One Size Fits All

I’ve decided to be flexible with our diet on our upcoming bicycle trip. This past weekend we biked 130 miles (round trip) to the state park in Delaware and back. Although I thought I was eating alot, I wound up losing 5 lbs. I suppose eventually my body will learn to communicate something besides how much pain I’m in, and, I’ll learn how to eat properly when I’m burning a ton of calories.

Although we took food with us (which we re-heated on the camp’s fire pit using branches found near our site, thus avoiding using our alcohol fueled camp stove), we found that we needed much more food that we had anticipated.

I’ve been reading up about how to eat nutritious meals when doing long distance bike trips and one temptation that I should avoid is eating the same thing day in and day out. Its something I have a tendency to do which is probably okay when I sit in front of a computer all day, but its a different thing when my body starts to demand more nutrition because of what I’m burning up.

Last night I made a fava bean dip first seen on Green Bean’s blog. I was too lazy to make it into a finely ground paste. I mashed it and quickly stuffed myself with it. I made pita chips to go with it. Also called pizza crust chips because the recipe I use to make pita and a pizza crust is the same. The flour, salt, pepper and olive oil is not local.

 

Today I made quiche. After seeing Heather’s post of a crustless quiche, I was inspired enough to make one. But then I thought I would  like a quiche better with a crust. So I made one with a crust. I used this recipe but I modified it a bit. I added half a cup of chickpea flour to the crust because I’m trying to finish up my chickpea flour. I added mushrooms, because Heather did and made my mouth water. I cooked the mushrooms and onions in butter (all local) before adding it on top of the eggs (which I had mixed with sour cream and local basil). The flours and sour cream are not local.

 

I haven’t been focusing on eating locally as much these days since I’m trying to finish up the stuff in our pantry. I finally finished the arrow root powder today and most of the muffin paper cups.

Today I made blueberry corn muffins. Receipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance(VwaV). This will be our breakfast for the week. I also made Spicy Chickpea Curry using the  recipe from Vegetarian cooking (its actually a vegan dish) and I made cobbler using plums and apricots using the recipe from VwaV. The dessert was most satisfying. But then again I just have a sweet tooth.

 

 

 

Tonight’s dinner is garlicky kale with tahini dressing. The recipe is from Vegan w/ a Vengence. And in case you can’t tell, its my favorite cookbook. The kale is local, but the tahini is from Istanbul (not Constantinople).

Now that global warming is probably a reality, brown is in! Tan is cool

We’ve finished all our white goods: flour, rice (sushi, jasmine, basmati). So we’ve switched to brown stuff: whole wheat flour, brown rice. Brown rice isn’t available in bulk bins and since I don’t want to buy several pounds like I normally do (because of our move that will happen in a few months), I bought them in prepackaged plastic bags. The bags are reusable ziplocs…so its not too terrible since the bags can be reused.

I baked bread using whole wheat and for some reason its a bit dense (didn’t rise much in the oven). I didn’t think there would be changes with switching flour, but I’ll play around with the dough the next time I make bread.

The rice I bought was from Lunberg’s, a company based in California and one that follows all the goody-goody policies that I appreciate. The rice I bought was a short grain rice and the cooking time was a bit longer than jasmine rice. The taste is slightly nutty/chewy which I like.  

Today I made baked eggs with creamy leeks from Vegetarian Cooking by Linda Fraser. It was the first time I had leeks and I loved it! I topped it with crumbs made from the bread I baked yesterday.

I rode to the farmer’s market and only purchased from basil, garlic stems (?) and 4 quarts of strawberries. I used one quart to make smoothies using the yogurt I made yesterday.

I then baked some hazelnut biscotti from the Veganomicon cookbook. I didn’t have hazelnuts and the batter from the recipe was too dry so I used hazelnut liquor. I topped the biscotti with pecans.

Now I am making granola for this week’s breakfast. I added some flaxseeds to it. 

Several months after arduous suggested making a meatloaf for a dinner party, I’m finally going to make it for my husband’s lunch this week.

I’m also going to make some stir fried noodles (with buckwheat noodles) using whatever veggies are starting to get forgotten in the crisper.  

I’m also going to make some pesto for sandwich spreads and pizza toppings.  

Update: with pictures:

Granola

 

Strawberry Pie. I made the crust using the same local flour but added 1/4 cup of corn flour which made the dough easier to handle and roll out. For the topping, its the crumbcake style topping using flour, local butter, sugar, cinnamon and pecan nuts.

