How Do You Know Shawn’s Happy?

Easy: I’m cooking or otherwise puttering in the kitchen!  I’ve been dehydrating cantaloupe, freezing bananas and melon (this is a great way to save seasonal produce for smoothies!), preparing to ferment sour pickles, and I forget what else. Fortunately, I did remember to take pictures of some of the putterings to remind me:

Above: Hummus. If you’ve never made it, you should. It’s easy, inexpensive, tasty, and healthy. It takes few ingredients (chickpeas, garlic, tahini, EVOO, and lemon juice) to start, then you can add anything you want to flavor it, from paprika to sundried tomatoes. It’s the perfect dip for all those summer veggies, or a great spread for sandwiches. Below: I don’t have a glass pitcher that won’t crack if I dump boiling water into it, so I make a strong quart of  tea, then dilute it into a larger pitcher for iced tea. We’re from the North, so we don’t quite get the whole “Sweet tea” thing. We drink it with little or no sugar and some lemon.

Above: Okay, let’s face it. There’s almost no way to make certain things look good on film, no matter how good they taste in real life: pot roast, curry, and this dish–Thai Peanut Sauce with Shrimp–are great examples. Drab photo aside, it was delicious. A bit spicy, a lot depth (umami!) from fish and soy sauces, with a bright bite from sarachi and lime.  I served it over noodles, and sided it with a cucumber-tomato salad. Thadd made himself sick on it, which is always an indicator that it was a great dinner.  Below: summer is a time for salads. We toss all kinds of stuff into our salads, including the mango and pecans you see below. They complimented the fresh, local goat cheese and spinach perfectly. A good salad needs little in the way of dressing, so I just drizzled some EVOO and balsamic over it, and sprinkled it with a bit of sea salt.

Below: Two recipes that have been featured here. First, the Mojo Pork Loin from my last post. Second, the three-potato salad that was my most popular recipe at the Growing Power seminar at Lynchburg Grows in March. These dishes work well together, and make a great barbecue menu!

This week, more puttering! I hope to get up some photos of the pickling process, as well as some of the dehydrating I am currently doing. Are you puttering?

Another All Local Feast

I didn’t get photos of the venison (gifted to us by my nephews Josh and Willie), and the photographs of the rest aren’t spectacular due to technical difficulties (meaning I’d screwed up the settings on my camera and couldn’t figure out how to reset them); but, the food was amazing.

The menu was a fresh baby greens salad, wilted orange-glazed kale, olive-oil roasted sunchokes, and broiled venison with a coffee dry rub.

Tonight will be venison with cauliflower-potato puree and veggies. All local. Yum!

Food, Flickr, and News

So much is going on it’s difficult to find time to blog about it all.  First, let’s get Flickr out of the way.  If you’re going through the archives and notice a bunch of broken picture links, it’s because my Flickr pro account expired while I was away and without internet access (I don’t think my grandparents, whom I was visiting, will ever get access, unfortunately).  It deleted pretty much everything important, it seems. I didn’t get forewarning, as they only give you about a week’s notice, it seems. ERGH!  I’ll get the photos back up,  but it’s going to be a while. If there’s something you just have to see, email me and let me know.

Next, the news. I am launching new Personal Chef packages and plan in September, which is why the “Sample Menu” and “Services” pages are down right now. There are going to be some really exciting new services to fit everyone’s budget and lifestyle, including a new meal plan that lets you forget about dinner for less than you’re probably paying for just the groceries!  Check back the first week in September for all the fun details!

And, of course, food.  With as hectic as things have been, from cooking to looking for a new apartment/house, to dealing with family, to just the general whirlwind of summer, UC and I needed a night together. A quiet night, with good food, good wine, and a bit of spoiling ourselves. Which, for me of course means cooking!

Above: We started with caprese salad.  The tomatoes are from our garden, as is the basil. Below: Rosemary Flounder en papillote. This is, obviously, pre-baking.

