Not Too Much. Mostly Plants?

One Year Later

2010-12-30T13:09:00.000-06:00

It is December 30, and since it looks like we'll be on the road all day tomorrow, I'm sending out my final post today. It's hard to believe my one whole year of only whole foods is almost at an end, and because I'm all about the honesty, I have to announce to you that I'm going out with a whimper rather than a bang. For one thing, I took too many "exception meals" over the holidays (...mmm toffee and cookies and Nana's hashed brown potato casserole...) For another, I then got seriously laid out with a vicious stomach flu.

So after a year of conscientious eating, and two years completely off soda pop, I spent the last week of December subsisting entirely on Coca-Cola.

And, stomach flu be damned, it tasted GOOD.

In any case, I've had a lot of questions about how this year has gone and what will happen next, so I thought I'd take some time to reflect by answering them...

What will you eat first?

This one is easy. OMG A HUGE HEAPING BOWL OF BREAKFAST CEREAL. Cereal, even the "healthy" kind, is sort of the ultimate processed food: when you think about it, it is basically a box full of machine-made flakes, often spiced with added vitamins, plenty of sugars, and (in the less "healthy" kinds) fun food colorings.

It is not, on the other hand, the sort of exciting meal that I was willing to waste an exception meal on ... So it really has been a full year since I ate any. And I'm pretty pumped for that first big bowl.

For those who like specifics: I'm leaning toward Raisin Bran.

Will you keep it up?

Yes, but not so stringently.

We've honestly loved all the fantastic foods we've been eating, and because we enjoy cooking and genuinely believe in the importance of going fresh and local (for reasons of health and politics) I can't imagine ever going back from this. Moreover, apart from the occasional urgent craving (usually during my period, go fig) I don't miss fast food at all. The things we eat are so much more delicious.

That being said, I'm looking forward to not having to monitor every single bite, thinking about what's in it. When we're out at parties, or at restaurants, I'll take a chill pill and just eat whatever appeals, not worrying about what might be in it. And for some homemade recipes that really require something with a complex man-made ingredient in it, I'll be able to say c'est la vie and just go for it.

What lessons about food are you taking away from this?

Ultimately, that food really does taste better when you've thought about it, taken time with it, put your own elbow grease into it, and sat down together with loved ones to enjoy it.

Also: YOU CAN ACTUALLY COOK ANYTHING if you are willing to take a stab at it. See, e.g., pot stickers ... they were better than actual Chinese take-out.

What meals were your favorites?

Oh, man, there were so many. But a sampling:

The cider-braised pork shoulder feast Matt created.

Pounded chicken breasts with lemon vinaigrette salad and shaved parmesana reggiano.

Lamb burgers and big beers as Duke won the championship last March.

Chocolate pot de creme for breakfast.

Lamb rogan josh and basmati rice.

... And, of course, the croissants!!

What book was it again that inspired you?

Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Please go buy it. It will change your life.

Final thoughts:

I just wanted to briefly say thank you to everyone who made accommodations for my crazy diet this year.

To Katie and Greg, whose farm was a major source of both food and inspiration.

To my friends and anyone else I may have cooked for, who put up with a steady stream of half-cocked whole foods recipe ideas.

To those who read this blog, and all the support you gave me over the last twelve months.

To my family, for switching to Whole Foods, joining CSAs, purchasing ridiculously expensive bottles of whole milk, allowing me full choice of the garden, free range in the kitchen, and everything else.

And to Matt, who jumped on this bandwagon with me.

I love you all!

Brussels Sprouts with Pancetta

2010-12-30T10:58:00.002-06:00

A recipe we stole from an incredible dinner we had at Mado (thank you again, Groupon):

First, we fried slices of deli-fresh pancetta in a saucepan.

We took the pancetta out, dried it on a towel and chopped it. Meanwhile, we sautéed a couple chopped shallots and a clove of garlic in the pan, adding a tiny bit of olive oil to the pancetta drippings.

As the shallots cooked, we pulled leaves off the sprouts, leaving out the hard (more bitter) cabagey innards.

Once the shallots were translucent, we tossed in the sprout leaves, cooking only a minute or two until they were at that sweet spot between crunchy and tender.

Added in the chopped pancetta, and voila:

I'm not sure how brussels sprouts got the "grossest vegetable" reputation, because I think they're phenomenal. I love their meaty flavor and firm texture, and the pairing here with the salty pancetta and sweet shallots is just fantastic. This is a dish that is spectacular as a side dish, but hearty enough to stand on its own for dinner.

And THAT, my friends, is what I call "mostly plants."

Thanksgiving, Part Two

2010-12-22T14:09:00.000-06:00

After spending Thanksgiving Thursday with my family in Omaha (see below), we set off the next day for Wisconsin, to enjoy another feast, this time with Matt's fam...

Weight Watchers Goes Unprocessed

2010-12-05T08:12:00.001-06:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/nyregion/04watchers.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage

Giving Thanks, Part One

2010-12-01T22:03:00.001-06:00

Between the two of us, Matt and I have more family than you can shake a stick at (what does that even mean?) and holidays are, as a consequence, pretty stick-shakingly full of love and laughter. And food. Always food.

I love this time of year, with first snowfalls and Christmas around the bend. Thanksgiving has always been a big joyous feast in our house, complete with cornucopia centerpieces, heaping plates of turkey, pints of fresh whipped cream over multiple pies, after-dinner games of Apples to Apples. Sharing my family's celebration with Matt, having our close friends Kim and David with us in Omaha, and joining Matt's family on Katie and Greg's farm two days later for a second feast ... We had some terrific reasons to give thanks.

And for someone eating whole foods, there was a great, great deal for which to be grateful... I could tell you all about it, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much are a THOUSAND pictures worth?

A million.

Warning: gratuitous naked turkey flesh ahead!

Ohhhh, Thanksgiving. Let me count the ways I love you: happy turkeys from the farm, sourdough stuffing seasoned with sage from the garden, simmered gravy from the innards and fresh-cut turkey neck, home-baked apple and pumpkin pie with home-rolled crust ...

We always say grace before dining, and the version from my mother's side of the family goes like this:

Father, we thank thee for this food. Bless it to our use, and give us grateful hearts.

Amen!

Whole Foods Thanksgiving: Teaser

2010-11-28T19:49:00.000-06:00

No time right now for the epic upcoming post about our marathon of a whole foods Thanksgiving, but for tonight, I'll leave you with this...

Adventures in Cooking with Galina (Take Two)

2010-11-28T19:26:00.000-06:00

You may recall earlier this year when my friend Galina came over to watch Slings & Arrows, and I chilled chocolate-dipped strawberries in such a way that the chocolate coating remained largely on the serving platter. Well, Galina came over again (for more Slings & Arrows!) and this time, inspired by the incredible early success of the pork potstickers, decided to make greasy Chinese food again.

Things rarely turn out how you plan.

I should have known to switch gears when I stopped by Whole Foods and found not only no ground pork (settling for ground turkey instead) but also no wonton wrappers (settling for a package of clear spring roll wrappers whose packaging and instructions were entirely in Japanese).

Everything seemed all right at first, but when I went to wrap the ground turkey mixture with the spring roll wrappers, it became evident that the clear, gummy shells were not going to either A) crisp up to the satisfying fried goodness of previous incarnations or B) remain in one piece around the stuffing mixture.

So we ended up with a pan of fried meat lumps and gelatinous skin sheddings.

Which was kind of gross.

Galina's a good sport, though, and pointed out that her family cooks a Russian dish which is basically fried meat lumps. And the shrimp fried rice I'd thrown together as a main course came out reasonably delicious, so I suppose all's well that ends well.

This is a remarkably simple recipe courtesy of Food Network's Ellie Krieger: sauté chopped spring onion and ginger in a little sesame oil, then add four cups chopped fresh cabbage and a pound of shrimp and cook until the shrimp is pink. Remove all of this from the pan, add a little more sesame oil, and fry two cups (cold) brown rice. Put the shrimp and cabbage mix back into, toss it all together, and serve hot.

Less Simple Pleasures

2010-11-28T19:07:00.000-06:00

Artisanal chocolates and ten year aged tawny port ... perfect for a Saturday night in, relaxing on the couch, cuddling up in front of a movie...

... Playing with the auto-focus on my camera...

Simple Pleasures

2010-11-28T18:57:00.000-06:00

Sunday Brunch at Home

2010-11-18T07:45:00.000-06:00

Scrambled eggs with cream, pan fried potatoes, and lime-cumin black beans.

Butternut Squash Soup and Veggie Fritters

2010-11-17T22:01:00.001-06:00

In an effort to pursue the "mostly plants?" end of things, I present to you a vegetarian meal to rival the meatiest of meats: butternut squash soup with crispy vegetable fritters! And to make it all happen, out came the Cuisine-art. Which was probably really, really grateful to be used. It's like the Velveteen Rabbit of food processors, sitting alone and sad up in my highest cabinet.

After dicing a few carrots and zucchinis in the processor, I tossed them in a simple batter of flour, eggs, milk, and beer.

Then fried them. In a lot of oil. Who says plants have to be healthy?

Meanwhile, I diced and simmered a whole butternut squash (about 2 pounds) with one diced onion and six cups chicken stock. (To make it fully vegetarian, you could easily trade out for vegetable stock.) When the squash was soft, I strained it out of the stock, quickly rinsed the food processor, and tossed it in to puree.

Added it back into the stock, seasoned with salt and fresh-grated nutmeg, and it came out the perfect sweet but savory autumn treat.

(Soup recipe here.)

Ricotta Gnucky**

2010-11-02T17:25:00.000-05:00

Joe and Lauren come over most weeks to watch Boardwalk Empire. (Is anyone else out there watching this show? Do you feel that, more than other HBO shows, it is needlessly gratuitous? What's with all the bouncing breasts? And blood spattering everywhere? Also: why isn't Omar slash Chalky in EVERY SCENE?)

Anyways, Joe and Lauren are new parents, and they bring their baby, Gwen, who is Bean's favorite person in the world. Including me and Matt. But I can't take much offense, because to be fair, Gwen is way, way cuter than either of us.

In any case, when they came this weekend I made this New York Times recipe for ricotta gnocchi. The article touts it as "light" but be forewarned: it pretty much consists entirely of cheese, flour, and butter.

Which is probably why I liked it so much.

You start by mixing a container of whole milk ricotta with flour, salt, pepper, two eggs, and a cup of freshly grated parmesano reggiano. Then you drop rounded spoonfuls into a pot of boiling water six at a time, fishing them out after about a minute, when they rise to float on the surface of the water.

And then, you throw them in the "sauce" which you have made in a saucepan by frying sage leaves in butter. And you let them get all warm and golden and buttery and sagey.

When you've cooked and tossed them all in the butter-sage mixture, I'd recommend squirting a slice of lemon in to add a little citrus lightness. I didn't do this the first night, but the next day eating leftovers, it made a huge difference to balance out the heaviness of the cheese and butter.

Aaaaand they were phenomenal. A special occasion treat, for sure, to those of us STILL working on the last ten pounds. But phenomenal:

We served them with jalapeño bratwurst (from Greg's farm last summer) and some juicy honeycrisp apple slices, figuring that you really can't go wrong with that pork/sage/apple combination.

PHENOMENAL.

** Credit goes to Lauren for the awesome titular pun.

Your Good Old Midwestern Steak Dinner

2010-11-02T17:00:00.000-05:00

Matt and I flew back to (heavenly) South Dakota a couple weekends ago to do some wedding planning (!), and while there, enjoyed some fantastic steaks out on the town. I don't typically order steak when dining out in Chicago -- a Nebraskan at heart, I can't handle paying $40 for a cut of beef -- so it had been a while, and these were well worth the wait. The restaurant sources from local cattle ranches, and they were served just right: a piece of fresh, perfectly cooked meat on a plate. No fancy sauces or glazes muddying the dish.
Sorry, vegetarians, but there is just nothing quite so satisfying as slicing into a rare filet, the flesh buttery soft and rich.

