teacher, homesteader, and mom – at her place just outside Montpelier, where I’ll get to see the ducks in action. But as a preview, she gifted me with a half dozen of the eggs, which measure about half again the size of chicken eggs (as do the yolks), have much harder shells with a bluish tint, and a higher protein content which makes for incredible baking, I’m told. I’m trying to stay away from baked goods these days, so I told myself I wouldn’t test that theory, but I’m having second thoughts. Meanwhile, I opted to use some of the leeks I dug out of a local hillside this week.

I can’t laud wild leeks enough. I’ve already posted about them a couple of years ago (click here for my version of Julia Child’s leek and potato soup). Every year, when the Vermont forested hillsides bloom green with their tender, oniony leaves, my heart flutters anew. It feels adventuresome to head out to the secret spots with back pack and tools; then digging into that incredible almost-black loamy soil to pull out the season’s first offerings. To me, accepting these gifts from God is a form of prayer in itself. One of the many aspects I enjoy about getting them myself is that wonderful long walk back home, with that allium smell wafting about the whole way.

I will not sugarcoat it though; they’re a bitch to clean. It took three rinsings in the sink, and individually sloughing off the outer skins, then snapping off the roots at the end of the bulbs, but all worth it.

The recipe, as it should be, is incredibly simple. It’s just sauteed leeks with scrambled duck eggs poured on top, a bit of heat and cheese and that’s it. I had just made some bacon, so I just cooked up this dish right in that flavorful grease; but if you haven’t got bacon on the menu, just use butter or olive oil to grease the pan.

Wild Leek and Duck Egg Scramble

Yields 3 servings

1/2 - 3/4 cup sliced wild leeks, bulb only (use of leaves optional)
3 duck eggs, whisked
shredded cheddar cheese, amount to taste
bacon grease (or butter)

Instructions: Set a heavy bottomed skillet on medium heat, add grease; saute leaks till barely tender. Add whisked duck eggs and scramble gently; turn heat off pan before eggs are fully cooked. Shred cheese over the eggs and mix in. Serve and eat!

We raised our own ducks some years back: these guys are Muscovy's, technically meat birds rather than egg layers, but, in our case, as it turned out, they were coyote food.

Angolan Shrimp with a Side of Perspective

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Cassandra

This is my rendering of Andre Loumingou mostly from memory because I forgot to get a picture of him.

(The shorter version of this story ran in the April 19 issue of the Montpelier Bridge‘s 2012 Farm & Food issue. It was also the debut of my column in that publication, by the same name as this website: Cooking with Cassandra. Because of word-count limits. I was not able to include the whole story there – so this version contains a few more details).

Andre Loumingou needed a bus to St. Johnsbury, which at first he thought might be late, and then later, we realized, did not exist. I’d met him because he greeted me, as I walked past, with a dark and grinning face, telling me (not asking) to help him. I could not help but respond.

He spoke with a heavy accent. Within a few minutes he explained that he spoke French and Spanish. His English required the listener to lean close and pay attention to every word. At the bus stop across from the Golden Dome, I joined him in scrutinizing the bus schedule, finding myself also unable to interpret it.

He whipped out a worn photograph– taken at least twenty years earlier – of himself with a white haired woman in a long dress; he, a thin young African; she, an elderly, stout, fair-skinned westerner. He said something hard to comprehend, except the word sister. Sister? I looked again at the picture; it seemed improbable that this woman was his sister, but stranger things have happened. He kept showing me the photograph, possibly as some form of I.D. – or maybe he thought I knew her. He appeared to be looking for her. Perhaps she lived in St. Johnsbury? I noticed a couple of large duffel bags and a worn backpack at his feet. He felt certain the bus should have arrived at 4:15. It was now 4:45.

“You give me ride to St. Johnsbury,” he said. “I have fifteen dollar.”

I had two children with me, getting antsy, and wondering who was this man with the luggage and the accent? I couldn’t walk away and leave him on the sidewalk with his $15 and heavy bags. I hefted the backpack, and we walked to St. Augustine’s, from whence he’d come. Along the way, he told me his story.

Andre had spent his earliest years in Angola, where his entire family had been killed during the civil war there in the mid 1970’s. As an orphan, he’d been taken in by nuns, educated in Paris, and also in Portugal, earning a couple of impressive degrees. He also was a roofer, a mason, and he taught French, Spanish and Portuguese (his bags strained with the weight of his books). And now, he showed up broke and apparently without a home on the streets of Montpelier.

He explained that he had been working here a few years ago, and tried to renew his working papers, only to find himself “detained” for 18 months. He spoke of the states he liked best; Florida, Georgia, Texas. I couldn’t believe Vermont would not be on the list, so I gave us a plug. After a while I got it: the states he favored were the ones in which he could sleep outdoors and not get cold. Vermont, by that measurement, did not rate.

