Carbonara in 15 Minutes

If you eat swine, I recommend this recipe for carbaonara for two reasons-- it's great for a quick dinner and easy. 

In a big pot with a lid, over high heat bring to boil water with a fat pinch of salt. 

There are certain dishes that I love to eat when they are made with lots of bacon-- carbonara, pizza for adults, and fried rice. However, an early trek to the farmers market is necessary to get the local stuff so when I do manage to buy bacon, I stash it in my freezer. 

Pull out a frozen block of bacon, hack it to bits, and brown it. You'll notice that keeping bacon in the freezer is great for chopping it.

I buy local food, but for some items are some that have no substitute-- Dececco pasta, avocados, and pomegranates. Put the pasta into boiling water and set the timer. If you use Dececco, it's always al dente when it says it will be, ten minutes for spaghetti. Add frozen peas when six minutes have passed.

Crack two eggs and place the yolks in bowl to use. Pour out the cream.

Drain the pasta, keeping some of the pasta water. Return the pasta to the still hot pan. Using a pasta scoop or two forks, mix the pasta until it is coated with the egg yolks, adding cream slowly. Season with salt and pepper. Add Parmesan cheese and toss again. Add more cream to obtain desired consistency. Serve the pasta and garnish with the cripsy bacon bits.

You might find you have an emergency worthy of this dish, regularly.

Carbonara in 15 minutes

Ingredients

Box of Spaghetti (Dececo), cooked al dente 10 minutes

Bacon, sliced (I prefer the whole package but if you've more self control half is tolerable)

Frozen Peas, 1/2 cup (optional)

Egg Yolks, 2

Cream, 1 cup
Parmesean Cheese, 1/2 cup

Kosher Salt, to taste

Fresh Ground Black Pepper, 1-2 cranks

Directions

Cover and bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat. Add pasta and cook until al dente ( has a bite when bitten), about 10 minutes.

Chop bacon. In a sauté pan, brown bacon over medium low heat. Remove from heat and drain onto a paper towel. Set aside. 

Add peas to pasta when pasta has about 4 minutes to go.

When pasta is al dente, drain pasta but not too thoroughly, save a bit of the water. Return pasta to the still warm pot. Add the egg yolks and with a pasta scoop or two forks, toss until the pasta is coated. Slowly, add cream until desired consistency is reached. 

Add the cheese and continue to toss. 

Season with salt and pepper. Adjust to taste.

Serve pasta topped with crispy bacon bits.

Ohio Winner of Healthy Lunchtime Challenge

Abby Cornwell, winner of Michelle Obama's Healthy Lunchtime Challenge for Ohio, has just returned from Washington, DC, where she attended the 2014 Kid's State Dinner at the White House. Her winning entrée was Sunrise Tuscan Chicken.  There will likely be other events and opportunities that come her way. Abby told me that a guest celebrity chef from Ohio may visit her school, East Elementary, later this year!

This is a clip of our meeting about her participation in the event. A big thanks to Abby's mom, Jenny Messina,  for hosting and to Sam Girton for recording the video. It was edited by a newbie, yours truly.

Abby has been interviewed a few times in recent days:

• ABC News article 4 Reasons the Kids' State Dinner is Way Cooler than the Adult One
• The Athens Messenger on June 22, 2014
• The Athens News on June 18, 2014

Suan La Tang Chinese Hot & Sour Soup

Cravings for Chinese food hit randomly. We go on egg roll making sprees and stash them in the freezer. Egg rolls taste almost as good heated in the oven as they do fresh out of the fry oil . This is a favorite with egg rolls at my house. There is a stash of lilly buds and wood-ear ever ready in the pantry. Fresh tofu and ginger are often in our fridge so the ingredients are easy to gather together. Increase the heat by adding more black pepper. I go for middle of the road heat.

Suan la Tang Chinese Hot and Sour Soup

Serves 3 to 4

Ingredients

Tiger Lilly Buds, 20 buds

Cloud Ear Fungus/Wood-Ear/Ki-kurage, 2 Tbsp dried

Chicken stock, 3 cups

Garlic, 1 clove peeled & smashed

Fresh Ginger, 1 knob peeled & smashed

Soy Sauce, 1 Tbsp

Salt, 1/2 tsp

Black pepper, 2 grinds

Rice Vinegar, 1 Tbsp

Corn starch, 2 Tbsp + 2Tbsp Water (more for thicker soup)

Firm Tofu, 1/4 block finely cubed

Scallions, garnish, chopped 1 tsp per serving

Sesame oil, garnish with a splash

Directions

1. Rehydrate Tiger Lilly Buds and Cloud Ear in hot water until softened, about 5 to 10 minutes.  
2. Over medium heat, bring chicken stock to a boil with smashed garlic and ginger.
3. Add soy sauce, salt, black pepper, and vinegar to stock.
4. Mix the corn starch with water and slowly add to the soup stirring vigorously until you have the consistency you want.
5. Dice tofu and scallions. Add tofu to stock and simmer 1 to 2 minutes until heated throughly.
6. Turn off the heat. Garnish with scallions and a splash of sesame oil. Serve with egg rolls if you have them.