In any case, I was inspired from that experience to purchase some organic ribeyes to cook at home. We did them really simply, just frying in a little butter for a few minutes on each side, then letting them rest in the pan, covered with foil to seal the heat in.

They came out exactly to my taste ... which is to say, practically bleeding:

And what's a steak without potatoes? We oven roasted these guys with a little olive oil, salt, and garlic, and finished everything off with mounds of steamed broccoli with shredded sharp cheddar.

Okay, so in the interests of perfect honesty, I have to say that by the time we'd gotten everything to the table and photographed it, the steak was a little tough and the broccoli a little cold, but these are the hazards of food-blogging, I guess. And it was all still pretty dang delicious.

Besides, this is just one more example of how nothing compares to South Dakota.

Apple Crisp!

2010-10-30T13:23:00.001-05:00

Easy Apple Crisp:

3 honeycrisp apples, thinly sliced
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 cup butter

Evenly spread the apple slices in a 9 x 9 baking pan, and preheat oven to 375. In a small bowl, combine the flour, sugar, oats, cinnamon and nutmeg. Cut in the stick of butter, until mixture is crumbly. Pour over the apples.

Bake forty minutes.

Eat. All of it. In one sitting. Maybe with vanilla ice cream.

Also, for all those who ever wondered what the inside of a nutmeg looks like:

Breakfast for Lunch

2010-10-30T13:16:00.000-05:00

There's a med student in my clase de espanol who went to Duke, and chatting with him about Marketplace brunch has made me seriously crave those heaping plates of eggs, bowls of grits dripping with cheddar and butter, biscuits smothered in gravy...

Ohhh, the freshman forty pounds I put on thanks to Marketplace brunch...

In any event, to satisfy that craving in a whole foods, healthier approach, I present: breakfast for lunch.

I know, you wouldn't think, to look at this box, that the enclosed zucchini pancakes are EITHER tasty or made of whole ingredients. But you would be so wrong, on both counts.

With a little butter in the pan, they fry up crispy and golden-brown. They're thick and have a satisfying hearty bite to them.

Throw the grits in boiling water, and they cook in just five minutes. I like to add salt, butter, and a little shredded cheddar or parmesan for richness.

I topped it all with a quick fried egg, a sprinkle of shaved parmesan, and a squirt of ketchup for the zucchini cakes.

Okay, so there weren't any biscuits or gravy, and neither was there an ENTIRE WALL of breakfast cereals... but it did the trick for now. Craving abated.

(... Do we get to go to the Marketplace during Reunion Weekend?)

Project: Freezing Burritos

2010-10-26T13:17:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed that posting is down on this blog, and if I had to blame anything, it would be how HOLY BUCKETS INCREDIBLY BUSY 3L year has turned out to be. I've been eating right on a day to day basis, but it's been mostly repeat recipes, peanut butter sandwiches, or black beans and cheese. There hasn't been anything particularly photo-worthy.

So last weekend, in an effort to combine interesting cooking with time efficiency, I took an old recommendation from Lauren and spent a couple hours putting together burritos to freeze and eat throughout the week.

I started with a simple tortilla recipe, combining white and whole wheat flour with a little canola oil and water, rolling out the dough and cooking them one by one.

Once the tortillas were cooked, I chopped and fried an onion and some garlic, then mixed in a can of black beans and a can of refried beans, and seasoned with salt, cayenne, chili, garlic powder, and cumin until it was spicy and flavorful. A couple ounces of shredded sharp cheddar added tang and richness.

I ladled a half cup of the bean mix into the center of each tortilla, folding the top and bottom in and rolling to close them. Then I wrapped each in foil and threw them in the freezer, to pull out and microwave throughout the week.

These have been such a lifesaver the past week: the tortilla is rich and thick, the inside spicy, tangy, and rich ... and they heat up in just three minutes. Thanks for the idea, Lauren!

(Recipe here)

Raspberry Milkshakes

2010-10-26T12:48:00.001-05:00

Organic raspberries, whole milk, and five-ingredient vanilla bean ice cream.

Dim Summers

2010-10-17T19:09:00.001-05:00

(Couldn't resist.)

I have (shall we say) a weakness for greasy Chinese food. I've spent far too many cheat-meals this year on feasts of crab rangoon and fried rice, inhaling that pungent bouquet of fry oil and MSG. So I figured it was high time I learned to cook a whole foods approximation.

And, as I imagine happens with so many strokes of genius in the world, this particular masterpiece came into life on an otherwise perfectly ordinary Saturday night.

That's pot stickers with a sweet chili dipping sauce, and a huge pile of zucchini lo mein.

I discovered the pot sticker recipe idly watching Guy's Big Bite instead of reading for Federal Jurisdiction. If you don't mind a couple steps, they really are remarkable simple, and taste just like the best dim sum you ever had.

For the stuffing: chop two green onions and two cloves of garlic. Mix with a pound of ground pork, a pinch of salt, a splash each of soy sauce, sesame oil, and red chili sauce. Note: if you're trying to do this whole foods style, it may take some searching to find a soy sauce that doesn't contain things like caramel color #4. Interestingly, though, the little packets that come with your take-out only contain soy oil and water.

After mixing the stuffing, beat one egg with a splash of milk to make an egg wash. Take a pre-made won ton wrapper (with a little searching, I found some at Whole Foods that didn't have any strange ingredients), and coat one side of the wrapper with the wash. This will keep the pot stickers from unfolding themselves and spewing out stuffing as they cook.

Put a pinch of stuffing on the egg-washed side of the potsticker, then crimp the edges to fold it shut.

Stage one of the cooking process is a boiling water bath. Throw the pot stickers in for just one minute.

You can eat them after boiling alone -- they're fully cooked -- but to put the amazing crisp edges on them, you're going to need to go on to step two: the fry pan.

You don't need much oil in the pan, but what's in there should be sizzling. Let the pot stickers fry, flipping them occasionally, until they're golden and a little crisp on each side.

I made an incredibly easy sweet chili dipping sauce to go with them from a combination of soy sauce, chili sauce, and honey to taste. And I know that sounds like a lot of steps for these little guys, and I guess it was, but oh, sweet heaven, they came out absolutely amazing.

We paired them with an easy lo mein recipe using the same ingredients in different proportions. I match-sticked a zucchini and boiled it with some soba noodles I found at whole foods -- the whole thing cooks in less than five minutes. I cooled it with a cold water rinse, then tossed with the sesame oil, soy sauce, and chili sauce.

People, the greatest thing about this whole foods regimen have been these unexpected, restaurant-quality ethnic masterpieces. If I'd never set out on this journey, I would have continued ordering greasy take-out my entire life ...

INSTEAD I'M MAKING IT MYSELF.

CHEESEBURGERS NEVER DIE

2010-10-12T18:03:00.000-05:00

I follow Pollan on Twitter, and he recently posted the following photo essay, from New York photographer Sally Davies:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sallydavies/sets/72157624739645253/

When you think about it, that kind of preservation is a really remarkable scientific feat ... But it's completely and utterly creepy, as you flip through the photos, watching the days and weeks go by as the burger remains unchanged.

Remember back in the 90s, when there was that urban legend about Twinkies being one molecule different from pantyhose? I don't think that is actually true (and Snopes seems to agree), but this photo project suggests something similar about the Happy Meal. We put so much non-food in our food, it may as well actually be the plastic versions that kids play with in their EZBake Ovens. It certainly seems to last as long.

Marathons and Whole Foods

2010-10-11T16:17:00.000-05:00

... don't mix.

In the last twenty four hours, I've eaten only coffee, pizza, water, and beer. And I feel completely justified in this. I may keep it up for another day or two. Or five.

Cheat Meal? La Casa Pizzeria

2010-09-29T15:53:00.000-05:00

To any Omahans reading this blog: if you haven't tried La Casa pizzeria, I highly recommend you do so.

TONIGHT.

I have a question mark after the "Cheat Meal" in the title, because it is unclear to me whether the pizza I devoured earlier this summer was actually cheating on the plan. La Casa is a family owned, local restaurant that cooks their pizzas in house and claims they are from a family recipe. I'm officially considering it cheating, because as usual with eating out, I have no idea what they put in. And the ingredients certainly aren't organic. But at least I know they make everything from scratch on site.

In any case, it's delicious pizza. They use a mix of romano and mozzarella cheeses, and their crust is buttery crisp, their sauce tangy and light.

In an otherwise unrelated topic, the night we had La Casa, Omaha was hit by a freak hailstorm. With HAIL STONES THE SIZE OF FRUIT!

Seriously? That's crazy.

Long Overdue: Family Wine Tasting!

2010-09-29T15:26:00.000-05:00

At the end of July (yes, long, LONG overdue) Matt's folks came to Omaha for the first (hopefully, of many) big Summers-Couch get-together. Because we have so many parents between the two of us and all are lovely, we were never concerned about how everyone would get along. Obviously everyone would have a great time together.

But we figured a little wine couldn't hurt.

So we created a tasting of potential wines for the wedding, picking a few that we liked and offering them up for review.

We tasted a range of wines: among others, a sauvignon blanc from New Zealand I've liked for years, an inexpensive valpolicella we'd greatly enjoyed earlier in the week, a shiraz we drank together on one of our first dates years ago in South Dakota. I set up a tasting sheet for everyone to note their ratings and comments, and we'll base some of our wine decisions off the results.

Particularly helpful comments included:

"Smells like wine. Tastes like ... wine? But not super winey. Kind of blah, but goodish."

and

"REALLY smells like wine."

and

"Smells like the swimming locker room... chlorine and sweat and feet."

To eat, we provided what I have to say was a pretty phenomenal cheese plate with D'Affinoise brie, a waxy manchego, a gouda, and an enormous wedge of Cypress Grove's incredible "Humboldt Fog" chevre. And lots of prosciutto from an Iowan family farm, the owners of which are Couch family friends.

After the tasting, Dad and Denise grilled up quite a spread for us to feast on: roasted potatoes and grilled summer veggies, french bread dripping with butter and crisp from the oven, and gorgeous enormous marinated steak kebabs.

Mom contributed a garden Greek salad: lettuce and tomatoes from the garden, tossed with feta, olives, and oil and vinegar. This is a pretty standard Summers contribution to any summer potluck...

The food was amazing, the wines were delicious, the comments on the wine tasting forms were delightful, and the company, of course, was the best imaginable.

Where is my milk from?

2010-09-16T10:53:00.000-05:00

Link courtesy of Katie, via Jeff, via Matt:

http://whereismymilkfrom.com/

My Organic Valley whole milk (yeah, yeah, I know ... but it has no added vitamins) was bottled at Smith Dairy in Richmond, Indiana. So not as far away as it could have been ... but it's no Oberweiss, either...

Whole Food BLTs

2010-09-15T07:50:00.001-05:00

I know, I know, I've been terrible at posting this summer... And I know you've heard this before, but I'm back in Chicago now, where (once this absurdly intense workshop is through) I'll be back to my own routine, cooking and photographing...

In the meantime, please enjoy some whole-food-style BLTs:

I know I did.

The tomatoes and lettuce were organic farm fresh, the bacon nitrate- and preservative- free (from the charming Iowan? I can't remember), the bread from my friendly local Great Harvest, and the slathering of mayonnaise (most important part) Spectrum brand.

I never remember to make BLTs, but whenever it does happen once in a blue moon, it makes me wonder why I don't eat them ABSOLUTELY EVERY SINGLE DAY because they are the GREATEST OF ALL SANDWICHES.

Sausage Fest!!

2010-08-28T19:03:00.000-05:00

... In the dietary sense.

