Basket of veggies

Wow, I guess it's been a while. So much for weekly! Where to start? Well, there was a 'Sauces' cooking class, with more yummy recipes to make. We've gone to the gym a few times. We got another couple veggies baskets; the one shown is this past Saturday's. We had to take a picture this time just because of how much there was! In there you can see a lot of corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, a pattypan squash, butter beans (in the bag), blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, peaches, rainbow chard, a canteloupe, bell peppers, round cucumbers (the three little whitish round things), and a kohlrabi (the spiky thing on the left. Apparently it's like a turnip, and it tastes like broccoli stems.) Whew! I'm a little surprised we got in all into our fridge. By the way, I know they all look small in that picture, but I assure, those are normal-sized ears of corn, and the tomatoes and cucumbers are quite large. By the way, if anyone has any ideas for cucumbers that doesn't include a salad, I would love to hear it!

We did a fondue dinner last night that helped us eat some of that stuff. We used some of our homemade veggie stock along with a few spices as a cooking medium, which was pretty good, although we didn't add enough salt. We chopped up one of the tomatoes, a bell pepper, half a summer squash and half the kohlrabi for cooking, along with some beef and chicken; we had a few sauces to go with it, including mustard, a couple bbq sauces, a habanero cheese dip, and a cucumber tzatziki sauce that came out pretty good (and used a cucumber! yay!) Turns out it was a lot of food, and at the end of the meal we dumped the rest of the chopped up items into the cooking stock and called it a 'soup' which we had for lunch today.

Today I got to experiment with the rest of the kohlrabi, and made kohlrabi and summer squash au gratin with the rest of the habanero cheese. That worked pretty well too, except for the amount of liquid; you really do need heavy cream instead of half-and-half, but I can't find organic heavy cream at any of the grocery stores we go to. The half-and-half at least comes organic, without the carageenan and other crap. We had fun making deviled eggs last week, too. That's a lot of egg, by the way, since we started with two yolk's worth of homemade mayo and just added more and more eggs after that.

Oh my god, I am so sick of salad. We've had salads of some sort or another in our fridge for the past two months! It's an easy way to use veggies, especially the leafy ones, but a girl's gotta have a limit somewhere. We've made the cucumber-tomato-mint salad for three weeks in a row, and it's tasty stuff, but I'm so tired of it. We're going to try to make tomato soup tomorrow as an alternative tomato meal; I'm betting it'll be good, and it looks fairly easy to make. We have some wild rice we've been saving that will go well with it, too.

In other news, I think that 100-day challenge is over, for now. I've had quite a few non-paleo items the past couple weeks, and not really for any special occasion; on top of that, I've lost track of those. But that's ok. Maybe I'll try again when I'm not so busy with other things, and it's not like I've gone back to the SAD (standard american diet.) It's been a few munchkins on one hand, butter beans on the other, and green bean casserole on the gripping hand; then there's the corn. As you can see we got a dozen ears this week; we got a dozen last week, too, and a dozen the week before that. Right now we're cutting it all of the cob and freezing it in Ziplocs - we have a gallon and a half of frozen corn in the freezer. Who knows what I'm going to do with that stuff. I don't really want to eat it. I found a fun post on Mark's Daily Apple that might have some ideas, though.

So yeah. Any squash or cucumber ideas, please please please let me know. Oh! We did make pickles! We have a big jar of cucumber spears slowly pickling away in a nice dill brine; I really hope they come out well. We'll probably do a lot more of that, cuz I like pickles, and they keep well. I think we'll need more jars. We made more pickled eggs, too. I love those. And now made with farm-fresh eggs from the farm's "all-natural bug control!" But even with the pickles, right now we have 5 very large cucumbers in the fridge, along with a big summer squash, a bigger zucchini, and the ufo-shaped pattypan. I really didn't expect to be drowning in veggies, but it seems we are... can you pickle corn?