Suan La Tang Chinese Hot and Sour Soup

Crispy Kosher Dill Pickles

This recipe is based on the Bell Blue Book recipe but it does use less sugar. Do follow proper canning procedures and review a resource if you're new to canning or it's been a while. These pickles are great on burgers, as a side, and can be eaten the next day, but the point of making them is to put them up for later. 

I'm slowly learning how much to make of things in terms of a year's supply now that I have a basement. Pickles are best made with fairly small cucumbers, about 4 to 6-inches long. This size cucumbers can easily be found at farmers markets, roadside stands, and produce auctions. If you take up pickling to any degree, you'll likely find the best deals come from either your own garden or a produce auction. However, I did get this peck (a big box with a handle) at the Athens Farmers Market.

Crispy Kosher Dill Pickles

Yields 3 quarts.

Useful Equipment

Quart jars with lids and bands for pickling

Water bath Pot for canning + canning equipment

Ingredients

• Cucumbers, 4 to 6-inches, 1 peck, wash, cut in half or quarters lengthwise (depending on size)
• Water, 1 quart (4 cups)
• White Vinegar, 1 quart (4 cups)
• Sugar, 1/2 cup
• Pickling Salt, 1/2 cup
• Pickling Spice Mix, 1 Tbsp per pint jar
• Dill head, 1 per jar
• Bay Leaf, 1 per jar 
• Ball Pickle Crisp, 1/4 tsp per quart jar
• Clove of Garlic, 1 per jar (optional)
• Dried Chili Pepper, 1 per jar (optional)

Directions

1. Wash and clean jars and lids. Use new lids. Reuse bands.
2. Heat jars in oven to 250ºF for 30 minutes.
3. Bring lids to simmer in pot on the stove.
4. Over low flame, heat pot for water bath with lid while preparing the pickles.
5. Rinse, drain, and cut cucumbers.
6. Add spice mix, dill head, bay leaf, pickle crisp, garlic clove (if using), and chili pepper (if using) to each jar.
7. Bring pickling juice ingredients: water, vinegar, sugar, and pickling salt to boil over medium heat, stir until sugar and salt dissolve. Pour hot liquid into the jars over the cucumbers and spices. 
8. Wipe rims with a clean damp cloth.
9. Place lid.
10. Seal with band to finger tight (just tight).
11. Place jars into water bath and bring to boil. Start processing time from when it begins to boil, process for 15 minutes.
12. Check seals. Anything that doesn’t seal, store in fridge and use within the week.
13. Label jars.
14. Use within a year

Crispy Kosher Dill Pickles

Eat Your Vegetables: Quick Pickles

Determined to eat well, we tramp off to the market, buy handfuls of luscious vegetables, and then we stuff the things into the crisper. Later, the once beautiful produce is wilted and no longer looks appetizing. The old veggies are composted, tossed, or maybe made into soup?

Having trouble keeping your vegetables in the edible state? Want another way to add vegetables to your diet? Japan to the rescue!

Pickles of varying types are traditionally eaten at every meal in Japan, yes, that includes breakfast. I had previously thought of pickling to be about cucumbers and water baths, but there is more to pickling, and quick pickling is a handy food preservation method. My cooking teacher, Nansai Sensei, demonstrated how to make quick pickles using a variety of vegetables all mixed together in a jar. This is a variation of her recipe then modified for the American pantry.

You can make and eat quick pickles the same day, though they do have a more intense flavor over time. It allows fresh produce to be stored in a ready to eat state that lasts beyond the usual day or two, and it adds texture and the zingy taste of vinegar to your palate.

Vegetables are best when cut into uniform shapes which is helpful for absorbing flavor. Some vegetables, such as cauliflower, beets, broccoli, carrots, and green beans, need a quick boil (1 to 2 minutes) followed by immersion into cold water to stop the cooking process, drain, and place into the hot pickling juice.  (TIP: Cauliflower will stay whiter if boiled with a slice of lemon).

Improvise with spices, use different types of vinegar, and tweak the recipe to your liking. Store quick pickles in a glass jar in the fridge up to 10 days. Now you can add vegetables to your lunch or easily eat them as a snack right out of the fridge. Heck, I serve them at parties. Combine the pickled vegetables with fresh vegetables for a textural and flavorful contrast in a salad.

Enjoy!