That night, he slept in the Catholic Church. The next day, we drove to St. Johnsbury. I found out that his “sister” was actually a nun who had helped him as an orphan. She’d told him, perhaps decades ago, to look her up when he was in the area. Originally from Newport, she was now 95 and retired in Florida. It wasn’t clear whether or not he was on a quest to find this nun, or if the picture of the two of them together was his form of credentials. Either way, I began to worry about him.

He marveled at my business card, which read “Cooking with Cassandra” across the top. I told him about my blog, but the word “blog” did not seem to have any meaning to him. The word “cook” did, however. He told me about how he had cooked for President Ronald Reagan, General Alexander Haig, Francois Mitterand, and Canadian Governor General Romeo LeBlanc. He handed me a laminated newspaper article, which confirmed all that he’d just said, from the Glennville (GA) Sentinal, where he’d apparently been living and working last December. The laminate had grown cloudy, presumably because he’d been handing it around so often. He clearly had to establish his credentials wherever he went, lest he be mistaken for – a concern of his made clear by the number of times he repeated it – someone who does not want to work. He wanted to work.

As a refugee recently released from what amounts to a prison, I imagine he found it necessary to repeat this mantra over and over, along with handing out his credentials: the sister and the article.

I felt ashamed for the freedom I wear so lightly; for the fact that I think Vermont is the best state because I have a (warm enough) home; because I don’t have to hammer into people that I like to work; because I don’t have to rate places by which are friendliest for sleeping outdoors; because I don’t have to hand out credentials in order to get taken seriously; and, mostly, because my family is intact; war happens, for the most part, overseas in places like Angola or Afghanistan, or Iraq or Kurdistan, or Kosovo – places I don’t see; violences I don’t experience.

It became more and more clear, the more I spoke with Andre, that he was a man of faith. He kept perking up as we passed churches on our drive to St. Johnsbury; it turned out the church is central in his life – and much of the reason he roams is because he preaches, through actions, to the homeless people he meets on his travels. Still, I wished he’d had some money in his pocket, but he was utterly unconcerned. The drive to St. Johnsbury felt fruitless, as he actually intended to go to Newport, so we traveled south so that he could go north; he insisted that someone from the Methodist church would drive him to Newport. He had never interacted with anyone in that congregation, but I have no doubt that someone there did indeed take him to his destination.

I left Andre in St. Johnsbury, with a little bit more food than he’d started out with, and at least one more blanket. I prayed he would be OK wherever the next leg of his journey led him. Before we said goodbye, he promised he’d visit one day, and cook his favorite Angolan Shrimp recipe for me. I still hold him to that.

Andre’s Angolan Grilled Shrimp

(note: be sure to rinse, remove shells and vein running down both sides of each shrimp before cooking)

1 lb jumbo shrimp

2 garlic cloves, crushed

½ cup green onions, including tops, chopped.

1 tsp ground cumin

¼ tsp salt

4 T wine vinegar

4 T water

Make sauce by combining all ingredients (except shrimp) and grinding them into a paste. Put the shrimp on skewers, brush with the sauce, and grill until done (3 – 4 minutes – or until they lose their translucency). Serve with extra sauce on the side.

Baba’s Beet Borscht (or Blood Soup for Better Health)

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Cassandra

This Borscht is packed with nutrition, offers a high level of satiety for relatively few calories, and tastes amazing.

My mother – a.k.a. “Baba” to her grandchildren – lost half her blood over the past few weeks. She was recovering from a heart attack she’d had while recovering from surgery – so you can imagine the stress on her poor body, then went the blood. It took her collapsing a couple of times for me to realize something had gone dreadfully wrong. Thankfully – after some good care at the local hospital, doctors discovered that she’d been bleeding internally and had only about half the blood her body should have. Half. I still don’t quite understand how that happens. … and yes, this *is* related to beets.

First of all, I have a renewed awe for the human body – that it can survive under such circumstances. And my respect for contemporary medical practices has grown deeper. To think, they can just pump some blood into a person, like gasoline into a car, and she comes back pert and peppy as if she’d never leaked out half of her most vital fluids – the actual river of life within. It’s strange and amazing and a bit frightening all at the same time. And I still don’t understand how I could have been talking to and feeding and laughing with someone who was getting by, bit by bit, on less and less blood.

What is really strange, though, is that out of all this trauma came a recipe. And stranger still, that the recipe is deeply red and packed with nutrition, much like (vegetarian) blood – as if somehow I knew that my mother needed a strongly healthful purple-red fluid put back inside of her.

