gf crepes with "I'm cheap" blintz filling, savory crepes

1/2 cup gf ap flour or sorghum (or any soft flour really)

2 eggs or egg substitutes whisked

pinch salt

1/4 cup warm water

1/2 cup milk of choice

optional : 1 tsp powdered sugar

Whisk well. Slowly pour 2 tb melted butter or margarine, or coconut oil while continuing to whisk until texture is smooth.

Preheat and oil a skillet or griddle at medium heat.

Pour out 1/3 to 1/4 cup of batter and spread either by rotating the pan or by using the back of a spoon.

Once the small bubbles set on the top of your crepe gently loosen the edges and flip. Allow to cook about 30-45 seconds. Remove to plate. Repeat. Whisk to smooth the batter as needed. If you are planning on preparing multiple batches for storage or freezing please separate them with layers of parchment. Seal in airtight bag once cool to store.

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"I'm cheap" blintz filling

1/2 lb water pack tofu set out or squeeze slowly and gently to drain (do not freeze). Mash the tofu until it almost smooth.

Add a scant pinch salt.

Add 2 tsp sweetener (powdered sugar or honey or 1/4tsp stevia), 2 tb cream or milk of choice and 1 tb vanilla extract (gf if needed). Whip. Use as crepe filling and top with fruit.

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Savory filling: I'm going to be real here. If you are gf sandwich bread is usually expensive and unsatisfying. Crepes are not either. Anything you can put in a warm sandwich can be shoved in a crepe,toasted lightly on both sides and nommed.
My favorite is as follows... 2 thin slices red onion, 1 handful leafy cooking greens(sorrel,spinach, arugula, cress, chard...I don't care) 1/4 crisp apple and 2 slices cheddar, swiss, harvarti, parmesan ,etc..cheese. I eat the rest of the apple as a side with some carrots. Lunchtime crisis averted.

Irish Soda Cake

In my continuing love affair with oats....


2 cups oat flour
2 tablespoons sugar, honey or 1/2 tsp stevia
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup currants or currants and walnuts (leave out if using for regular bread or breadcrumbs)
1-1/2 cup buttermilk
(or same amount milk of choice, allowed to sit with 1 tb lemon or cider vinegar for 5 minutes to curdle)
1 egg or 2 tb flax gel
1 stick butter cold (or 3 oz coconut oil cold,or 1 stick margarine cold)

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and soda. A pastry knife makes this easier or you can use a fork or your fingers. Stir in currants, then stir in the buttermilk, stirring just until mixture is blended. Turn out onto a lightly oat floured surface and knead until uniform (as oatflour is low gluten or gf if you get gf oatflour you generally don't have to worry as much about over kneading) . Form dough into a round and put on parchment in a clean iron skillet or on a cookie sheet. I tend to get better results with the skillet.. Cut a cross on the top of the loaf. Bake at 375° for 30 minutes. Allow to cool for 15 minutes to reduce crumbling when you cut wedges. Serve warm with butter. Good with everything.

sesame spinach ( and other greens) gf if needed

You just roasted some tofu and made some rice
You need edible greens...

Take 1 lb leaves wash em'. Remove woody parts.
Please don't be skittish about ingesting a variety of edible greens. Use what's in season, you can grow it and will be ok cooked. Eating what's available encourages biodviersity, your health and can save you money. (For ex right now in may spinach is tres expensive but the kale is coming up, and so is arugula and dandelion greens. Last month cress was cheap...and if the strawberry spinach would grow it should have shown up then..alas.
Pour 1 tb off the top of your tahini or direct from a bottle of sesame oil
add 1 tb lemon juice and 3 cloves garlic, if desired grate in 1/2 inch fresh ginger.
Heat and allow greens to wilt . Add 3 tb soy sauce (gf if needed) and a small handful of sesame or sesame and flax seeds. Serve hot or chilled. Some greens freeze well, some do not.