We picked up these brats from the charming Iowan at the farmer's market - the one who, every week, without fail, manages to talk me into spending an extra $20 on some incredibly expensive pork product I hadn't previously anticipated even wanting.

But MAN, it is some good meat:

The brats were ours, the littler hot dogs Mara's. We kept things pretty simple, grilling them in a little olive oil with some sliced peppers and onions, then layering it all on toasted ciabatta rolls and drizzling with organic ketchup and mustard...

Incredible.

But very hard to eat.

Mara had less trouble with her hot dogs.

BEST. $20 IMPULSE PORK PURCHASE. YET.

Killing Chickens

2010-08-21T14:03:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Matt had helped out slaughtering chickens on Katie and Greg's farm, and I think he'd like to post about the experience. So you may find out about that in about seven months, after he's collected his thoughts and arranged and rearranged the words into the precise order he'd like them.

He's making this face right now as he reads that:

So you'll have to wait a little for Matt's thoughts on the act of killing something you intend to eat. In the meantime, though, I can tell you the second half of the story...

In the interests of perfect honesty, Matt didn't kill this particular bird. But it did spend its years on Katie and Greg's farm, enjoying the chickeny good life. Katie doesn't eat "unhappy" meat, so you'd better believe that anyone she's involved in raising is living a humane, comfortable, natural life.

And I can assure you, first-hand, that a humane, comfortable, natural life translates into a pretty incredible meal.

Matt tweaked our favorite roast chicken recipe a little, stuffing this guy with a whole head of garlic and a lemon, surrounding it with chopped zucchini, carrots, and red onions. He also poured a lemony beer over the top (Leinenkugel's "Summer Shandy") for added moisture and richness.

We then simply baked it, as per usual, at 350. This one was a little bigger than our usual, so I think we left it in for almost two hours while we prepped everything else. And when it came out, OH HOLY GOD:

Did you want another photo of that? Maybe from another angle?

One more?

I know. That's how we all felt.

Mom had also made a cheesy casserole with some green vegetable that I can't remember off the top of my head (asparagus? more zucchini?) that came in her CSA bag. We heated a loaf of take-n-bake that contains just flour, yeast, water, salt. And after the red wine you see above, we popped a celebratory bottle of Summers Vineyard un-oaked chardonnay.

(No relation that we know of. But the wine is great! )

The bird was, needless to say, flawless. The meat fell off the bone, to the point that Matt had to give up on trying to carve it; it was simply too juicy and tender to hold up in large slices. Each bite -- even the white meat, usually too dry for me -- was dripping with lemony, garlicky, fatty, chickeny goodness. I've had some happy birds before who were a little too tough and stringy (often animals raised the right way are leaner than their feedlot-stuffed counterparts), but this was absolutely perfect. Exactly what a chicken ought to be.

The vegetables that roasted with the chicken were phenomenal: perfectly tender and completely infused with the lemon, garlic, and chicken jus that filled the bottom of the pan as the chicken cooked.

Our friend Karen had come over for the feast, and Matt said a grace he'd composed for the occasion. I can't completely remember, but it called on us to be thoughtful about and grateful for the food on our plates, and the way it reached our table. As we ate, I think we were very aware of every piece of the meal, where it came from, and how eating it tied us into that chain.

Better yet, eating it together tied us to one another. Every time you share a meal, I think you're making connections with your fellow diners in a fundamentally human way. With friends and family around a table spread with thoughtfully raised and prepared food, we were engaging in a daily ritual that people have enjoyed, and which has set us apart from other animals, for centuries.

The following photo is a terrible one of everyone involved, but I like it because you can see how happy we are to be enjoying each other's company:

Slash how happy we are that Karen brought a pie.

Strawberry rhubarb (rhubarb from her garden, I think): the perfect end to the perfect meal.

I don't think I'm thoughtful enough about my food on a daily basis as I would like to be, and meals like this one provide a terrific reminder of all I have to be grateful for.

Peach Pie Poll: Lick the Plate?

2010-08-16T22:34:00.001-05:00

Since discovering the crisco-less crust that I can eat, Mom has baked a number of fresh fruit pies this summer. The above was an absolutely delectable peach cream pie, courtesy of our friend Debbie. The inside is just fresh peaches, a little sugar, cinnamon, and fresh cream poured over the top to thicken and bubble. Served with more cream, in the iced form, on side, it has to be something like heaven.

Matt caught me actually licking my plate, and I think you can tell from the crazed intensity in my eyes JUST HOW GOOD it really was...

... I was like, 100% focused on getting EVERY. LAST. DROP. of flavor from that plate...

So looking at this photo, I'm a little embarrassed, but I have to ask: when something is just that good, do you ever actually lick the plate? Am I the only one? Or am I just the only one who does it in front of other people?

Another Dog Post With No Food Involved

2010-08-16T22:26:00.001-05:00

... But I came across this photo from the French dip night, and had to share it:

That's my mom's dog, Desi.

Isn't she cute?

Dipping Foods

2010-08-16T22:24:00.001-05:00

Approximately one month ago today (I know, I know), Matt and Mom and Mara and I made French dip sandwiches on toasted baguettes with oven-melted provolone:

The meat was left over from a beef brisket we'd had the night before, and was salty and garlicky, tearing off in juicy shreds; in true French dip fashion, we sopped up the jus, letting it soak into the bread until the crisp from the oven became this dense, melt in your mouth experience.

We paired it with not one, not two, but three styles of zucchini: battered and fried blossoms, battered and fried slices, and a small handful of oven grilled for those watching their waistlines.

The zucchini blossoms had come in Mom's CSA bag, inspiring the fry-fest; the tender petals and stems are a perfect match to the crispy batter shell. I threw together the batter: an egg, milk, salt, and enough flour to get the desired sticky consistency.

We dipped the blossoms and slices in the batter, then dipped them again into a pan of hot canola oil for a few minutes, turning occasionally until they became a dark golden.

We pulled them out and patted dry with a paper towel, then served them with a simple bruschetta Mara had created: two tomatoes, a clove of garlic, a few sprigs of garden-fresh basil, a dash of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste.

She was very proud.

She had every right to be; it was delicious.

Simple Shrimp Scampi

2010-08-05T17:39:00.001-05:00

Wow, I am so behind. The following meal occurred on or about Thursday, July 8th ... which makes this post belated, to say the least.

Anyways... SHRIMP!

Shrimp, as a concept, kind of gross me out. Like, if someone showed me a pool of live shrimp, with all their little legs wiggling around and their little white muscley bodies bouncing off one another, and asked me to eat one, I would say HECK. TO THE. NO.

This is where processing helps us; it divorces the animal from the eating, so that we don't think about how what is now lying so temptingly on our plate was once a creature struggling to get from this day to the next. This is why I have such respect for those who farm and slaughter their own animals (see forthcoming post re: Matt killing chickens with Katie and Greg).

Shrimp are different, though. I wouldn't not want to eat a shrimp because of a deep moral dilemma about the value of its life and the selfishness of my killing it. Live shrimp are just creepy.

But I digress.

We melted a couple tablespoons of butter in a frying pan, then popped a pound of shrimp in with a couple cloves of crushed garlic, letting the shrimpies cook for just one minute before flipping them over. One minute on the other side, and we took the shrimp out into a bowl to wait for the juice. (This way, they didn't get all rubbery and overcooked while the sauce heated.)

We deglazed the pan with the juice of a lemon and a couple cups dry white wine (we used a crisp New Zealand sauvignon blanc, the rest of which we drank with the meal). Once the sauce was simmering again, we added back in the shrimp, tossed in a couple handfuls of fresh parsley, and immediately poured it all over a big pot of fresh linguine.

We served it with a hearty bakery bread -- great for mopping up the runny, lemony sauce that pooled in the bottom of our bowls -- and some slow-roasted vegetables Matt made in the oven. The result was a summer feast:

I loved this sauce, because scampis are delicious (especially in summer) but often too rich for me. Because we used such little butter, relying on the parsley, lemon, and wine for taste, this one was light and refreshing.

This meal happened too long ago to remember, but I think it's a safe bet that I licked that bowl clean.

Cookie Fail

2010-08-01T12:17:00.000-05:00

I consider myself a chocolate cookie expert, so when the following disaster struck, it was something of a shock.

Not sure exactly what went wrong (too much butter? too little baking powder?) but they went MAJORLY FLAT in the oven.

And then we had to literally peel them off the pan, like so:

... But no worries, we still ate them, down to the very last crumble.

Honey Garlic Short Ribs

2010-07-27T17:51:00.000-05:00

If I could choose only one animal to eat for the rest of my life, it would be pork. Bacon? Sausage? Bratwurst? Ham? Tenderloins? Chops? Prosciutto? Yes, please.

Slow-braised short-ribs?

Yes, PLEASE.

These are a remarkably simple recipe that Mom found: salt and pepper a rack of short ribs and slow roast in the oven at 300 degrees for an hour. Meanwhile, mix a half cup honey, half cup soy sauce, three tablespoons of molasses, and two crushed garlic cloves together in a saucepan. Stirring constantly, bring to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for five minutes.

After the ribs have roasted a full hour, baste with the sauce and turn the heat up to 350 degrees.

Bake another half an hour, re-basting every ten minutes.

By the time you serve, the meat will be tender, falling off the bone. Tie a napkin around your neck, forego fork and knife, and give thanks for the miraculous pig.

Things You Can Wrap With Prosciutto

2010-07-22T20:54:00.000-05:00

I think this may become a running list.

And the first entry is ... ASPARAGUS:

Bake it in the oven at 350 until the prosciutto gets crispy and the asparagus soft.

Serve with ANYTHING.

Olive OIl Poached Lemon Fish

2010-07-22T20:46:00.002-05:00

One of the greatest joys of food blogging is discovering other food bloggers in the food blogosphere, each busily cooking and arranging and photographing and then rearranging and photographing again and rearranging perhaps one more time until our significant other is looking at us and clearly thinking IT IS ALL GETTING COLD CAN WE PLEASE JUST EAT IT ALREADY.

Anyways.

One of the numerous food bloggers I follow is Adrienne at Hungry Bruno, from whom I boosted the following delicious olive-oil poached fish with lemon and capers:

It's outrageously simple: thinly slice two lemons and use half the slices to cover the bottom of a glass baking dish.

Layer fresh filets of any white fish that looks good at the fish counter (we used cod) and sprinkle with capers, fresh parsley, salt and pepper. (We didn't have any fresh parsley at the time, so we used a little dried instead, but this is not a substitute I would recommend, in a perfect world.)

Layer the other half of the lemons on top, then pour in enough olive oil to cover the fish.

Stick it in a 250 degree oven and allow it to cook ever so slowly, the fish poaching in the oil rather than broiling or baking. Leave them in for an hour or a little longer, until the fish is flaky.

Serve with your veggie of choice, and try to restrain yourself from being a creepy lemon paparazzo who keeps everyone else from their meal.

A Rant

2010-07-15T19:50:00.002-05:00

Last night, Mom and Matt and I cooked a delicious dinner of enormous Philly-cheese-steak sandwiches, dripping with tender roast beef and carmelized onions and peppers, each decadently coated in a layer of munster and swiss, melted and blistering from a quick tour under the broiler.

As we munched our way through these, Mom brought out a Wall Street Journal article she'd wanted to share with us, found here. It was about weight loss, "hedonic impulses", people's differing chemical abilities to resist culinary temptation, obesity, and the like. It suggested that some people are simply more controlled by those impulses than others, and purported to explain why "some people can resist dessert while others can't".

And it included a quiz.

Readers could rate statements, then add up their score to discover how controlled they are by their hedonic impulses. The gist was that the more strongly you agreed with the statements, the less in control you were when it came to food, and the more likely to be unhealthy. These statements included, among others:

"I love the taste of certain foods so much that I can't avoid eating them even if they're bad for me."

"I think I enjoy eating a lot more than most other people."

and

"It's very important to me that the foods I eat are as delicious as possible."

