Tag Archives: food

Food combinations

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This week we are getting:
# Asparagus
# Green Garlic
# Chard
# Salad Mix
# Spinach
# Radishes
# Sugar Snap Peas
# Tokyo Turnips

We still have spinach, some salad mix, kale, and fennel in the fridge as well. I’m trying to figure out meal planning for the week.

We have (in the freezer) chicken, different kinds of sausage, and several cuts of beef.

We have cheese (cheddars mostly, but also some parmesan), eggs, pasta, and rice of several kinds.

Of course there are other things in the house but those are the biggies. Any suggestions?

Experimental cooking

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I’m going to boil some spaghetti noodles and chard. Then I’m going to stir fry them with garlic, oil, apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, maybe a splash of soy sauce.

Hm. I wonder if this will work out.

ETA: I added harisa which is a blend of hot red peppers, olive oil, spices, and garlic.

This is hella spicy but really good.

Meat

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I’m looking into ordering some grass fed beef. It looks like ordering half a cow costs $6.15/lb while a whole cow costs $6.00/lb. Half a cow represents ~170 lbs of meat and a whole cow is ~340 lbs of meat (makes sense now doesn’t it). There would be additional delivery fees as well. I’m putting this up here because I am open to sharing this order with a bunch of people (all co-op style) if there is interest. I would cheerfully deal with picking up the meat (I would need to rent/borrow a truck for a whole cow) and arranging for it to be divvied up. The meat would be a mixture of steaks, roasts, ground beef and stew. Usually a breakdown for a split (half) of a cow looks like this:
15 lbs pounds steaks (one – two pound packages)
17 lbs roasts (2.5 – 4 lbs)
35 lbs pounds ground beef (1 lb. packages)
11 lbs chuck and round steaks (1.5 – 2 lb. packages)
7 lbs stew meat (1 lb packages)

I don’t have the storage for a whole cow by myself but I could potentially help with storing some meat for other people on a limited basis. This would need to be negotiated case by case because I will run out of room. The company I am looking at is: www.morrisgrassfed.com

Pickup would be in early June, this gives us all time to eat out of our freezers and make some room. 🙂

So! Who is interested? We could have a meat pick-up party. 🙂 I would like to put in an order by the end of April.

Want to eat!

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I have recently heard about a few new-to-me restaurants that I want to go to.

http://essanaycafe.com is in Fremont and it sounds like a pretty interesting restaurant. The Prix Fixe menu in particular sounds really interesting.
http://www.pampaspaloalto.com/ is in Palo Alto and I really really really want to go here. I mean, meat. And more meat. And more meat. And the sides sound good too. 🙂
http://tymefortea.com is also in Fremont. I think that a girly sort of outing is in order. *cough*JennyhasWednesdayoff*cough**cough*MarkletLauraborrowthecar*cough*

It would be awesome if people read this post as: “Hey! Do any of these restaurants sound good to you? I would love to find people to go with!”

Cookin’

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Today we did our best to cook up the stuff from the farm share box. We cooked: swiss chard, kale, rutabaga, carrots, green garlic, asparagus, and broccoli. In addition to veggies we cooked a couple of chicken breasts in mustard, and put many of the veggies into a frittata (we also added the last of the artichoke heart in the frittata). We have spinach, cabbage, red leaf lettuce, and romaine lettuce for salads. Oh, and I have a little bit of celery left that we will finish up this week.

We probably made enough food for us for the whole week because I am going to be gone for a couple of days. Whereas Noah misses eating out cause it is fun and variety and such I feel pretty good about the fact that he is going to be eating a neat variety of interesting healthy foods for really cheap with basically no effort on his part.

So yeah, this cooking thing is going pretty well. 🙂 I still don’t think I could/would want to be a vegetarian I’m happy that we are eating such a variety of vegetables.

Hot cereal and compassion

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Today I decided that I should probably not put my normal 2-3 tablespoons of refined white sugar on my cream of wheat. If I want my kid to eat less sugar I need to lead the charge. (In my defense: I use less sugar than my mother.) So I chopped up a couple of fresh strawberries and used two teaspoons of strawberry preserves. It was alright but not terribly sweet so I added a teaspoon of sugar. It was good enough for me. My hope is that with practice I won’t need the added sugar after a while. 🙂

As for compassion: I’m having a hard time finding compassion for a mama of my acquaintance and I don’t feel good about my lack of compassion. Her son is six weeks older than Shanna and she hit postpartum depression about a month ago. I’ve talked to her about depression in general, coping skills and vitamins/supplements that tend to help and that’s all fine. I’m having a hard time because she is on disability leave from her job and she is not spending any time with her son. She continues to send him off to his grandparents every day (they are in their late 70’s) and she stays home by herself. I have a long history of depression but I always manage to do the things that have to be done. I have never personally been so depressed that I neglected basic care for another person. On one hand, she is making sure her son is well cared for and that’s good. On the other hand: she’s not taking care of her son, her husband and his parents are. I feel guilty about judging her because I haven’t walked in her shoes and it isn’t my place. On the other hand it’s hard for me to supply the compassion she deserves when she comes to my house crying.

I feel conflicted. I almost want to tell her that being depressed in no excuse to pawn off care of her son. I wouldn’t do it no matter how depressed I was. But that’s me. I have no idea what it is like to live in someone else’s head so I shouldn’t be such a snot.

URGH!

meat.

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This week I used two chicken breasts, five sausages (of two different varieties), and ~nine strips of bacon in cooking. That’s it for the week. Wow. I had one meat sandwich. I’m feeling massive cravings right now for red meat.