The final product:

Founder en papillote, caramelized potatoes, and fillet mignon on a bed of wilted kale. Surrounded by blistered pole beans, also from the garden, and drizzled with a reduction from the pan drippings. Far more relaxing and intimate than a restaurant!

Foodie and Frugal, 1.19.09 to 1.21.09

First:

What’s New & Upcoming at EclecticEdibles.com: The Bean Burger Recipe I’d promised last week is now up in the left sidebar. Sorry for the delay. Also, later in the week you’ll get another 10 Minute Lunches update, and I am going to try to get a separate page started for those this week, too. Sometime either this week or next, I hope to post on my latest farm tours. Those of you on my mailing list will also receive another addition of my newsletter.

Foodie & Frugal:

I haven’t been keeping up on the Foodie and Frugal thing as much as I’d like, in part because they’re long posts and I’ve been busy. This will be an abbreviated version in some ways, but it’s the best I could do on limited time (farm visit today).

Large shopping trip today: $50.00

Meat shopping at farm today: $10.00 (approx)

Est. “fresh” trip for perishables next week: $20.00

Total Grocery budget: $80.00 total. $40.00 a week. Right on budget.

Week I (1.19.08 to 1.24.08  )

Monday. Indian Chicken with rice. This is a recipe adapted from this site, one of my current favorites. I love this woman’s site. The chicken recipe was a good base, but I wanted a bit more. So, I’ve added some different spices and tossed in a bunch of greens. We’re serving this over white rice, because I am NOT paying $3/bag for brown rice, which is all they had left today at the local store.  It’s on my list for when I head to my out-of-town store, where I get it for far, far less.

Tuesday. Hobo Casserole with lima beans & salad. We have some local potatoes in cold storage we need to use up before they go bad, so I’ll combine them with our local, grassfed beef, carrots, peas, red onions, and a bunch of spices in my cast-iron skillet and bake it all up. I’ll top it with unprocessed wheat germ (tasteless, but good for fiber). Served with organic salad from Costco and frozen baby lima beans. Yep, frozen. We’re eating a lot of frozen veggies right now, because our local produce selection is just *awful*.

Wednesday. Goulash. Pseudo-traditional goulash for movie night. Folks will bring sides, we’ll watch movies. Should be fun.

Thursday. Herb seared salmon with quinoa risotto and asparagus. Quinoa is a great, lower carb side dish. I’m doing it with Rembrandt Aged Gouda (you can get this at The Frenchman’s Cellar. Run. Now. This post will be here when you get back), black smoked sea salt, and mushrooms. The asparagus is from Aldi. They’ve got great prices on it. I realize it’s not local, nor is it organic. Sometimes, you gotta do what your budget will let you, and given the horrible selection of fresh, and the limited selection of organic frozen, this was a reasonable option.

Friday. Meatballs with whipped sweet potatoes and peas. UC will be doing the cooking for that night while I am delivering my Ready-to-Go Meals at the Frenchman’s Corner. Local beef, as usual.

Saturday. GAME NIGHT. We’re headed over to J & B’s with some other folks. The Guys will be playing Axis and Allies. The Ladies will be watching all 5 hours of BBC’s Pride & Prejuidice. And possibly swimming. Dinner is TBD, but will likely be pizza, I am thinking.

Week II (1.25.09 to 1.31.09)

Sunday. Lasagne with salad and garlic bread. This starts us off with lots of leftovers for UC’s lunch. I’ll be doing my healthy version, which uses no ricotta cheese. Instead, I blend lowfat cottage cheese with a bunch of spices (secret blend, sorry!) and some bread crumbs to use as filling. There will be whole wheat noodles, greens, mushrooms, local beef, and yummy sauce. Served with organic salad and garlic bread made from UC’s ciabatta (baked yesterday in a frenzy of flour and yeast…go check it out!).

Monday. Chickpea saag over rice. UC’s still working out the kinks in his favorite Indian recipe. This week’s version will be made with our home-canned beet greens and spinach.

