And by lunch I mean things I'll be snacking on all day. I am bringing:
2 carrots 1 apple a bag of pecans a snack thing of dried, salted seaweed a sandwich kit consisting of:
A small plastic bowl with a lid, containing sandwich greens, onion slices and chopped mushrooms soaked in balsamic vinegar and coated lightly in olive oil and pepper, along with two slices of cracked wheat bread in a sandwich bag. The sandwich components will be assembled at school.
and a Thermos full of soup containing beans, quinoa, and kale, among other things
I am going to be so full.
All of these things are prepared and waiting either in my bag already or in the door of the fridge. There's a note on the front door telling me not to leave without all my snacks.
I take back what I said about these being overpriced. I would pay a zillion dollars for these sandwich greens.
You eat them with thinly-sliced Portobello mushrooms drenched in balsamic vinegar, coated with olive oil, onions. Mustard would be perfect, but I don't have any. Had a very thin coating of Vegenaise on each slice of bread, because the cracked-wheat bread is very heavy and requires dressings. I would prefer mustard. You want to layer the greens with the mushrooms. Pile them pretty high. Remember, your bread is heavy, so lots of wet ingredients are good, and your mushrooms and greens are coated in oil and vinegar.
My camera's batteries died before I could photograph the finished sandwich.
1 lb of red beans 1 lb of yellow split peas a lot of orange carrots for $1.25/lb an overpriced pre-mixed bag of salad greens (only greens they had left) 1/2 dozen Empire apples 1 Portobello cap (last one they had) 5 yellow onions maybe 8 smallish blue potatoes 5 white sweet potatoes 3 Beauregard (red) sweet potatoes 12 oz jar of apple syrup 2 oz. of fennel seeds 1 oz. of celery seed (soup seasoning) 1 oz. of sweet Hungarian paprika 1 giant loaf of cracked-wheat bread 2 sesame-seed bagels
Total: $42.92
So happy the bean-and-spice lady was back! At least for today. It's almost 50 degrees out, so maybe that's why she was there. Split peas. I'mma make a good soup with split peas, sweet potatoes, onion, fennel, and paprika. Would that work? I think I'll try it. Mark's going to make a bean soup, so that's what I got the celery seed for. And the fennel allows me to have my mushroom scramble breakfasts. I got a lot of mushrooms last week, so I still had a Portobello left and some white mushrooms. If I run out, I can get Baby Bellas at Fu-Wah. I was almost out of fennel and getting antsy. I don't know where else to get it.
I've made a habit of having buckwheat pancakes with apple syrup for dinner when I get home from class. After "working" (observing, lesson-planning, teaching) from 8-3 and then having a meeting usually and then class from 4:30-7, I'm starving and pancakes are so quick, easy, and filling. Buckwheat pancakes, anyway, are filling. Especially because I use flaxseed, which gives them extra fat and protein.
Since I'm on the go so much, I've been eating what I call horse food. I bring raw carrots and apples as snacks, along with my travel-cereal-bowl for oat bran. I use water from the water fountain and heat the oat bran in the conference-room microwave. I also add flaxseed to that. I've made a bad habit of going to Subway before class in the evening for a veggie-max sub. I can't afford to be doing that every day, but I haven't been doing it every day, so it's OK, but I need to cut down. I tried bringing the Thai Kitchen instant noodles, but if you can't start with boiling water, or at least hot water, they're kind of high-maintenance. Starting with water from the water fountain, you have to heat them for like 8 minutes in the microwave, before they get soft enough to eat, and then they're too hot to eat, so you have to wait for them to cool, or blow on each bite until you're dizzy, or burn your tongue. All three options make me way too cranky to lesson-plan.
Good soup ingredients this week, though, so I can take my Thermos full of very filling soup (remember, we also have quinoa), and that should take care of my Subway problem. I might start treating myself to wasabi peas. That's something I can bring that will seem like a treat and will be filling. I need to get some nuts, too. They're kind of prohibitively expensive, but worth it if they keep me out of Subway. At least I wouldn't be nickel-and-diming myself.
It's a gorgeous Saturday, which is supposed to be followed by a warm, rainy Sunday, and then a gorgeous Martin Luther King Day. I'm going to spend some more time outside. I might even bring out the bike. I have some lesson plans to work on, a mock-up and rubric for a project I'm assigning my students, and somehow I have to procure 90 pieces of posterboard. I'm a canvasser. This can't be too hard. Lemme get to thinking now.
buckwheat pancake mix 2 Tablespoons of ground flaxseed soymilk (or rice milke, etc.) a small amount of water cooking oil apple syrup
I don't know if this is a bona fide recipe, as one of the ingredients is pancake mix. But here's what I had for a delicious Sunday afternoon breakfast.
