WFP
Just a few snippets of the last week in food. It’s been a busy week, and unpredictable food-wise. So I didn’t get together that perfect week in food. But I worry not! Even when my menu plan doesn’t go… as planned, it’s never a loss. I just move those meals around on the calendar and it makes my job easier for the next week. No worries. That being said, there were some beautiful things to eat this past week.
Eggplant burgers. We tested them out from frozen patties, and it worked well! They fell apart a bit when I tried to flip them, but they cooked up beautifully in the oven, roasted alongside these yummy sunchokes. Served on a bed of spinach with homemade (and cultured!) mayo and salsa… oh man. SO GOOD. I am definitely making these (in a larger quantity) next year. Mmm mmm.
I also wanted to share with you the amazingness that is potato-leek soup. Oh man. This soup is amazingly simple and incredibly delicious. I love this soup! Here’s what you do. Cut up about 3 leeks and soften them in a pan with the fat of your choice. In this case, I chose a little bacon fat…
To that, add potatoes, a healthy dose of garlic, chicken/veggie stock (for this I just did one quart chicken stock with a quart of water), salt, pepper, a little thyme if you want…
Let that cook for a while, then go at it with a hand blender (or ladle your soup into a blender or something to get a smooth texture). Serve with a little sour cream, cheese, a slice of hearty sourdough toast… or just beautifully plain. YUM!
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So, with the holidays practically upon us, I’ve taken it upon myself to create some recipes for sweet things. I do this because, frankly, most sweets offered during the holidays are a recipe for disaster. Sure, we’ll have some pie, we’ll taste a few cookies… and then we’ll experience sugar withdrawal from just those few little treats. I happens every year. Jeff and I are fine having a treat here and there, then the holidays pass and BAM- we’re buying ice cream and craving sweets far more often until we recognize it and wean ourselves off. It’s so easy to do- that refined sugar is serious trouble! Now that I have a little toddler with an innocent sweet tooth, I feel like I have to be doubly prepared. Vera has the best appetite, eating practically everything I give her (the quantities vary, but the variety does not), UNTIL she has a few sweets at the grandparents’ houses- and we’re suddenly in this 3 or 4 day battle to wean her off. All while she begs for maple syrup or eats just the jam off her toast, asking for more when it’s gone. Suddenly in tantrum mode when I say she can’t have a "treat". It’s horrible. I hate it. It happens almost every time- and I’ve noticed it coincides with when she has treats with refined sugar in them. Just a little maple syrup in her oats? No big deal. A frosted cookie or two? Watch out. I wonder if this is the issue many parents have with their children- they refuse to eat anything but sweet/carby, and really what’s happening is an addiction to sugar. I think most people suffer from this, and I’m amazed by how quickly we are affected by it now that I’ve put the pieces together.
So, long story short, I do not plan on being a big downer and not letting us eat sweets. We’ll have them in moderation. BUT, when it comes time to reset our systems, I’m going to try to be better prepared. This will include a good dose of probiotics and plenty of lacto-fermented foods all throughout the season, and sweet treats that I can stand by. This so, when our cravings hit, we can grab something that will be good for us. So, with all that in mind, I put together this simple hot cocoa recipe.
I just gathered ingredients that I thought would be nice- cocoa, allspice, ginger, cinnamon, cayenne, raw cane sugar, and a little instant espresso (for mamas).
I put together a good sprinkling of each of the spices (and just a pinch of cayenne), and then about 2 parts cocoa to 1 part sugar. 
I heated it all up with some fresh whole milk, and voila! It was nicely spiced, slightly sweet, and had a bit of heat from the cayenne right at the back of your throat… very warming and delicious. Vera liked it too. I will probably try different variations, but I liked this one so much that I made a whole jar to use over the next month. 
What are you all cooking up for the holidays?