Tuesday. Salmon Patties with roasted sweet potatoes & red onions and corn. My famous fish patties make a return on this week’s menu. They’re lowfat, full of protein and fatty acids, and tasty. I’ll roast off some red onions and sweet potatoes together, seasoned with Herbs de Provence, black smoked sea salt, and cracked pepper.

Wednesday. Pumpkin Soup, in the pumpkin. We’ve got a huge cheese wheel squash in storage that needs to be roasted. We’re doing this for Movie night, and using the pumpkin to make pumpkin soup, garnished with a choice of porcini mushroom oil or fig balsamic vinegar. We’ll also likely have ciabatta available. Folks, as usual, will bring sides to round out the meal.

Thursday. Peanut noodles with scallops, served with salad and asparagus. This is UC’s birthday, but we’re doing the bigger meal Friday night. Tonight is another of his favorites, but it’s a lot quicker to make since we have spin class.

Friday. Garlic & Sea Salt Roasted Pork Shoulder, with golden potatoes. UC will be cooking his own Birthday dinner, which is the way he wanted it. This is one of his favorite dishes, and also one of his specialties. It’s not terribly healthy for you, but it’s his Birthday, so who cares?

Saturday. Tortilla Soup. After the rich meals for the past two nights, we wanted to switch up to something lighter and easy to make. We love tortilla soup, made with homemade chicken broth, black beans, home canned tomatoes, and lots of other yummies. Topped with some tortilla chips, a pinch of cheddar, and a dab of guacamole.

Foodie and Frugal, Week of 12.13.08

Above: tonight’s dinner: Polenta with wild mushrooms (chicken and puffball), onions, and fricasse’ sauce. It was served with a mix of peas and collard greens. Yummy! Below: last night’s dinner: okra & pinenut pasta with blue cheese sauce and herb rubbed salmon.

I’ve been a bit lax on the whole “Foodie and Frugal” thing, and apparently it’s been missed. Sorry about that. So, here’s the menu plan for this coming week:

Monday: Lentil & Sausage Soup. You see this here a lot because it is very tasty, very hearty, very healthy, and very quick. Mondays see both UC and I gone for classes, me at Body Combat and him at Tai Chi; so, we need a quick meal. We use turkey sausage to keep the fat down. Lentils are a complete protein and full of fiber, so it keeps you full.    The recipe we use makes a huge pot that feeds us for several meals (and occasionally a few helpings even make it into the freezer) for under $3.00. We’re using the chicken stock I am making tonight from the hens we got a while ago as the base:

Tuesday: Not Your Mom’s Meatloaf and Sweet potatoes. This recipe is one of the absolute best I’ve made recently. I’ll try to get it up on the sidebar later this week. It’s also very healthy, and low-cal. Served with sweet potatoes for antioxidants its’ pretty much a complete meal, but we’ll toss in some beets or corn, too. This can be a bit pricier just because it has meat, but it also has veggies in it. It’ll give us two meals, so I’m going to guess $1.50/person per meal.

Wednesday: Chicken or beef kabobs. This is movie night, and we feed lots of people. We make the main dish, everyone brings a side to pass. Tonight, it’s meat and veggie kabobs. I think I’m going to do them in a Thai peanut sauce.

Thursday: Beef Stew. You’re seeing a lot meat on this menu, it’s true. Our veggie dish was tonight. While I like to do more, UC is back to trying to gain weight, so we’re back to eating more meat (its seems to be the most effective thing he can do). This does break the bank a bit, unfortunately, but it keeps him in good shape. Beef stew is a pretty effective use of the beef, and it’ll also mean I can crock pot it. Which is great, since this is our night for spin. I’ll brown off the meat earlier in the day, then toss it in the crockpot with carrots, onion, corn, peas, and potatoes. We’ll have it with some of the sourdough UC is making right now, and probably brown rice.

Friday: Chicken Lasagne. This is one of the dishes you’ll see on my menu for my Ready to Go Meals this week, so I am just going to toss another one in the oven. This will give us some leftovers for later. I’ll be using whole wheat noodles, spinach, TVP, mushrooms, and a low-fat cheese combo I make myself (there’s no ricotta in this, but it’s actually doesn’t need it). This is really frugal, and with all the protein and fiber, it’s incredibly healthy.

