30 Different Plants Per Week

The latest (?) food trend that's permeated through the fog: 30 Plant Points for Good gut health!  

Let's see how close I got in the past few days:  

1. Apple
2. Orange
3. Tomatoes
4. Oats
5. Almonds
6. Onions
7. Soy 
8. Brown rice
9. Quinoa
10. Peanuts
11. Olives 
12. Bok choy sum 
13. a) Ginger; b) Green Tea; c) Green onion; d) Garlic
14. Flax seed
15. Small red beans 
16. Lettuce 
17. Carrots
18. Shiitake mushrooms 
19. Blueberries
20. Corn
21. Grapes
22. Whole wheat (pasta)
23. Swiss Chard
24. Green Cabbage 
25. a) Cilantro; b) Black pepper; 
26. Celery 
27. Savoy Cabbage  
28. Dried apricots  

Ah, different colours count!  But herbs and spices are only worth a quarter each...

At least 5 of these were from left over foods kids did not eat -- the hidden benefit in being the "garbage disposal".  

Conclusion: Packaged chopped salads did a lot of heavy lifting.  And maybe we should add a seed mix topping to everything.  

Wrapped Down

Emma: "Mama, it's OK.  You're not the messiest person in the world.  I know some toddlers that are soooo messy." 

I don't think she meant it as a burn, but ouch.  

I need to step up my Taco Tuesday balancing/wrapping game -- I just like salsa and yogurt too much?  

Cultured and Diet Diversity

Reading and immensely enjoying (thanks, Kevin!) Cultured: How Ancient Foods Can Feed Our Microbiome by Katherine Harmon Courage.  I know part of why I like it is that "I'm in the choir" (plants are good for you, your gut biome is important--especially for the brain), but it's also very readable, and fun to go on her travel adventures to discover / learn about cultured foods.

Anyway, it comes at the right time: my mood is low, I don't feel healthy, and I'm getting worried / frustrated with my diet restrictions.

Harmon talks about the benefits of a plant diet for their fibres and action as prebiotics, and concludes at some point that more fibres and more differnt types of fibres the better and that in the past, humans definitely ate a more diverse array of plants.  At one point she refers to 100+ species of plants as a benchmark for diversity in a type of cuisine.

Um... so back to examining my plate: What do I eat?  What can I eat right now?  My list has 78, but that's really over the whole year and most are occasional / seasonal*.  On a regular day, maybe between 5-10.

Though the premise might not be complete (what about our bodies and microbes evolving to handle seasonal availability of plants?), I think I will try to make it a goal to try new plants... once I'm OK with having more different kinds of foods.  I would also love to try more of these cultured foods -- I'm hoping they'll fill in the gaps of what I'm missing right now.

* Also, am I cheating by including spices?  Yikes, and how many of these are actually the same species and I'm just eating a cultivar / variation?

What I can / do eat right now:

1. Apples 
2. Oats
3. Rice (brown usually)
4. Flax 
5. Oranges (mandarin, navel, kumquats)
6. Onions 
7. Pears 
8. Bananas 
9. Carrots 
10. Garlic 
11. Grapefruit 
12. Cinnamon
13. Tomatoes (fresh, canned, sundried)
14. Celery 
15. Green Onions 
16. Grapes (Red and Green)
17. Amaranth (greens, seeds?)
18. Coconut
19. Mangoes 
20. Yu Choy 
21. Bok Choy 
22. Spinach 
23. Chickpeas 
24. Broccoli 
25. Cauliflower 
26. Ginger 
27. Lentils (red, green, brown) 
28. Lemon 
29. Cilantro (ground and leafy)
30. Blueberries 
31. Strawberries 
32. Peaches 
33. Plums
34. Bell peppers 
35. Quinoa 
36. Green beans 
37. Kidney beans 
38. Black-eyed peas 
39. Beets (roots and greens)
40. Potatoes 
41. Squash (Zucchini, Pumpkin, butternut)
42. Kale 
43. Cranberries
44. Cherries 
45. Apricots
46. Dates 
47. Swiss Chard 
48. Mushrooms (white, brown, cremini, shittake) 
49. Chia 
50. Avocado 
51. Sunflower seeds 
52. Rosemary 
53. Turmeric 
54. Cumin
55. Basil 
56. Oregano
57. Raspberries 
58. Blackberries 
59. Napa cabbage 
60. Olives 
61. Watermelon 
62. Cucumber
63. Eggplant 
64. Brussels sprouts
65. Daikon radish
66. Figs
67. Sweet potato
68. Asparagus
69. Yams
70. Lychee
71. Papaya
72. Pineapple
73. Tapioca
74. Bitter melon
75. Ya Pear
76. Mint
77. Mustard
78. Lettuce

Soon, maybe? Fingers crossed, I can add these back in: 

1. Almonds 
2. Peanuts 
3. Soy
4. Sesame
5. Corn 
6. Wheat 
7. Barley 
8. Cashew 
9. Walnuts 
10. Cocoa powder (who am I kidding? It'll be chocolate)
11. Pistachios

Smitten with Fatima

My little escapes to Fatima's (the discount grocery store) have been nice.  I'm out of the house* and there's always something interesting there.

