CSA, curry, salsa

Haven't posted in a long time... Did anyone notice? A lot has happened in the time since I was posting more frequently. I have been riding my bike a lot and have lost a pretty good amount of weight... About 25 pounds so far, give or take. I bid farewell to my 6 wisdom teeth, and so far I am happy that they are gone. We just ditched Planet Organics and are trying out a CSA called Two Small Farms. They sent us corn, beautiful heirloom tomatoes, tomatillos, sweet red peppers (HOT), strawberrys, red onions, and spinach. Possibly some other stuff but that's what I remember.

The problem with PO was that most of the time, the food (supposedly picked less than 24 hours before delivery) was already spoiling, and the stuff that wasn't was going to soon. We couldn't just eat all the food in one day, so our interest in PO kinda waned and we ended up wasting food every week, which made us unhappy. It looks like the weekly portion from TSF will be a better size, and so far I am more impressed with the quantity. Also, we like the idea that we're supporting a few local farms. With PO, it was supposedly all local, but, well, that proved to be the case much less of the time than we'd hoped. Oh well. They're a good business and they try hard, I think, but perhaps they have moved in a direction that is not in line with our interest.

Anyway, tonight I made a curry with corn and potatoes. Boiled those both first. I sauteed onions, garam masala, star anise, and a cinnamon stick for a while cutting the corn off the cobs, occasionally adding water to the pot to soften and meld it all together. I used ghee, btw, mostly because I've got some I want to use up. I do like it's flavor, but I'm happy enough to just use olive oil, even when most people say its flavor is too distinct for a given recipe.

Anyway, I added the potatoes and corn to the pot and a few cups of water, and put it on about medium heat. I added a chopped red pepper (which is currently burning my thumb), some peanut butter, and some almond milk, and then let it simmer for about 20 minutes. It was pretty liquidy at that point, but after letting it sit for a while, whilst I made the salsa and assembled burritos from preexisting parts, it had thickened up to a nice consistency. I'm looking forward to eating it, although sadly I haven't been very hungry today and still am not*.

For the salsa, I just chopped and blended all the tomatillos, one onion, one heirloom tomato, and two chili peppers, which may have turned out to be too much. I added a bit of water to help with the blending but I think that was the wrong thing to do. It could be that simmering this whole mixture would be good, but I'm not planning to try it now... Just an idea for next time. Although I may try it, given that I can barely eat it as it is, due to its heat.

*Note: there is, however, a root beer float in my near future.

I don't know what to call it.

For tonight's dinner, I sauteed a variety of summer squashes with dill and basil, steamed some spinach, and pureed it all with some tahini. The inspiration was a mixture of baba ganoush and palak panir, and it came out very well. I served it over rice.

Sweet english peas

We got a whole bunch of these in our Planet Organics deliveries the past two weeks, and I wanted to use them before they went bad, even though I didn't know what to do with them. I ended up more or less following this recipe except I used non-dairy buttery stuff instead of butter and orange blossom honey instead of sugar. The mint came from our garden. I was ready to put the peas on the "do not send" list, because they seemed like they'd be too much work, but shelling them wasn't hard or even as slow as I expected, cooking them was easy, and they're much better than the usual frozen peas I've had.

Some meals I prepared this week

Last night I made a few dishes inspired by the gujarati cuisine at Kokila's Kitchen in Cupertino. The main dish consisted of many little potatoes boiled until soft, then simmered for a half hour or so with onion, cauliflower, mustard seeds, cinnamon sticks, star anise, fresh mint, turmeric, coriander, asfoetida, a bit of salt, and a splash of wine. On the side, we had green beans sauteed in similar spices, minus the mustard seeds and add cayenne.

