Getting Started: Saturday Farmers' Market

So I do a little research on what is likely to be at the market and head down there about 9:30 Saturday morning.  I end up with:

3 tangerines
2 oranges
2 baskets of strawberries

I try to hold back on fruit because I've still got a bunch of geriatric granny smith apples lazing around the kitchen.

Veggies:

1 bunch asparagus
1 small bag of mixed new potatoes
1 bunch dill
1 bunch lemon grass
1 head cauliflower
2 broccoli crowns
2 huge artichokes for $1.50 each, possibly my best coup.

Total expenditure about $25.

I'm going to get the mp3 player and go prep the produce next (listening to the Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith), but just for now, kicking around some ideas for what to do with the swag.

Asparagus:  I can use this at least twice, one serving maybe to be steamed (en papillote?) with a halibut filet I have thawing in the fridge; this will be flavored with ginger, sesame oil, rice wine, spring onions, for a vaguely oriental effect.  Brown basmati rice will accompany this for my dinner tonight.

I'd like to use a funky recipe of Alton Brown's for some of the cauliflower and all the broccoli, which will leave me with half a head of cauliflower to bake or make soup of.

Not sure I'd've let myself be tempted by the potatoes, but with the dill being available, I felt I had to.  We'll see what I find.  The lemon grass makes me want to make some kind of Thai chicken soup; will have to go get one of my staples, frozen boneless chicken thighs, for that.  I've got coconut milk and straw mushrooms in the pantry, and kaffir lime leaves vacuum packed in the freezer.  Maybe some salmon, if it's not already in the freezer, to go with some of the dill, as well.  Artichokes...hmm, big questions is will I take the time to do a hollandaise or just pick up some low fat mayo at TJ's?

Just thoughts for now, time to go prep, then do some paying work.  I'll post back when the plan comes together.

Wednesday: Baby steps

So there I sat Wednesday morning, a work-at-home day, with an eggplant way past its sell-by date and a butternut squash of equal vintage. On my lunch hour the day before I had gone down to Safeway for some basics: low-fat milk, fat-free half-and-half for my coffee, and a cross-rib and a bottom roast, a pair of Cornish game hens, a tray of pork chops, and 3 half-breasts of chicken. I popped all but the cross-rib roast and 2 chops and 1 breast half into the freezer and roasted the beef in the oven. That accounted for dinner Tuesday night and, I afraid to say, breakfast Wednesday, when I took off at noon to pick up a ream of paper and stopped by a nearby Asian market for red Thai curry powder; I picked up a bunch of cilantro and some green onions while I was at it.

That evening, I sautéed the ancient eggplant in a blend of Indian spices and butter, then simmered it until it was soft and delicious. (Note to self: need some new cardamom pods, and where the heck are the cilantro seeds you bought last year?) A little chopped cilantro went on top. At the same time I made some lentils flavored with cumin according to a recipe I found on Chowhound. The lentils would be good for about 3-4 meals, the eggplant for two. The entrée was to be a half breast of chicken prepared according to the Cook's Illustrated methodology; however, when using a probe thermometer to ensure the proper doneness of meat, it's important to actually hook the cord up to the unit. I had some crispy chicken skin and my cat had some shredded, dried out meat.

None of this was rocket science, but it did ensure I had something to take to work for lunch on Thursday and Friday. I'm not saying there were all good dietary choices, but just getting it done is the goal for now. Friday morning I had a pita with scrambled eggs for breakfast and pan-fried the two pork chops in between showering and dressing, so I could take one, with leftover lentils, to work. This would have been great, but I had eaten it all by 10:30, so ended up going down to the Juice Joint for eggplant parmesan and a peanut butter cooking at 3 p.m. This was not in the plan.

On the plus side, I never did want any supper, just had my nightcap of two glasses of low-fat milk.

Renewing the food blog

This blog, with a different name, was originally set up to teach my friend David, who retired to Mexico a couple of years ago, to cook. I could have started a new blog, of course, but I like some of the things I had written, as well as the layout and photo, so I decided to keep them.

This is about a new venture, though, another culinary project, on a path I've been down before: using my love of cooking to help me lose weight and improve my health. My last successful attempt at this was via Atkins/South Beach and involved a lot of exercise. Now I'm older, and issues such as blood sugar, blood pressure, and possibly arthritis have reared their ugly heads, and so I think perhaps an approach that doesn't include huge hunks of fatty meat might be more suitable at this time in my life. (Oh, yeah, there's that exercise thing, too. And the ongoing challenge of defeating alcoholism and depression.)

I'm using three tools: a book by Oprah's Dr. Oz, You on a Diet, a 3-month online subscription to Weight Watchers, and Living Cookbook, software that lets you organize your recipes, meal plans, nutritional info, etc.

The idea is to watch your intake, of course, but this is not your mother's Weight Watchers, and you get credit for eating whole, filling, fiber-loaded foods rather than treating all calories as equal.

As for the ethnic part, I realize a lot of people are blogging about food now. One woman has embarked on the ambitious project of cooking a meal from every country in the world. An admirable endeavor, and you can bet your buppie I will be stealing recipes from her, but her reasons and methodology are different from mine. She is doing research and coming up with a complete, dinner-party-worthy menu for each country, and then she posts background info, music, I'd not be surprised if she makes costumes, too (and I mean that in the nicest possible way).

I'd like to give dinner parties, too, but what I am aiming at is something different: spend two weeks to a month exploring one country's or ethnic/religious/geographic group's cuisine and develop everyday meals that I can incorporate into my daily diet. I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up having some kind of dal pancake for breakfast when this is all done.

To this I want to add the locavore aspect; that is, create menus appropriate to the season. I live in California, where fresh produce of every kind is available not 30 miles from my farmers' market, so why not exploit that?

I think that my first country will be Egypt, and I've two books on order through Link+, due to be delivered to my local library in Alameda County tomorrow, with any luck at all.

In the meantime, I will try to post about things I have been cooking, focusing simply on mindfulness, making things from scratch, and figuring out how to get the stuff done so I'm not required to fall back on fast-food from around my office building or impulse-dial to the pizza man. When my kitchen is sufficiently tidy, I will start posting photos, too!

Just one more note: a lot of food bloggers take the approach: choose a recipe, go shopping for the ingredients, and a couple hours later, voila! A meal fit for Ruth Reichl. But again, I'm more interested in working out a system that works for me. Three days a week I get home at 6 p.m., which conventional wisdom suggests it pretty close to the latest you should be having supper. I have received a lot of inspiration from another two books, Monday to Friday Cooking by Michelle Urvater, and The Pleasures of Cooking for One, by Judith Jones (the editor who pushed for Knopf to publish Mastering the Art of French Cooking). I'll review these in more detail in another post, but the short version is that they both give you good ideas about planning your meals a week at a time instead of dinner by dinner.