My latest find: the Smitten apple from New Zealand!  Its yellow flesh tastes like a cross between Gala and Red Delicious.  With a squished Gala-look (mostly red with yellow stripe markings).  This one was fairly juicy.  Not my favourite, but I liked it.

In looking up apple information I find Granny Smith is Australian.  And when they go overripe and yellow (Fatima's got them) they're still pretty nice to eat (less sharp).

* Mom also generally doesn't complain since it's a short break and I'm only picking up a few items.

So that's why I'm coughing and my nose is running!

2 tsp of cayenne did seem a bit much...

It was only after tasting the dish (and coughing, etc.) that I looked it up: Chili powder is not the same as cayenne! 

http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/glossary/g/Chili-Powder.htm

In fact, according to recipe found in the article: 

Chili Powder Recipe
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon ground oregano

the mix is less than 15% cayenne pepper.  

Yikes.  

It's good that Paul can stand it (and he can add yogurt to help cool it down).  

Two Tastes: Eggplant and Yoso

It's been a year since I've had eggplant.

Angela and Mom's (most recent) Chinese-Medicine-Based food book deemed it wasn't good for pregnant women, and not a good choice either for sitting the month (something about the uterus... cleans out the system too much?)

Mom made it for me today and it was delicious. With garlic, salt, and ginger... it's the same softness and creaminess that I remember and can never replicate (because I'm not patient enough and I never add enough oil).  She, however, said it was tasteless because she couldn't add soy or oyster sauce... I don't miss it. 

But there are other things I do miss like yogurt and ice cream... Erica found me a comparable (dairy-free and gluten-free) treat: Yoso.  It's "Premium Creamy Cultured Coconut".  It's like a chocolatey and coconut yogurt and pudding cup in one.  Yum.

Returned, Open Baggage

Extra hour of sleep, but still so sleepy.

Two baking experiments failed: Too much fruit making it much too wet and then the quiche that was too dry.  I wish I could just mash them together to average them out.

Too much fruit.

Mom's back!  Picked her and Theresa up from the airport and ack! all that backseat driving from Dad. (Though he wanted me to drive because it wasn't bright and there was a bit of snow.)

They also giving me a hard time about my big coat... except for Mom.  I think it's the first time in ages she didn't say I was under dressed.

Annoyed as I was, I kept quiet and listened to Mom talk about Maternal Grandmother's funeral.

Aunt 4's husband cried just as much as the rest of them (her children) -- needing 2 people to help him up.

Yunnan (雲南) in 18 lines.

Dad told us that when he asked him why he was so emotional.  He said it was because Maternal Grandma had believed in him.  There was a time when he'd been sharing an apartment with someone (couldn't even really afford to house himself), but she still agreed to let Aunt 4 marry him, trusted that he could take care of her.

Theresa didn't seem sad.  Tired, but when I dropped her off, she was still excited to start unpacking and divvying souvenirs.  She gave me half of the little boxes from Yunnan (雲南) (above and at end).  Each box had a line from a poem (?) / saying / stereotype about Yunnan, and they contained a pastry sweet from the region.

I then went to Mom and Dad's to have dinner and help unpack.

Aunt 5 again performed her packing magic.  I'm amazed again Mom wasn't stopped at customs.  There were steamed puddings (dumplings) Aunt 5 had made, and "egg fruit" (below) she thought were so tasty we (in Canada) had to try some.   Unfortunately, despite all that effort, I didn't like the taste of any of it.

"Egg Fruit", squished

It was pretty late by the time I got home, but I kept thinking about what Jackie said when I told her of Maternal Grandmother's death: It's horrible being an orphan.  I was confused -- my mom's not an orphan.  Not according to the dictionary at least, since she's not child.

But Jackie was concentrating the another party: The only people who would love you warts and all was gone.

Yeah, I can see that being awful, child or not.

------------------------------------------------------- 

Yunnan (雲南) souvenir sweet boxes in more detail - mixed up order (if there is one):

 

 

Sod Story and ApriApple Muffakes

The angry note on the tree had seemed a little unreal. Really?  Someone just took the stack of sod in front of Fran's house?

I read it earlier in the week and thought little more of it until yesterday heading home - there was a "congregation" on the sidewalk. 