Because of the multiple traumas, those of us caring for Mom had to work around her strange diet – a combination of both no-fiber and heart healthy. These two plans contradict each other most of the time, so she had quickly become accustomed to extremely bland food: saltless crackers with a banana; a tiny amount of chicken breast with a quarter cup of over-boiled green beans. You get the idea. So during my time with her last week, I determined to find a way to serve up food that fit into her narrow diet plan that also had flavor. As well, it became clear that she needed vegetables – but not raw vegetables, and nothing with seeds, and no brassicas or onions … and on and on. Finally, we came up with pureed soups, and from there, we decided upon borscht.

Borscht – much like Grandma Goldner’s Chicken Soup – is one of those foods that hearken back to my Jewish heritage (click here for a brief history of borscht). My mother and all her cousins have fond memories of it – we used to have a bottle of it from the store in the door of the refrigerator just about all the time. It was a clear purplish-red liquid, something like beet juice – mom would eat it cold with a dollop of sour cream on top. I never liked it. Then, about 20 years ago, I met a Russian man whose grandmother served me her version of borscht, which was more like a hearty beef stew with lots of beets in it. Now THAT was something I could wrap my mind around!

After many years of gardening and experimenting with my home grown beets, I found a recipe that now exemplifies, to me, what borscht should be. It starts out somewhat like the Russian Grandmother’s version, but then all but the meat gets pureed, and – oh! – it is good, and so healthful. Plus it’s a low-calorie, veggieful dish that offers a high level of satiety. My original recipe came from the Joy of Cooking (what else?) but I have played with it enough that the one here is all my own. This one features braised beef, of course, and the beets get roasted, which brings out all the sweetness and flavor. I also use the beet greens, adding them in the last half hour of simmering, then pureeing the soup so the greens disappear into the beety purple goodness.

I’ve been writing lately about how cooking has become more of a chore for me these days – seems like the focus on food just doesn’t fit with my current mood. So cooking up a batch of something semi-complex such as borscht did not appeal – but creating something nutritious that I could freeze into single portion sizes for my mom to enjoy after I returned to Vermont over-rid all other indecision. Plus this is another one of those “low and slow” recipes, which involves some prep, but the majority of the work is done by a low heat, and lots of time.

Baba’s Borscht (or Blood Soup for Better Health)

– Don’t worry – there’s not actual blood in the recipe! –

Note: You’ll need a heavy bottom stock pot and a blender for this recipe. Also note that the meat stays separate from the soup so it retains its flavor. Add it in when you are ready to serve. Prep time: about 15 minutes; Cooking time: 2 hours.

Ingredients:

6 beets (or 2 bunches) with greens still attached.
1 T (+ or -) olive oil
1 pound stew beef cut into 3/4 ” cubes
1/2 medium onion, sliced
1/2 – 3/4 cup carrots cut into large chunks
1 – 2 T tomato puree
8 cups water or beef or chicken broth
salt and pepper to taste
fresh dill
low-fat sour cream

Instructions: Preheat oven to 325. Wash and cut the greens off the beets. Trim and either halve or quarter (depending on size of the beet) and set into a cast iron skillet or stoneware pan. Drizzle with the olive oil, and put into the oven for about 1 hour or until soft. Heat the heavy bottomed stock pot with 1 – 2 tsp olive oil. When oil is hot, add the cubed stew beef (I used loin, but chuck works as well). Brown the beef, then cover with water or broth until just barely covered. Cover the pot and turn heat to low. Let sit for 40 minutes – 1 hour. When beef is fork tender, remove from the broth with a slotted spoon and set aside in a bowl. The beets should be done at about this time as well. Roughly chop the beet greens and add to the broth. Add the beets, carrots and onion. Add the rest of the water or broth, cover, and cook on a low heat for another 40 minutes or longer if needed. Cook until all vegetables are tender.

Get the blender ready; ladle the cooked soup into the blender and puree in batches, pouring into a large bowl. When it is all pureed, season with salt and pepper. Add in a few pieces of the beef to each bowl of the soup; serve with a dollop of sour cream (light or low-fat for the heart-healthy diet), and a sprig or two of dill.

Edna Goldner’s Chicken Soup (or Cassandra’s Tear Water Soup)

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Cassandra

(Editor’s note: There is a recipe in here somewhere, just keep looking)

My heart hurts lately, and, among many other things, it means I don’t feel like cooking. I don’t even miss it. I don’t mind making the odd piece of toast or tossing together a salad (so long as I don’t have to chop anything), but the act of cooking — the gathering of the recipe ideas and ingredients, the paring and slicing and aromas and oils, the washing up and the serving, and relishing — gone. The main problem with that is that I feel obligated not only to this blog, to which I have committed to post recipes to an adoring public of, I think, 7, but because I do have to feed my family. For them, this lapse means they have to choke down a lot of frozen pizza and last-minute, slightly brown, omelets.