I was planning to make Palak Paneer tomorrow, but I was bored this evening and it occurred to me that we always say "boy, that curry tasted better the second day, after it had some time to meld." So, I went ahead and made palak paneer this evening. I used more spinach than I normally do, steamed it until wilted and then blended it rather than chopping it as usual. I sauteed the paneer (in the future I may generally use tofu, but we already had the paneer) in the cast iron skillet and some spices in the big pot for the palak... Let's see, I used curry leaves, cinnamon sticks, garam masala, turmeric, asfoetida, cayenne, and a bit of salt. I added the blended spinach back and let the whole thing simmer for about an hour, adding the paneer in part way. Usually I'd add yogurt, but this time I don't think it really needs it. I will leave that until serving time tomorrow night, because it did come out a bit on the spicey side and my wife (yes, wife! I said it again!) might like the yogurt to cut the spice a bit.

The texture is definitely a lot more like what I'd find in a restaurant... I guess the blender does work better than knife for this.

Bike fuel

I've recently started commuting on bicycle again after a two or three year hiatus. The new commute is 12 miles each way instead of 3, but back then I used to take a 30 mile detour two or three times a week. I've noticed a big change since I was 24, which is that I can't just have a sip of water, go ride 30 miles, and be ready for a nice lunch... Now I actually seem to require some kind of sustenance before I go!

For the most part, I have been making smoothies for my morning fuel (supplemented by a double-shot of espresso a third of the way into the ride). The base is banana, soy yogurt, cashew butter, soy or almond milk, and cocoa powder from Trader Joes. The last two days, I have also thrown in an apple, and ended up with a very thick, pudding-like smoothie which tastes great and keeps me going through the bike ride all the way until lunchtime.

chocolate tofu pie

I made a chocolate tofu pie the other day to serve at a party on Friday. I started with a store bought graham cracker crust, two bricks of silken tofu, and a bar of baking chocolate. I melted the chocolate and then blended it with the tofu. At that point, it wasn't chocolatey enough, so I added some cocoa powder and kept blending until it was smooth. Then I filled the crust and stuck it in the refrigerator.

It came out tasting great, but it was more pudding-like than I'd hoped. Actually, it'd make a fantastic pudding, but I was trying to make pie. I either need to put something in to thicken it up, or (as a friend suggested) try a different brand of tofu which may have a lower water content.

Also, next time I will go with my original gut (ha ha) instinct and get an extra bar of chocolate, in case the one is not enough for the amount of tofu.

Tonight's adventures: burritos & muffins

First, I made stuff to put in burritos... Leftover brown rice, a rinsed can of pinto beans, salsa, and "sour cream uncheez sauce," which basically consists of cashew butter, fresh lemon juice, and a touch of nutritional yeast. This mixture really hit the spot for me.

Unfortunately, the tortillas were a flat out (ha ha) disaster. I think I got the dough to the right consistency, but the recipe (basically 2 to 1 and a bit masa harina and water) said to roll them out between two sheets of wax paper, and I found it to be nearly impossible to transfer them from the wax paper to the skillet without them falling apart. I got ONE good one, which of course wasn't really ideal for a burrito anyway, because it was too crispy. I might try this again to make gorditas or crispy tacos, but it really didn't work for the burritos, so I guess I will have to get some store-bought flour tortillas to finish the burritos... It's too bad, because I was hoping to share them with a gluten-allergic friend.

I made some muffins, too, partly because I was annoyed at my defeat at the hands of the tortillas. Roughly 2 cups of flour, all purpose, brown rice, and almond, in some reasonable proportion favoring the first two, combined with some cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder and soda, all vaguely like a recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. I put a banana, some soy yogurt, soy milk, oil, and cashew butter in the blender and pureed it, and then stirred all that in to the batter. Filled the muffin cups and baked for 20 minutes at 400 and they came out quite nice... A little on the dense side, but tasty... I couldn't bring myself to use as much sugar as the recipe called for, so they're not as sweet as they could be, but I think with the banana and the cocoa they have a very good flavor. They stick to the muffin cups a bit too much; I'm not sure what to do about that.

I will probably edit this in the future and put in some links, but for now I'm off to bed. Tomorrow morning I plan to ride my bike at least part of the way to work, for the first time in a long time. It's an awful long and dangerous commute entirely by bike (15 miles each way, give or take) but I am excited about it... I need the exercise, I miss riding, and I will be burning less gasoline.