Saturday: Yule. This is our holiday celebration with good friends. We’ll be cooking off a turkey and a bunch of other stuff, but the specifics are still in the works.

I expect to spend $35-45 on groceries. The rest is from the pantry.

Check back tomorrow for my Ready To Go Meals selections for this week. Also, check the RSS Feed on the sidebar for my published articles on treating ADD/ADHD and Depresison with diet.

11.5.08 Weekly Frugal & Festivals

Hi, everyone! Sorry for the delay, but I was watching the election when I should have been blogging.

**Before I get to the menu for the week, I want to do some shameless promotion. I’m writing for Associated Content now, and getting paid for it. Please click through and read (or just click through and give me page hits, I’m easy to please) when you can.  It’s all work safe. Thanks!!**

We headed to the Heritage Apple Festival and the Persimmon Festival at Edible Landscaping with our friends, Dave & MJ and Erin and Adam. We had a great time, but it probably would have been a better time if two of the four of us hadn’t been just starting to come down with something. I am really looking forward to next year, when I hopefully don’t feel like collapsing on my face. That said, it was still a lot of fun, and we got a great deal on apples (which we’ll be canning as sauce and apple butter this weekend sometime).

I am so excited because we only spent $25 on groceries for the week (and $5 of that was in rare breed eating apples). This is when our stocking up starts coming into play, and those high summer grocery bills begin to be totally worth it!

This week (starting yesterday):

Dinners

Sunday: Butternut squash soup with homemade onion rolls. We put up squash from one of our favorite farms, Roundabout, and this was the first use of it. The soup was delightful and rich, perfect with UC’s NY Style onion rolls!

Monday: Homemade whole wheat pasta and sauce, with a side of sauteed zucchini. We will be making fresh pasta tonight, and pairing it with our homemade vodka sauce. The tomatoes are from linguisas we got for $1/lb (organic & local). We’ll be adding TVP to the sauce after it’s done to add protein. All told, a super-cheap, healthy meal.

Tuesday: Scalloped veggies. We need to use up some leftover cheeses (Amish butter, morbier, and aged gouda), so I’ll mix those with some standard cheddar and make a nice sauce. That’ll get dumped over some fresh veggies, then baked with a topping of whole wheat and anadama bread crumbs & TVP from homemade bread (we save and dry the ends).  it’s a great meal.

Wednesday: Chicken soup and sides. We’re hosting a movie & dinner night, and I’m making homemade chicken soup out of some local, organically-raised hens we got for $1/lb. They were older laying hens, so they’re perfect for stocks and soups. I’ll be popping in some carrots, and hopefully some homemade noodles (leftover from Monday night’s dinner). Folks bring sides if they want dinner.

Thursday: Pork chops with pickled beet tops and roasted beets. I’ll do the pork chops in one of my favorite spice rubs from The Frenchman’s Corner and pan-sear them. When we were putting up food for the winter, we got a ton of beets with the tops on. We wanted to do something with the tops, since they’re so healthful and tasty, and had initially thought about just cooking them down to can. Then, UC found a recipe for yeast fermented pickled chard. We used the beet tops in place of chard, and tonight we’ll pop a jar and try the results!

Friday: Undecided. Now that the markets are closed, we’ll be heading to some farms & stores directly on Fridays, so as of this week we’ll start our meal planning on Friday afternoon.

Lunches:

tuna salad on onion rolls (this was TASTY today), leftovers, pb&J on homemade bread, soup, and wraps from leftover 100% grass-fed London Broil (Pannill’s Gate) I pulled out of the freezer (along with local lettuces and tomatoes).

Snacks:

pb&J, cheese, smoothies, yogurt & granola, fruit (including some rare local apples!), roasted nuts, sliced tomatoes, carrots, chips & salsa.

