Meg Cotner – Page 10 – Harmonious Belly

January 7, 2012January 7, 2012

Food Lover’s Cleanse 2012, Day 3

Day 3 of the Food Lover’s Cleanse went well! I started out using the set schedule, with a two egg omelet with caramelized onions. I finished it with some of the wonderful paprika salt from my friends at Gardenfreude. I love this salt – it is my favorite of the herb salts they prepare. It has an earthy sweetness that I find irresistible.

I found this omelet to be pretty filling, so I wanted something light for lunch. So I chose to eat Day 2’s snack for lunch, along with half an avocado with meyer lemon juice. Pictured are CSA apples, AkMak crackers with VT chevre, kalamata olives, and slices of spicy pork sausage. It was perfect! I think my favorite flavor combination was the sausage and apple.

Dinner was the beet soup and the salmon from Day 2’s dinner. Now, I was hesitant when I saw the 5 Spice Beet Soup as part of the menu – last year it was there and I found it lacking in flavor. I had to doctor it up with extra spices and everything. Well, this year something changed – likely, it’s my taste buds. I loved the soup this year!

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January 5, 2012

Food Lover’s Cleanse 2012, Day 2

Well, the Food Lover’s Cleanse is coming along. I’m enjoying following it as well as diverging from it. On Day 2 I only used the cleanse as a template, and chose a variant path. For breakfast, I ate the leftover soaked oatmeal and topped it with whole milk yogurt, walnuts, and unsulphured dried apricots.

I love the Blenheim apricots from California that I get at Trader Joe’s, and especially that they are unsulfured. I much prefer them to the Turkish apricots, too.

The rest of my meals were full of leftovers. Lunch was leftover kimchi pancakes, and lentils with yogurt and caramelized onions; dinner was more leftover lentils, cheese grits, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes. I remember last year’s cleanse having an incredible amount of leftovers by the end of the week. This year I want to keep that in check by eating more of the current leftovers.

The best part about this is that food isn’t being wasted.

More to come!

January 4, 2012

Food Lover’s Cleanse 2012, Day 1

As you may remember from last year, I did the two weeks of Bon Appetit’s Food Lover’s Cleanse – this is not one of those vinegar-cayenne-honey liquid cleanses, but is basically two weeks of eating real, whole foods after the abundance of fractured foods present at the holidays.

This year, I’m doing it again, though not as strictly as last year (it made lots of leftovers and was a little overwhelming). Plus I’ll change things up to be more compatible with NT ways of cooking. So with this in mind, I know 2012’s Food Lovers Cleanse is going to be a fun adventure.

In the tradition of being less strict, I didn’t start until Tuesday the 3rd. From the start I altered things. I chose for breakfast to do soaked oatmeal (rolled organic oats, since I don’t have any steel cut right now) with whole milk, grass-fed yogurt, and the last of the frozen blueberries from the summer. I also spiced it up with cinnamon and freshly grated nutmeg.

I was sad to see the blueberries go, but dang they were tasty. I will definitely freeze blueberries again next year, and in bigger quantities. I’m currently eating a pasteurized whole milk yogurt from Trader Joe’s, since I ran out of raw yogurt; I’ll get some more of the raw stuff soon. This is a pretty decent commercial product, though. I like that it’s full fat and made from the milk of cows that eat grass.

For lunch I ate leftover Hoppin’ John from new years – leftovers are actually called “Skippin’ Jenny” (one day delayed for me). I had some roasted butternut squash with that, too.

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January 3, 2012January 3, 2012

Welcome, 2012

A belated happy new year to all of you reading this. I don’t know about you, but I was more than happy to say goodbye to 2011 – it was not a stellar year. That being said, there were some good things (successful tomato season; getting involved with the Traditional Community Kitchen; finding Linus) amongst the bad (losing my job; my beloved cat Marina passed on December 28; the general bad economy). A new start is definitely welcome.

As I mentioned on my Facebook page, we ate Hoppin John – or at least a variant on it – on New Year’s Day. Hoppin John is traditionally eaten on New Year’s Day, and is essentially rice and beans – black eyed peas and rice in most parts of the US. I mixed it up a bit by using red field peas and grits. The Sea Island Red Peas and Carolina Quick Grits were both from Anson Mills. I’d actually had them on hand for a long time, stored in the freezer, but they turned out great!