Cook until most of the liquid is dissolved and evaporated and your greens are bright green.
options:
add 1 tsp honey or maple syrup if sweetness is desired with the soysauce
add 1/4 tsp thai or korean chili powder with the soysauce.
This is good packed with a protein and rice balls for lunch, as part of bibimbap, sushi filling, as a sandwich topping or omlette filling and along side bbq tempeh or pulled jackfruit bbq.

how rice ate chicago- lazy lentil risotto

This month this been insane. As a result not only have my posts been more sporadic at best. The status of my frequency in the kitchen is not much better. But we still have to eat and hopefully it'll be quick and not too intense or frequent and it should be hearty and contain nutrients...which brings us to my rice cooker. Several years back, in the throes of a bad fever I purchased a rice cooker online. One of those non stick vacuum sealed bucket kinds. It was a very good deal. No, seriously. Despite it's fever related origins this device is used almost as much as my cast iron, my cutting boards and my knives. Better yet it can keep food warm for a day so I make one big batch of something and it's good for 24 hours without changing serving devices. Please keep in mind the method I am suggesting is not recommended by manufacturers , may cause fires and is done entirely at your own risk. I have successfully been doing this and crazy stuff like it with my rice cooker for 7 years. It's not supposed to do sushi rice or brown rice either but it has been doing that for years too. It's still working. I do have to clean the vents more often. We make pilaf,  rice and beans, sushi rice for handrolls etc in it. We use it an average of 4 days a week. Rice cookers save my sanity, such as it is. This is the best thing I can make in it besides plain  rice. That being said I have seen enough recipes calling for similar that I would assume you can throw these ingredients in a crockpot on low for 8 hours and get similar results. I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know but it might work.


In your rice cooker put:
1 cup lentils

1 1/2 cup rice
3-4 cup water or broth
1 cup red or white wine or hard cider ( my favorite)
1 half head of garlic and 1 sauteed onion or 2 cleaned and sauteed leeks and 2 tb butter/ olive oil/ mixture to sautee them in.
1 lb chopped veg of choice (lately peppers from the freezer or chunks of squash form previous cooking)
1 handful frozen peas
1tb grated nutmeg
chives or scapes when available
1 tsp salt
a few grinds of black pepper
1/2 lb to 1 lb small cooking greens (little kale, dandelion,baby mustard, mizuna, cress,spinach, chard, caulifower leaves,whatever is popping up) washed
1/2 lb grated cheese (swiss, gouda, cheddar, parmesan...whatever)
4 oz sliced mushrooms or 5 dried shitake broken up into the rice cooker pot.

Throw everything but the cheese in. Stir. Put on a full cook cycle. adjust flavours to preference. Stir in cheese. wait 15 minutes, stir again....serve.

Eggs - ranting and basic egg recipes

Eggs are nutritious and carry a wide variety of proteins and trace nutrients. They are portable boiled in their shells can be used for making art, and incredibly versatile in cooking. They are also a symbol of life in virtually every religion on the planet. That's some powerful magic.

So why are most of my recipes egg free? No doubt you are aware of what happens with factory farmed chickens. Live slaughter, debeaking, living in poo. You know, I know. Aside from this ethical concern there is another one many of us don't think about. If it's that bad for the chicken's how bad is it for the people who work in the battery? Not only do better treated chickens taste better (both them and their eggs I hear) follow the logical chain of thought regarding that poor standard of life for the chickens means a pretty horrible standard of life for the people working with chickens. According to Human Rights Watch meat and poultry work suffer from systematic human rights abuses, breathing and endocrine problems as a result of the mass manufacture methods used with chickens. (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/usa0105/usa0105.pdf.) To compound the issue US poultry labeling standards tell us nothing about the quality of life for either the worker or, in most cases, the chicken.

Back when we lived in KS this posed no problem for us. We knew the family who raised the chickens whose eggs we ate. Those chickens were heritage breeds, given a high flax diet, lived on a pasture and allowed the full range of social interaction for chickens. We even met a few of the chickens. Those eggs in 2008 were about 2.50 a dozen for the medium eggs. At the time I could have gotten a dozen of battery eggs for 80cents or so but I got a sense of responsibility and well being as well as taste from these eggs. It just meant we ate fewer eggs, that they were mostly reserved for hard cooked eggs, weekends, parties or the occasional big quiche. This why many of my recipes eschew eggs and offer appropriate substitutes and when eggs appear they are the center of attention.