 

The purples things are purple cabbage. I also added snow peas(?), onions, sesame seeds a dash of sesame oil and soy sauce.

Radishes are in season and I don’t think I’ve had them prior to yesterday. I’ve been introduced to so many new fruits and vegetables since I began eating locally…who knew eating local foods to be so adventurous?

Last night I made radish salad which was most excellent. The recipe is from Blooming Glen farm - a farm that is a regular at the farmers’ market I frequent. 

The recipe is as follows:

1 bunch watermelon radishes or one medium daikon radish
2 tablespoons rice or balsamic vinegar (or a combination)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

Wash and julienne radishes, or grate them. Mix together the rest of the ingredients and dress the radishes with the dressing. Save your radish tops for other uses.

I’m currently reading Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage by William L. Rathje and Cullen Murphy. To claim that the book is  compelling would be an understatement. 

Yesterday evening I read the section on two U.S. food shortages, beef and sugar, that occured in 1973* and 1975. The garbologists found a very odd occurence resulting from the shortages…that more food was wasted during the shortages than before. An excerpt:

In the months after the beef shortage ended, the rate of beef waste (cooked and uncooked, but not counting fat or bone) amounted to about 3 percent of all the beef bought. During the months of the shortage, in contrast, the rate of waste was 9 percent. In other words, people wasted three times more beef when it was in short supply than they did when it was plentiful. 

This conclusion seemed perverse, but the data, when checked, seemed solid. Eventually a Hypothesis was put forward to account for the odd behavior: the practice of crisis-buying. When confronted with the widespread and sometimes alarmist coverage of the beef shortage in the local and national media many people may have responded by buying up all the beef they could get their hands on, even if some of the cuts were unfamiliar. Of course, they didn’t necessarily know how to cook some of those cuts in an appetizing way. More important, they didn’t necessarily know how to store large amounts of meat for an extended period of time. The inevitable result in either case: greater waste.

The general proposition drawn from the findings about red meat — that wastage of a food increases when that food is scarce — was unexpected, but in the context it seemed reasonable. The reaction among nutrition educators and home economists when this result was reported, however, was somewhat muted, their criticism being that the hypothesis was probably not broadly applicable to a wide range of foods.

 

Fate smiled on the Garbage Project in the spring of 1975 by unleashing a sugar shortage. As the price of sugar and high-sugar products doubled, the wastage of those items in Tucson’s garbage tripled. Because Tucson is only sixty miles from the U.S. border with Mexico, where the price of sugar had remained stable, many Tucsonans stocked up with sugar that they bought south of the border. Mexican sugar, however, is not as highly processed as American sugar; it is browner, and it turns hard quickly. Before long, hard, brown bricks of Mexican sugar began appearing in the garbage. Some Tucsonans began buying Desserta and other unfamiliar products made from sugar substitutes, such as cyclamates; the reviews were plainly evident in the form of unconsumed discards.

Also prominent in the trash were items containing sugar that had crystallized during the course of long-term hoarding. In sum, the behavior of people in the midst of the sugar shortage corroborated the findings about red meat. The sugar shortage, more sharply than the beef shortage, also drew attention to the role that unfamiliarity with a food plays in the wasting of that food.

From the information garnered during the beef and sugar shortages the Garbage Project developed the First Principle of Food Waste: The more repetitive your diet — the more you eat the same things day after day — the less food you waste. In hindsight the First Principle seems simple and obvious. The waste in garbage from the standard sixteen-ounce and twenty-four-ounce loaves of sliced bread that every household buys regularly is virtually nonexistent — at most, crusts and ends; this is because common sandwich bread is used continually, meal after meal.

 So I wonder how much rice is being wasted in the U.S. today. When I first heard about the big box stores limiting how much rice one could buy, my first thought was: since when did Americans start eating rice? I thought Americans ate flour: doughnuts, cookies, pasta, bread, cakes, etc. I thought rice was more of an Asian staple. I am also confused on whether there is actually a rice shortage…I thought the governmental mandates pushing for ethanol would increase the cost of corn. Is ethanol somehow affecting the price of rice? Are rice fields being cleared to make way for corn? I am slowly making my way through the WaPo’s series of articles on the "Global Food Crisis" and I have no way of knowing how much of this is just manufactured and how much of it is real. I imagine floods and other natural disasters do disrupt any food route…but I can’t figure out why this is global. Additionally I am not entirely sure my food bill has increased from previous years. I have more or less stopped going to any brick and mortar grocery store. My purchases at local food sources such as the farmers’ market have gone way up since last year. Currently the only things I am buying from a brick store are: coffee, nuts and some herbs like cilantro which is not in season yet. Other foods (like flour) not available at a farmer’s stand is being purchased in bulk from online vendors. The per pound cost of the organic flour we use is less than $1. The rice bags I buy are purchased from the Indian grocery store where the price was the same as it was a year ago. I’ve never been to a Costco so I don’t know if rice was something that was sold there previously. I’m very curious on finding out if food waste in the U.S. has gone down because of this "crisis"…because wasting food is wasting money.