Put your skillet over medium to high heat, add a little olive oil, spread it around, and let the skillet get hot. My new cast iron skillet is perfect for this.
I started with Arrowhead Mills Buckwheat Pancake Mix. Maybe a cup of that (I didn't measure, just eyeballed it).
Added enough soy milk to mix it up but kept it thick and goopy because I still had another wet ingredient to add.
In a separate, small dish, put about 2 Tablespoons of ground flaxseed (a good source of fat and protein) and add cold water. Let this sit for a couple of minutes. The flaxseed will absorb the water and take on a slightly gooey consistency, similar to a raw egg. That's going to serve the function that people sometimes use chicken eggs for in recipes.
Add this mixture to the mix, and you're ready to fry your pancakes.
I always butcher the first one, even if I've let my skillet get hot. Be sure the cooking surface is hot and ready to sizzle before you pour the batter. When the pancakes start to bubble on top, slide your spatula under to make sure it's not sticking. Be gentle. When you're confident it's not stuck to the skillet, flip it over.
My first two were messy but the second two were beautiful.
Enjoy with your favorite syrup. I used my apple syrup, made right here in PA and bought at the Clark Park Farmers' Market.
Got to the market late today, not until after one o'clock. My sleeping has been a little off, due to training institute getting underway this week, and the wave of excitement and anxiety that came with it. I got my practice teaching assignment and started to practice the daily routines that will become familiar to me over the next four weeks. Early morning, trolley, subway, walking a few blocks in my old neighborhood, checking in at the principal's office, taking a tiny elevator up to the fourth floor. Then, after a day in the classroom, taking the subway north to gather in a hot, second-floor high school classroom for framework sessions with other new teachers like me. I did not really meet, but sort of briefly glimpsed, some of the students who will be kind of my students over the next four weeks. They're not mine for keeps. I'll meet those students in February and they'll be mine until June. I don't know where they'll be, what age, or what they'll need. All of these questions require good nutrition to gather and answer. Which brings us to this sunny, cold Saturday.
Saturday Shopping List
Several bunches of purple and green curly kale A paper sack full of carrots - orange, purple, and white 4 big yellow onions and 2 small shallot-sized yellow onions About a quart of white mushrooms 1 Portobello cap 3 sweet-tart apples a 12-oz. jar of apple syrup a 23-oz. jar of apple sauce
total: $25.40
No one had any leeks, but I still have one from last week, for a soup. We are all stocked up on potatoes. We still have about half a head of cauliflower and a little broccoli. No one brings beans anymore. I guess the bean people have quit for the winter. The spice lady seems to have packed it in until spring as well. I need to find a place to get fennel seeds. That's how I flavor my breakfast mushroom scramble. That's the key ingredient that makes that breakfast taste like breakfast. We have beans, though. We were fairly well stocked on those. We have kidney beans, black beans, and red lentils. We do need to make a trip to Trader Joe's for flaxseed and tea, along with a few household basics like dishsoap.
One thing you'll find in abundance at the farmers' market in winter is apples, in various forms. One table has nothing but apples, apple cider, apple sauce, apple butter, and today for the first time, apple syrup. The lady says it's good on pancakes, just like any other syrup. We have buckwheat pancake mix. This may necessitate getting some rice milk or almond milk and making pancakes this week.
The kale in winter seems frail, less juicy. Maybe it's been frozen, I'm not sure. We buy it from a different person now. It's still curly kale, but it's more in a bunch or bouquet, rather than a "head" formation. And he has the dark purple kale you saw in the picture above.
When I got home, Mark was in the middle of juicing some carrots and kale (leftover from last week). I threw some purple kale into the mix, and when he ran it through the juicer, it gave off a sweet smell, almost like fruit. The resulting juice was the best-tasting juice we've made so far. It seemed to have mostly the flavor of carrots, rather than greens. The carrots were dark purple, and the dark purple kale I'm sure added some sweetness as well. That purple is good for you. The purple comes from flavonoids.
Here is how our juicer works, working on the kale:
So, what do we have to eat this week? The menu will probably shape up to look something like this:
potato-leek soup lentil soup bean and vegetable stew mushroom hoagies baked potatoes fried potatoes with mushrooms and gravy noodles with mushrooms raw carrot snacks carrot and kale juice pasta with marinara and mushrooms onion-pepper quinoa buckwheat pancakes with apple syrup oat bran apple tarts
That's it for this week's groceries. Write me with any questions. Comment, bookmark, or otherwise follow the blog. And, as always, remember the animals. Have a great weekend!
