Another potluck and farmer's market haul

My tabouleh received a lukewarm greeting at the baby shower. Mostly because the party was at 2:30 and people wanted more snacky food. This was good for me because it means I got to bring most of it home.
I have another potluck today, a picnic in the park at a concert. I want to be sure to bring something unusual but also to work with what I have so I've picked a recipe for Tomato Mint Quinoa salad which will be fresh and light and probably not something anyone else is making. Plus, I have all the ingredients except the radishes and I'm just going to leave them out. I don't think I've ever bought a radish in my life. I will FINALLY finish the tomatoes from a couple weeks ago.

My farmer's market haul for the week:

1 lb kale $1
6 yams $2
3 cucumbers $1
3 green peppers $1
1 qt green beans $2
1/4 peck peaches $6 (but it's a ton of peaches!)
1 lb rhubarb $3.50
1 dz eggs 1.75
1/2 gall milk 3.50
6 small onions $2

Total: $23.75

I have chicken, oatmeal, rice and some beans left so I'll probably buy a few loaves of bread and maybe a jar of peanut butter and be done with it.

Two weeks ago the big market explosion was the tomatoes. This week it was the peaches. I can't wait to have peachy oatmeal and since I have so many, I will probably freeze the rhubarb to use in the fall with apples.

Visiting Family

I'm leaving tonight for my sister's until Monday. it's about 600miles so we will drive through the night (I sleep and my housemate drives and then when we get there, he gets to sleep).

This presents a dilemma for me because I want to be generous and share in the expense for food but I'd also like to stay within my weekly budget if I can. So my plan is to take actual food with me rather than offering my little $15 dollars. I think this works really well because there are things I can get cheaper here than she can get there and it also helps with her ability to get everything done.

This is the list of what I'm planning to take:

6 loaves of bread (from the outlet 3/$1)
2 sets of hot dog buns 2.50

Two pounds of coffee which I already have in my freezer
that "relish" accident I made the other day- I'm going to stick it in a pretty jar and make it be gourmet

I'm also going to make a couple pounds of Greek style green beans . green bean are running about $1.50/lb right now.

and, since I am developing a surplus of milk and eggs, I'll do a bread pudding to take with me too.

Then I need to get some beer so I'll get a case of the local stuff and that will put me over budget but it will be worth it since it's sort of a gift.

The more I plan, the more excited I'm getting!

Ahh kale

I don't think I ever had kale when I was growing up. In fact, if I had to guess, I'd say I probably never had it before two years ago. For sure, I never cooked it before then. But, a year or two ago I was at a retreat center that inlcuded a "plain" food section in its buffet every day. One day, the regular fare (all vegetarian) didn't look all that appealing to me so I was looking around for something to add to my plate. That's when I found kale. At the time, I followed the example of the Buddhist nuns with whom I was sharing a table and I added Gomasio (sesame salt) and a dash of umeboshi plum vinegar (I learned fast that a small dash of this is enough!).

Now, I'm not sure that I would say that I think kale is the most delicious food ever but I enjoy the flavor and eating it always makes me feel like I'm doing something good for my body. Just look at the ratings: (table courtesy of The World's Healthiest Foods

Kale, boiled 1.00 cup 130.00 grams 36.40 calories
Nutrient	Amount	DV (%)	Nutrient Density	World's Healthiest Foods Rating
vitamin K	1062.10 mcg	1327.6	656.5	excellent
vitamin A	9620.00 IU	192.4	95.1	excellent
vitamin C	53.30 mg	88.8	43.9	excellent
manganese	0.54 mg	27.0	13.4	excellent
dietary fiber	2.60 g	10.4	5.1	very good
copper	0.20 mg	10.0	4.9	very good
tryptophan	0.03 g	9.4	4.6	very good
calcium	93.60 mg	9.4	4.6	very good
vitamin B6 (pyridoxine)	0.18 mg	9.0	4.5	very good
potassium	296.40 mg	8.5	4.2	very good
iron	1.17 mg	6.5	3.2	good
magnesium	23.40 mg	5.8	2.9	good
vitamin E	1.11 mg	5.6	2.7	good
omega 3 fatty acids	0.13 g	5.4	2.7	good
vitamin B2 (riboflavin)	0.09 mg	5.3	2.6	good
protein	2.47 g	4.9	2.4	good
vitamin B1 (thiamin)	0.07 mg	4.7	2.3	good
folate	17.29 mcg	4.3	2.1	good
phosphorus	36.40 mg	3.6	1.8	good
vitamin B3 (niacin)	0.65 mg	3.3	1.6	good

World's Healthiest Foods Rating	Rule
excellent	DV>=75%	OR	Density>=7.6	AND	DV>=10%
very good	DV>=50%	OR	Density>=3.4	AND	DV>=5%
good	DV>=25%	OR	Density>=1.5	AND	DV>=2.5%

Of course, the other fantastic thing about Kale is how incredibly cheap it is. I can buy a pound for a dollar and that will last me at least 4 meals. It's such a hardy plant, too, that I can get it fresh and local from the farmer's market for most of the year.


