Look at my perfect math vegetable.

I spent all day in math class today, a crash course in functions and calculus.

Then I come home, and Mark has brought this perfect fractal home from the farmers' market.

It's a Romanesco broccoli, also called a Roman cauliflower, or coral broccoli.

I don't want to cut it.

Sometimes, when someone decides to be an asshole, they say something to me like, "Well, what about plants? Don't you think plants have feelings?" (Unfathomably, used as a reason why I should eat animals, because there's an outside chance plants might have feelings.) Obviously, such a statement doesn't get a serious response.

But in this case?

It's not that I think it has feelings. It's just that it spooks me, because I think it might have reason. How did it do the math, to come up with those perfect spirals and cones? It's a plant. It grew its nutrition into spines and cones like a coral. Shouldn't it live free under the water somewhere off a coast? Shouldn't something with tentacles develop a partnership with it that allows them both to hunt?

Look at it from different angles:


Any non-profit types reading this know how to open a museum?

On top of being stunning, this thing is a good source of vitamin C, potassium, and carotenoids, among other things, I'm sure, but they don't list it on NutritionData.com.

OK. It's late at night. I took a lot of time to unwind after my seven-hour math class today. I couldn't go to the farmers' market this morning; class started at 9 a.m. But I hear we did very well at the market.

Saturday shopping list

That perfect Roman cauliflower
10 Brussels sprouts (a pint)
1 head of green leaf lettuce
1 bunch of kale
4 small white onions
2 red onions
maroon carrots
1 pint tomatillos
2 leeks
blue potatoes
white potatoes
2 portabella caps
1 very large garlic bulb
1 oz ground rosemary
1 loaf multi-grain bread
3 chocolate-banana muffins

total: reportedly about $33

I don't see how that's possible, but that matches up with the amount of money we still have, so OK. Pretty miraculous. I think he flirted with all the Amish girls and got crazy discounts. Heheh. That's my baby.

I was going to broil some potatoes tonight, which would have been my first experience with broiling anything.

When the kitchen filled with smoke, I changed my mind, and after it cleared out, I roasted some blue potatoes.

They are dressed with olive oil, rosemary, oregano, garlic (2 cloves, crushed), and salt. Roasted in the oven for about half an hour at about 375 degrees. But... 375 degrees after pre-heating the oven to broil and then turning it off and letting the kitchen air out, so, however many degrees that is.

I needed some good food. Last night, I fed myself fried potatoes, sauerkraut with semi-nasty fake hot dogs, and raw tomatillos. I was kind of down and only got lower after that dinner. The potatoes were undercooked. Today I had Subway for lunch (6" Veggie Max on wheat with spinach, lettuce, tomato, onion, green peppers, and mustard, and a bag of barbecue chips). After class, I had a tofu hoagie from Fu-Wah, which is great, but, you know, it's another tofu hoagie from Fu-Wah.

So tonight, with the perfectly-roasted and seasoned potatoes, I had a couple of Brussels Sprouts I had seared in a pan with just oil and salt. Brussels Sprouts are great for protein and iron. I love how the outer layers of the sprouts get crispy in the oil, and I love the burned taste of the browned, cut edges.

Here are things I want to do in the coming days: Make a potato-leek soup and garnish each bowl with crispy Brussels Sprout layers. Make mashed potatoes and do the same thing. Do something with that perfect vegetable at the start of this post.

Juicing carrots, kale, and broccoli

Juicing is so simple, I can't even imagine why we don't do it more frequently. It takes ten minutes. You split the carrots in half lengthwise so they'll go into the shoot easily, you rinse everything, and you drop everything into the juicer. Every time I do it, I insist that I'm going to remember how quick and easy it is, but somehow I always forget.

This evening, I juiced some of the maroon carrots we bought last Saturday. Maroon carrot juice is not as pretty as orange-skinned carrot juice, but the pulp is beautiful. It's orange with red flecks. To that, I added some broccoli stalks and a lot of kale.

I'm making a soup out of this and some potatoes, three cloves of garlic, and a whole onion.

I want to show you this leek, seriously. Remember, I told you this leek would make a whole pot of soup? To appreciate its size, look at it next to some common objects, like other vegetables, animals, and minerals:

The leek took up most of the pot (just that giant leek, not the little one), on top of an entire sweet yellow "candy" onion and three cloves of garlic. There was barely any room for potatoes, but I added four Russets and two Yukons. Still the soup is less potato-heavy than before and is more about leeks and garlic. There's a huge pot of it in the fridge, and I already had a bowl, with sourdough toast.