It has occurred to me that one or two of my seven readers might ask me why my heart hurts, to which I have no reply. I can say this: there are a lot of tragedies in this world, and this is not one of them. Sometimes life works out the way you hope it will — sometimes a lot better than you may have ever imagined — and sometimes it doesn’t, that’s it in a nut shell. There’s a myth, in this strange society, that we’re supposed to be happy. It is “stoic” to pretend you’re OK when you’re dying inside; you’re supposed to smile when you’re on stage, and say “I am well” when people ask how you are, because, really, they don’t want to know. I have never mastered this art of pretending. Or perhaps I have, and that’s the problem right there. Either one hurts; pretending to everyone that things are hunky hurts just as much as allowing them to glimpse your sorrow and then experience how awkward and uncomfortable it makes everyone. So, in this case, you are then supposed to either take anti-depressants, or see a therapist, or go do something proactive that ensures that the next time someone asks how you are, you are much, much better at lying.

I propose that it is OK to be sad. If you are never sad, how will you ever know when you’re happy? If you smile at someone when you don’t really mean it, how is that a smile? Wouldn’t you prefer to get a real smile, sometimes or even rarely, than a fake one every day? There are so many wonders in this world – real joys – that pretending that every day is full of them alone, to me, diminishes them; so, therefore, I get to be sad if I’m sad. And when you see me smile, you’ll know it’s real, too.

For most of my life, the cure-all for tears has been soup, particularly my grandmother’s (and my mother’s) chicken soup. I was going to write a post called “Tear Soup,” then discovered that there is a book by that name, aimed at people who are grieving. In one of my daughter’s picture books, Owl at Home, by Arnold Lobel, Owl makes “Tear Water Tea.” Of course he needs to cry in order to produce the main ingredient, so he thinks of mornings nobody saw because everybody was sleeping and pencils that are too short to use, chairs with broken legs, and books that cannot be read because some of the pages have been torn out. After enough of these sad things — spoons that have fallen behind the stove and are never seen again! – he manages to cry enough tears for one salty cup of tea. It’s a beautiful story that inspired my Tear Soup concept, except that clearly someone else felt inspired, too, so I’m no original. But that’s OK, because Grandma’s soup generally works, no matter what it’s called. The trouble is, I keep circling back to the fact that although a pot of Grandma’s soup is just what I need, I can’t bring myself to feel like making it.

I was away last week, taking care of my mother who had, among other things, a heart attack. This, in itself, merits a pot of chicken soup, but, just as I was about to drive back north, I found out that the dreaded Nora Virus had invaded the household, and there was a lot of vomiting going on, among other symptoms not fit to mention here. I made the decision to — for the first time in 15 years — not be there for the main throes of illness (in order to keep my own self healthy). You can imagine how this went down. To put it mildly, not well. So on my way home (after stopping at the pharmacy for face masks, latex gloves, and a multitude of vitamins aimed at boosting the immune system), I stopped by the food co-op and bought the ingredients for a good old fashioned pot of the best soup that I know of. I even spent over $22 on an organic free-range chicken! Donning face mask, gloves – and after a thorough, and slightly paranoid, bleach-water washdown of the kitchen – I started step-one of Grandma’s soup. The entire chicken goes into a stock pot, covered it with cold water. I then added 1/2 onion (skin still on), a couple of whole carrots, some celery stalk that I broke in half, and half a parsnip just because I happened to have one in the refrigerator. I love stock, because peeling and slicing is not necessary -in fact leaving the peels on enhances flavor. I set the burner on low, covered it, and walked away. It cooked there for hours, never boiling, barely even simmering, but eventually giving off an incredible aroma.

Now here comes the weird part: once I made the stock, I couldn’t deal with finishing the soup. I found some leftover ham and potatoes, and ended up feeding that to the family. To the sick ones, I dumped some canned chicken soup in a pot and heated it — not even caring that it boiled. All of this, even as my stock cooked in my favorite manner — low and slow — for hours. What is wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just dice some onions, slice some carrots, shred some cabbage, pick the chicken off the bone, and finish the soup? And the tragedy (aha! there is a tragedy in here after all) is that the stock turned out perfect. Yet, it sits on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, chicken gelled into the aspicky broth, waiting to be finished. And I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s been two days now, and I can’t stand to waste a $22 chicken, so I’ll probably make it today.

This is very new for me, to be so non-committal about chicken soup, or any form of cooking for that matter. I have had moments of sheer bliss merely glimpsing through Baking with Julia; my heart soars at the market when I find the exact right ingredient; there’s not much I love more than having good friends over for dinner and having the excuse to spend days crafting a lovely meal. So NOT wanting to cook is extreme – and not wanting to cook enough to let the perfect stock linger in the fridge is unthinkable.