Breakfasts

Eggs in a “nest” with toast (the nest is sautee’d spinach and garlic with balsamic dressing), porridge (wheat berry and pearl barley), cereal (got the Good Stuff with no HFCS on sale), and hopefully some homemade english muffin sandwhiches (UC is supposed to make the english muffins this week, but we’ll see if we have time).

Fermented Pickled Beet Tops

Per request

Let me start by saying this recipe is new to us. We had a lot of beet tops from my trip to Roundabout, and I’d thought we’d just pickle them. UC popped online and came up with this fermented pickle recipe using yeast, and you know how he feels about his yeast. It needs to sit for several more days before it’s “done” enough to try, but I’ll let you know how it goes.

Here’s the recipe, and we just subbed beet tops for chard.

Happy fermenting…er, pickling…er, whatever.

365Crockpotting

Tonight we’re having Indian Chicken and Palak Tofu from the website A Year of Crockpotting. I was turned onto this site by a forum I belong to, and have spent more time perusing it than I have doing much work lately. It’s fantastic. I use the crock pot year round, but many of these recipes are new, innovative, and even a bit shocking! As it turns out, not everything in a crockpot has to be soup or stew.

Tonight’s meals were amazing. I made the Palak Tofu on the stove top simply because I only have one crock, but I am pretty sure after tonight we’ll be springing for a second. If you have time, scoot on over to the site and have a look around. Let me know what you think! I think she’s amazing.

What’s In

What can you do with local foods? Why do we eat locally? Well, there’s a bunch of economic mumbo-jumbo I could get into, but the truth is we like the way it tastes. This was dinner on Saturday night:

Fresh green beans, ready to cook. They were sautee’d with garlic, EVOO, agave, and a bit of water.

Homemade pasta noodles with wilted kale, diced tomatoes, fresh cracked pepper, and sea salt. This was topped with Parmesan cheese at the table.

Salmon, poached in it’s own juices and butter infused with garden-fresh herbs.

For dessert, yogurt & fruit parfaits:

Local fruits are just starting to come in right now, and this dessert makes the most of their natural sweet, complex flavors. Peaches, plums, and apricots are topped by organic yogurt and a local honey that tastes like you’re eating the actual wildflowers. It’s all topped off with mango-ginger Stilton, which gives it a wonderful cheesecakey taste and texture.

This is the best reason to eat as local as you can that I can think of: it’s good. You can’t always get everything locally, such as the fish and cheese (though we did buy both at locally-owned shops), but adding in the seasonal items grown closest to home makes things so much tastier, fresher, and healthier. A peach picked within 24 hours of you eating it tastes so little like those fuzzy softballs you get at the store. There’s more than sugar to them, they’ve got a depth of flavor just like wine, with differences just as regional. And, like wine, there is a certain age when they are the best. And, this meal cost us far, far less than we’d spend going out. Actually, it cost us less than it would have if we’d purchased the same items at the grocery store.

But, for me, dollars aren’t the true cost of food. Nutritional value vs. dollars, taste vs. dollars, responsible purchasing vs. dollars. These are all choices that go into our foods, and sometimes the cheapest isn’t the best value.

This Week in Food and Frugality

Farmer’s Market: $50.

Whole Foods: $10

Local grocer: $50

I suppose we could eat for less, but despite being frugal, we’re not willing to give up nutrition and quality. Almost everything from the above budget is organically raised, and most of it is local. The eggs (all three dozen, including duck eggs) are all 100% pastured & organic. Really, for the quality, I think we’re doing pretty darn well. There are some items that are bulk, such as the organic brown rice, that will get used for many weeks. I suppose I could have pro-rated those items or something, but I am just not that motivated. I wanted to include pictures of everything, but it’s raining buckets here and the light in this house just stinks for photos.

Also, feeding Tall and Lanky takes 3,500-4,000 calories a day just so he doesn’t lose weight, and we can’t do that healthfully with simple carbs and sugar (which would be a lot cheaper). His diet makes a very large difference in his ability to concentrate and also to sleep, and pretty much completely reverses any signs of ADD (as it does with most people, though not all). So, for us, it’s worth it. Honestly, I’d give up almost anything but the roof over my head and my cats to not jeopardize our way of eating.