Finally watched Food Inc. It's not as if I didn't know this, but I really, really... really have to stop eating tofu.
For real.
I know that over 90% of American soybeans are Monsanto soybeans. Why do I act as if I don't know it? Do I feel better if I buy something that says "non-GMO" on the package? Then I'm just as dumb as the sanctimonious liberal who buys the cow that says "grass fed." Do I really think I'm smart enough to find that less than 10% of soybeans that are real beans? Really?
Watching a farmer who didn't choose to grow Monsanto beans talk about watching his legal costs grow because his neighbors' soybeans contaminate his crop and once that happens, Monsanto owns the patent to his crops. Monsanto sending goons - thugs in big black cars - out to his farm at 4:30 in the morning to spook him. Watching him say, "How can they do this?" And then he gives advice to a young farmer: "Just try to get out of this thing with your skin intact. Roll over. You can't fight it." How can they do this? Just like that. If everyone stood up, they couldn't do it. That's why organizing - on any level but theirs - is their enemy.
Damn it.
And a lot of organic soybeans come from China. Great. There's something I feel safe about. Eating crap from China.
Fortunately, I have my protein-rich and versatile quinoa and of course, my good old-fashioned pinto beans and kidney beans. And, as I learned recently, I can buy local kale in a blizzard if I don't mind the cold! In most of the recipes I did use tofu in, I've already replaced it with mushrooms, which act very similar and taste better.
Remember how, when 23" of snow fell on Philly two weeks ago, I simply assumed there would not be a farmers' market and did not brave the blizzard to trudge down to 43rd Street and verify?
Finally! After a long, lonely three weeks, the Clark Park Farmers' Market is back.
Can I just say that I love January? I love January. It's like having a new thing. I know that nothing actually happened at midnight on December 31st, but it makes a difference to me. I like writing the "1." I like writing "2010." I like saying the word January. Everything seems shiny and exciting.
It is freezing cold today in Philadelphia. The RealFeel forecast said 9 degrees. High winds made walking home almost painful. It's the kind of cold you can feel in your eyes and teeth. My new boots kept my feet cozy and I was dressed warmly, but that cold could not be ignored. I didn't mind at all. It was refreshing, invigorating, and just thoroughly January.
Let's have a round of applause for the people who worked the farmers' market today. I could barely take the 20 minutes or so we were outside, they were out there all day. It was sparse, maybe five tables (and one of those all eggs and cheese, and another seemed to be only apple products), but it was enough for us.
Saturday Shopping List
at the farmers' market:
2 leeks 1 head of cauliflower 5 florets of broccoli 2 kohlrabi bulbs 1 pint white mushrooms 1 portobello mushroom cap approximately a metric ton of curly kale lots of purple carrots about 2 pints of yukon gold potoatoes 5 yellow onions a 23-oz. jar of applesauce a jar of pickles 4 bulbs of garlic
at Milk & Honey:
a very large loaf of cracked-wheat bread 2 sesame seed bagels
This will be my first experience with Kohlrabi, also known as German Turnips, and according to Wikipedia, popular in Kashmir. According to NutritionData.com, the protein content of these beauties looks pretty good. They are said to be sweet and crisp, able to be eaten raw or used for cooking.
I can't wait to make potato-leek soup, which will include carrots, cauliflower, onions, kale, broccoli, mushrooms and - why not - kohlrabi. I like to make my vegetable soups as hearty and nutritious as possible, so they fill me up. I'm a lazy eater, so I pack in the kale, broccoli, and cauliflower to load up on protein and calcium, and the mushrooms to help fill me up. Subtle variations in the types of vegetables and quantities of each one will give you a different soup each time and help keep things interesting.
VegetablesGrainsLegumesFruitsshopping lists, cost-benefit considerations, food-related adventures,recipes told mostly in photographsbut with narrative explanation and approximatemeasures
I grew up in rural West Virginia in a series of rented houses and trailers and, homeless for a summer, a tent on Summersville Lake. After college, I worked in community radio in my home state for four years. I moved to Philadelphia in October 2007, for no particular reason.
Philly farmers' markets accept food stamps. All 30-plus farmers' markets operated by The Food Trust throughout the Philadelphia region (including the Clark Park market, featured in this blog) accept the ACCESS card as a form of payment. This is the card used to access benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as Food Stamps.
This site allows you to search any food item and get complete nutritional information in an easy-to-read format. You can search food categories from vegetables to grains to foods from specific restaurants, everything from broccoli to Wendy's.
And by lunch I mean things I'll be snacking on all day. I am bringing:
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