* The year 1973 is very interesting for very many reasons. For one, U.S. experience its first oil crisis due to events resulting from the Yom Kippur War. The Bretton Woods system also came to a close in 1973. So many things happened that year that changed so much.

 

In an attempt to bring no new plastic into the house this month, I decided to make sriracha sauce instead of buying it.

I had alot of dried red chillis sitting forgotten on a kitchen shelf and thought it would be the perfect way to get use it up. I first soaked the chillis in a solution of white vinegar and water for one week turning the chilli peppers over once a day to let it soak in the vinegar solution. Today I ground it all up in a blender along with salt, sugar and garlic. I added some water to make the sauce more spreadable. The recipe I used is based on the one here. I did a taste test with the last bit of store bought, plastic contained sriracha sauce and the sauce I made has a more intense flavor. Mine is much, much better.

SFordinarygirl asked me to share a sample of what I eat as a vegan to stay full. I was so flattered that someone values my thoughts that I basked in that glory for awhile.

After I got done with the basking, I thought about providing a response. I tracked what I ate for a week and found that I am a very boring eater. Also my upbringing and associated culture has had a huge impact on my eating habits. This means that I’m Indian and eat alot of Indian food.

When I have a choice I eat vegan meals. If I am offered a meal that has no vegan options, I eat it. I typically eat 100% vegan (except for honey which isn’t considered vegan by some) on weekdays and eat vegetarian on weekends, meaning cheese. Sometimes I will try meat if its exceptional or served by friends at parties who don’t keep track of my latest food habit. My husband makes fantastic pizza, and we have access to a variety of really excellent cheese, so I eat pizza about once or twice a week. I don’t believe in serving sizes. I eat until I’m full. And I have a healthy BMI. I am not big on exercising either, but I walk about a mile every day and more on the weekends. I also ride my bicycle on the weekends and it varies from 4 to 50 miles depending on my mood and desire to explore. This doesn’t seem to be standard advice, but I only eat when I’m hungry. Additionally, I didn’t grow up eating the Standard American Diet so I’m not that crazy about it.

My husband and I eat meals that can best be classified as culinary confusion (or ethnic mashup). We draw inspiration from the following styles of cooking on a regular basis:

Chinese
Indian (the Asian variety)
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Mexican
Middle eastern region

I typically try out one new recipe every week. For example, recently I bought alot of rutabagas that was a steal and then came home and realized that I probably wouldn’t like rutabagas in the common way its prepared. So I decided to turn it into curry.  I had it over rice, my husband had it over an emu egg that was made in the style of tamagoyaki (Japanese omelet). The emu egg was local.

I cannot cook without a recipe. I am just not imaginative in the kitchen…and I rely on Isa Chandra’s Vegan with a Vegence (VwaV), Linda Frazer’s Vegetarian Cooking, the internet and blogs for recipe ideas. Most of the recipes for VwaV are available online on someone’s blog. Pink Haired Girl has made most of the recipes in VwaV and taken pictures. Most recently I found the chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon to be incredibly filling. I served it with red wine roux and lemon roasted potatoes.

For breakfast I generally eat: granola, fruits, homemade cookies, pancakes, leftovers, scrambled tofu with bread, something Indian based like samosas or chappatis and curry, or a spicy noodle soup (noodles dunked in vegan hot & sour soup). My husband for some odd reason loves eating gazpacho for breakfast (he doesn’t make it into a soup, just cuts up the ingredients and lets it marinate in olive oil and lemon juice overnight).  

For lunch I almost always eat a bean and rice dish. Last week I had white beans mixed with teriyaki sauce served over rice every day for lunch. If I’m tired of rice, I eat it mexican style: quesadillas for example.  Or I eat rice with mixed veggies stir fried. I like dessert so I have some thing sweet afterward, its usually fruit or cookies when I’m at work. Or some sort of home made pie if I’m at home. Or ice cream (I like soy dream). Rice and beans is just easier to transport, so its what I have at work everyday.

Mid afternoon snack: whatever is available - nuts, fruits, cookies or lots of water if I’m unprepared.