Since 2008 both grain and gasoline prices have gone up, and this has further raised the cost of eggs and other animal products. We also now live in a large city which, while being closer than many cities to agriculture no longer offers us the option of a half dozen different farms from which to choose our eggs.

This raises the cost of the eggs too. We could go down to whole Foods I guess but these are the same people who refused to back National Healthcare because they assumed you wouldn't be unhealthy if you ate their food. Most people can't afford a "Whole Foods" diet. We can afford diets based on actual whole foods but that's another story. Social Darwinism anyone? Anyway we tend to avoid big chains because they take money out of the community and rarely contribute as much as is being funneled away. Not only that but the fact that they are a nation wide chain tends to mean more standardization and large scale processing which means even if the workers in the slightly larger Organic battery cages might be better off the processor workers will still be dealing with the same mess.

For now we have two choices- travel 1 1/2 each way hours by bus to the big polish market on Narragansett which carries family farmed pasture raised butter, milk and eggs at 2008 prices (as well as pasture raised cured meats which I still won't eat but which some of my family enjoys) or pony up 4-5$ a carton for the same at the health food stores near us. Prices even go up from that in winter because biologically speaking chickens are supposed to taper off to producing fewer or no eggs during the winter. I suspect the rent difference between the two stores is largely responsible for the cost difference. This means when I do get there it's usually for the specific purpose of making yule cookies, Oster eggs, pysanky making, lemon curd or a party. When I do this I usually grab an extra dozen or two, boiling some , freezing the egg white and using the yolks to make lemon, lime or orange curd. We try to save the shells for pysanky of composting.

Eggs are a luxury and we should revere them as such. Respect the egg! Please use the best eggs you can.

To check the freshness of your eggs click here.

Eggs Coddled/ basted

Take as many ramekins or oven safe little cups/ mugs as people you will be serving. Oil or butter lightly. crack each egg into a ramekin. Nudge the egg yolk with the  back of a spoon until the yolk is centered. This means it's more likely the yolk will still be creamy and not solid.) As always with eggs which are not fully cooked you may get sick. Fresher eggs are better for these recipes for that reason and also for taste reasons.

Stove top method

Put ramekins in a wide pan filled to below the rims of the ramekins with boiling water. I use my kettle to do this easier and with less fuel. Turn that sucker on high. When the water boils again cover and check on your eggs in 3 minutes. they should done. If you have a family member with a morbid fear of accidental egg white snot, like my Rabbit, allow to cook for 4 minutes. If they complain about the yolk being too solid explain that animal protein always contracts under heat and the fat only provides a modicum of protection to maintain a runny yolk. So they can pick risk of moderate egg jelly or risk of more solid yolks. Please use waterproof mitts or a jar lifter to remove the ramekins so nobody gets horrible burns. Allow to cool slightly before serving to young children and the impatient. Ceramic holds onto the heat for a while.

Oven method:extra butter or oil needed

preheat oven to 400F. If you want toast slide a cookie sheet of bread on the second rack for ten minutes and then flip when you put the eggs in.

Put ramekins into a large ceramic baking dish. Now add a lump of butter or light drizzle of oil to the top of these eggs. This protects them from over cooking and you from the horrible burned egg smell. 

Pour boiling water into the larger dish up to just below the rims of the ramekins. Put in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Please use waterproof mitts or a jar lifter to remove the ramekins so nobody gets horrible burns. Allow to cool slightly before serving to young children and the impatient. Ceramic holds onto the heat for a while.