ARE. YOU. F-ING. KIDDING.

It is this kind of attitude -- that there is something wrong with you, that you are too controlled by your "hedonic impulses", if you want your food to be as delicious as possible -- that is the foundation of the messed up relationship America has with food. Don't enjoy food too much, or you'll be a fatty! FEAR DELICIOUS FOODS.

Let me tell YOU something, Wall Street Journal.

When I was at my heaviest in college, I would stop by the McDonald's on campus twice a week, guiltily (and/or drunkenly) cramming in French fries and hating myself as I ate. The Armadillo Grill's nacho cheese dip was a similar guilty pleasure, but so guilty it almost wasn't pleasurable. I would eat these terrible, empty, tasty foods, feel absolutely horrible about doing it, resolve over and over and over again to diet (meaning cut out all carbs, or all fats, or eat only Lean Cuisines for a month, or only V8 for a week leading up to a fraternity formal) and then, inevitably find myself back at the counter where the McDonald's worker knew me by name.

I didn't savor food. I didn't enjoy it that much. I feared it, feared facing down things I wanted to eat and knew I shouldn't. So I just crammed it in and felt guilty and fat. And as a result, I WAS fat.

The truth is, you simply can't lose weight successfully -- for the long term -- if you see it in black and white. Brussels sprouts are terrible, but you have to "be good" and eat them. Chocolate cake is an enemy to be resisted at all costs, and if you have a bite, you've failed.

No. Speaking as someone who has lost forty pounds in the last four years, slowly but surely, one of the things that most appealed to me about the whole foods/slow foods movement was its message of truly LOVING food in a healthy, normal, positive way. Brussels sprouts are dang good, if you cook them how you like them. And a small piece of that chocolate cake isn't going to derail everything you're working toward. On the contrary, if you deny yourself all the pleasure in eating, eventually you're going to be back there at the McDonald's counter once again. You do need control, and you do need awareness of your choices, and yes, sometimes you do need to say "I've had enough" ... but you also need to love every bite of the food you're putting in your mouth and not feel guilty about that.

I still have a little way to go on my own weight loss journey, as I work to lose another ten in time for my marriage to the THINNEST MAN EVER BORN. (Author's edit: I have recently been notified by Kim that I am, in fact, marrying the SECOND THINNEST MAN EVER BORN.) And I still have nights where I come away from dinner and realize I'm stuffed full, having eaten much more than I really needed or wanted to. But focusing on whole, slow, natural foods, and on how much I enjoy the acts of cooking and dining with loved ones, brings me great, great joy. Savoring small portions of truly mouth-watering meals, feeling great about what I've made and who I'm eating it with, knowing exactly where the meal came from and loving how it tastes: dining makes me feel like a part of the planet. I don't fear food anymore; I give thanks for it. Good food really is a gift from God.

So thanks very much, Wall Street Journal, but I'll keep my hedonic impulses.

And damn it, yes, I DO want my food to be as delicious as possible.

That is all.

Oh, wait, also --

Good Brown Bread

2010-07-12T10:18:00.001-05:00

A quick, no-rise loaf of hearty brown bread, from 1990 Gourmet Magazine recipe:

I like yeastless breads, because I lack the patience and foresight required for baking risen bread. I feel like I always want fresh-baked bread at about 4:37 in the afternoon, when it's absolutely too late to start something that needs kneading and hours to rise. And if I happen to think of my craving the next morning, when there WOULD be time for all that, I simply can't be bothered.

And then I go to the bakery instead and walk out with about four different breads, only one of which I actually wanted.

And a croissant.

So yeastless breads are a good lifestyle choice for me.

This one has molasses and brown sugar, raisins and wheat germ, and a hearty dose of buttermilk to add moisture. Could it please combine a few more of my favorite things? Like cheese? Maybe we could get some cheese in there? Or chocolate? OR PEANUT BUTTER?

Mara and I cut slices when it was still hot from the oven; the little pat of butter we put on each slice melted immediately, making that wonderful bright/salty/buttery marriage with the dark/sugary/heavy bread.

Good Brown Bread
1.5 cups wheat germ
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp. salt
1.5 tsp. baking soda
.25 cup packed (dark) brown sugar
2 cups buttermilk
.5 cup dark molasses
.5 cup raisins

Combine wheat germ, wheat flour, salt, baking soda, and brown sugar in a big bowl. Combine the buttermilk and molasses, then add to dry ingredients. Stir in the raisins last, and bake in a lightly greased loaf pan at 350 for one hour.

Mustard Salmon with Bruschetta Melts

2010-07-12T10:06:00.001-05:00

Sorryyyyy again for the long delay in posting. But I have a huge back-up of delicious, home-cooked meals to share with you, so I hope to make it up to you with an orgy of mouthwatering photographs.

Such as:

and...

This was salmon rubbed with mustard, a recipe courtesy of our friend Elizabeth. We slathered the filets in a mixture of melted butter, two types of mustard, and brown sugar, then baked for twenty minutes, broiling for an extra ten. The broil gave the brown sugar a crunch, making a wonderful sort of mustardy-sweet crust on the tender fish flesh.

We ate them with simple oven-melted bruschetta slices. Just slices of fresh French baguette, each topped with a slice of tomato, a leaf of basil (fresh picked from the garden, of course), and a chunk of mozzarella from the cheese counter, then set under the broiler for ten minutes:

Pull them out when the cheese begins to blister and the bread begins to brown, and OH SWEET HEAVEN that's my favorite part of summertime.

We also boiled some sweet corn (wait, maybe THAT'S my favorite part of summertime) and voila:

Elizabeth's Mustard Salmon
1/2 stick butter, melted
3 TBS country dijon mustard
2 TBS regular dijon mustard
3 TBS brown sugar
1 lb salmon

Mix butter, mustards, and brown sugar. Slather onto fish filets. Bake at 375 for twenty minutes, then broil an additional ten minutes.

Extra topping can be kept in the refrigerator for next time, and is also (apparently) delicious on pork or chicken.

Korma Simmer Sauce

2010-07-03T12:56:00.002-05:00

The ideal, really, of a slow foods diet is to do all your own mixing and cooking from fresh ingredients.

But sometimes, you've spent the entire day doing research into motions to suppress the statement your client made to the police while he was handcuffed on the side of the road, and the spirit just isn't in you to simmer and season for three hours.

On days like this, you either guiltily get take-out or hope there's something exciting in your pantry you can just open with a can-opener that won't break the rules.

Okay, so I'm not completely sure what tapioca starch is. But we have tapioca and we have starch in the house, so I let that one slide. Plus, it's organic tapioca starch! Right?

We threw it in a pan with some roughly chopped carrot, red onion, green and bell peppers, frozen peas, and a sliced chicken breast. And simmered. Simmer sauce!

Meanwhile, there's a great crop of assorted lettuces growing in my mom's garden, lovingly tended by my green-thumb niece. We picked and rinsed some for a bright summer salad:

(A couple of those leaves were a surprise spicy arugula.)

We served it all with a little basmati rice from our favorite Indian place, the Jaipur, and BAM. The sauce was a mellow and fragrant, a little sweet, as kormas should be. Paired with our spicy, tangy salad, and it was a summer feast in less than thirty minutes.

Risen Buckwheat Cakes

2010-07-03T12:29:00.001-05:00

My family loves brunch. When at least two of us get together on a Saturday or Sunday, you can pretty much guarantee that something will be whipped together, fried in butter, slathered with maple syrup or jam, and eaten with bottomless cups of coffee.

This can present a problem for the size of my thighs.

Solution: risen buckwheat cakes!

We fry them on the griddle like pancakes, but they're made with yeast as well as baking soda, so we mix them up the evening before and let the batter rise overnight.

The molasses gives a hint of sweetness to balance the nutty buckwheat.

Because the buckwheat flour is so hearty, they're a heart-healthier option than our other favorite recipes; I think Jenny once calculated the Weight Watchers points on these, and got ten pancakes for one point. NOT. BAD.

Last weekend, we had these with heaping bowls of blueberries, stacks of free range/organically raised chicken sausages, and of course, the requisite bottomless cups of coffee.

The recipe was passed down to my mom from my grandfather, possibly passed on to him from his mother, which means that A) it's golden for my whole foods diet and B) some of the directions in the recipe are a little quaint...

Risen Buckwheat Cakes:

Ingredients:
Water
1 packet yeast
1 TBS cornmeal
1 tsp salt
Approximately 2-3 cups buckwheat flour
Approximately 1 cup white flour
3 TBS dark molasses
1/2 tsp baking soda
Approximately 1/2 cup milk

The night before:
Heat one pint water until lukewarm (not hot). And half cake yeast (we translate this as one dry packet) and stir until dissolved. Stir in one tablespoon cornmeal and one teaspoon salt. Then sift in enough buckwheat flour, mixing a little white flour as well, to make a medium-thick batter. Let rise overnight in a fairly warm place.

The day of:
Add three tablespoons dark molasses and half a teaspoon baking soda. Thin batter with milk. Fry in batches on hot griddle.

Chicken Salad Sliders

2010-06-28T17:59:00.000-05:00

(I know it kind of looks big in the picture, but that's a mini chicken salad on a little 2-inch dinner roll.)

(Making it totally fair for me to have eaten four of them.)

The chicken salad was made from the left-overs of a Free Bird roast, meat pulled from the bone and tossed with chopped celery, onion, a little mustard and Spectrum mayo. The lettuce was from my mom's garden, though the tomatoes, concededly, were from somewhere in Mexico. The rolls are a phenomenal recipe from my mom's friend Mary, which I promise to make, photograph, and blog for you very soon.

A Post Describing Why My Mom Will Be Living With Us After We're Married

2010-06-26T20:49:00.002-05:00

She recently baked this cherry pie.

And not only did she actually go two houses down and HAND-PICK THE CHERRIES from our neighbor's tree, but she also spent three hours pitting and de-worming them. Fresh from the tree, they had that hint of tartness that sucks your cheeks in a little as you eat.

She also substituted her traditional pie crust (made with Crisco) for one that I could eat: just flour, canola oil, and a little milk and sugar.

It was crumbly and rich, hitting that perfect balance just between golden-flaky and buttery-melt-on-your-tongue.

She topped hers with a little vanilla ice cream, but since we didn't have anything on hand without preservatives, I went with fresh blueberries instead.

I haven't consulted Matt yet about the new addition to our newlywed household, but something tells me he's going to be TOTALLY OKAY WITH IT.

Chips and Dips

2010-06-24T18:40:00.000-05:00

Summer is my favorite time for home-made Mexican comfort foods... And it doesn't hurt that my mom, it turns out, is apparently an avid collector of small earthenware pots.

The salsa is pretty standard: roughly chopped tomato and onion mixed with minced jalapeno and fresh cilantro, tossed with the juice of one lime, a dash of olive oil, and plenty of salt and pepper to taste.

The bean dip is incredibly simple and flavorful: throw a can of black beans into the mixer with one garlic clove, the juice of the other lime, and a couple teaspoons each of cumin, chili powder, and cayenne. Salt and pepper until it zings on your tongue.

Minimalist Lunch

2010-06-19T20:13:00.000-05:00

(For the cynics out there, that's a Smart Chicken organic hot dog: not super tasty, as far as hot dogs go, but the first hot dog I've seen containing only ingredients my mom has in her kitchen...)

Backdated: Berkshire Pork Chops

2010-06-19T19:54:00.001-05:00

Mom and I bought these pork chops a couple weeks ago at the farmer's market, from a seriously charming Iowan who insisted they were the preferred pig of the Queen of England.

I don't know whether this is true, but they were thick and juicy, and we (tragically) overcooked them a little waiting fruitlessly for the flesh to turn white; I gathered later from a Wikipedia entry and a consultation with Garver that Berkshire cooks almost like red meat, staying pink even when fully cooked.