Meanwhile, I will do it because it’s too much of a sin not to. And, when I sip the wonderful flavors, I will be glad. When my family gobbles it down, I may be even gladder. And to think, it all hearkens back to Edna Goldner, mistress of the soup – craftily adding ingredients on the sly so we never could know exactly what she put into it. I find myself wanting to hope (but not quite hoping) that a nice bowl of the stuff might put one of those authentic smiles on my face. I suspect though, that it will remind me of my beloved Grandma and I will close my eyes as the wholesomeness of the ingredients does its magic, and, very slowly, I’ll start to feel better.

Edna Goldner’s Chicken Soup

(with huge ammendments made by her granddaughter)

Notes: Do this on a day when you will be around the house for many hours; do not worry so much about amounts and be flexible with your ingredients. As always, use what you have.

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken (I used a ‘young’ chicken but I suspect the original recipe used up an old cock – please no jokes!)
2 onions
many carrots
as much celery as you like
either parsnip or parsley (or both) grandma was never clear on this point
garlic (not traditional, so play it by your own taste)
salt and pepper to taste
Optional:
Greens such as shredded cabbage or kale
rice or noodles or matzoh balls on the side (never mix in with the soup in the pot).

Directions: Cover the whole chicken with cold water in a large, heavy bottomed stock pot. Halve the onion, a couple of the carrots and 2 stalks celery, add to the pot. Add parsnip or parsley if you like. Set on a low heat, cover, and leave it alone for at least 3 hours. When the chicken is cooked through, take it off the pot and let cool. Drain the stock into a large bowl. Toss the vegetables; keep the chicken. Dice or slice the remaining onions, carrots and celery (and any other vegetables you may want in your soup) and toss with 1 T of the chicken fat skimmed from the top of the soup (in the same stockpot in which the stock cooked). After 4 – 5 minutes, add the stock back in. Cook vegetables until soft; meanwhile remove chicken from bones and shred or cut into small pieces and set aside in a bowl. If you want rice, noodles or matzoh balls, make them and also set aside in a bowl. (Do not add the chicken and the starch to the soup; doing so will cause the meat to lose flavor, and the starches to swell up and take up much of your broth). Rather, when the soup is ready to eat; add the amount of rice and chicken you want to your bowl, then pour the soup over it. The heat of the soup will heat up the rice and chicken. Sprinkle with chopped parsley if desired. Salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy. May it heal you and fill your belly with love and nutrition.

Food Obsessions – Breaking the Cycle

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Cassandra

Everywhere I look, I find an new item or article – or, this week, an actual resolution on the Montpelier city ballot – bandying about words like “sustainable,” “local,” “farm fresh” and peppered throughout:“food.” While I fully support moves to create a sane food supply that consists of actual nutrients (not to mention human connections), I also feel like all this focus on food is getting to be a bit much. But then, that’s what I’ve done for years.

What is it about food that appeals so? Is it the satiety missing in other parts of our lives? Is it the comfort? Taste? The security of a full belly? I trace my own focus on food to having grown up in a foodie family – on the one side a dad who literally starved in college and spent the rest of his life developing sustainable food systems via his Permaculture work, and on the other a culture of food as healing: you’re sick? Have some of Grandma’s chicken soup. You’re sad? Mom will make her famous pot roast. Family’s getting together? Can’t do it without a feast of bagels and lox! I used to be ashamed of how much my family focused on food, and then I embraced it, and started blogging out my recipes to share with the world. And now – I wonder what use it serves to forever focus on a part of life that is important, yes, but is also, after all, merely the fuel. It’s what one does with the energy provided by the fuel that should be important, not the fuel itself.

In the past six weeks two events have broken what I can only call my foodie obsession. First, I stopped consuming sugar, mainly because I’m addicted and I needed to break the cycle, and — more importantly — realized my kids were developing the same terrible eating habits. Within a few days, my hunger levels went down – or should I say craving levels. The consummation of sugar, apparently, had triggered cravings for other foods that my body didn’t actually want or need, and now, without the sugar, I craved simply sustenance. Then, Secondly, I hurt my back. It didn’t require surgery or a wheelchair; but it hurt a lot, and I was unable to be active in my usual way. As a result, I lost my appetite. So the removal of exercise, coupled with the removal of sugar, took away my interest in food completely. And I feel free.

Exercise is healthy, I know. But I was not, even though I was doing what everyone says you’re supposed to do. An hour a day, or more, or sometimes much, much more; high energy cardio combined with strength training and not the whimpy strength training either. Sometimes I’d swim, or take a Zumba class or spinning class, and sometimes I’d also go for a walk; mostly I flung myself onto the elliptical trainer or the rowing machine, making sure to work my heart up to the recommended optimal range … but I never quite tipped the balance into weight loss. I was frenetically pumping my arms and checking my heart rate monitor and going through the weight lifting moves – and I have a lot of lean muscle mass as a result – but it is covered with a layer of fat. Simultaneously obsessing on food and over-obsessively exercising, as it turns out, does not bring about balance.