Basic Scrambled Eggs for Two
Crack  3 eggs into a bowl. Add 1 oz milk or dairy free milk, broth or even water. You can use a small shot glass to measure if you don't have a 1 oz measure. Using a fork or whisk to create a uniform texture. If using the whisk eggs will generally be fluffier. This is a matter of personal taste.  I usually like to add a grate or two of nutmeg and either a few snips of thyme , chives or other fresh herbs and stir. When preparing this for use in fried rice skip the herbs and spices. Heat a seasoned iron pan to medium, add small bit of oil or butter. Allow oil to heat and spread evenly using a spatula. Pour into pan and stir with fork or spatula until egg begins to coagulate or form little clouds. Continue to stir or flip periodically until you reach the desired texture. Some people like their eggs softer than others.
Hard cooked eggs

You do not really want to boil eggs . This leaves them with a green ring and rubber yolks. Here's what to do instead. Gently place eggs in enough cold water to cover them. Turn stove on medium high. Make sure the lid is clean. Once the eggs reach a boil set a timer for 4 minutes. When this timer goes off cover them with the lid and turn off the heat. Set a timer for 20 minutes and leave them alone. Repeat steps for each dozen you want to make. The stock pot will not help you here.

Deviled Eggs 
Start with 1 dozen peeled hard cooked eggs. Remove the yolks and place in a bowl. Mash the yolks until powdery. Add 2 tb  sourcream or labneh and 2 tb mayo, 1tb fresh dill, a sprinkle of thyme if you have it and 2 tb dijon mustard. Mash it until uniform.If desired Stir in 1 tb capers or dill relish. Spoon or flute into the egg. Sprinkle with parika Refrigerate or serve on a plate over ice, covered.


Godzilla Eggs
These were designed for an insane radioactive picnic sci fi con theme party. Fortune favors the brave. If you aren't making them for a party I wouldn't bother dying whites, but to each their own.
Prepare your dye bath. Use 10 drops food safe green dye (yes there all all natural forms but the green is widely considered the safest) in 1 1/2 cup water with 2 tb cider vinegar in a big bowl or tub. Put the whites in there once separated from the yolk and rotate them every so often so the dye is even. Start with 1 dozen peeled hard cooked eggs. Remove the yolks and place in a bowl. Mash the yolks until powdery. Add 2 tb  sourcream and 2 tb mayo or 4 tb mayo, 1 tb dijon, 1 tb wasabi powder (not the real stuff the green powdered horseradish stuff) and 2 tb sambal oelek.   Mash it until uniform.
Before introducing egg white and filling allow the whites to dry on paper towel to prevent hand an clothes staining. poon or flute into the egg. Sprinkle with paprika or chili powder Refrigerate or serve on a plate over ice, covered. Warn people about the heat level unless you want one thrown at you.

Beans.... a preliminary guide

Beans.... a preliminary guide

For most of you reading this cooking beans from scratch is old hat. This makes sense..beans are far and way the cheapest form of protein available (short of cannibalism), they are versatile,tasty, filling, healthy, and ubiquitous in virtually every cuisine on earth for thousands of years.

However , it has come to my attention that there are many , many, many of us who do not understand how to make our dry beans tender moist and pliable in a manner suitable to people used to convenience foods. These methods allow one to by pass the expense and BPA in canned beans and retain most of the convenience. Storage methods discussed later.

For bean in this post I mean broad beans of all types, soybeans, lupins, Vigna,chickpeas and Phaseolus types. Lentils ,peas and other pulses are generally prepared differently.

Here, I present 2 methods which both require this 1st step

Step one:

Take 1lb bag of beans and pick through for bits of rock, beans without skin, rotten/gnawed on parts and rinse to remove road crap. (I call this showering the beans.) Prep Flavoring agents. In my case I usually cook beans with plenty of garlic onion and cumin because my my favorite are black beans. I add lime, salt and ancho chiles at the end. to navy beans I leave them be as there are widely differing methods to spice these guys and I use them to make a creamier lower fat macaroni and cheese, a garlic dip, and in baked beans. To red beans I usually add garlic, green pepper, red onion cumin oregano and tomatoes. Adzuki beans get left alone until they're done cooking as they're used for sweets. Whatever.