... Yeah, they were still pretty good.

Mom had also gotten some beets in her CSA bag, so we chopped and grilled the greens in a little olive oil, cumin, and salt. We stuck the beets themselves in the oven to roast for an hour until they were soft and dripping red, then sliced them and served with a little soft goat butter and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

Finally, we made some of Matt's fantastic buttermilk mashed potatoes of which, as usual, I ate way too many.

Aside from the potatoes, everything in this meal came from the farmer's market, boding well for my New Year's resolution lasting at least through the summer...

Buffalo Meatballs

2010-06-19T09:38:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the break in posting... I rolled into Omaha last week, promptly broke my camera, went to California for the wedding, and started working full-time on Monday, so let's just say that photographing my food hasn't been the priority for a while.

Now that I'm reasonably settled and back in a routine, though, I promise to do better. With that, I present you: spaghetti and meatballs, slow-foods-style.

My dad and his wife graciously watched the Bean while I was away in California (they like having her: Denise claims she's a good influence on their wild child beagle pup, Bailey) so in thanks, I offered to cook dinner for them on Thursday night.

I stopped by the grocery on my way from work to their place, and was inspired by finding a package of ground bison. Bison, for those who haven't already heard it, is a terrific whole foods choice, because buffalo are pasture-raised, generally without the use of hormones or antibiotics. Someone who reads this might know more about raising buffalo than I do, but my general impression is that the meat hasn't gotten popular enough for someone to bother figuring out how to cram bison in feedlots.

The meat is wonderful; really, just like grass-raised ground beef, lean and savory. And when you mash it together in balls with parmesan reggiano, an egg, and some bread crumbs, fry it in oil and then slather it in crushed tomatoes with basil fresh from the garden, really, any kind of meat will taste delicious.

I served them over organic rotini, with fresh-baked organic bread, each slice brushed with butter and then toasted in the oven, a light salad with lemon juice and olive oil, and more choices of cheese than were probably necessary: mozzarella, parmesan, feta.

I forgot my camera, so Dad took these photos, and I love how this one came out kind of like a Dutch painting, all light and shadow, with something vaguely eerie about it...

The Wedding of the Century

2010-06-15T20:24:00.000-05:00

(At least, until next June...)

We left early Wednesday morning for a long weekend in Sonora, California, there to celebrate the nuptials of two of our closest friends from our time in South Dakota. Kim and David were married at a gorgeous vineyard about twenty minutes from her home in the little mountain town. The weather was phenomenal, the celebration intimate and meaningful, the bride was beautiful, the couple was joyous.

And the food was OHHH. M. G.

Wednesday, Matthew Blair and I spent the day in San Francisco, dining at not one but two incredible whole-food-centric restaurants: Boulette's Larder in the Ferry Building, and a Moroccan place called Aziza with a Michelin star. I managed, of course, to photograph neither meal. Between a dead camera battery and a broken lens (requiring the use of my wildlife zoom lens for all photos), photographing on Wednesday was right out.

So we pick up with photos on Thursday, by which point we were ensconced with Kim's lovely family, receiving fresh-made waffles and french toast with locally-grown berries for breakfast, coffees with agave nectar and fresh whipped cream, sandwiches slathered with peanut butter and dripping with jelly, and more than one memorable dinner:

And, it has to be said, the most fantastic margaritas I've ever had:

Not a great photo because (as with all of these, and, for that matter, all the photos you'll see for the next few weeks until my kit lens comes back from the repair shop) this was shot from a distance of twenty feet. But Kim's dad's margaritas are just lime-ade, triple sec, tequila, and lemons. So they're whole, tasty, and wayyyy too easy to drink.

Which was a problem, when we had them not only Thursday night, but also with the catered Mexican rehearsal dinner:

This is saying a lot, but it was generally agreed and I really do think that those enchiladas were the best ever. If you ever happen to find yourself in Sonora, I recommend you check out El Jardin.

The wedding dinner was the crowning glory. Kim and David hired a local caterer who specializes in using local ingredients. The spread of tender roast chicken with garlic and cherry tomatoes, grilled zucchini and bright bell pepper, fresh bread and greek salad was perfectly suited to the sunny, seventy degree evening.

I have to thank Jen for taking these photos, because I was part of the wedding party and didn't want to ruin the effect of my dress and hair by lugging the huge zoom-lens'd camera around all night.

Additionally, I drank, shall we say, to excess.

So the camera was safer with her.

What's a wedding without a cake?? This one, also created by the caterer, was lemon with a cream-cheese frosting. The inner layer of frosting was stuffed with fresh berries.

It was so good, I actually stole two other people's slices when they were busy dancing.

This is true. And I am not ashamed. Not one little bit.

Congratulations, Kim and David!

We love you so much, and we can't wait to see you in Chicago this year...

Farmer's Market

2010-06-06T10:31:00.002-05:00

My mom joined a CSA with a couple friends this year, so we went yesterday morning to meet her farmers and divvy up the goods among the group. While there, of course, we picked up some extraneous produce and cheeses, and a set of four Berkshire pork chops that cost an arm and a leg and look absolutely incredible. Photos coming of that meal tonight...

This is a locally-crafted goat cheese, rolled in lavender and lemon zest. I think they may have overdone it a little on the seasoning, but the cheese is soft and tangy, and the zest gives a flavorful crunch.

Above is a tiny loaf of dandelion bread, lovingly crafted by the young woman from whom my mom gets her weekly sack of goods. You can see the little dandelion hairs in the slice; she said they sat around for hours, delicately pulling the hairs from the greens. The resulting loaf was sweet and soft, a little like cornbread, and when spread with the smoky ripe camembert and topped with a fresh-picked strawberry from our own garden, absolutely heavenly.

Cheat-Meal: Jaipur

2010-06-06T10:26:00.001-05:00

I'm not officially Homaha until we've eaten at my favorite restaurant in the world: The Jaipur. I know this photo doesn't look that inviting, but let me tell you, nowhere else makes malai seekh kebab or vegetable samosas quite as delicious.

It's good to be home!

Sweet Summertime

2010-06-04T09:55:00.001-05:00

I'm Homaha for the summer, on break from law school (ONBREAKFROMLAW SCHOOL!!!ZOMGG) and starting work for the public defender in just a couple weeks. Matt and I are heading to California next week for Kim and David's wedding, and I'll launch into work immediately upon my return. In the meantime, though, I'm taking a few days to run, play, read, write, generally decompress, and -- of course -- eat.

My mom and seven year old niece grow an amazing garden every year, which means there are always fresh vegetables and herbs for our meals, hand-picked only moments before cooking: as fresh and as local as you can possibly get. (Photos coming soon). Summer makes slow food so much easier.

This morning, for instance, Mara and I set out to make parfaits with organic yogurt, summer-sweet berries, and the granola mom recently baked up:

(The granola is just old fashioned oats, shredded unsweetened coconut, and chopped pecans coated in a little canola oil and honey, baked until golden and then tossed with tart dried cherries.)

We layered the ingredients. As one does with a parfait.

But when it came time to photograph, she grabbed some mint she'd picked from the garden last night for a garnish, and suddenly, your average fruit and yogurt parfait became a SUMMERTIME WORK OF ART:

You can't tell me that's not the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. Go on. Try it.

Liar.

In any case, we heartily enjoyed them:

And when they were gone, we had to do something with the extra few mint leaves and strawberries... Luckily for us, there was lemonade in the fridge.

I'm rapidly revising my list of favorite months of the year. February? You got nothing on June.

Cooking for Three

2010-06-02T16:48:00.001-05:00

Matt's sister Katie is due today (!!!), so over the weekend we journeyed up to Madison with his mom to visit in anticipation of the blessed event. While there, we helped prepare some meals for them to reheat after the baby is born, when they will be overworked, underslept, and, apparently, very hungry.

While we cooked, we munched on good Wisconsin cheese and beer, purchased from the rather incredible Madison Saturday morning farmer's market:

On Sunday morning, Matt and I cooked breakfast, whipping up my mom's recipe for French pancakes. We served them with just-picked strawberries from the farmer's market, and as farmers themselves, Katie and Greg had all kinds of home-canned preserves lying around, perfect for spreading with butter and farm-fresh goat cheese on the doughy crepes:

If anyone doesn't understand why I love the country so much, please reference the photo above.

Katie and Greg, we're sending all kinds of love and the best wishes in the world your way!!

We Are Officially a Coffee Shop

2010-06-02T16:27:00.001-05:00

That's the Last of Them

2010-05-24T10:58:00.000-05:00

Sighhhhhhhh.

Saag Gosht and Stuffed Dates

2010-05-19T11:28:00.001-05:00

Sunday dinner was Indian night again at the apartment, and fresh from meeting Crystal, we were stocked again with juicy lamb stew meat. While I studied, Matt set it simmering in a subtly-spiced spinach curry:

Cumin, coriander, chili, and lemon dominated, mellowed by the soft, earthy spinach and rich lamb. Matt has a lighter hand with the cayenne than I do, so this was more of a comfort food than last week's rogan josh.

My favorite part, though, was his appetizer: medjool dates stuffed with prosciutto and marcona almonds, then baked until warm.

I've had the date/bacon combination before, but these were fantastic. Medjools are so soft and sweet, and when warm, melt like brown sugar in your mouth. Laced with the salty, tangy prosciutto, and given texture with the crunch of the almond, the only fault I could find was that I wanted to eat too many of them...

Breakfast ALL THIS WEEK

2010-05-19T11:10:00.002-05:00

Cafe Summers-Couch

2010-05-17T17:20:00.001-05:00

Since the life-changing advent of the espresso machine into our little home, Matt and I have been making noises about baking our own croissants. This Saturday, we allocated the morning to finally making good on this big dream ... only to discover that a morning does not contain nearly enough hours to successfully make croissants. One week from exams, I spent fourteen hours making French pastries instead of studying:

At 9:00 AM, we printed off the recipe from Epicurious, pulled out the big bowl and hand-mixer, and industriously whipped together some flour, yeast, and whole milk.

At 10:00 AM, we pounded three sticks of butter between the folds of a dishtowel into a thin slab half an inch thick, then chilled both dough and butter slab.

At 11:00 AM, we rolled out the dough and placed the butter on it, folding like you would a piece of paper you want to stuff in an envelope, rolling out again, folding again into envelope shape, before putting the whole thing back in the fridge to chill.

At 12:00 PM, we did this again.

At 1:00 PM, again.

By 2:00 PM, the butter slab had started to roll into the dough, starting to look kind of flaky (like a croissant!) so after a final roll-out and envelope fold, we could put it away to chill for ABSOLUTELY NO LESS THAN eight hours and ABSOLUTELY NO MORE THAN eighteen.

Eight hours from 2:00 PM is 10:00 PM. Eighteen hours from 2:00 PM is 8:00 AM. Neither is ideal, when you have friends coming over for the evening and an intent to drink a few beers on a Saturday night.

This is why you should always read through instructions all the way through before beginning a project.

In the end, we'd just worked too hard all day not to have the flaky, buttery reward at the end, so we pulled the dough out a little early (oh nooo) and started in on the next (no less complicated) steps:

We measured and cut half the dough into six rectangles, then measured and cut those rectangles into twelve triangles, then rolled those triangles into little crescent shapes on a baking sheet. The other half the dough we measured and cut into eight rectangles, rolling each of those around an ounce of bittersweet chocolate, placing on another baking sheet.

We then placed these baking sheets into two trashbags, propping the trashbags up with glasses:

We then let them rise for -- I kid you not -- another two hours.

A little after 11:30 PM, they had doubled in size and were ready to bake. They baked for precisely ten minutes at 400 degrees, at which point we rotated them 180 degrees (exactly!) and baked for an additional ten minutes at 375 degrees. We spritzed the oven with a water mist each time.

The person who first made these things must have been either OCD, wildly bored, or completely off his rocker.

