Born For This

Well.

It has certainly been a while.  I have been busy committing the most egregious blogger sin: writing posts, then leaving them in a draft state while I “think things over”.

As if I needed to edit that recipe just one more time.

F.

So.  I’m just doing this, because I’d like to.  And there are things going on in my personal life that make this little sphere of food and fitness so very appealing.  Is it unhealthy if you use healthiness as an escape?

Don’t tell me yes.  It’s only one blog post.

I had people in town this weekend.  Family-type people.  So I made snacks:

• Watermelon chunks, wrapped in jamaican sorrel and topped with goat cheese and mint chiffonade.
• Caprese skewers with fresh cherry tomatoes, ciliegine mozzarella, basil from my balcony garden, and a tiny snippet of crispy, salty tempeh bacon.  (You could also use raw eggplant bacon.)
• Hot peppers stuffed with neufchatel and mozzarella cheese, garlic, and herbs from my balcony.
• Figs, broiled with a touch of sugar and a sprinkle of truffle salt.

I didn’t make the olives or the almonds, sorry.

I also made dessert, but my mother thought it looked like frosted corks (rather than mini gluten-free vanilla cupcakes with vanilla bean frosting and fresh berries), so no photo of those. Yet.

And I made the heck out of these scones, which are adapted from a Giada recipe.  True love, y’all.

Gluten-free Berry Rosemary Scones

Ingredients:

• 2 cups gluten-free flour, plus more for dusting (I used 1 cup rice flour, 1/4 cup ground flax, 1/4 cup chia seeds, 1/4 cup buckwheat flour, and 1/4 cup garbanzo flour)
• 3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small cubes (I used half butter, half coconut oil)
• 1 cup cold almond milk
• 1/3 cup strawberry jam (**see step 2 below for what I do, which requires about 3/4 cup of fresh berries and 1 T of honey)

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. If you’re being fancy (and I am ALWAYS being fancy), chop the berries and add them to the honey.  Mash with a fork until jam-like.
3. Mix the flour, xanthan gum, sugar, and salt.  Cut in the butter (and/or oil – just work it in with your fingers) and mix until it resembles wet sand.
4. Slowly pour in the almond milk until you can gather the dough into a neat ball.  Depending on the humidity and your flours, you might not use quite all of it.
5. On a lightly floured surface, pat the dough down until it is about 1/2″ thick.  Cut using a cutter (3-4 inches) or a sharp knife; I used a knife for these triangles, but followed Giada’s original recommendation the first time to use a heart-shaped cutter.  Transfer scones to a parchment- or silpat-lined baking sheet.
6. Using a wet finger, make a dent in the center of each scone.  Fill with a heaping 1/2 teaspoon of jam.
7. Bake about 20 minutes or until just golden.

They’re delicious.  The leftover berry topping is fab on yogurt.

Have I been trying to cook myself out of this funk?  A little bit.  The going has been a little rough, but I’ve learned a lot about myself.  And I have miniature blueberry pies in the oven.  More on those next time; I have to go see what 387 items iTunes is downloading.  (????)

(I am perhaps a wee bit behind on everything.  Except work.  Never work.  I can’t keep working until 8 pm.  Project is almost done.)

Oh, and those corks…corkcakes…cupcakes…I’ll post them anyhow.  I made the little skewer decorations as well, thanks to some tips from the Martha.

What do you do about gym oglers??  I usually take the high road and ignore them, but this dude’s laser eyes followed me on every.single.squat (180 of them, to be precise) yesterday!  I thought that moving to a farther corner would solve things, but he was more persistent than I gave him credit for It didn’t help that he looked like Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation, either:

(Source)

I know y’all have a good solution for this

Moving right along, yesterday’s breakfast ended up being quite the use it up winner!  I mixed up the following:

• Canned pumpkin
• Goji berry trail mix
• Cereal and granola odds and ends
• Marmalade
• and flax and chia (not on the use it up list )

Chopping the trail mix…

…the end result:

Pumpkin bars!  Sweet, nutty, and delicious, with a little crunch.  For those of you playing along at home, I had to bake this at 375 for about 30 minutes before it would solidify…originally I had thought this would turn into pancakes, but the cereal never really soaked up the moisture like I thought it would.

WB also took care of this little guy:

(A sugar cookie from last June?)

Off to work…hard to get started after another long weekend, but I have a presentation to make at 10.

This week’s lunch: Raw-cos

Like tacos, get it?

