Saturday: purple kale, mushrooms, and winter apples

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!