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*Note: I also wanted to add something about my weight loss/postpartum happenings. I’m happy to report that so far, my high-fat, whole food diet seems to be doing it’s work, and I’m losing about a pound a week with minimal effort. This is actually more weight loss than I saw after having Vera (although my diet is even better now). I’m pleased and I feel good. I’m still above my pre-pregnancy weight, but I don’t mind. I’ve got lots of milk to make (for two kids!), and I’m only 4.5 months PP. I’d also like to add that I haven’t been able to exercise very intensively at all. I’m lucky if I get on the elliptical once every couple of weeks. I am active around the house, and I still take walks when I can, but it’s nothing more than that usually. Every body is different and needs different things, but I guess I just wanted to see that this diet was something that would benefit me and get me back to my optimal weight without breaking my back exercising. So far so good. I know some of you were interested, so I wanted to give an update. So, without getting too specific, I know that I’ve lost a little less than 20 pounds since my first weigh-in after giving birth. It fluctuates, but I’m always steadily losing. I guess what this tells me is that this diet and this amount of activity is perfect for getting me to my optimal weight, and healthily, and that’s exactly what I was aiming for. 🙂
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wow, cayenne is something i would have never thought to put in hot chocolate… but it actually sounds like something i could like! very interesting!!
It’s so good! It doesn’t even seem spicy, really- just warming. 🙂
Yummy, I love potato-leek soup, so simple and good.
That hot chocolate sounds good, too, though I’d skip the espresso, coffee is not my friend. I’d thought of making up some kind of mix like that for gifts this year, but somehow xmas is 10 days away(OMGWHAT?!?)and I’ve yet to do anything gift-related, besides making all that antipasto last month. Totally unprepared!
Sounds like you’re doing awesome PP, I hope I do anywhere near as well after this little guy arrives:)
Yeah… coffee and I have had a love affair for the past decade. It’s actually one of those things I need to quit, I think. Tea would just be a much better and healthier option and I could do it locally. Ah, but I just love coffee. 🙂
So, what exactly is your antipasto? What’s it like?
I get soooo sick if I drink coffee, even a little bit, it’s brutal. I’m all about the herbal teas:)
Mmmm, my mom and I read a bunch of recipes, looked at the label of our favourite locally made antipasto, and made some very yummy stuff. It’s zucchini, carrots, tomatoes, red and yellow sweet peppers, black and green olives, onion, sweet pickled pearl onions, garlic, cauliflower, mushrooms, green beans, and probably some I’m forgetting, with a delicious sauce of tomato/red wine vinegar/sweet chili/lemon/etc. We didn’t add any tuna, which a lot of antipasto has, I am most definitely not a fan. We pressure canned it for I think 45 minutes, at about 11 or 12 lbs or more, because of all the low-acid veggies/olives/etc. We used as much local/organic as we could, and it truly turned out delicious. I had planned on making some homemade crackers to go with it for gifts, but since there’s only just over a week until xmas, I doubt that’ll be happening…I don’t think I’ll even get my usual batches of Scottish shortbread and fudge made:(
I’ve started wondering how the holidays will go, foodwise. Merritt reacts horribly to refined sugar, although he seems to take peanut-butter and honey sandwhiches fine. (I definately can’t handle even the honey, but he seems able to.) I can make all sorts of semi-sweet things for us here, but we are going out to my parent’s place Christmas day, and the house will be just filled with open boxes of chocolates, and desserts and stuff. I can pass on it, but Merritt won’t. I’ve been debating whether I insist he not have any, or whether I just go ahead and let him have whatever and deal with the five days of withdrawal afterwards.
I haven’t tried cayenne in hot cocoa, though sometimes I add cloves, which gives a nice warmth. I’ll have to try cayenne sometime.
Yeah, I’ll be setting limits, but not completely shutting her off from it. Like, I’ll let her have a piece of homemade pie with real whipped cream, but I’ll probably not let her have candies, etc., which likely have HFCS in them. Anyway, that’s my meager attempt at controlling things…
Oooh, cloves! I may have to add that to my existing mix. Yummy!
I looooooove spicy hot cocoa. I like to treat myself to a canister of this delicious fair-trade spicy hot cocoa at our food co-op. I think I’ll go heat myself up a cup right now!! 🙂
Okay, now I’m hungry! I don’t even like eggplant but that first pic is absolutely mouthwatering!
Mmm, the eggplant burgers look delicious!