The red peas are smaller than black eyed peas, and have an earthier taste. Apparently it’s common to use these peas in Hoppin John in the Low Country of South Carolina and Georgia. I loved the grits, which I soaked during the day in water and raw vinegar, were creamy and delicious, no doubt enhanced by the big knob of pasture butter I added at the end.

The photo above I took with my brand spankin’ new iPhone and the awesome Instagram app. I look forward to taking lots of pictures with this camera, so expect to see more pictures from that device (which has a fantastic little camera in it).

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January 2, 2012January 2, 2012

Beyond Kombucha Haiku Contest

Win 30 days of
Beyond Kombucha for one
inspired haiku

One of my favorite discoveries from the travels on my current food path is fermented foods and beverages. I’ve found that I love all sorts of lacto fermented comestibles – sauerkraut, fermented beets, kimchi, kefir, yogurt. I also love kombucha, a fermented sweet tea with origins in China. It’s got a sweetness and tang, all wrapped up in a sparkly beverage.

I’ve made kombucha before, but got out of the practice, since I have some excellent sources of prepared kombucha. One of these sources is Beyond Kombucha, a company based right here in Astoria. I’m particularly fond of their hibiscus flavor, which has a nice fruitiness to it.

I was recently contacted by the people at Beyond Kombucha, who alerted me to haiku contest they’re running. Here’s more info:

Beyond Kombucha, in conjunction with the national 30 Day Drink Kombucha Challenge, is running a haiku contest starting tomorrow morning, Tuesday January 3rd and going through Friday, January 6th. Contestants can log onto our Facebook page to submit an original haiku on the theme of kombucha or tea.

The Grand Prize winner receives a 30 day supply of Beyond Kombucha (shipped anywhere in continental US) and a copy of their poem hand-written by label artist Christine Theofilatos. Runners up receive their poem written by Christine and a copy of our favorite office reading, “The Tea Enthusiasts Handbook” by lifetime tea-lovers Mary Lou and Robert Heiss. Winning poems may be featured on our new website or labels!

Such great prizes! So, put on your haiku helmet and find the perfect 5-7-5 as your entry. Please feel free to share your haiku masterpiece here in the comments, too (just for fun, no prizes are coming from my end).

Good luck, everyone!

December 22, 2011December 22, 2011

Sugar Plums and Other Sweet Holiday Treats

Another recent Traditional Community Kitchen meetup I attended recently focused on healthy holiday treats – sweet things that contain unrefined, natural sweeteners, with flavors appropriate for the season. This event was seriously calling my name when I first saw it, as I have a major sweet tooth and have struggled with sugar for a long time (my struggles continue, but I’m working on it).

One way I deal with my bully of a sweet tooth is to still eat sweet treats but eat those made with natural sweeteners. That means maple syrup, honey, sucanat, and coconut sugar. I don’t eat much stevia, but I do like it in some cases. I also love to eat refrigerated medjool dates – keeping them in the fridge solidifies them a bit and gives them the texture similar to chewy caramel. It’s become a favorite treat of mine over the years.

By the way, dates are also great stuffed with cream cheese, wrapped in prosciutto and baked until the meat crisps up. Sweet, tangy, and smokey all in one little snack – perfect!

Anyway, my love of dates leads me to my new love of sugar plums. Yes, sugar plums – the treat of the same name from A Visit From St. Nicholas (The children were nestled all snug in their beds/While visions of sugar plums danc’d in their heads.). One of the main ingredients of sugar plums is dates, and I think that’s why I like them so much.

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December 20, 2011December 18, 2011

Final Hellgate CSA Share of 2011

So, last Tuesday was our final Hellgate CSA distribution of 2011. I won’t deny that it will be strange not picking up later tonight. What we got last week was:

1 bunch lacinato kale
1 celeriac
1 pound carrots
1 pound rutabagas
1 head cauliflower
1 bag sunchokes

I’ve eaten half the kale and carrots. The sunchokes were used for carrot-sunchoke fritters. Celeriac for remoulade. Rutabagas will be for roasting, as will the cauliflower.

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