And so I remained that anomaly that stuck in the craw of the gym crew: I exercised more and harder than most anyone else, and if I did lose weight, it came off less than an ounce at a time and came right back at the slightest provocation. I ate fresh wholesome foods, artfully prepared, lowered my gluten intake, counted calories, kept a food journal, and recorded my every bite on both the Weight Watchers website AND at Sparkpeople.com. Meanwhile, steeped in out-of-whackness, I somehow justified eating dessert every night (and during the day), and still felt bewildered when all other efforts didn’t pay off.

Then, I woke up one morning and couldn’t move because all the muscles in my back were in spasms. I’d suffered through many years of multiple hip injuries – people I know who think running is atrocious say it was because of the running; people I know who exercise a lot think I just needed the right medical provider – in the end, I kept up an intense exercise regime while struggling through pain in both hips, hip flexors and the bursa. Then the back pain came. Unlike the hips, I was unable to move at all. The back had seized up and that was that. No runs, no spinning class, no hour of flailing on the elliptical machine, not even a quiet stroll in Hubbard Park. It was all lying down and resting. I would hate it, I told myself, because I hate resting. Whenever I had allowed rest, in entered weight gain. In other words; my freaky eat-exercise-eat routine did not allow for the removal of exercise. And finally, I’d pounded myself down enough that I simply could not exercise, not even a twitch. At first, I was in so much pain that I forgot about exercise. And then, something amazing happened: I was not hungry.

Not only was I not hungry, I didn’t want to eat either. How many of us who struggle with our weight actually eat because we are hungry? Not me, I can tell you that. I have eaten because I am bored, stressed, upset, nostalgic, or in need of comfort, but – I am ashamed to admit – rarely because of true hunger. Suddenly, I’d lost both my hunger and my appetite. And I felt free.

Breaking away from a hyper-focus on the gathering, preparing, eating, and storing of food has released untold numbers of hours into my life. Simultaneously letting go of the perceived need to punish my body in order burn a prerequisite number of calories has also freed up some hours. So now, I take long prayer walks, and I feel 1,000 times more refreshed than I ever did from a power-walk. I eat, but only if my body has a specific hunger; and sometimes that doesn’t happen exactly at noon, and sometimes the food I have on hand is not what my body craves so rather than – as I would have in the past – eating it anyway, I wait. I now have more time to practice my music; to read; to catch up on letters. I have been able to write to friends rather than scrawl out cards. I have cleaned the house.

The other day I drove by a house with a sign for electrolysis services out front. I shuddered, remembering the countless hours I’d spent some years back, subjecting myself to the quasi-medieval torture involved in that particular process. Why? Because I thought I had too many chin hairs. “Thank God those days are over,” I thought, by which I meant, thank God I no longer care so much about chin hair that I’m willing to spend time, money and energy in the pursuit of something that both hurt a lot, and was ultimately fruitless. Same deal here. No more of the punishing eat-exercise-eat cycle. I deserve better, and I’ve got much better things to do with my time. Oh, and my years-long hip pain has vanished.

I will still post recipes here, but my focus now will be on total simplicity. I won’t be featuring recipes that involve fancy ingredients, lots of steps, or oddball cooking techniques. If it’s healthful, quick, easy, and tastes good, I’ll post it. If not, there might be a lag between posts, but you can bet when they do come, you’ll like them. And maybe, sometimes, I’ll post an article just because I felt like writing it, like this. Either way, I invite you to visit me here, comment on my writings, and let me hear what your thoughts are on our national food obsession and your own personal journey.

My new favorite lunch!

Kyona Mizuna and Ground Lamb Pizza

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Cassandra

First of all, you need neither Kyona Mizuna — a spicy, spikey, asian green that’s easy to grow and right up there in nutritional value with all leafy greens — nor ground lamb for this concoction. Perhaps it would be better titled “vegetable and meat pizza” and you fill in the categories with what you have in your refrigerator. I happened to have ground lamb thanks to that wonderful CSA box I keep raving about. Ground lamb is just not one of those things I’d go out and buy, so I had to hunt around to find a recipe, and when I came across one for pizza, I knew I’d found something that would get my straight-laced kids to enjoy it as much as I would. Plus, homemade pizza has the potential to be 1,000 times healthier than the garden variety (so to say) because you can control the crust, the toppings, and of course, the amount of cheese on top. Continue reading →

Pan Roasted Cauliflower

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Cassandra

Pan seared, roasted, and covered with a roasted garlic and tomato salsa, this healthful veggie dish makes a tasty meal.