I read an interesting article recently that made me think of you. The author spent time with several different communities and groups of activists, all of whom are trying to move away from the corporate food system. The article is basically an overview of the widely varied ways in which people are approaching the situation, from the raw milk movement to freeganism to several other strategies. It’s not terribly in-depth, but I did find it interesting. The article is here if you’re interested.
Aw, I’d love to read it, but it says I have to have a subscription… 🙁 Could you sum it up for me?
Sorry about that! I’m a subscriber, so I don’t always know which articles are and aren’t available…
Here is the (very long) abstract of the article:
ABSTRACT: A REPORTER AT LARGE about Sandor Katz and the underground food movement. A self-avowed “fermentation fetishist,” Katz travels around the country giving lectures and demonstrations, spreading the gospel of sauerkraut, dill pickles, and all foods transformed and ennobled by bacteria. His two books—“Wild Fermentation” and “The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved”—have become manifestos and how-to manuals for a generation of underground food activists, and he’s at work on a third, definitive volume. Katz was on his way to the Green Path, a gathering of herbalists, foragers, raw-milk drinkers, and roadkill eaters in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. The groups in Katz’s network have no single agenda or ideology. Some identify themselves as punks, others as hippies, others as evangelical Christians; some live as rustically as homesteaders—the “techno-peasantry,” they call themselves; others are thoroughly plugged in. If they have a connecting thread, it’s their distrust of “dead, anonymous, industrialized, genetically engineered, and chemicalized corporate food.” Writer describes lunch with a group of opportunivores, who eat discarded food recovered from dumpsters and other sources. Katz believes that Americans are killing themselves with cleanliness. Lunch from a dumpster isn’t just a form of conservation; it’s a kind of inoculation. Eating bacteria is one of life’s great pleasures, Katz says. Beer, wine, cheese, bread, cured meats, coffee, chocolate: our best-loved foods are almost all fermented. Katz was a political activist long before he was a fermentation fetishist. At Brown, as an undergraduate, his causes were standard issue for the time: gay rights, divestment from South Africa, U.S. out of Central America. After graduation, Katz moved back to New York. He took a job as the executive director of Westpride. As the AIDS epidemic escalated, in the late eighties, Katz became an organizer for ACT UP. Then, in 1991, he found out he was H.I.V.-positive. The virus transformed Katz’s political ambitions. He focussed on curing himself. In 1992, Katz moved to Hickory Knoll (the name has been changed) in Tennessee. Hickory Knoll was something of a legend in the gay community: a queer sanctuary in the heart of the Bible Belt, with no television or hot running water—just goats, vegetable gardens, and gay men. Tells about life on the commune and Katz’s experiments with fermentation, including his recipe for sauerkraut, which he calls “the safest food there is.” Tells about the raw-milk movement and discusses the safety of raw milk. Writer visits practitioners of the primal diet, who believe in the importance of eating raw meat, and others who forage food such as acorns and ants. Tells about the Green Path gathering, part ecological retreat and part pagan revival meeting. Mentions Frank Cook, the founder, who had died a year earlier of a tapeworm infection.
If that piques your interest enough, I’d be happy to tear the article out and mail it to you when I’m done with the magazine! If you don’t mind sharing your address with a stranger on the internet, that is. 🙂
Totally! I think he and I would get along! I have heard of “Wild Fermentation”, but I haven’t read it or anything about the author. I’d love to give the article a look when you’re done. I’ll message you with my address. 🙂
Yum. What’s a sunchoke?
A sunchoke is also called a Jerusalem Artichoke. It’s a root vegetable that can be used like a potato- although I think it’s got a nuttier flavor and a creamier texture when cooked. You should try them!
I’m really strict with Zakary when it comes to sweet stuff for the very reasons you describe. He’s got a really good appetite and loves his veggies and home made foods and I want to keep it at way so currently I let him have a small amount of milk chocolate as a treat regularly and occasional plain biscuits but otherwise sweetness comes from fruit, organic vanilla ice cream, yoghurt, jam and that kind of thing and he only drinks water as I’ve noticed that friend’s kids start refusing water as soon as they’re allowed nasty artificial cordial drinks. I sound way harsh I know but health and good teeth are soooo important for little ones!