All kinds of things

I guess it's been a while since I last posted! Whoops. I'll try to post at least once a week from now on; it's easier that way. I did try to write a post on my iPod on Saturday, but I somehow managed to delete it... :(

Cooking class on Sunday after our Six Flags trip was Soups, Stocks, and Salads. Rich and I made a southwestern squash soup in class that was delicious, and one we'll make again. It's very paleo-friendly. The other soups were less so, unfortunately, but I'm hoping to find ways to alter them, because they were quite tasty. (Yes, another special occasion meal gone...) We also picked up a couple good salad dressing recipes, and have started freezing all our vegetable and meat scraps to make our own stocks. We ended up with enough leftover soups to last us for lunch the whole week. Next week we get to braise rabbit!

Then, this past weekend, we visited my parents for the 4th of July. It was a rather tiring weekend, but a lot of fun. We had a gym session on Friday, and we headed North after picking up our veggies Saturday. So many veggies this week! Soon it's going to border on ridiculous. Rich has been resisting freezing or dehydrating our veggies so far, but this week it's a necessity. Anyway, we hung out with my parents on the lake, played bocce and horseshoes, and went hiking Monday before leaving Tuesday in time for yet another gym appointment. The hike was awesome. It was fairly short, about 5 miles, but one section is all rocks and caves that are tons of fun to climb through. We did that same hike last fall as well; I definitely felt more confident hopping from rock to rock in my Vibrams than I did last fall in my big clunky hiking boots. My feet did get tired again, but at this point we've done all the types of terrain we'll encounter on Mt. Washington this Saturday. I feel confident we can handle it. (We're still going to bring our boots along, though. We haven't done that kind of distance in our VFFs yet, and tired feet on the way down could be dangerous.)

So one question I've gotten from a few people is why I'll sometimes eat things that are clearly not paleo (like a brownie with ice cream over the weekend, and an ear of corn. There goes yet another special occasion meal!) or things that I've said I don't eat, like potato or rice.

The answer's pretty simple. My purpose is to enjoy my life. Finding a diet that helps me feel better, that I think is healthier overall, and that will increase my quality of life in the long term has been a big step towards that. However, I won't give up dairy (go strict paleo) unless I feel my life will be better by doing so, and since I'm at a more reasonable weight now, I don't think that it would. I also will occasionally eat things off-diet because I feel my life is enhanced by those small moments of pleasure. This is why I say I follow a moderate paleo diet; I won't give up dairy, and I don't follow it very strictly.

Giving up wheat and other grains, though, has improved my life, and so it will continue. For example, my trail mix for Saturday is nutritious and interesting, and will provide me with all the energy I'll need. Macadamias, almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, sunflower kernels, and a few cashews and walnuts; chopped-up baking chocolate; craisins, raisins, dates, and occasional blueberries, raisins, pineapple, and banana. Tonight I'll be dehydrating a couple apples and peaches to add, too. It wasn't hard to avoid peanuts, pretzels, soynuts, and Chex, and I think those items detract from my quality of life rather than enhance it.

Well, this weekend I'll be hanging out with my aunts, who mostly disagree with me on my dietary choices; that will be interesting. I think this time I'll be prepared and bring along some info for them. I'm not very good at defending my choices when I don't have a computer in front of me yet. I'll post whatever I pull together, since I'm hoping to either find or create a good, informative summary of what I eat and why.

Oh! One more thing! The cats ate canned food instead of raw meat over the weekend, since we were out of raw meals and didn't have time to dismember chickens until yesterday. Their breath stank. Far worse than what's normal for them now. Back to raw meat again! Unfortunately, though, it doesn't appear that a raw diet affects how much they shed. There's fur everywhere. Poor kitties.

Eggs! and hiking

What a crazy weekend. First, on Saturday, we're running around doing errands until we can pick up our veggies at 12, and of course we run late. Then we stop for gas on our way home, so we can get ready to go visit my parents, and Rich's battery dies. Wait for an hour until AAA is done putting in a new battery (yes, it really did need a new one.) Go home, put away veggies, feed cats, drive an hour and a half to get to my parents' place.