The weekly drill is to get up early and go to the market. We have standing orders with some farmers, and from the rest pick out what is freshest and ripe. We then come home and organize or clean the refrigerator, writing down our purchases from the market as we stock. Any vegetable remains that are getting too soft or ripe (or that there’s just not much of) go into the stock bag, and everything else that needs used is written down on a list by priority for use. We then sit down and plan our weekly meals around the lists, and head to the store for remaining ingredients. There is no waste, and that is–to me–a large part of being frugal.

This is what’s on the menu this week.

Dinners

Tonight: London broil wraps (marinated London broil, avacado, garlicscapes, tomato, red peppers, onions, cheese, and sour-cream sauce on low-carb tortillas). Served with stuffed squash blossoms. Normally, we eat grass-fed beef; but, we do keep some other in stock sometimes. In this case, we got the meat on sale for $1.99/lb, and bought a 5 lb. Package. We portioned it into five 1 lb. baggies of thinly sliced meats and froze them for future use in stir fry, wraps, pastas, etc. Really has paid off! The veggies are largely small bits we have leftover from last week’s meals that I don’t want to put into the stock bag, and the low-carb tortillas are a great alternative to bread for us (they are a bit expensive, but it takes us weeks to go through one package).

Sunday: BLTs, served with a green salad (red leaf and other organic lettuces, unpasteurized cherve, roasted walnuts, vinegar and oil).

Monday: Beet, radish, and turnip soup, served with crusty whole grain bread (homemade). Small beets are in right now, as are the first lovely radishes and turnips. I make stock, then use the whole vegetable—greens and all—for the soup. Since it’s hot, I just put the roots in the crock pot and let it go. I’ll add the tops about an hour before we want to eat, then stick my emulsion blender in for a few turns while adding some milk. Also, I don’t skin the vegetables, because they leave more flavor and nutrients in the soup. It’s fantastic. Some of this will get frozen for lunches or dinners at a later date.

Tuesday: Seafood pasta mix and garlicscapes over homemade pasta. We got the huge seafood mix (Krab, small shrimps, tiny octopi, some small scallops) at $3.00/lb. And got just a pound. Put over homemade whole grain pasta with some fresh garlicscapes, this will make a dinner and two lunches at least.

Wednesday: Salmon burgers with roasted corn on the cob served with smoky butter and blue potatoes. Burgers are made with no-salt-added wild-caught canned salmon (which, incidentally, was the same price, is healthier for you than fresh farm-raised and also better for the environment), bread crumbs from the ends of our homemade breads, herbs and spices (many of them from my upside down tomato pots), hickory salt, and egg. The corn on the cob is the last of the frozen ears from last years great crop, and the smoky butter is a bit of Amish butter (this is actually cheaper around here than standard butter, which is fantastic!) melted with smoked paprika. The blue potatoes will be roasted, and stay blue. These are coming in really fast around here, so the price is great. I am considering buying a bulk of them to freeze for the winter (mashed).

Thursday: Vegetarian stir fry (fennel, red pepper, summer squash, eggplant, garbanzo beans) over herb-scented scented brown rice.

Friday: Quiche. We use quiches and frittatas to use up extra vegetable, leftover meats and cheeses, and herbs. We make our own whole grain crusts. It’s a great way to remake leftovers! Some of this will also get carried over to next week for lunches and frozen for use at a later date.

Lunches (we don’t do these by day, as they’re often catch-as-catch-can): Fried egg sandwiches on whole grain bread. Soup & salad. Thai peanut chicken over whole wheat noodles (leftovers from yesterday). BLTs. PB&J wraps. Tuna salad pitas. Egg salad.

Breakfasts: Our Egg Muffins, Warm grape-nuts type cereal, lacto-fermented oatmeal, eggs on organic ciabatta bread (germ-in) w/basil and lettuce.

Snacks: Hummus & guacamole w/pita chips, carrots, cucumbers. Cottage cheese. Fruit. Yogurt (which I will make into frozen yogurt, too!).