Filling ingredients (quantities given make 5 servings):

• 4 shiitake mushrooms, diced small and sauteed (I sautee in olive oil)
• 1 lb firm or extra-firm tofu, drained and pressed
• juice from 1 lime
• 1 T cumin
• 2 t chili powder (I used ancho)
• 1.5 t garlic (I use granulated because it’s not as pungent as fresh)
• dash of cayenne
• big pinch of oregano
• salt to taste , and anything else that strikes your fancy.
• 7 carrots
• 6 stalks of celery
• 4-6 sunchokes (a big handful)
• 3 hot peppers (jalapenos, anaheim, poblanos, etc)

Wrappers and final toppings:

• 20 romaine leaves (1 big head)
• sliced avocado
• sprouts

Dice the tofu and mix with spices and lime juice; set aside.  Wash, trim, and peel the veggies as needed, then slice or grate them in the food processor.  Adjust spices (raw veggies can really suck up the flavor, so don’t be shy!), then leave overnight to allow flavors to blend.

To serve, spoon filling onto lettuce leaf.  Roll up, or fold like a taco.

It’s another really tasty, balanced, and filling raw (mostly) lunch that served me well all week!  You could, of course, vary the ingredients by what’s in season, available, and tasty to you.

Our weekends have mellowed into something familiar and enjoyable.  Sometimes we don’t know what to do with our free time; it seems so rare and precious that we become paralyzed and end up watching dull reruns for hours while we search for the perfect thing to do.

Saturday is mostly about food.  In the morning, the farmer’s market(s), which this week yielded the following:

Winter squash, hot peppers, and jersusalem artichokes (sunchokes)…

…and wildflowers!  And sprouts – mixed bean sprouts and some broccoli sprouts.  And two eggplant that were much happier in the fridge than in this photo.

And…er…how did those get here?  Pumpkin, salt caramel, vanilla bean, and strawberry.  I mean…I know nothing about these macarons.

We skipped our usual brunch this weekend in favor of some hot and convenient breakfast tacos.  Often, however, the next step after the farmer’s market is to prepare a gigantic brunch.  Many of these have been recorded here already, but some haven’t made it in. For starters:

Post-race brunch from a few weeks back.  You can’t go wrong with an Elvis-print tablecloth…

or some angry, stabby fruit…

but the omelette, that can do you in.  The sauce was…well, looking at the photo now, I can say the sauces tasted just like it looks in the photo.  White, greasy, creamy, and…it meant well.  There is a ton of avocado hiding inside that omelette.  It was waaaay too heavy for post-race food, and I paid for it for a few days.

So, Saturday afternoons I either kick WB out to have friends over (trust me, he heads for the hills willingly to avoid the hours of girl talk) or we do something cozy.  An adorable social gathering went unannounced a few weeks ago, which I will now recap here for your viewing pleasure:

From left to right: romaine salad with truffle dressing, topped with broiled figs and mozzarella; peach jalapeno corn muffins; pumpkin spice muffins; apple cheddar muffins; chocolate almond biscotti; homemade plum and hot pepper jam.  All of the baked goods are gluten free and made by moi, of course.

But this week we went to the library and, 25 books later (20 of which were mine, but 6 of those are for work), we stopped for a picnic.  I packed an apple and some almond butter for me, and a tomato, butter, and soft cheese sandwich for WB:

To be honest, it was hotter and humid-er than I thought and the picnic was cut short by rain.  But, nothing like a rainy Saturday afternoon to justify some chocolates:

milk and dark Michel Cluizel salted caramels, and Leonidas raspberry marzipan (buche framboise) and rum praliné (Europe Dark).  It was a small consolation after finding out that our favorite local chocolatier had gone out of business…but who am I kidding, it was still delicious

Saturday night is usually a simple dinner, often a reprise of the morning’s brunch.  With no brunch to fall back on, I invented a sauce to go on some sautéed eggplant, along with a sunchoke salad, some simple tofu, and the leftovers of my raw salads from Whole Foods.

The sauce had a tangy, caponata-like flavor.  I wanted a tomato base, but the closest we had was the vegetable juice I’ve been using for my “soups”…so I whizzed some in the blender with a diced hot pepper, some green olives, and a tablespoon of capers, et voila, sauce!  (If you are going to try this, you may wish to reduce the sauce by about 1/3 after it comes out of the blender.)

