Balance: Hot Chocolate vs. Veggies

Hot chocolate.

That’s pretty much all I want to eat right now, and Theo’s sipping chocolate (organic! fair trade!) is doing the job nicely.

But I think the key to this time of year is balance. We just entered a new year and everyone is either sick, detoxing, or breaking their resolutions. It seems like this has already been a year of extremes; it snowed yesterday, it’s 55 degrees today. Wouldn’t it be nice to just mellow out, eat some kale but have your hot chocolate, too?

On a recent trip to Boston and Providence, even though I ate my way through two states, I got to thinking about which foods actually make me feel good. We stopped at Wildflour Bakery in Pawtucket, RI – and decadence was in full effect. This bakery has the most amazing display of vegan baked goodness but the ambience is minimalist and cool. It begs you to drink a freshly squeezed juice. Instead, I had a cinnamon bun, some pizza, and a scone for the road.

The day wound down to Foo(d) at AS220, the performance space/gallery/bar/restaurant run by a nonprofit and dedicated to community arts. It’s sleek appearance again belied what would fill my plate: seasonal farm-to-table (and in my case, sriracha-spicy) food! Definitely a place to go back to on a future trip.

And finally, back in the old stomping ground of Cambridge, MA, we checked out Life Alive. This place is packed with super healthy dishes centered around whole foods like quinoa, rice, and loads of veggies. Never mind the new age-y space, sometimes a little extra purple ambience gets your appetite rumbling.

These meals all had a few key “spice” ingredients: chiles, ginger, garlic, and cinnamon.

All of these components, besides being delicious, have the added benefit of warming the body! Maybe during this global warming winter you’re thinking more about ice cream, but getting the pulse racing and a little anti-microbial sweat on your skin isn’t the worst idea. Research has even found that the scent of cinnamon boosts brain function! For me, it gets my stomach growling. Maybe I’ll try a big cup of chai before my upcoming midterm – the caffeine and sugar should at least do something!

I wanted to share with you two meal ideas that contain some or all of the ingredients on this list, plus lots of veggies for health and feeling light on your toes. At Live Alive the ginger nama-shoyu sauce was so good that Eleni and I had to try it at home, with great results. Neither of us used the raw shoyu, but tamari or soy sauce works just as well. The sauce can be poured over quinoa and steamed or stir-fried veggies for a seriously flavorful meal. Don’t be bashful about eating so much garlic, it’s just exciting!

A vegetable vindaloo would also be a great way to incorporate all these warm-in-the-belly ingredients, plus the addition of turmeric. Turmeric, like ginger, has been found to calm inflammation and boost the immune system, which certainly can’t hurt! I haven’t tried this recipe that calls for tamarind, but I love it’s sour-sweetness. Most vindaloos include tomato paste or puree, which would work just as well.

Garlic is available at farmer’s markets right now, and Allandale Farm in Brookline, MA is experimenting with growing ginger. I have lots of dried chiles from the summer’s harvest!

Fortunately, all these things mix nicely with chocolate, too… but more on that next time!

Tags: cambridge, chiles, chocolate, garlic, ginger, nama shoyu, providence

Hot Diggity Dog!

Yum

[Edit: The above was all that WordPress posted despite having written some words about fun plans for 2012. But I'll just leave you with this veggie dog, smothered with home-fermented sauerkraut, local mustard, and rooftop pickled hot peppers. I want more.]

Approaching Winter

It’s been a while since I visited, but as winter approaches I’ve done a little hibernating, and a little comfort food eating, and a lot of eating out. I feel guilty. And it’s been hovering around 60 degrees for weeks, so there isn’t really an excuse.

But farms – and hungry stomachs – don’t ever really sleep. The rooftop farm will be bedecked in cover crops for the winter, those fantastic sort of weedy plants (clover, vetch) that infuse the soil with critical nutrients so that it will be brimming with healthy plants next Spring. Fortunately we had one last public day on the farm a couple weeks ago, and I poked my head up to see what was happening. I’ve mostly seen it in the dark, at night, as I pull handfuls of what I hope is clover for the rabbits. That Sunday, I saw kale still growing and loving the cool weather, people mingling with chickens, and flowers popping everywhere. A sight for sore eyes in November.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Look at the compost bin! Full of my scraps which, like many city folks, I keep in the freezer until I get a chance to visit a compost location.