(All of that meat was put into ~34 servings of food. I need to freeze the leftovers.) (And 34 servings sounds like a lot until you think about the fact that a person eats at least/around 21 meals/week and there are two of us here.)

I’ve finished off ~ 80% of the CSA box. Next week I need to make less pasta. It’s a big filler.

Crunchification

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Next Saturday we pick up our first CSA box. I’m pretty excited. I’m also trying to figure out how to get in on the Co-op for Organic Pastures which sells raw milk/cream/butter and beef. I’ve bought some of it from Whole Foods and the taste is so significantly better that I’m pretty shocked. I didn’t believe that I would notice or care. I’m not likely to go completely raw for all foods, but I’m impressed by the benefits of raw milk. Noah is at least mildly lactose intolerant so I think that the switch is certainly worthwhile for him. We’ve mostly moved to eating whole grain bread (but the potato bread is SO GOOD we get it sometimes anyway). Whole wheat pasta and brown rice are our standards at this point. We are getting organic/not from concentrate juices cause they taste better. The guy at Whole Foods talked me into trying the Omega 3 eggs. They are pretty good. At the very least we like the eggs from the farmers market. I don’t like the generic Safeway eggs anymore. This is all making me much more sensitive to the overpowering taste of most processed foods. They are pretty jarring. Sometimes that is fun, but sometimes it is just too much.

I find all of this kind of funny. How did I become this person?

This post makes my food icon a little more funny. Cause I tried it Sam-I-am and I liked it.

F’n piece of S#!7

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Every time I try to bookmark this page firefox crashes.

So here’s the god damn link: http://cupcakeblog.com/2008/04/3-vanilla-cupcakes-with-vanilla-sea-salt/

They have really amazing looking cupcake recipes.

and it crashed the last time I tried to select an icon on lj. FUCK!

It’s the end of the world. (or not)

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I get too upset about stupid things. I got all excited about getting my mom’s recipe book and I decided that I was going to make Every Cookie Recipe In It. But you know what? That’s not realistic right now. I am stressing myself out for something really really stupid. It’s time to remember that I am supposedly a grown up and get over this.

My goals need to come down to a more reasonable level. No one expects that I be superwoman except for me. If I say, “You know, I didn’t manage to make your favorite cookies because Shanna kept me busy” no one is going to hate me.

I still feel bad. I’m kind of dumb sometimes.

I don’t like that the tired bear cries. I’m not crying.

A very good day.

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Today I made four batches of Cinnamon rolls. This was after a fudge on the first attempt when the dough wouldn’t rise. Bother. I also made and put in the fridge: molasses crinkle dough, sugar cookie dough, and refrigerator cookies.

I went through nearly 10 lbs of flour and like 3 lbs of sugar. I need to go buy more flour before I can make more cookies. 🙂

This is so much more fun that studying for the comp exam. 🙂 I asked Noah for a laptop-free day and he was awesome about it. He read me some Peter Beagle stuff for a while and he spent some time reading The Moral Animal and talking to me about it. We also MST3K’ed a few Christmas movies. It’s really been a wonderful day. 🙂

And now my darling little boobie monster is falling asleep while eating. I’ve been impressed by her overall good nature today as I’ve spent very little time with her.

Cookies!

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My mother hand copied all of our family recipes into a cookbook for me. I think this is awesome and spiffy and I am incredibly grateful. You know that perfect cursive that was above the chalkboard in third grade? My mother writes like that. It’s incredible. Her handwriting is a joy to read. And tomorrow (Thursday), along with Miss Laura, I get to start baking! I’m so thrilled. So you all get a poll!
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Adventures with food

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You know how sometimes when you poop you can tell exactly what you had to eat? By that metric, Shanna’s first food was Great Fir.

And it seems that her first favorite food is banana. She’s still not that thrilled with broccoli or avocado, but she’s starting to lurch for banana. And she’s chewing! It’s very cute to watch. 🙂 Still no sign of teeth. I’m probably grateful given that she’s still my little booby-monster.

And right now I am alone in my house. I’m not sure what to do with myself. Hm. On one hand I feel like I should go do chores. On the other hand–this is the first hour I have been alone in my house in over six months, screw chores.

hmmm

Adventurous

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Today I tried new-to-me food. I had: pumpkin pie (it’s decent), pecan pie (WHAT WAS I THINKING NOT EATING THIS YEARS AGO?! It’s soooooooooooooo good), red tuna (not oh-my-god good, but I’ll eat it again), salmon (same as the red tuna), eel (creepy icki texture I don’t need in my mouth again), white tuna (it grossed me out enough I couldn’t eat the whole piece), a California roll (not incredible but I could learn to like it), and inari (very awesome).

For those of you who are asking yourselves why I am posting about this, I have declared loudly for years that I don’t eat anything that lives in water. This was a huge huge huge deal for me. I think I should get a prize of some kind.

I did all this fish tasting after a really good day at Dickens Fair. I have some really awesome friends. I don’t get to see any of them enough.

Thanksgiving coming

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So this year I’m hosting Thanksgiving dinner. The main thing that is fussy about it is that I have no idea who will want to come. It could be anywhere from 14 people to 24 people. That’s a big difference. That’s an enormous difference in terms of food prep. And seating arrangements.

I’m looking forward to seeing the mingled shock and horror when they discover no really, I don’t own a tv. I’m going to put out board games and cards. 🙂 It’s kind of fun looking at what I should make to eat. My family hasn’t had any experience with my cooking since I started being involved with Noah and boy howdy have things changed. The man introduced me to “full fat” and it’s improved pretty much everything that I cook. 🙂

This means I have two weeks to get my house really clean. No problem. 🙂