The sunchokes got a bit more consideration.  I credit this site http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch26.html with most of what I now know about this tuber, and this site http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=209&utm_source=rss_reader&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_feed with what I know about the inulins it contains.  Raw, it has a radish-like tang and a earthy, root-y taste, with a texture similar to jicama or water chestnuts…not fibrous, just white and smooth and crunchy.  We dressed it accordingly and mixed it with broccoli sprouts.

All of our basic vinaigrettes start with olive oil, apple cider vinegar (or lemon juice, or maybe white wine), and dry mustard.  For the uninitiated, dry mustard is an emulsifier http://www.ochef.com/1411.htm, which means it can convince the oil and water to blend smoothly together.  Consider mustard the diplomat of the dressing world.

So, for a basic dressing like this one, we mixed:

• one part vinegar
• 4 parts olive oil
• 1/2 part dry mustard (ground)

I like to add something zesty, something bright, and something crisp or salty to flavor every dressing.  Our zestiness came from Pommery mustard, the brightness from some dried oregano, and the saltiness from truffle salt (which also added another earthy element to complement the sunchokes). We equally could have added some plum chutney (spicy and sweet), marjoram and basil, and…probably still the truffle salt.  You only live once, right?

Sunday used to be the cranky, difficult day of the weekend.  We’ve largely taken care of that by planning fun activities and taking care of as many errands and chores as possible during the week or, as a last resort, on Saturday.  There’s no brunch – I work early in the morning – but when I get back there’s often a fluffy plate of eggs and veggies in the works.

These days, the afternoon goes to more work – catching up on blogging, perhaps, or taking care of travel arrangements and holiday plans.  It’s also when I cook for the week, but that requires more description than this post can hold.  We put the apartment to bed around 8, just after dinner, so that we can relax and read in the clean and quiet space.  Soon we’re drifting off to sleep, another week of projects, meals to cook, miles to run, and so much more waiting to find us in the morning.

Yeah, kind of like that.

After feeling sick for more than a week, it’s no surprise that I’m craving some new flavors.  Whether it’s psychological or physiological or somewhere in-between, I’ve been craving fresh, raw, whole foods by the truckload.

I had a huge green monster for breakfast this morning – 3 kale leaves, a whole banana, three strawberries, and a splash of almond milk.  (Too tired for photo, sorry.)

I snacked on some pomegranate white tea, Mary’s Gone Crackers, and almond butter mid-morning.  I was worried this was going to be too heavy.

Lunch was a rabbit’s dream   Broccoli and lettuce wraps.  (I ended up mixing the broccoli with the leftover sauce from the lettuce wraps, delicious!)

I made good use of the food processor last night to demolish 5 stalks of celery and 7 carrots in less than a minute.  While I was prepping those, I put some chopped shitake mushrooms on to saute in sesame oil.  Those all went in a huge (4 quart) bowl with 16 oz of cubed tofu, a package of mung bean sprouts, and a mixture of soy sauce, cayenne, ginger, garlic, and a little more sesame oil.  It tasted good last night, but was even better this afternoon, especially in the company of crisp, green romaine.

And last but never least, chocolate and raisins.  I’ve been on a real raisin kick recently; I had stopped eating them long ago because they’re relatively high in sugar.  Same thing goes for bananas, which have also happily found a renewed lease in my kitchen.

And dinner, what can I say about dinner…

On the left: “tomato soup”, made from vegetable juice (Whole Foods V8-esque juice) with a tiny drizzle of olive oil and a splash of curry powder, heated

On the right: tofu with nutritional yeast, broccoli with chili powder (a blend that includes oregano, thyme, and garlic along with chilies), and some raw beet and cabbage salad from Whole Foods that is dressed with plum vinegar.

I ran 2.81 miles at a 12:15 average pace (intervals of 10:30 alternating with 12:30) between the raisins and the dinner   It was supposed to be 3 entire miles, but I was way too starving to finish.  I tried doing my warmup at a 12:30 jog rather than walking – worked quite well, highly recommended.  I’m hoping to get my “easy” pace set at a firm 12:00 by race day (currently at 12:30), and I’ve relaxed my goal pace to about 10:30.  If I could alternate between those two for the entire race, I’d easily finish by what used to be my dream time….

The rest of the week should look much the same as today.  Light, flavorful, and strangely vegan.  I don’t necessarily believe in going vegan forever, but I’m happy to cut out dairy and eggs when the mood strikes.  I felt alert and awake and light all day, which is a great way to feel.  Sure, a change in perspective is the real culprit, but it’s true too that we are what we eat.