But I have to confess, I recently got my hands on a copy of the new Candle 79 Cookbook, and a few recipes have been calling my name since then. Candle 79 is the delectable vegan restaurant here in NYC that I’ve visited only a few times, but always enjoyed. On a whim I decided to make the dish below, despite it calling for a few ingredients that I don’t use much in my local cooking:

This amazing recipe layers not one, but two sauces, between a bed of veggie quinoa pilaf and hunks of marinated tofu. The avocado-tomatillo sauce is piquant and smooth, while the smokey chile sauce is rich and exciting. I could not find guajillo chiles, but this great website suggested New Mexico chiles and it was superb. This cookbook is obviously going to wow us as much as the restaurant itself.

It’s nice to be back in the kitchen, and as always planning to get my hands dirty in the Spring. I hope to carve out a little more time to report on the fantastic foods and workshops I have coming up, and a few news items that have caught my attention. For now, I’ll sit at my new kitchen table and breathe deeply the smell of Orange Cranberry Bread to inaugurate this holiday season.

Tags: chile tofu

Inspirations:October

1. Vandana Shiva, who spoke at Feeding Hope: Living Democracy with Frances Moore Lappé. I never imagined I’d see the feisty and uber-intelligent Indian physicist and agro-ecologist speak, let alone at a free event! An advocate of sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, seeds, and social issues that affect us all, Dr. Shiva is very much an inspiration and leader. She’s fun to watch and listen to as she is articulate and fascinating.

2. Peace Meals, and borscht. The book “Peace Meals: Candy-Wrapped Kalashnikovs and Other War Stories” might seem like a strange juxtaposition: where food meets atrocious violence. I used to think about this when studying peace and conflict issues in my undergrad – couldn’t we just all get along over a meal? Everyone loves to eat! But as Anna Badkhen points out – meals can bring us together, but a lack of meals can fuel wars. In some places, every meal is a celebration of living another day. Her life stories from traveling as a journalist in Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia and beyond remind us that the kebabs and dumplings and vodka that we consume together are more than just a quick gulp… they are a rite (and a right!) and hopefully, a sign of our humanity.

I happened to be reading the chapter on Russia when I realized I had a beet situation on my hands. Too many! So for the first time, I made and ate BORSCHT! Click the link for this amazing NY Times recipe that caused me to consume 6 bowls of beets in the last two days. I’d recommend sour cream (tofutti) in place of yogurt.

3. The peaches in this photo expose that I took it a couple weeks ago, but the third inspiration of the post is trying new things. Not just borscht, but sweet potato greens, and Italian plums. Sweet potato greens can be cooked like spinach but with a drier, hard-to-describe texture. The internet says to blanch them before adding them to a recipe, and also says that eating these leaves will make you a “completist.” I can accept that.

I’d love to hear about your inspirations for the month. I’ll be back with more, I’m sure!

Tags: borscht, inspiration, october, sweet potato, vandana shiva

Being a farm worker in Brooklyn is great; elsewhere it is not.

Somehow, lucky me, until today it escaped my mind that I’d seen a film and read a report recently on terrible labor standards for agricultural workers. I meant to mention it here, but only until I saw today’s headline about the rising poverty rate in the US was my memory sparked. The terrible price that farm workers pay for our food is just one of the reasons why that food is often so cheap.

I went to see The Harvest/La Cosecha recently, having first learned about the plight of child farm workers in Human Rights Watch’s “Fields of Peril” report. Both of these expose how these underprivileged kids miss out on schooling – and therefore future opportunities to change their lives – as well as risk their health and relinquish their childhoods in order to work the fields with their poverty stricken, often migrant families. This is here in the United States. Never mind the rest of the farm workers and their lack of access to health care, sanitary facilities, homes, steady work and fair wages.*

Human Rights Watch also released a report recently on South African farm workers in the fruit and wine industry called “Ripe with Abuse.” There’s more than nose bouquet to think about when reaching for a bottle of wine from this, and many other regions. Consumers can pressure wine distributors to offer ethical and sustainably produced wines, while continuing to enjoy and support the wine industry.*

Now for something a little less dismal (unless you start thinking about tomato farming)… I love these sclafani cans, as the tomatoes are painted right on. You can drill holes in the bottom and use them as little planters, as done here with morning glories on my fire escape. Since this was taken, they’ve started climbing up the sides!

*My views and opinions do not necessarily represent the views of Human Rights Watch, on anything, ever.

Tags: farm worker