For preparation, I still tend to eat it just as I did that first time with a bit of Gomasio or plum vinegar. I make my own sesame salt which end sup being really cheap and useful to have around the house (I just toast the seeds with regular table salt in the toaster oven). If I have them, I may also add other Japanese seasonings.

Based on a general search for kale recipes, it seems to go well with lots of other ingredients, form noodles to beans to other vegetables.

For a nice selection of Kale recipes, try Culinate.com or Epicurious

Given what's hanging around my house at the moment, the two recipes I'm most interested in trying are:

Tuscan Kale Chips and Rice with Kale and Tomatoes

There are a couple of other recipes I'm eying up for next week too!

Farmer's market Haul

I have finally managed to eat most of the food that has been hanging around the house. I knew that I wouldn't be able to use all of the baking ingredients or sugar so I made no real effort to do that. But I really wanted to clear out the rest of the stuff. I feel much better now that most of the excess food is gone. The organization in the kitchen is much better and I have a better grasp of what there is to have for each meal.

Last week, during he great "eat down", the only food I bought was a half gallon of milk and some potatoes. This week, I decided that I needed to get some good fresh vegetables to fill out what's left in the house which is mostly carbohydrates. So, my haul from the farmer's market today was:

half gallon of milk 3.50
head of cabbage 2.00
pound of kale 1.00
5 large tomatoes 4.00
3 summer squash 2.00

total is 12.50 and I'm hoping not othave to spend much more this week.

I STILL have lettuce left over (it's holding up amazingly well)

While trying to use up stuff, I made a delicious couscous recipe. it's a sweet dish which I eat for breakfast and dessert. I love couscous in the summer because it take no effort at all to cook but is a nice starchy food. the ingredients for my dish were:

couscous
dried coconut
dried apples
dried figs
raisins
cinnamon
ground ginger
honey

I put all the ingredient into one container and then added the recommended mount of water and stirred until the water was all absorbed. That was it- very simple and delicious!

But I don't feel like eating that!

I was preparing my lunch for today and feeling uninspired. "This is crazy," I thought "I wanted all this food when I bought it so there is no reason not to want it now." Eh, but I just didn't.
I dug around some more and took the dog for a walk and while I was out, I came up with a few options for things to make. Once I got thinking about it, my mind was on a roll and I thought of all sorts of ways to combine what I have into something I felt like eating.

I ended up with:

oatmeal with milk and raisins for breakfast
large salad with sunflower seeds and dried cranberries and farfalle pasta with roasted asparagus and spring onions for lunch
Miso soup and almonds for snacks

Now I'm pretty excited about the menu. But I was thinking about the whole "I don't feel like eating that today" habit." How many of us have thought about going somewhere for lunch and someone in the group said "Oh, I had Chinese yesterday." or "I'm having pizza tonight" ? In my group of friends, the former would be greeted with "What do you think the Chinese do every day?"

Really, there is no reason (apart maybe from the high sodium content) not to eat Chinese food two days in a row. Even the smallest hole in the wall place has a wide variety of dishes to suit almost any taste.

The thing is that most of us have gotten into the habit of a lot of variation and eating what we want when we want to. Some of my friends never cook more than they can eat in a single meal because they hate to have leftovers even for one extra meal.

For me, making lunch today was hard because the food has been around in my kitchen and isn't new and exciting. I feel forced into eating it and I'd rather eat something else just because.

It made me think about all the people who never get to choose what they eat: refugees, the poor who rely on soup kitchens and other charities for every meal, prisoners, many children, many of the elderly, people in nursing homes, hospitals, hospice, etc. Most of these people have lost many other freedoms in addition to the freedom to choose food which makes the vast quantity of choice I have here in the US seem like a huge luxury.