On New Years Eve, I resolved to stop dieting. Of course, I use the term loosely. For me, what I mean is to stop SAY I’m dieting, when really, I’m not. But somehow, the attachment to thinking I’m “on Weight Watchers” or “eating low-gluten” or whatever the thing is, works as a convenient self-deception, so that when I down Hershey’s kisses between meals, I imagine that I usually “eat healthy” and this is only a little treat. So, in honor of 2012 – and my sanity – I’m officially canceling my unused Weight Watchers membership, and instead focusing on eating in a truly healthful manner, with an ever more emphatic emphasis on the types of foods that grow seasonally, and show up in the produce aisles and CSA boxes (and gardens!) of the world.

So, when perusing the latest issue of Bon Appetit (curbing the foodie obsession is a resolutions I’m saving for another year), and found a recipe for pan roasted cauliflower, I could hardly resist. First of all, I love cauliflower. I once made a cauliflower soup that almost got me booted from the office where I worked at the time because it smelled to high heaven. Most people don’t understand that good stink of a brassica. Now, when I’m having broccoli, cabbage, or cauliflower for lunch, I try to warn the people around me, so they don’t start thinking I’m just plain gassy. I’m realizing now that this introduction may not be tempting some of you to try this particular cauliflower dish, so rest assured, there’s no funky smell involved. In fact, I suspect the fact that the cauliflower is roasted – rather than steamed or boiled – may be the reason why it actually smells GOOD rather than what we’ve all come to expect of this often maligned vegetable.

This particular recipe hits all the texture highlights I like in a good meal: it’s both tender roasted, and crunchy with the sprinkled raw cauliflower on top; the olives provide a nice salty highlight, while the roasted tomato/garlic salsa adds a rich, smooth undertone which pulls the whole thing together. Plus, who doesn’t like just about anything that’s been seared and roasted?

I made a few minor tweaks to the recipe, based on what I actually had on hand (you all know I won’t run out to buy ingredients; every recipe can be modified or amended). Luckily, I did happen to have some oil-cured black olives in the door of the refrigerator, otherwise, it might not have tasted quite so good. The recipe is less simple than many veggie side dishes, so give yourself about a half and hour for prep and follow up. Also consider having it as a main dish. That’s what I did. When it was all over, I’d eaten more than a half a head of cauliflower for lunch and only didn’t finish the rest because I wanted some for lunch the next day.

Pan Roasted Cauliflower with Tomato Garlic Salsa
(adapted and tweaked from Bon Appetit)
Prep time: 15 minutes Cook time: 15 minutes
(NOTES: Have a cast iron skillet and a baking pan ready before you start prep and preheat the oven to 350F)
Ingredients:
1 head cauliflower, cleaned and cored (but still intact)
3 cloves garlic
3 plum tomatoes
1/2 cup pitted and chopped oil cured black olives
1/4 cup grated fresh parmesan cheese (feta would make a good substitute)
3 T olive oil (as always, you can cut down this amount to suit your preferences)
2 T chopped parsley or cilantro (optional)

Instructions: Cut cauliflower into four or five 1/2″ thick steaks. Set aside the parts that crumble off. Heat 1 T olive oil in the skillet on med-high. Add cauliflower steaks (depending on the size of your pan, you may have to do this in two batches). Sear for 2 minutes, and turn over to sear other side. Each side should be browned. Set the seared cauliflower into the baking dish and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, halve tomatoes. Add another 1/2 – 1 T of olive oil to the still hot skilled, and set the tomato halves face down to sear. Add the 3 (whole) cloves of garlic. Place the pan into the oven for 8 – 10 minutes to roast. While the tomatoes, garlic and cauliflower are roasting, finely chop the leftover florets and bits that fell off when prepping earlier; mix with the chopped olives and set aside. Toss the roasted tomatoes, garlic and 1 T of olive oil into a blender and mix until roughly chopped to make a salsa. Plate the roasted cauliflower, pour the salsa over it, and sprinkle the chopped cauliflower/olives over the top. Add 1 – 2 T of grated parm, and (if you want) the chopped parsley or cilantro, and voila! It’s ready to eat.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the grocery store to pick up another head of cauliflower to make this one all over again!

Serial Cereal Bags – How to Reuse Something Forever

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Cassandra

Cereal Bags ... I love 'em! Open them up, and use them forever.

A very nice lady named Anne from the Bethany Church recently gave me a tip that probably everyone over the age of 60 already knows. She said she re-uses the bags inside her cereal boxes. At first this didn’t seem particularly like news to me; I have reused them before. But she suggested carefully pulling them apart, then using them either for layering cookies or bars (useful around the holidays), or using them like wax paper, with the exception that they can be wiped off and used again and again and again, virtually forever.

I’m not one to pass up a good tip, so I tried it, and I’m hooked for life. The seams pull apart … um … seamlessly … after which remains a perfect rectangle very close to the size of my large bar pan. I have found I can wrap up everything from a banana bread to sandwiches or anything in between, and – just as Anne predicted – wipe down the plastic, air dry it, and it’s good to go again. This will dramatically cut down on my purchase of wax paper and saran wrap, which means I’ll spend less money, have less clutter, and — most importantly, perhaps — use less plastic.