1. Low tech

post shower Soak overnight in 2x as much warm water as there are beans. Leave it alone covered with a cover, towel or whatever at room temp. Drain (no you can't skip this. feed your plants the water) and cover with 2X as much water as the current volume. That usually means 1lb of beans ends up with 2 qt of water at this stage. Add any seasonings desired except salt and vinegar (salt and vinegar make beans stay hard), onions garlic, wine , whatever. Bring to a boil and cover...reduce to a simmer boil 40 minutes to 2 1/2 hours here's a chart telling you how long each type takes http://www.chezbettay.com/pages/basics1/basics_beans1.html

2.'high tech"

This is what our crockpot lives for. It takes less energy, less effort and less hands on time to create good beans this way than any other method. You plop your 1 lb of showered beans into the crockpot with 6 cups water or unsalted flavoring liquid. (salt and vinegar make beans stay hard) cover and turn on low. Add seasonings that aren't salt or vinegar. Go away for 8 hours. If it's too thick add water. If your beans are too firm wait a while.

The one caveat is that yes you do need to cook them for the full 8 hours or risk poisoning yourself. According to Wikipedia "Some kinds of raw beans, especially red and kidney beans, contain a harmful toxin (lectin phytohaemagglutinin) that must be removed by cooking. A recommended method is to boil the beans for at least ten minutes; undercooked beans may be more toxic than raw beans. Cooking beans in a, slow cooker because of the lower temperatures often used, may not destroy toxins even though the beans do not smell or taste 'bad'(though this should not be a problem if the food reaches boiling temperature and stays there for some time)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean.

3. the gassy (um quick) method...just don't . this method makes sub par beans that make your gastrointestinal tract infamous rather than your gastronomy. Go ahead and use some other bean. You can even buy frozen or canned just this once. I won't tell.

4. A pressure cooker. These are apparently awesome for this and real energy savers. Unfortunately, I don't have one and I don't know how. Check another blog.

Sorry.
Yeah now I have one. These ARE awesome. Rinse and pick you beans add 2 cups beans and fill water to the minimum fill line. Attach lis per directions. Cook on high until pressure hisses. Reduce to simmer and do something for 35 minutes. Your beans are done. Look at the chart that comes with yours.

Storage: why you can use this instead of canned.

Crockpot:

If you used a crockpot you can leave anything but chickpeas in there for 3 or so days adding about 1 cup of water a day to replace the amount lost by evaporation

The chickpeas will get water logged and gross. Drain them after 1 day at most unless they are in Chili.

If you aren't crock potting them allow them to cool.

Frozen:

You can pour them into any bpa free container and stack in the freezer. Freezer bags filled and squished flat work well here as do freezable glass jars.

Jars should only be filled 2/3 to allow for the water in the beans to expand as it freezes. If using on stovetop add 1/2 water to heat. put them in other things in the oven or you can nuke them if you want. I don't but then we don't own a nuker and I'm freaked out by possible radiation in my starches.

fridge;

Pour into jar and store in fridge. (any old jar will do)

As a puree: This is what we call lowfat refried beans. Take my blackbeans recipe from above ..pour off 1/2 the bean liquor (into soup maybe?)and apply a stick blender until smooth. 

You can do this..It's easier than writing about it even.

Home Economics- where it all begins

       When I list off the things I or my wife won't or can't eat I get asked "So what DO you eat?" There seems to be this idea that food is static and inflexible. This blog is going to be about food, a variety of real food. My recipes reflect my experimentation with different forms ,different cultures of people I know. frustrating allergies,a very small budget, access to a whole lot of great small groceries, a deep love of vegetables , tofu and random whole grains,sweet tooths, ethical quandaries about consumption, environment and labor issues. There's also a whole list of stuff my wife won't eat like cherries for example . My avoidance of water chestnuts on the basis of being "not food" , however, is justified and completely reasonable.

                   Food speaks to us in sounds and smells that remind us of our history , our friends, family, old lovers or next door neighbors. Food is about culture, about artistry , about survival. Food is one of the basic ways we provide for our families. Food is also about how we connect and build communities or destroy them. When talking about food I am always reminded that I am my mother's daughter. She is the woman who made sure I knew how to cook in era when most city dwellers had resort to packaged food or takeout, and how to scrounge and to think about food.
  