Fran, Erica, and Prabhdeep were talking and I get closer and say hi.  "So, what's up?"

Fran declares the mystery has been solved!

She'd been sputtering mad, explaining to another neighbour, Sukh, how their contractors had over-ordered sod for their landscape job, and then before they picked it up for a refund, someone had stolen it!

"I took it."  Sukh explained how he thought the pile, lying in the boulevard, was being thrown out.  He used it to patch up his backyard. 

"Oh, that Sukhie, " Fran laughed.  So it was all a misunderstanding.  And Sukh, with all his charm, was in back in the good books.

I'm glad everyone could laugh about it and that robbery wasn't rampant in the area.  But it does makes me think twice about claiming what I think might be someone's garbage... How awkward it could have been!


More baking experiments to use up the apples: Combined with apricots and somewhere between the texture of a muffin and a cake.  Maybe "Apricot Apple Caffins" would be a more appropriate name (though "muffakes" do at least warn you that they're not what they seem)... if I try to make them again.  

Joie de Oeuf

A belated housewarming basket showed up for me today.  Ah, Wendy's so sweet!  Inside were very thoughtful items including packages of Top Ramen and microwavable cake mixes.

Good, Paul and I should manage not to starve for a little while :P


The big item in the basket was a Joie "Big Boiley" microwave egg cooker.  The eggy-chickeny-looking covered dish fits four eggs at a time and supposedly can make them all hard-boiled or soft-boiled (or something in between).  Nice.  Experiment time! 

Fill the bottom dish with the line.  Pierce the egg shells using the supplied pin.  Put the trays together and twist on the lid. Microwave as directed, and...

Hm.. two out of four ain't bad.  And actually, since they were all well-cooked I'm still going to eat them (over a few days).

This would be pretty convenient for me to prepare eggs at work.  But, there is a little something disturbing about an eggy-chickeny-thing promoting / aiding in the eating of eggs....

Dash, Mash, and Bash

Dad seemed so surprised when I called him, "What?  They actually liked the food?!"  Yes, and even if they were just being polite, they at did eat (so there!). 

Being a bit behind schedule worked in my favour: Celina and Kevin had fun taking out their aggression on the potatoes.  My attempt at fowl for Thanksgiving didn't stray too far from my usual fare.  I made a chicken with garlic recipe, doubled.  So, lots of garlic and lots of chicken, all cooked in its own gravy juices. 

After dinner, Carl left us to play board games.  We managed one: 13 Dead End Drive.  The game that should come with a warning "Takes longer to put together than to play." 

Paul patiently set up the pieces and the traps.  We played (mildly amusing).  Then we (mostly Kevin) let them all fly.  The chandelier fell, the suit of armour crushed... the whole thing fell down!  Once again, the fun of chaos beats order. 

We then dug into dessert (apple crumble / soggy).  The two young'ns tried again to figure out what we did without a television.  Kevin falls back on, "You probably jam out to Mozart all diddle, diddle, dit."

Well, actually, hip hop's more likely: 

But our demo didn't prove convincing. :)

Consider the Energy

Reading Consider the Fork: How Technology Transforms the Way We Cook and Eat and thinking about waste.  Well, wasteful behaviours. 

In Chapter Two -- Knife -- and Chapter Three -- Fire -- Bee Wilson writes about how Chinese cooking maximizes what is available: 

'The [minimax] idea is a frugal one: the best Chinese kitchen would extract the maximum cooking potential form the minimum number of utensils.  The tou fits the bill... A tou could reduce ingredients to small enough pieces that the flavors of all the ingredients in a dish melded together and the pieces could cook very quickly... It was a thrifty tool that could make the most of scarce fuel: cut everything small, cook it fast, waste nothing."

"Bread, beer, and roast meat were all greedy consumers of firewood; it has been calculated that simply keeping up with London's appetite for bread and beer would have taken around 30,000 tons of firewood in the year 1300, but this was no problem because there was a plenty of well-stocked -- and largely renewable -- woodland in the surrounding counties... The difference with China is stark.  It is true that the Chinese have their own tradition of roast meats... But work frying remains the basic Chinese cooking technique, a cuisine born of fuel poverty.  Every meal had to be founded on frugal calculations about how to extract the maximum taste from the minimum input of energy."

I've half-jokingly said before Chinese people don't mind eating all parts of an animals and what some call weeds because they've had to live through famine, but never thought about fuel scarcity and how that reflected on the food. 

Anyway, it's making me think on how I cook.  My methods are mostly based on time - I avoid things that go into the oven and cook them stove top instead (with expected results...)  But, energy-wise, is this the best way?  Should I learn more Chinese dishes or cook with the microwave?  (Paul cringes at the latter.) 