Progressive Pumpkin Baked Squash

Ambercup Squash. Is what this is called, as I understand it.

So that no one else falls prey to not knowing about the Ambercup Squash (or pumpkin-like squash, as I've come to call it), here is a little guide to squash, which I found helpful. If you scroll down and look on the right, you'll see a picture of the little darling you see here to the left.

What we've done with it is we've cut it in two, with a puny little knife, which is what we have right now, so it looks a little hacked, but that shows the texture off better in a later picture, so that's OK. Cut it with a big, sharp knife if you have one (don't hurt yourself, for crying out loud), because it was really hard cutting it with the little one. Anyway. You don't put the apples in right away.

Just set those apples aside for now. You're going to fill the bowl of the squash with a little olive oil, molasses, and cinnamon (brown sugar, if you have that, I'm delaying going to the grocery store, so I am currently out).

Save the seeds and pulpy stuff. You can boil them down for stock for a light, squash-flavored soup (good with quinoa or rice, and corn). Nope. Seemed like a good idea, but it didn't work. We tried boiling these down as soup stock, it started stinking to high heaven, I thought the sink drain was backed up. I have no idea why that would happen. I'll have to look into this. (update, 10/8/09, 11:20 p.m.)


Cover each half with aluminum foil and bake at 350 for about half an hour. Then you're going to take it out, fill the bowls with the diced apples, drizzle with a bit more oil, molasses, sprinkle with whatever you like, whatever you have, cover it back up and bake for about another 30-40 minutes.


When a fork goes in smoothly and easily, it's done, eat it.

You've probably noticed that I talk about molasses a lot. That's because a.) it's a smoky sweet acquired taste that I have soundly acquired and b.) two tablespoons of it contains 20% of my "recommended daily value" of iron, of calcium, and of vitamin A. I don't even know what vitamin A does, but I'll take it. I know what iron and calcium do, those are good, at least plant-sources of them are good.

Keeping your bones strong depends more on preventing the loss of calcium from your body than on boosting your calcium intake.

Some cultures consume few or no dairy products and typically ingest fewer than 500 milligrams of calcium per day. However, these people generally have low rates of osteoporosis. Many scientists believe that exercise and other factors have more to do with osteoporosis than calcium intake does.

Use molasses liberally. (Progressively, even.)

Molasses, quinoa, calcium, outer space

Just had a bedtime snack, an English muffin, toasted, with molasses, and some grapes (only fruit in the house, it's almost shopping day). The label says molasses has 20% of your recommended daily value, whatever that means, of iron. Twenty percent of your recommended daily vitamin A, and 20% of your calcium. Hmm.

Made a rare trip to the grocery store after work. Bought something expensive I'd been thinking about all day. Quinoa is $3.99 for a 16 oz. package. We searched it online, it only goes up from there. Does anyone know where to get this cheaper? (She said, as though people were already hanging out here reading.) But I want to try it. You prepare it like white rice, but it's heartier than rice. Got cheap balsamic, $2.29 for a glass bottle that will last us a couple of months. The English muffins, splurged on some soy sausage, got soap for the shower, flax seed meal, I feel like I'm forgetting something. Spent around $15 altogether. I usually go to the grocery store about once a month for oat bran, flax seed, and tea. Coffee comes in cans from Fu-Wah. Yesterday at Fu-Wah we picked up a package of pastry wraps and that's why we couldn't resist the soy sausage. Oh, we're gonna stuff something and cook it.

Quinoa is a wonderful food:

Quinoa was of great nutritional importance in pre-Columbian Andean civilizations, being secondary only to the potato, and was followed in importance by maize. In contemporary times, this crop has become highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%), making it a healthful choice for vegetarians and vegans. Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source.[4] It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. Because of all these characteristics, quinoa is being considered a possible crop in NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration manned spaceflights.[4]

I would like for it to be cheaper. But I can already eat on $80/month if need be. Depending on the outcome of this weekend's festivities, quinoa might get its own line item. We have a birthday in the family this weekend, and a cat adoptiversary, and a new Michael Moore movie (Capitalism: A Love Story). Cool weather and cooking. And blogging.