Natural food, sustainability, and delicious living.
A year ago today I published my first post, with the hope and intent to use this space to keep myself on the straight and narrow with my eating and overall health, and learn something along the way. I feel pretty successful in those endeavors.
Happy first birthday, little blog! Here’s to another year of real food and good eatin’.
This morning we woke up to a city covered in ice – an ice storm had come through overnight. There was about 1/4 inch of ice everywhere, even thicker in some places. It wrapped itself beautifully around our apricot tree, and the scene was begging for a photo shoot, so I took some pictures. I wonder if the freezing will yield a bigger crop of fruit this year… I’d totally love that.
More images from storm can be found on my flickr page.
Happy Friday everyone! This post is my 100th post – quite a happy milestone for me, and the blog. In honor of that nice juicy round number, I wanted to share this video that really had an effect on me.
Deepak Chopra “True Sustainability” from Omega Institute on Vimeo.
I love the idea that the world around us, the environment, is our extended body. With that in mind, how else can we treat the world around us but in a sustainable way? Chopra says, “There will never be social transformation unless there is personal transformation.” I couldn’t agree more; change always starts with oneself.
Personally, I like to think that I have made some changes-to-practice in the direction of sustainability. These days I’m composting as much as I can, using both my worm bin and the outdoor composter; eating as locally as possible; not driving, but walking and taking public transportation; drinking out of reusable containers at work; using a cloth towel instead of paper towels to dry my lunch dishes; refusing plastic bags at the grocery store and elsewhere.
I’m sure I can do more, though. And with the idea in mind that the world around me is simply an extension of myself, paired with the fact that I do my best to nourish myself in myriad ways, nourishing the world around me is a logical conclusion. That includes the I we treat myself, those around me, the earth, sky, water, to be kind and show compassion. I’ll be exploring ways to implement change and will share it here on the blog.
Here’s to many posts to come!
This is the first year in a long time that I’ve been eager for autumn to arrive.
Usually, I lament its arrival – the air cools down and the leaves fall, alerting me to the impending Dreaded Winter. I am forced to change over my wardrobe to longer sleeved tops and pants, heavier clothing in general, and am always a little sad to put my shorts away. However – and I wrote about this often – this summer was a scorcher, so cooler weather is truly welcome. I actually feel a bit cheated out of my summer because on many days the only option was to stay inside with the air conditioner on. As someone who likes to be outside, this was a disappointment.
Our ConEd bill will also decrease, which will be a relief.
Along with my welcoming of the cool, crisp fall air this year, I also welcome back a number of foods I set aside while it was hot and I didn’t want to turn on the oven: I’m cooking more whole grains, including steel cut oats for breakfast; granola and bread baking are in my plans for next weekend; and roasting winter squash! This might be my favorite cooking technique in the cooler seasons.
We’ve been getting these hard squashes in our CSA shares for a few weeks, and they have been fantastic. The other day I cut an acorn squash in half, scooped out the seeds, then cut each half into three pieces. Then I roasted them with olive oil, salt, and cumin. They were amazing!
Sauerkraut season is around the corner, too, which is very exciting. This should herald the arrival of a Harsch crock to our home. I’d also like to make some kimchi this fall, too. All lacto-fermented, of course.
I’m back to drinking raw milk, too – I was eating raw yogurt but not straight milk for a couple of months. I have a lot of milk in the freezer right now! Not sure why I stopped for a little while, but my guess was that it had something to do with the warm weather, and my not eating cereal (homemade granola or porridge – I don’t eat commercial cold cereal) for breakfast. Most of my milk intake happens at breakfast.
My running should also click back into gear – due to a couple a colds and simply overly hot and humid weather, my running suffered in August and September. Running keeps me centered and healthy, both physically and mentally; the cooler temperatures can only facilitate getting back into a regular routine. Truth be told, my favorite running weather is sunny with temperatures in the mid-50s.
And with a new season, comes a few changes to the blog. I’ve cut things down to two columns, giving the content area more space. Images can be bigger this way, too. I’ve also added a polling feature, so I’ll showcase polls from time to time. I’ll also be doing some more fiddling around, so you should see minor changes come and go for a little while longer.
I’m excited by this new season – it feels like a kind of restart, or at least a return to a more varied life. Fall, I’m happy to see you!
So last week I was a little lax with the posting. It was my birthday on Friday, and I had a bunch of plans with friends, so I ended up being offline from Friday afternoon through the weekend. It was a nice break, and a little odd not turning on the computer, but I think it’s important to unplug from the laptop a bit for a few days from time to time.
Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to reconnect with old friends, as well as with some newer friends, and that made the weekend really special. So good to be with the people you care about, and who care about you.
As far as what I ate… well, I admit that overindulged in the rich, sweet food category a bit, but hey – it was my birthday! But on the bright side, what I ate was made with quality ingredients. I had some cake from a local bakery that uses real food – butter, eggs, cream; none of this shortening or veg oil business. And I did make a peach sorbet from my CSA peaches, which came out great. Had a few cups of fair trade coffee and tea. Sharing it all with friends made it even better.
So now I’m back on my favored eating path, and expect to feel amazing over the next couple of weeks! I’ll have some recipes, a garden update, and another CSA report this week. Stay tuned!
So, usually I post more on Mondays, but life intervened this week. More to come soon! Promise.
In the meantime, you might check in on my running tumblr or watch another great short film by food.curated:
When I started working with soaked dough recipes, I expected the initial soaked element (flour mixed with an acidic liquid like buttermilk) to be kind of like sourdough starter – loose and soft, and very fermentable. This has not always been the case. Sometimes it ends up being a compact ball resembling something more like a medicine ball – dense and heavy (and kind of shaggy).
Sometimes it really is more like sourdough starter, although still more compact than starter. These mixtures are easier to work with.
I wish more recipes indicated these variants and possible outcomes.
I could have figured that out by the proportions, of course, but flours do vary in their natural moisture level, and I always hoped in the back of my mind that the soaking stage would always result in a loose dough. As I mentioned above, looser dough is also easier to work with.
Sometimes I need to use more elbow grease to manipulate the dough to meet the end that the recipe indicates. While I’m in the midst of it, I imagine a whole generation of women before me that must have had amazing upper body strength from working with these denser doughs.
The good news is that each time the recipe has worked out and yielded something delicious! Great texture, too – not gummy and not tough, but quite tender.
So, if you start working with soaked dough recipes and you find the soaked ball of dough a bit unwieldy, don’t worry – it will all work out in the end.