But Internet, when they came out of the oven, they were worth EVERY. MINUTE.

Do you see how exhausted we look? I haven't yet run a full marathon or birthed a child, but I can only imagine this must be a similar experience...

Cafe Summers-Couch is open and ready for business. Please come buy some croissants, so that when I fail out of law school I have something to pay my loans back with.

Ants on a Redwood

2010-05-17T16:51:00.000-05:00

Found these ENORMOUS carrots and in a fit of nostalgia for the second grade couldn't resist slathering them with (organic) peanut butter and raisins.

This Pizza is a Whole Food

2010-05-12T14:07:00.001-05:00

BELIEVE IT.

We spread Bertolli pasta sauce (tomatoes, assorted seasonings, olive oil) on a Rustic Naturals crust (flour, yeast, assorted seasonings) and topped with fresh grated mozzarella, some browned C&D farms ground beef, chopped mushrooms and black olives from Whole Foods.

HECK. YES.

Slings and Arrows

2010-05-10T14:51:00.000-05:00

Friday night, instead of going to Law School Prom (yes, you read that right), I cooked a huge pot of pasta and my friend Galina brought over the first season of "Slings and Arrows," a Canadian show about a Shakespeare festival that was ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT.

I didn't photograph the pasta -- you've seen it before -- but we also dipped some strawberries in Lindt 85% dark chocolate and stuck them in the fridge to chill. About three episodes in, we pulled them out with some tea:

Lessons learned include: when you dip strawberries in chocolate and chill them, place them on parchment paper instead of a plate.

The chocolate wants to stick to the plate more than it wants to stick to the berries.

Of course, this did not stop us from enjoying every last one.

At Home Indian

2010-05-10T14:41:00.000-05:00

Before starting this regime, I'd say we ate out at least twice a week. That number hasn't necessarily changed all that much, but following the rules has affected the locations at which we dine. Fresh/local/organic seems to go hand in hand with this particular type of upscale American bistro restaurant. You never see a fresh/local/organic Mexican, Chinese, or Indian place. (Chicagoans, if there's some place I'm missing out on, PLEASE fill me in...)

So, much like living on a Reservation in South Dakota, the only solution is to COOK IT YOURSELF.

Enter Thursday night's lamb rogan josh with jasmine rice:

The recipe is one I found on SparkPeople. Since you can read the recipe here I won't bore you with the details, but it basically involved a big simmering pot of red onions, green chilies, tomatoes, garlic and ginger mashed into a paste, chunks of tender lamb meat I chopped from a loin we bought from Crystal last week, and healthy doses of garam masala, chili powder, turmeric, cumin, and coriander. Salt to taste, obvs.

Though the recipe doesn't include it, I also threw in some spinach for extra large muscles.

The curry came out incredibly fragrant and spicy, the garam masala and chili powders working together to smell and taste just like your local Indian restaurant's version. Opening the tupperware the next day for leftovers honestly felt like digging into a doggie bag of leftover carry-out.

This is very exciting. I consider myself a decent cook, but very very rarely do dishes come out tasting like something I would have paid $30 for...

We finished the meal with some simple coconut milk sherbets, an easy recipe from an Indian cookbook my mom gave me for Christmas one year: fill two cups with milk, adding two tablespoons each of dried coconut and granulated sugar to each. Stir and freeze.

I froze these a little long, so we had to sort of chip at them with our spoons, but after the spicy lamb, they were cool, refreshing, deliciously creamy and sweet.

Everyone Looks Better in White

2010-05-10T14:22:00.000-05:00

This post is an ode to my new dishware, courtesy of Matt.

Granola Bars

2010-05-05T14:38:00.000-05:00

Found these at Z & H Market, and have fallen desperately in love:

New York, New York

2010-05-03T14:16:00.001-05:00

For those who were wondering when I started snoring in Evidence this morning: I returned last night from an amazing weekend with the girls in NYC. (!!!) We shopped at Kleinfeld for my wedding dress (success!), toured Soho in sundresses on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, drank to excess at a beer garden and then to greater excess on Drea and Margaret's rooftop deck, and of course, above all other things, ATE.

Followers of the blog, they were extremely gracious hosts, researching restaurants that would fit the plan. Turns out, eating unprocessed is pretty easy in New York, where the fresh and local movement is the hip thing to do if you're a chef.

Waiting on Drea to get out of work on Friday afternoon, I dined solo at Cafe 50 West, where I had a big, fresh salad and approximately the most incredible macaroni and cheese (with white truffle oil!) in the history of the world:

Friday night, we hit Jean-Georges' new restaurant, ABC Kitchen. Totally committed to fresh/local/organic cuisine, the menu lists its source farms on the back. No need to fear that anything here ever encountered a factory or warehouse:

Margaret had a goat cheese ravioli:

Drea ordered a roasted carrot salad which it would never have occurred to me to get, but turned out to be the greatest thing I had ever tasted:

I got the spicy pork ragu bigoli:

And Melissa had a pizza with prosciutto and kale:

(Sorry these photos are so blurry ... the lighting was a little too romantic for great quality pictures.)

On Saturday, Drea and I took a break from strolling in Soho to dine at another Jean-Georges restaurant, (Mercer)Market. She and I shared an appetizer of roasted beets with goat cheese before digging into a tuna spring roll and eggs benedict, respectively:

I really can't describe how lemony and wonderful that hollandaise was. Definitely on my list to learn how to make (without contracting salmonella).

We met up with Margaret after lunch and came upon -- no joke -- an organic ice cream truck.

When you write a blog of this sort and then COME UPON AN ORGANIC ICE CREAM TRUCK there is really a sort of obligation to get an ice cream cone.

So I did:

We finished Saturday with several hours at the Loreley beer garden, during and after which I made the (wise) decision to keep my camera in my bag.

Sunday afternoon, we wrapped up my visit with a trip to Shake Shack. For those who aren't familiar and don't live in NYC, I'm so sorry. For those who aren't familiar and do live in NYC, GO. Make sure to check the Shack Cam before you go, though, to avoid an hours-long line.

I didn't bring the camera on this venture either, but Drea let me snap a photo of my ShackBurger with her iPhone:

BEST. CHEATMEAL. EVER.

To Juliet, Love Juliet

2010-05-03T13:44:00.001-05:00

Have I mentioned yet that my birthday present to myself this year was an espresso machine? Or that it has been TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY LIFE-CHANGING?

Pre-espresso machine I used to end up at Medici three or four times a week for lattes, at about $4 a pop.

Post-espresso machine I am saving money by drinking wayyyyy more espresso than I ever did before.

This is where addiction and frugality meet back on the other side.

Courtesy of Anna D

2010-04-29T21:00:00.003-05:00

Man at Very Top of Food Chain Chooses Bugles

It's My Party and I'll Eat What I Want To

2010-04-29T18:42:00.001-05:00

Every Wednesday morning, the University of Chicago Law School hosts an event called "Coffee Mess" in which Dunkin Donuts coffee, doughnuts, bagels, and an assortment of fruits and yogurts are provided for law students.

Wednesday mornings have been very difficult for me this year.

Yesterday was my birthday, and I'll be damned if I wasn't going to have a doughnut on my birthday.

Or two.

I'm going to be honest with you: they were very, very tasty. Marsha Nagorsky, our Dean of Communications (shout out!) challenged me about eating them; what is the lesson of the experiment if, on the one day a year you really can and should eat whatever your heart desires, I choose to eat heavily processed foods?

She had a point. And here's the answer: the lesson is that after months of eating unprocessed foods with few exceptions, gorging on two huge frosted doughnuts on my birthday resulted in A) a silty feeling on the roof of my mouth that lasted all the way through two classes, until I eventually got home to brush my teeth and B) several hours of serious stomach upset.

When I say "serious stomach upset", you should read "major diarrhea."

It's all honesty on this blog.

AWESOME way to spend a birthday.

Thankfully, it wasn't all bad news. My lovely friend Amy has a tradition of baking everyone cupcakes on their birthdays. Usually that involves the birthday friend articulating their favorite Betty Crocker flavor, but for me, she insisted on making them from scratch.

She was most concerned about making home-made frosting, and settled on fresh-cut strawberries in a sugar sauce. It had to be spooned in immediately precedent to eating:

Everyone was amused. Especially when she pulled out a stove lighter to light my candle.

We won't discuss those balloons.

Happy birthday to me! Thanks Amy -- and everyone else -- for making my day special. That's kind of a feat, especially since it was a Wednesday in law school with six hours of classes, homework to finish, and things to work on for the clinic.

And diarrhea.

Twenty Six Candles

2010-04-26T15:03:00.001-05:00

... Or just two candles that spell out "26".

I turn 26 on Wednesday, and since he'll be in Champaign for the week, Matt surprised me last night with some beautiful new serving dishes. I was pounding out a motion for Pretrial as he cooked, and when he suggested I come in to see how everything had turned out, I got so distracted by A) the candles and B) how amazingly delicious the mashed potatoes looked that it took me a full five minutes to realize I didn't previously own any of the dishes on which everything was plated.

I've been talking all year about wanting more plain white dishes, because food looks so much better on white. Matt took notes, and picked this stuff up at Bed Bath & Beyond. I love how spare it is.

And am I right or am I right about food looking delicious on white? See, e.g.:

He also got me some legit beer glasses, so we can stop drinking beer out of my wine stemware:

That's a Scottish stout which smelled and tasted like (imagine this!) Scotch, because the brewery barrels the beer in whiskey casks.

As for the dinner itself, we had chicken pinwheels with brown sugar-glazed carrots and buttermilk whipped potatoes. The chicken was really remarkably easy: we hammered two breasts flat, then spread each with some thawed frozen spinach, a goat cheese already mixed with sundried tomatoes and basil, and some chopped Greek olives.

Roll each breast up, and bake in a pan with sides for approximately 45 minutes to an hour. Voila:

The potatoes were inspired by a meal we had at Province Restaurant this weekend while our TFA friend Kim Clinite was in town. Matt mashed about five red potatoes with three tablespoons of butter and a half cup of buttermilk. I love really rich mashed potatoes, filled with butter and heavy cream, but these were so much lighter and with all the flavor; the tang of the buttermilk gave them a great zing, and they came out really fluffy.

We (read: I) ate them all.

Finally, I have no idea what he did with the carrots except that it involved brown sugar and butter and was very tasty. He later claimed to have only cooked the carrots so as to "have something long" for the presentation on the serving dishes.

Law school got in the way -- as it too often does -- from fully relaxing over this incredible dinner with more than one beer, but as always, the food was great and the company the best I could possibly ask for. Being more than a quarter-century old is fine by me, if this is my life at 26...

Bad News Bears

2010-04-26T08:37:00.001-05:00

When I started this journey, the basic rules I chose to live by were:

1) Don't eat anything containing ingredients my great-grandmother Genevieve wouldn't recognize as a food. (Rephrased: don't eat anything containing ingredients I wouldn't keep in my own kitchen.)

2) Eat fresh and local as much as possible.

3) Avoid meats from sources I'm unfamiliar with.

4) Take one exception meal a week.

The problem with #2 and #3, of course, is that I qualified them. It's hard to eat fresh and local in Chicago in winter without dining out at ridiculously expensive boutique farm-to-table restaurants every day. And aside from the stuff I get from Crystal, my farmer, I'm really never quite sure where meats are coming from. Since I don't want to be a de-facto vegetarian, this means that every time I eat out, I'm in a sense breaking one of the rules. So if I eat out more than once, I'm overloading on #4.

Rule #1 was the only hard and fast one.

Then came this:

You can't possibly convince me that Fritos are unprocessed. They are the VERY SOUL of processed. So Rule #1 clearly needs a little rephrasing.

Why is this all so hard??

Breakfast of Champions

2010-04-26T08:27:00.001-05:00

Oatmeal raisin cookies and a big glass of whole milk to dip.