So many articles online seem to focus on the cost of cooking - comparing electric to gas as well as methods.  But what closest to what I'm looking is at michalbluejay.com, an article on Energy Used By Cooking. It's a bit rambling, but sources a quoted. 

The list "Tips to save on energy and costs when cooking" is pretty enlightening (i.e. Use a crockpot or a microwave oven for baking, use glass and ceramic pans when baking...), but the whole site reiterates again and again that changing what we eat (from meat to vegetables / legumes) would make a much bigger energy difference. 

Garlic time!

Dinner was going to be late.  But how late? 

Peeling the (approximately) 40 cloves was going to take the bulk of the prep time and could be the deciding factor.

Why not then try out Angela's video forward she called "The right way to peel garlic"?  The kitchen hack from Martha Stewart looked miraculous: In goes one head of garlic, shake-shake-shake, and out comes perfectly peeled garlic cloves. 

I'd already pulled the heads apart into cloves, so in my version: In goes (approximately) 40 cloves of unpeeled garlic... 





Shake-shake-shake... and shake-shake-shake some more... and out came...








 

... (approximately) 40 cloves of unpeeled garlic. 

Dang.  I'd really hoped for a big ta-dah moment that would make dinner only slightly later than I'd wanted.  Oh, well.  I got on with it, finished off (started / continued?) peeling the "wrong" way and cooked as regular. 

Looking back on the experiment, I now wonder if keeping the whole garlic head together may have made it work better... and maybe just less of them in the shaker at a time... Though the biggest factor is probably garlic type.  My purple skinned gems had survived intact all the way from China, and were probably of a tougher breed (so I tell myself).

Anyway, I'll try this all again and follow the method to the letter and then we'll see. 

Have you tried upped your garlic-peeling game using this trick?

Where's there's smoke...

... there's rain putting out a fire.

Catherine came over to teach us how to start a fire in our fire pit.  The branches and leaves we collected cleaning up the yard were going to be put to good use!  (Below: Paul in a box.)

She started off with newspapers, two dry logs (left by the previous owners), and a match (from Ken and Sophie's wedding).

She added some small sticks to the center of it, and sat down to relax and enjoy.  The Brownies had taught her well! 

But, before it could become a roaring success, the sky clouded over, started raining, and put it all out.  Well, as long as the don't protest at the house warming, Fire Mistress Catherine should have things under control.

For her efforts, she was treated to my latest experiment: Rhubarb peach muffins.  They were o.k., but probably won't make another appearance any time soon.

 Together, we flipped through and marveled at the DIY books I borrowed from the library.  I was filled ideas, but of course, there was also a nagging in the back of my head: Where to find the time? 

Well, later that night, I decided to start on that t-shirt rug. But, Coconut, um... got tangled in it.  Silly giant curly lamb.

Nuts of Water

It's raining, it's pouring.  And I have headaches.  I'm convinced it's weather related, and decide to just go on with my errands. 

First to the library, which was extremely busy.  Next was the Chinese supermarket.  I didn't think I would find myself alone there again (specialist Chinese new year candies aside), but I couldn't find water chestnuts at our regular store.  Surely something like that would come in a can and be available there.  Yes,they do.  Only the cans were 4 L each!  I wander the store a bit more, headache growing worse, before realising the bulb-like lumps inside one of the cardboard bins were also water chestnuts (only in their skins).  Where they good, bad, rotten?  I settled with some of those.  

Once home, I work on the recipe -- "Lion's Head" meatballs with napa cabbage -- another attempt at cooking Chinese food.  As usual, I don't tell Paul the name to ward off any expectations. And, it was a good choice: My lion heads (below) were sadly, really, really disfigured. But the dish did taste o.k. 

There was more rain and then there were leaky pipes in the house to contend with... I hate such dampness.  But I know I shouldn't complain: There's flooding in Fort McMurray and in Europe.  I wonder if Rem and Steph's vacation is being affected. 

Soup with a Faint Beet

Oh, lovely beets.  A gift you were.  You moved with us.  Finally, it's time to eat!  

Jitterbug Perfume made me have some pretty big expectations of beets.  From the smell to the colour to the taste... the senses evoked in the novel had been summed up into one word in my head: "intense". Especially the smell.  But maybe because they were so old (and stored in the refrigerator for so long), the smell wasn't that noticeable.

It was the colour that captured me.  They bled red and purple and stained my hands when I peeled and chopped them into wedges of ruby.

And then I followed the rest of the recipe. I'm still not convinced it's borscht, but at least I made it. It tasted pretty good; Paul ate it not suspecting beets at all.

The beets (removed as instructed, after their "bath" in the soup), however, had tasted great.