So finally we get to the fun parts of the weekend. We cook up some of the awesome fries to go with dinner, and use the bunch of spinach and one of the two strawberry baskets we picked up for a salad. We should have cooked the fries just a little longer, but they came out tasty, and my little sherry vinaigrette worked well on the salad. The smoked salmon my parents made was fantastic, as were the steamed mussels we had for an appetizer.

The next morning we went hiking. Mt. Major isn't a big mountain, but it has rocky parts, dusty parts, root-filled trails, and anything else you'll find on a hiking trail in New England. Rich and I survived all of it in our Vibrams, although my feet were definitely tired at the end of the day. I also got one small blister that worries me a little. So far the plan for Mt. Washington in a couple weeks is still the Vibrams, and we're still going to bring along our old hiking boots. I'm hoping to get another hike or two in before we go for more testing; I'd like to feel comfortable enough to leave our hiking boots behind. We'll see.

Then we had our cooking class, and it was all about eggs. It was a lot of fun, and mostly paleo-friendly. The soufflés had a little flour in them; it was only 3 tbsp for 10 portions, so I didn't let it bother me. They were awesome, and now that I know how to make them, I can make them without the bechamel sauce. By the way, Oopsie rolls? Essentially a soufflé. (In case you haven't heard of Oopsie rolls, they're used as a paleo-friendly bread substitute.) I also made an olive oil mayonnaise, which came out quite tasty, although a little thick; I'll add water next time. The hollandaise - also paleo-friendly - came out quite good, too, although it wasn't quite restaurant-quality. I'll have to play with that one. We also made quiches, scrambled eggs, crepes, eggs benedict, and frittatas. Once I make the almond crust in my almond flour cookbook, I'll have a perfectly good quiche recipe to bring to family gatherings.

Last night we made lunch again for the next few days. We used up our mayos (Rich made a canola-based one, I used my own olive oil mayo) to make chicken salad wraps. We used the scallions, garlic scapes, and tomatoes from our veggie basket in the salad, and used the field lettuce as our wraps. They came out pretty good, but they'll only last us two days; they're just not very big. All we have left from our basket now is the bok choy, a bunch of baby romaine, a little field lettuce, and half a basket of strawberries. And, of course, a dozen eggs, but I'm sure we'll go through that quickly. Eggs don't seem to last long in our house, and now that I know how to make a dark-chocolate soufflé - with strawberries - well...

Graduation parties, some cooking, and some veggies

I'm pretty sure graduation parties are out to get me. I had a few cousins graduate high school, and of course they had parties to celebrate. I don't know how much sugar I ate, but I do know it was far more than I should have eaten - even if most of it was in fruit form. Remember that 100-day challenge I'm in the middle of? I've already used quite a few of those 'special occasion' meals, and I've got a long way to go still...

But on a better note, we went to the gym this morning. Our trainer is out next week, so we get two sessions this week; we'll have a second on Thursday. As usual, he kicked our butts, and as usual, I hurt. I'll hurt tomorrow, too. And probably Wednesday.

We got our first veggie basket from Springdell Farms on Saturday. Lots of spinach, some field lettuce, pak choy, a few tomatoes, some wonderfully flavored unpasteurized farm honey, a dozen eggs, and a basket of small, sweet, juicy strawberries. This is the smallest basket of the season, apparently, so I'm looking forward to Saturday's. Today we're going to make a spinach and strawberry salad to go with the buffalo liver my parents bought for us. The honey has been transported to the office to be used in our tea. I could get used to this whole CSA idea.

Additionally, as you may remember, we had our very first cooking class yesterday. So. Much. Fun. We learned how to choose a good knife; we learned the different kinds of (basic) knives; we learned how to take care of them, sharpen them, hone them, carry them, and, finally, we learned how to use them. I've been teaching myself a little about cutting veggies, and trying to do it right, but I learned more in those three hours than I've taught myself via Food Network over the past year. And at the end of the class, we got to eat the french fries and salad we all so carefully tried to cut, expertly seasoned and dressed by our sweet little chef. I am really, really looking forward to egg class next week; the chef said we're going to learn how to make a souffle, among other things!

Also: this.