I don't miss cereal at all.

Musical Viewing Party

2010-04-19T20:36:00.001-05:00

Friday night, several cast-mates from the Law School Musical came over to watch highlights of the show and discuss our mutual awesomeness. An unprocessed feast was in order:

Strawberries, raspberries, olives ... Camembert, gouda, and Irish butter to spread on hearty slices of fresh bread:

Hummus from Cedars, a local Greek restaurant, and five ingredient crackers ("Stonewall Farms") to dip:

Adam came with Shauna, and of course, when Adam and Shauna come, they bring chocolate:

(Coated in Ghiradelli white and milk chocolate).

Caitlin, our remarkably cool producer, came out with fresh guacamole and salsa fresca from a local Mexican place. No clue why I didn't get these photographed. But I DID manage to shoot about 300 takes of the massive jug of strawberry lemonade she'd mixed up for the occasion:

We tossed in some frozen blueberries in lieu of ice. And some shots of blackberry vodka, just because.

Minimalist Dinner

2010-04-19T20:15:00.000-05:00

There are three ingredients in this dinner. Steak, artichoke, butter.

Five if you count salt and pepper.

This Post Is Not About Whole Foods

2010-04-19T20:03:00.000-05:00

But the following photo is so dang cute I can't resist sharing it with the great wide interwebz:

I know she looks like a slacker, but in Bean's defense, this is what usually ends up happening to me when I study Evidence, too...

Buy Me Some Peanuts

2010-04-17T08:56:00.001-05:00

This week, I took my exception meal on Sunday, using up my quota of processed foods for the week at the White Sox game:

God only knows what was in that hot dog. But it was coated in grilled onion and pepper, ketchup and mustard, and tasted like heaven.

Also, we should discuss this:

Around the seventh inning, nachos sounded really appealing, and I wanted to make the most of my exception meal for the week. I have to tell you, though, that these were not nearly so good as the hot dogs. I'd forgotten that rubbery texture processed cheese has, and how it hardens ever so slightly as it cools, eerily reminiscent of the Gak I played with in my youth.

No, I'll take a quarter pound of ground pork stuffed in intestine lining and topped with sugary tomato paste instead...

Fiesta Night and Chocolate for Breakfast

2010-04-13T21:36:00.002-05:00

After the infamous meatloaf disaster, a more rational group of people might have thrown in the towel and just dined out. I mean, Chicago has at least a couple good restaurants. Not us.

We cleaned up the mess from Thursday and launched right into the next endeavor: fiesta night! Nan drove up on Friday, so between Matt, Mara, Jen, Nan, and I, we had a WHOLE lot of cooks in the kitchen. This time, though, everything turned out great:

Jen and Mara made Mara-style guacamole (read: avocados mashed with salt and a squeeze of lime.) Sidenote: when Matt and I get around to registering, someone remind me to put a masher on there. Sorry, Jen.

Meanwhile, Matt, Liza Nan and I created a health-conscious seven layer bean dip:

The bottom layer is four cups of black beans blended in the Cuisinart with garlic, cumin, lime juice, salt, and cayenne pepper to taste. Top that with a spread of organic sour cream (took me a while to find one not containing that dang locust bean gum...). The next layer is just a couple cups of frozen corn, thawed on the stove with some chopped fresh cilantro and more lime juice. Finally, a fresh salsa from chopped red and yellow tomatoes, a jalapeno, more fresh cilantro and lime. The flavors are wonderful, and because it doesn't have any cheese and not much sour cream, it's also remarkably low calorie.

We also heated some C&D ground beef on the stove, simmering with cumin, chili powder, salt, and cayenne, and everyone built their plates...

The last one there is mine, because it is noticeably missing a taco shell or tortilla. We didn't have the energy -- or, for that matter, room in the kitchen -- to home cook tortillas, and all the packaged varieties contain things like Yellow Number 5, so I stuck with Donkey Chips and was perfectly satisfied.

The only thing we were missing was margaritas.

After the dishes had been washed (thank you, family), we whipped up a quick pot de creme.

I love that I can say that: "whipped up a quick pot de creme".

No, wait, I don't love that I can say that, because pot de creme is TOO EASY to whip up and TOO DELICIOUS not to, and this impacts my hips alarmingly.

In any event, we whipped it up and popped it in a fridge, and then I forgot about it because Matt and I dashed over to Amy and Lauren's birthday party (happy birthday!) and when we came home, everyone else had knocked out in sheer exhaustion.

So we had pot de creme for breakfast on Saturday.

Nobody minded.

And whipped cream, which Jen and Matt had whisked up the night before.

Also on the registry: an egg-beater. Sorry again, Jen.

Mara took the inaugural bite:

... I think she approved.

There's nothing like one big happy family, all together, sharing a pot of chocolate pudding for breakfast.

Snappy Garlic Carrot Meaty Loaf-Surprise!

2010-04-12T22:55:00.002-05:00

Last weekend, both my ranunculus sisters and delightful seven-year-old niece came to Chicago for a visit, which meant A) the floor of my apartment couldn't be walked across for bodies B) more Apples to Apples than you can possibly imagine and C) near-constant eating. Jen and Mara haven't yet been featured on the blog, so I am delighted to present them to you in this post.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in this family, they're a little strange. But lovely.

On Thursday night, Jen and I decided on a whim to make meatloaf and mashed potatoes -- simple enough, and she has a favorite recipe which, when she initially described it, sounded like I had all the requisite ingredients: ground beef, milk, carrots, ketchup, oats.

The trouble began with worcestershire sauce, which I can't eat and don't keep in the house. No problem, we decided. We'll just season with garlic powder and salt, and it'll be a little bland but still tasty.

Jen was disconcerted when she discovered I only keep whole milk in the house. But we shrugged and poured it in. Then we asked Mara to grab out the oats, and when she handed us the container she found, we realized it had maybe seven individual oats left in it. So we ripped up some whole wheat bread into crumbs, folding it in.

Meanwhile, we also searched my pantry for potatoes, finding only a handful of fingerlings: not really appropriate to mash. Meh. We diced, seasoned, and roasted them instead.

Jen usually bakes her meatloaf in a glass dish, but I don't have one, so we poured the mix into a metal bread loaf pan. Forty five minutes later, and out came the LEAST. APPETIZING. THING. I HAVE EVER SEEN.

See that yellowish stuff mixing with the ketchup? It's not mustard. It's a pool of fat which collected on top of the browning meat; as the ground beef was extra lean grass raised, we could only imagine that the whole milk had done it.

We sopped up a little of the creamy fat pool with a paper towel, then tried to plate it. Plating didn't help.

It smelled like hamburger day in a school cafeteria, and looked, well, like an oily meat slab. The whole thing was so off-putting, in fact, it reminded us of the Weight Watchers recipe cards. So we styled the dish and photographed with a bright flash in an effort to capture the effect:

Snappy Garlic Carrot Meaty Loaf-Surprise!

The best part, of course, was that when we actually ate it, it was kind of satisfying, in the way those old school hamburgers were...

... nobody ever accused the Summers family of leaving food on our plates.

NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

2010-04-06T12:48:00.001-05:00

Matt and I toyed with the idea of going to Indianapolis to watch my alma mater Duke play Butler for the NCAA Championship (which, for those who live under a rock, we ended up winning by one point after a thrilling game). When the logistics started getting too tricky, we made the decision that if we were willing to spend that much money and that much time going to the game, we should be willing to spend at least half that much money and that much time making our private viewing SUPER AWESOME.

We started with Swedish "cheese bread" toasted in a skillet.

Then it was enormous, juicy, 1/3 pound burgers from C&D farms, topped with artisanal cheddar, mushrooms sauteed in butter, organic lettuce, tomato, ketchup, and mayo. We stacked it all on fresh-baked ciabatta buns from my local bakery, which were soft enough to rip when bitten into, but firm enough to hold ALL. THAT. FOOD.

I didn't have the wherewithal to fry fries, so we tested a recipe for kale chips we've been meaning to try: we brushed a couple cups of kale leaves with olive, sprinkled with salt, and toasted it in the oven for twenty minutes or so.

I'd doubted the recipe, which claimed that kale crisps under heat, but the "chips" did in fact come out crisp rather than wilted! They were tasty (if you're into kale) but sort of odd, the crispness crumbling to a kale-y ash in the mouth. I'd make them again, but really, if you're in the mood for french fries or potato chips, this just isn't going to be the replacement you're looking for.

Matt wanted to replicate my undergraduate basketball experience, so he was bent on making us "Big Beers" a la Satty's (shout-out to all the Duke grads reading this blog). 32 ounces of beer in a plastic cup. Unfortunately, he failed to find a plastic cup capable of holding 32 ounces of beer. We ended up with these, instead:

Finally, at half-time, when the game was nail-bitingly close, nothing would do to comfort us but a big pan of brownies, lovingly crafted from Ghiradelli unsweetened baking chocolate, fresh eggs, organic sugar, walnuts, flour, artisanal vanilla extract, and a stick of butter borrowed from our lovely upstairs neighbors, Joe and Lauren.

This feast may not have been better than actually seeing Duke win the championship in person, but it went a long way toward making up for it.

GO BLUE DEVILS!

Baby Shower in Des Moines

2010-04-06T12:34:00.001-05:00

This weekend, Matt's mom hosted an Easter baby shower for Katie and Greg. (!!!) I don't want to go too far into the details, but suffice it to say that most of the treats on offer were prooooobably not strictly in line with my dietary regime.

Several weeks ago, Matt threatened to start a shadow blog, "Things Juliet Doesn't Tell You," so in the interests of avoiding a post on there, I'd better be honest.

I had a cupcake.

In my defense, though, I shared it with Matt. And he ate the sugary bunny on top.

The spread was kind of amazing ...

The numerous quiches were all homemade, and sported various assortments of vegetables and cheeses: zucchini, mushroom, spinach, red pepper, onion / asiago, parmesan, swiss, cheddar. We helped make them before the party started, so though the crusts were packaged and frozen, I felt a little more legitimate cutting myself a huge slice.

There were fresh berries and fruit salad...

... and approximately every kind of ham and bacon you could imagine. Katie only eats "happy meat," so I dove into one from a local Iowa farm which Ron, Matt's stepdad, called "The Ham that God Made." (As distinguished from the Hormel variety, labelled "The Ham that Hormel Made."

Later, after presents had been unwrapped and we lay, exhausted, in front of the NCAA semi-finals, there was pizza. But I'll let you read about that on Matt's blog...

Midnight Snack

2010-04-06T12:11:00.000-05:00

I had to give up bacon this year.

I know. I know. It's been hard.

The thing is, even my local farmer's bacon is cured with sodium nitrate and all kinds of other weird stuff. I haven't yet found one that is just straight up pork. For a while, I have to tell you, life was bleak.

And then Matt brought home some prosciutto. Ingredients? Pork and salt. AND A WHOLE LOT OF DELICOUS.

Costa Rica!

2010-03-27T14:59:00.003-05:00

Last night, I returned to 40 degree Chicago from 80 degree Costa Rica, where I'd spent the past several days with some close sorority sisters from my undergrad at Duke. The trip was pretty amazing (if you'd like to see non-food-related photos, check my Flickr site here) and the food was, too... I think I ate more rice, beans, and sugar-sweet fresh fruit in the past few days than I have in the whole last year:

I ate a lot of "casada tipica de Costa Rica": black beans, rice, mahi mahi sauteed in lime and garlic butter, served with fried plantains and a tangy sauce. SO. GOOD.

You can't really tell, but that's beef fajitas, with the standard bell pepper/onion sautee, but also fresh guacamole, plantains, and bacon to add zing.

And, of course, it wouldn't be a trip to Costa Rica without some serious coffee...

... or a spring break without some sweet coconut water and rum!