Dinner: Sometimes I have a salad if I didn’t have a heavy lunch. I usually add nuts, fruits, fake meat like tofu or seitan (marinated in some sauce and baked ), and home made dressing. Most of the time I don’t eat dinner as my lunch is pretty filling.

Beverages: I drink beer in the evenings (which might explain some of my more incoherent comments online), or wine. I’ve been drinking black coffee with sugar in the mornings and water the rest of the day.

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Here is another thing that I have experienced but my friends haven’t. For the past eight years I thought I was a glutton…I just couldn’t stop thinking about food as I was constantly hungry. And it drove me mad. About two months ago I sat down to think about why I didn’t experience hunger pangs so frequently when I was growing up and thought about what had changed. My conclusion: I was on the birth control pill. I went off the pill about 2 months ago and promptly lost 10 lbs and quit having hunger pangs and thinking about food all the freakin’ time. I had a bowl of chilli for breakfast this morning and it was enough.

Last year I tried many new fruits and vegetables that I’d never had before. While there has been studies on the time it takes for people to adjust to new foods, the asian pears I had from North Star Orchard was….unbelievably delicious! I didn’t need to convince my taste buds that they needed any "adjusting". North Star Orchard’s, Lisa Kerschner is featured in a Newsweek article titled "Farming as a Labor of Love". An excerpt:

Additionally, farmers are not always looked upon very highly. In some circles, announcing that your husband - or, worse yet, you - are a farmer is often met with looks of incredulousness. I’ve had a number of people ask why I choose to farm rather than do something more lucrative and be able to have a few vacations a year.

Last winter at a farmers-market meeting, I was asked this question by one of the market’s board members (who happens to be a banker). He had been astounded to hear about farming’s hardships year after year, both at the meetings and when he shopped at the farmers market. He emphatically threw down his pen and notes and said, "I just can’t take it anymore! Why, for gosh sakes, do you folks keep doing this?"

We all looked at each other, and one by one the various farmers in the room spoke up. Without fail, every one of us stated some version of this: "We love growing food for people."

 

Last week I made chickpea cutlets from the Veganomicon cookbook. I had some leftover chickpeas so I made Spicy Chickpeas from Vegatarian Cooking by Linda Frazer. Onions, tomatoes and chickpeas were local.

Apparently the 4th episode didn’t teach me anything.I have no idea what made me ill. Was it the non-local strawberries? The ice cream? The restaurant kim chee?

This poisoning meant that I purchase many nonlocal items: oranges, orange juice, and other items. I’ll post my riot4austerity numbers when I feel better.

This is the bread we’ve been making using a modified version of the no-knead recipe. We store it on the counter top in the kitchen and the bread last for more than a week without getting mouldy. 

I think eating locally is starting to get easier despite the fact that we’re still buying at least 2 organic tomatoes (grown in mexico) at $4.99/lb every time we buy groceries. I will not be doing this anymore…because Mexico is far away and thus not local. I did go without tomatoes for about 2 months…but I still can’t completely stop eating it. There are too many dishes I eat that call for tomatoes and I just don’t like squash and turnips and parsnips and an entire assortment of veggies that are available in the winter season. Obviously if I had canned the summer produce I wouldn’t have this problem. But…I have many excuses for not canning including: school was driving me crazy and I was terrified of this toxin called botulinum toxin.

Except for oil, flour, rice, chocolate, coffee and some spices we’ve been eating local produce for nearly all our meals. I did experiment with local spelt flour and found it to be a good replacement for regular midwestern flour from King Arthur, but spelt flour is a bit too expensive for our budget right now.

One of the reasons I’m really looking forward to moving to Southern California is because of the food. There is a possibility that I can eat locally grown citrus fruits and bananas and avocados and have fresh cilantro all year round. Right now, I could just go out and eat the non local items like I am with tomatoes, but I can’t seem to do it. At some point last year I read articles and watched documentaries on the plight of banana workers. Google will yield many results. It really depressed me and I asked my husband if we could stop buying bananas. He had already given up avocados…so this was yet another item I was asking to give up. After he watched a documentary or two with me (Life and Debt depicts this issue quite well) he agreed. An added bonus to not eating bananas would be the elimination of fruit flies attracted to banana peals in our composter.

I am trying out all these challenges to test myself and for a bit of excitement…but now I have to grapple with all these moral issues to boot. I find it difficult to eat a freakin’ banana now because I have the image of banana workers getting beaten by cops for asking for higher wages.  

I’m looking forward to berry season. I’m sick of eating apples.