                         Here's where my food comes from.  I grew up in a working class family on the north side of Chicago. My mother was trying to feed 2 (sometimes 3) kids on a nurse's salary in a very expensive city. She was busy, like most single parents so we all helped out in meal preparation. Keeping expenses down meant that we always tried to keep a small garden in the back of our building, on a balcony or on the easement. In addition, she was/is a very ethical person and was concerned about the labor conditions our food was produced and sold under so that informed a lot of choices too. Being in a large city also gave us access to recipes and condiments from every corner of the earth. I got to taste everything-Around Channukah  Mrs. Feldman liked feeding me latkes and cookies, I went to Vickie's upstairs for tea and papaya salad, or fried fresh caught smelt on the BBQ with my brothers.

                    Being broke for our family meant that meat was considered a condiment. This  last factor was very lucky as we later found out that mom has a rare genetic kidney disorder which causes the body to do very bad things with certain proteins including all quadrupeds, most game fowl, mushrooms and spinach. I would now be very sad without my beloved mushrooms but I also got the lesson that meals can be planned around economics and allergies with a little creativity. It really came in handy when I couldn't breathe around most cleaners and again last year when I found out I've been allergic to wheat this whole time.

                              Eventually we left and moved to Nebraska in the 90's where I had to learn how to be even more creative because there was less access to certain ingredients (like gojuchang, tapioca or rice noodles )and a greater access as well as much lower costs on produce from local farms. Around the time we moved to Nebraska I became a vegetarian and found it a lot easier than many people my age who did the same because we'd always eaten very little meat. Gradually more diverse ingredients came into the stores there and I gradually learned where the small ethnic groceries were hiding and learned to cook there too. Throughout high school we had a little more money so I got to play with more ingredients and experiment with some pretty outlandish combinations. Some of them worked. Cranberry fudge sauce anyone? Some of them ended up with scorch marks on the ceiling and hiding mutilated cheese under newspaper in the trashcan. I have loved to cook my whole life but it really took off then. 

      Five years ago we were living in KS. I still miss the prevalence of biscuits and gravy even though I know now I'm not supposed to eat wheat. I also miss the guy who charged us 10-15$ for a few bushels of veg every week at the farmers market. Sometimes this means I make baked beans, collards and barley biscuits for a week.  About 10 years ago I  had a year long vegan period which mostly has amounted to knowing how to bake without dairy or eggs- a handy skill for people who want to keep a small budget and avoid factory farming or excessive cholesterol. I also have friends who are allergic to things. I like to accommodate so I will be including recipes for GF stuff, oatfree, cornfree, low/no sugar things, recipes for cleaners for people with chemical sensitivities, etc...  Just after being vegan I started eating fish again, although  I'm pretty picky about what kind for environmental and labor politics reasons so it ends up being once or twice a month when we're feeling financially flush now.  

      We've usually been pretty broke and like a lot of people during this really scary economic climate we still are very broke. In some ways this helps with a quest to eat healthier stuff and in some ways it doesn't. 1$ a lb for organic oats plus a penny for  salt, maybe an apple, cinnamon and ginger plus almost nothing for water  is a far cheaper than a box of cereal with milk. It's arguably healthier. What it isn't is fast or convenient. Research and thought are required. Sometimes land or food really isn't there to use. Sometimes we go out to eat more frequently than we intend. Sometimes we trust the guy who lives less than a hundred miles away who raises chickens in his yard, or grows apples rather than spending thousands on a USDA cert the farm can't afford. Sometimes spending time with your family is more pressing than cooking from scratch. Sometimes we really can't afford that extra 20cents a lb for organic potatoes, and carrots. I think that's ok. We do what we can with what we have, you know?  There are some places where I'm a bit rigid-usually on animal protein. I'd rather go without eggs than buy ones where the chicken had no outdoor access, I eat fish and shellfish rarely because I don't like how fishermen are treated in most large scale operations but I have been known to be more flexible than I'm ethically comfortable with in order to have cheese. Sometimes I'd rather buy a bottle of hard cider than a dozen eggs despite the nutritional benefits of egg vs the questionable nutritive deficit involved in fruit-booze. We all have our faults and our limits. In any case, I plan on making my experiments and time tested recipes available here  and I encourage you to email me and do the same.