Family Dinner Party

2010-03-27T13:30:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting, y'all -- I've been off on spring break (photos from Costa Rica coming soon!) and left the computer behind.

A couple weeks ago, Matt's sister Katie (of the incredible strawberry jam) and her husband Greg came to town to help us use one of the Green Zebra groupons. As it happened, my little sis was also in Chicago with Jefferson again, so everyone came over Friday night for a big, whole foods meal. Aside from a brief coffee Matt and I once shared with our respective moms, this was the first time anyone in our families had met, and it ended up being a pretty fun evening.

And the food was delicious.

Above: crispy parmesan chicken breasts topped with a light lemon vinaigrette salad. Matt was in charge of hammering the chicken breasts flat, which I then dipped in 1) flour, 2) egg, 3) a mixture of grated parmesan and bread crumbs and fried in a little butter.

Hammering the chicken thin meant that it didn't need to stay long on the fryer -- just a couple minutes on each side -- and thus was crispy on the outside, but tender and juicy on the inside.

The salad was incredibly simple: I bought an organic lettuce mix, mixed equal parts olive oil and lemon juice, and topped with shaved parmesan reggiano.

Below: cream of mushroom and leek soup. A Barefoot Contessa recipe, found here, and I'm not going to lie, it was mostly butter. You can see the fat in a beautiful, delicious, creamy sheen on top.

For me, the soup could have used a little more depth of flavor -- its dominant notes were the thyme and white wine -- but its subtlety was nice in contrast to the sharp acidity of the lemon-parm chicken.

We paired it all with Goose Island's Sofie: a citrusy Belgian, and one of our favorite beers. I'd do a more thorough review for you, but it would be put to shame by Matt's brother Andy's description, which can be found on his kind of fantastic beer blog here.

Cooking for family is a reminder of why I want to live this way, eat this food; people have always come together over food, and with loved ones, the act of eating is a complete experience rather than a simple consumption of calories. And when the food is fresh and delicious, when you've put some thought into what you're sharing with the people you love, that experience is all the better.

Mostly Plants?

2010-03-09T21:04:00.000-06:00

There's a question mark at the end of my blog title for a reason. Since well before beginning this challenge, I knew that the hardest part would be the "mostly plants" end of things. How many of us struggle with the recommended five to seven vegetables, even in summer when everything is fresh from the garden? How about in winter in Chicago, when the greens available in the produce section were either A) grown in Mexico or somewhere similarly distant or B) look sort of sad, pale, bruisy and wrinkled? It's like a Sophie's Choice between eating a pear from half a world away, or eating a pear that looks vaguely like Winston Churchill.

I can only tackle one eating challenge at a time. I'd like to be responsible in getting produce fresh and local, but if it's going to be so unappealing in my fridge that I won't eat it, then I won't be feeding my body right. And frankly, living on lattes and croissants freshly made though they may be (see previous post), is JUST NOT what this year is about.

So I'm buying those $5 boxes of berries. At least until summer comes back.

Assuming summer will, in fact, come back. Some days in Chicago it is just hard to tell.

We love zucchini. Matt's been known to have it for breakfast. I'll chop up a whole one, grill it in a little olive oil, and eat it instead of chips in front of a movie.

I'm trying to get two fruits or vegetables in every meal, to hit the recommended servings mark. So, above is artichoke alongside a bolognese made with fresh crushed tomatoes.

And, of course, it helps if one of those daily plant servings comes a little decadent...

Haagendaaz "Five" Vanilla Bean ice cream topped with a cup of fresh raspberries. That is officially my FAVORITE WAY TO GET MY DAILY FIBER.

Exams, In Sum

2010-03-09T20:36:00.001-06:00

Latte and a fresh-baked croissant from my local bakery. I'm pretty much living on espresso, milk, eggs, butter, and pastry flour.

And Adam Marvin Makes My Day

2010-03-05T19:33:00.000-06:00

Antique Weight Watchers Recipe Cards

Although, let's be honest, it's hard to say which days of mine Adam Marvin doesn't make.

Things You Learn in Law School that Reconfirm your Commitment to Bizarre New Year's Resolutions Include...

2010-03-05T18:28:00.000-06:00

Professional bakers often cannot be fingerprinted.

The years of working with enriched white flour have literally burned their fingerprints off their fingers.

This tells us two things:

1) If you plan a life of crime, take a cue from Nancy Botwin and make your front a bakery.

2) HOLY MOTHER STOP EATING SO MUCH BREAD

Lentil Soup

2010-03-04T11:27:00.001-06:00

Winter has lasted approximately FOREVERPLUSTHIRTYSEVENDAYS in Chicago this year, and a few days ago that meant nothing would do but a big pot of my mom's lentil soup.

Start with three grated carrots and a chopped onion in a little olive oil:

(Look! Photos from the cooking process!)

(Well, make that one photo from the cooking process. The other ones came out too blurry. Especially after I popped the bottle of wine and had a glass. Or two.)

Season with a pinch of salt and pepper and a teaspoon of dried marjoram. Saute until the onions are tender and the marjoram fragrant.

Add a can of diced tomatoes (I used the Racconio brand again, just tomatoes and sea salt), a bag of lentils, rinsed and cleaned, and about eight cups of broth. To make the dish fully vegetarian you can go with vegetable broth, but since I have about 2908239072349082349 containers of homemade chicken stock in my freezer from the 2908239072349082349 times I've made roasted chicken and then boiled the bones, I figured I'd better use some up.

Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for an hour until the lentils are soft. Pour in one to two ounces of dry white wine and simmer uncovered another ten minutes.

Top with cheese (I went with a lovely mellow munster) and serve with fresh baked bread and butter.

It's a vegetable-based recipe, if not totally vegetarian, and goes to the heart of what I think Pollan's food rules are all about: fill yourself with beautiful plants and herbs first, supplemented by natural starches, garnished with naturally-raised meats and dairy.

When I make this soup, I feel like I'm really eating from the earth.

Confessions: Airport Food

2010-03-01T13:20:00.003-06:00

Returned late last night from an amazing weekend visiting friends and scouting a wedding location in South Dakota. Our travel dates corresponded, amazingly enough, with the running of the 3rd Annual Nemo Outhouse Race, and as always with the SD*TFA crew, the fun was out of control. I'd post photos, but A) most of them were inappropriate and B) none of them had much to do with eating whole foods.

I DID take some photos of things I ate this weekend, and this post is going to be something of a confessional.

In my own apartment, with my own utensils, my nearby Whole Foods, and all the time in the world (read: fifteen minutes between classes) I can cook anything I want and eating unprocessed is easy.

When dashing through the airport at 6:00 AM on an empty stomach, it's not so easy.

Hence:

That would be a Caribou Coffee dark chocolate latte. God knows what's in it. But it tasted like HEAVENNNNNNNNN.

I like this photo that Matt took; it captures the voices of angels I heard while sipping on that.

Over the weekend, we ate out a lot, but mostly at places whom I would trust to use largely fresh, local, whole ingredients. For example, a bowl of granola and fruit at Bully Blends tea and coffee shop, accompanied by a pitcher of whole milk:

In perfect honesty, though, I didn't alter my orders or ask the server about what went into the dishes I wanted this weekend. I just ate.

And drank:

You can't tell me those sprinkles are whole, even if everything else in the mug was (which it decidedly wasn't).

And the return journey was worse. We woke at 5:00 AM to reach the airport by our early flight time, only to discover that the flight had been delayed, then delayed again, then delayed again. We didn't reach our connection in Minneapolis until 6:00, and didn't get home to Chicago until almost 10:00. All of which meant that we dined on airport food all day.

... for breakfast...

... for lunch ...

And for dinner: the camera was out of batteries by this point, but Matt got a Wolfgang Puck margherita pizza, and I took one of their cold Caesar salads. Didn't have much of the dressing or croutons, because I was feeling so disgusting from all the junk. All the same, I don't feel like I can quite count it on the unprocessed side of my weekend equation.

Several people, when I've told them about my yearlong challenge, have asked how I feel: have I noticed a substantial change for the better in my body? I've been saying "yes," not out of any real conviction that my eating has improved my body image or health, but rather because I've been generally feeling good and healthy, and may as well attribute it to the eating regime as to anything else. Coming out of this weekend, though, I can tell a major difference. I feel decidedly draggy, heavy, bloated, and lethargic. It's really astounding how a couple days off the wagon can so seriously impact your body. And it makes me more determined and eager than ever to stick to my challenge.

Anyways, this is sum of my travel confessions. I'm back home and more ready than ever to cook and eat the kinds of meals I've been cooking and eating.

And no more Caribou for a long, long time.

Burgers and Fries

2010-02-24T20:25:00.002-06:00

This weekend I hit up Epic Burger with my mom. For those who haven't been, the experience can be reasonably summed up in ZOMG!!!!!11. Epic Burger has follows some food rules of their own: all natural ingredients (even the ketchup is organic, though containing some things I can't eat), grass raised beef, real Wisconsin cheddar, locally baked buns available in white or wheat ... frankly, a dreamboat place for a girl who gave up processed foods for the year and HAS ACTUALLY BEEN DREAMING OF MCDONALD'S CHEESEBURGERS.

Like, hott dreams.

Of course, the problem with eating one delicious cheeseburger is then you crave them all week, right?
But you don't want to be that guy who the staff at Epic Burger starts to recognize. And Michael Pollan says "RULE #63: COOK".

So tonight I cooked:

I had some ground lamb in the freezer from a couple weeks ago when Crystal was out of ground beef, just the right flavor profile for Greek burgers. If you read this blog, you know that I love lemon and feta, and they're total stars in this recipe.

Saute half an onion and a couple minced garlic cloves in a little olive oil until almost caramelized. Chop two or three sun-dried tomatoes and saute another minute or two. Pour it all into a mixing bowl and allow to cool for a minute or two (so it won't start to cook the lamb as you mix). Mix in 1/3 to 1/2 a pound of ground lamb -- more if serving more than a couple people -- and add the juice of half a lemon, one teaspoon ground cumin, and one teaspoon ground coriander. Divide into burgers and grill in your onion pan.

Simultaneously, melt a tablespoon of butter in a smaller pan; add a cup of sliced mushrooms and stir occasionally as they cook down.

When the burgers are almost fully cooked, top each with a slice of feta -- the feta will melt slightly as they finish.

I layered these on some slices of sunflower rye bread we had lying around (home-baking buns was briefly considered and eventually rejected in favor of watching the Olympics), and roasted some sliced fingerlings as a stand in for fries. For the record: roasted potatoes < french fries. Also for the record: french fries = significantly messier to cook and clean up.

They weren't Epic Burgers(tm). But they were pretty epic nonetheless.

MUSICAL IS OVER

2010-02-23T16:48:00.000-06:00

As you may have noticed, posting dropped off significantly in the past week or two, and as you also may notice, this post contains no photos.

This is not, as some have accused, because I stopped eating only unprocessed foods during the last hellish days of the Law School Musical. On the contrary, I did my best in a bad set of circumstances, but what that really looked like was grabbing a handful of carrots and a piece of bread on my way out the door, or settling down to an enormous bowl of beans and cheese upon a midnight return from rehearsal.

In the interests of perfect honesty, it did also mean skipping dinner Saturday night during the show, only to get inappropriately blasted at the cast party and eat Matt's entire take-out meal from Harold's Chicken and Fish.

Yes. That's right. I admit it, you did see me eating Harold's Chicken and Fish on Saturday night. And I have no defense.

That being said, the title of this post is MUSICAL IS OVER and though I'm still a law student living hour to hour, assignment to assignment, I'm back to my normal life and can take the time to prepare meals worth photographing. Lentil soup is simmering on the stove, and I can't wait to show it to you.

Everything in a Pizza Pocket

2010-02-21T13:53:00.000-06:00

... Listed in beautiful poster form here.

(Link courtesy of Mugs)