Part of eating to live and not living to eat is choosing a diet that meets the daily nutritional requirements. If you are strict about it, your freedom of choice in your food selections will be limited. Yes, you can structure a basic menu for the day but at some point, you are probably going to have to eat something you don't feel like eating. I'm not sure why we are so insistent on this variety. It's easier and more economical to cook one large batch of food and portion it out into several meals and sticking to a diet with less variation makes it much easier to control portions and nutritional intake.

Once I started playing with the options for my menu, I got excited because I started to see all the possibilities. I need to concentrate on that as a luxury and enjoy what I have rather than wishing I had something better.

Eating down goes on and on and on....

The Farmer's market was a challenge this morning. Everywhere I looked I though "Oh, I'll just get that." But, i was good and I really stuck to my plan of buying only milk (half gallon of 2%) and rhubarb.

Because I still had some rhubarb left from last week that I wanted to use up, I decided to make a variation on a bread pudding. For this, I used:

4 thin stalks of rhubarb
1 apple (I found a decent one in the refrigerator)
splenda
5 eggs
1 cup milk
honey
brown sugar
3 slices cinnamon raisin bread
whole wheat flour
cinnamon

I chopped the rhubarb and apple and put them in a5 qt casserole with some splenda and about 1/2 cup of water and put that into the microwave for 3 minutes
While that was in the microwave, I mixed all the ingredients except the bread and flour together.
Once the fruits mix was done, I sprinkled about 1/3 bup of whole wheat flour on it and ripped up the bread slices and layered them on top.
I poured the liquid mix over the fruit and bread layers and baked in the oven at 350 for about an hour.

It ends up being kind of sweet and custardy.
With my housemate's help, this week, I have managed to finish off the following items from my list of the other day:
lentils
cauliflower
one jar of honey
bananas
chicken thighs
bread (which I notice wasn't even on the list but the rye bread is gone now too)
brown sugar
rhubarb (which has been replaced)
the almost empty tub of margarine


I still have to work on that heap of lettuce but it should be gone in a few days.

Tonight's dinner will be a big salad with something that I haven't decided on yet. I still have tortillas but may save those for lunches this week with the tuna and/or sardines. Maybe one of the prepared Indian packets will work. I've been trying to get my housemate to eat the frozen pizzas but he isn't going for it.

This brings up an interesting point. Most of the budget guidelines suggest that families and couples can eat for less than a single person can. I can see that this would be true if everyone is willing to eat the same thing. In my household, my partner and I have very different diets. mine is primarily vegetarian with meat at a couple dinners a week. His is primarily carnivorous and he never eats vegetables or anything spicy or unusual. Trust me, there have been more than a few occasions when I've freaked out over his food choices. But what this means is that we are each pretty much eating like single people.
He will eat things like the bread pudding above or oatmeal with fruit in it but he won't touch my salad or bean dishes ever. As a result, I get no real benefit from having two people in the house unless I compromise my diet to meet his.

The Great "Eat Down"

Today I begin “eating down” the kitchen. I realized almost immediately that this needs to be done carefully so that I don’t fall into the same old traps. What this means is balancing the desire to get the stuff eaten and out of the house so that I can move on with it and not over consuming just because the stuff is there. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if I start my new food plan next week or the week after or if I have a modified plan for a few weeks as long as the plan is sensible and not wasteful.

Today I planned the following menu:

Breakfast:

Tea

Rhubarb pie oatmeal (rhubarb and frozen berries cooked with a bit of sweetener and then cooked with a layer of oatmeal sweetened with honey over it)

Snack:

Rye toast with butter

Lunch:

Curried lentils

cauliflower

Banana

Salad of lettuce, dried fish (these are small anchovies that are sweet and spicy from a Chinese grocery), sunflower seeds and dried cranberries with a rice wine vinegar and oil dressing.

Snack

Almonds

Dinner:

Cauliflower

Couscous

Chicken thigh

Asparagus

salad

Looks like a good day’s worth of eating and comes in just under 2000 calories but I still had to fight the inclination to add more to it just because the food was there to be eaten. As it is, this menu barely made a dent in the food that is around the house. I used up the mixed berries (but gave half the oatmeal to my housemate) and about half the rhubarb. This day’s diet is also fairly high in fat, even though the fat comes from sources that aren’t too bad (olive oil, almonds).

Grams Calories %-Cals Calories 1,900 Fat 115.8 1,002 53 % Saturated 21.4 187 10 % Polyunsaturated 30.0 257 14 % Monounsaturated 57.3 496 26 % Carbohydrate 173.4 669 35 % Dietary Fiber 40.2 Protein 65.6 231 12 % Alcohol 0.0 0 0 %