Thanks Anne!

The Best Braised Brisket

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Cassandra

The brisket moments after browning: my family ate up the finished product before I could grab my camera.

I look forward each week to my CSA pick up. It’s a treasure box every time; one week it’ll be full of lovely orange (and clean!) carrots that don’t at all resemble the wormy roots that required lots of trimming pulled out of my own garden this year; another will have bags of freshly washed mescalin mix and gem-like spinach, or a perfectly smooth round cabbage head. And then there’s the meat, which comes every other week: there was that package that at first looked like skinned chicken breasts and ended up to be a whole rabbit (more on that later); plus the ground beef, meaty pork chops, and — most recently — a gorgeous four-pound brisket. It’s not that I couldn’t buy much of this (except the rabbit) down the street at Shaw’s – or at the Hunger Mountain Coop – it’s that I’m simultaneously getting a deep discount by buying directly from the farmer, AND I can rest assured that I’m getting top-notch, grass-fed beef that hasn’t been fed other cows, for instance, or been overcrowded in a feed lot; it’s that I don’t worry about antibiotics or disease, or even just getting a cut that’s been around the cooler too long. The meat is so fresh, it’s like a different animal – so to say – than the equivalent sized cut at the supermarket.

So there I was with a four-pound brisket and a family of five. I did what any girl would do and I Googled brisket recipes — skipped past all the fancy-schmancy ones that included wine, beer, chili, or pearl onions – and found a good basic braised brisket from Gourmet Magazine, 2009 (thank you epicurous). Of course, I amended it to suit what I had on hand and my own personal tastes. The result was a fork-tender melt-in-your-mouth meal that went so quickly I didn’t even have time for a photo opp of the finished product. It was the kind of thing that I might have eaten at my Grandmother Goldner’s table, and that’s saying something.

Never be shy about increasing the amount of veggies in your recipes! These carrots from Fair Food Farm came so clean I didn't even peel them (more nutrients).

Other than increasing the amount of veggies called for in this recipe, I swapped out the quarter-cup of cider vinegar and cup of chicken stock for about 1 3/4 cups of cider; I also changed out the crushed tomatoes for a gallon bag of own garden tomatoes that I’d frozen whole earlier this year (which also added quite a bit of liquid, so I adjusted accordingly). The original recipe called for a 2 pound brisket, so I doubled it based on … my favorite phrase … what I already had. There’s nothing that annoys me more (other than whiny kids) than having to go get some obscure ingredient or unheard of cut of meat for a recipe. Rather, make the recipe match what you have.

I was in the middle of a move while my tomatoes ripened this year, so instead of putting them up in a sauce, I froze them whole in zip loc bags. I toss them into soups (or brisket liquid) and they just melt in, the peels virtually disappearing. I'll probably use this method every year from now on.

NOTE: Make sure you have a heavy bottomed pot on hand that has a tight fitting lid, and is also oven safe. I happen to have such a thing, but boy this is one of those times when I’d have given at least one kidney for some Le Creuset.

The Best Braised Beef Brisket
adapted from Gourmet Magazine, 2009, courtesy of epicurous.com
prep: 20 minutes; cook time: 3 hours.

- 6 tablespoons canola oil
- 1 four-pound piece beef brisket (preferably second-cut)
- 3 medium white onions, chopped
- 6 medium carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 4 celery ribs, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 1 head garlic
- 1 3/4 cups cider
- 1 gallon bag frozen whole tomatoes (I subbed this for a 28 oz can of crushed tomatoes; use whichever suits you).
- herbs, salt, pepper to taste. I used a scant T of thyme and liberally salted the brisket with kosher salt before browning.

Directions: Set your oven rack to the lower 1/3 of the oven and preheat the oven for 350 F. Rinse and pat dry the brisket, then salt & pepper both sides liberally while heating 3 T of the oil in a heavy bottomed 8 quart pot. When oil heats to just before smoking, set in the brisket and brown on both sides — about 7 – 8 minutes. Remove brisket and set aside. If the pot is still oily, add the vegetables (except tomatoes) and never mind the remaining 3 T of oil; if it needs more oil, add the rest and stir the garnis periodically about 6 minutes or until onions start to turn translucent. Then add the liquid, then the frozen (or crushed) tomatoes. Set the browned brisket on top of the veggie liquid (it will not cover the meat, nor should it), cover tightly and put in the oven. Cook, covered, for 3 hours. I served this with jasmine rice cooked in chicken broth, but you could also serve it with potatoes, or just on its own with nothing on the side.

The rough chop of the garnis in this dish make for easy prep.

Don't forget to compost!