Eat Your Vegetables Quick Pickles

Yield 4 pints or 2 quarts

Useful Equipment

Clean glass jar with lid, pint or quart size

Ingredients for Pickling Juice

Water, 1 quart (4 cups)

White Vinegar, 2 cups

Sugar, 1/3 cup

Pickling or Kosher Salt, 2 Tbsp

Spice Options

Pickling Spice Mix, 1 tsp per pint jar

Dried Hot Red Pepper, 1 per jar (optional)

Bay Leaf, 1 per jar (optional)

Clove of Garlic, 1 per jar (optional)

Mustard Seeds, 1/2 tsp per jar (optional)

Ball Pickle Crisp, 1/8 tsp per pint jar, 1/4 tsp per quart jar (optional for cucumbers, beets)

Vegetable Options

• Cucumber, wash, cut in half, cut to fit into jar
• Carrots, wash, peel, cut in sticks, boil 1-2 minutes, plunge into cool water, drain
• Cauliflower, wash, chop into pieces, boil 1-2 minutes with slice of lemon, plunge into cool water, drain
• Turnips, wash, quarter, boil 1-2 minutes, plunge into cool water, drain
• Beets, wash, chop, 1/4-inch slice, boil 1-2 minutes, plunge into cool water, drain (store by themselves-- turns the juice pink)
• Green Beans, trim ends, wash, boil 1-2 minutes, plunge into cool water, drain
• Daikon Radish, peel, slice into half moons, boil 1-2 minutes, plunge into cool water, drain
• Asparagus, trim ends, wash, chop, boil 1-2 minutes, plunge into cool water, drain
• Garlic, boil 1-2 minutes, remove peel and separate cloves

Directions

1. Clean and prep vegetables.
2. Add pickling spices and vegetables to jar(s). 
3. Bring pickling juice ingredients to boil over medium heat, stir until sugar and salt dissolve.
4. Pour hot liquid over prepared vegetables in clean jars. 
5. Add pickle crisp (if using) to each jar of cucumbers, beets, etc.
6. Label jar.
7. Wait about 30-45 minutes before eating. Store in the fridge up to 10 days.

Eat Your Vegetables Quick Pickles

Jr Chefs

My moment of glory was teaching the junior chefs at the Athens Farmers Market today. We suited up in aprons. I laid out the plan, and then we strolled the market to shop for vegetables. Our menu was quick pickles and rice balls. The kids found something from every vegetable vender at the market from purple cauliflower to cherry tomatoes to sweet onions. They wanted fresh dill and sharper knives. They packed their jars full of vegetables and then ate them. Well, one little girl waited for her mother to return before she would even taste any of it. She was so proud of her colorful jar of veggies. The rice ball making was a bit more challenging-- they looked more like smashed burgers than firmly pressed rice balls. However, one of the kiddos got a cash offer for his jar of vegetables. He did not part with it.

It was pretty awesome to work with kid foodies.

Jr Chefs at the Ahens Farmers Market

Dinner in a Box?

More than once, women friends have mentioned the desire for or the use of dinner in a box services (The Blue Apron, Peach Dish, Plated). I haven't ever used one, but I get the appeal for this kind of service. This isn't dinner in a box as in preserved processed food, but as in proportioned ingredients, with a recipe, sent to your home to alleviate the grunt work of kitchen duty. 

The service costs money and is mostly available in larger cities, but it adds variety and fresh food to the diet that can be a welcome respite at the end of a weary day when kitchen duty beckons. 

The lure-- eating healthy, tasty food, made of fresh local ingredients with a plan but also options for improv. Oh, I get that dream-- the pleasure of cooking at home so it's super fresh, hot, and builds your cooking skills and kitchen repertoire, but no shopping or thinking required-- just a cook with a plan and ingredients. I have to think about ways to use produce, add vegetables, avoid the same meal rut, and I sense that I'm not alone.

With the abundance of awesome fresh ingredients, chefs, and purveyors of meats, vegetables, fruits, beers, wines, cider, meads, salsas, pickles, sauces, crackers, grains, beans, cheeses, and pasta, in Athens, the missing link is the combiner of things into an easily transportable basket, box, etc., so that it can be picked up or delivered. It seems like an idea whose time has come.

I see a business opportunity, maybe only a small business opportunity, for those who want to go home at the end of the day, pour a beverage and cook dinner without the running around for last minute ingredients, grocery shopping, and then to enjoy the beauty of one's own home and table. 

Intrigued? Interested in the idea? I am.

Home Cooking for Health

Despite my trail of letters here in the netherworld of the web, I do not see myself as an expert or to that end, using writing as therapy. It's about letting the sand flow through your fingers and occasionally finding a shark's tooth or a sand dollar. However, while I'm fumbling around in the dark and sharing the glimmer of light I've collected, part of me is embarrassed by my meager findings considering the time I've spend searching. Nonetheless, I can't resist so when something sticks or shows up that interests me, I share it.

Though I worked for many years as a registered nurse with patients suffering from cardiac and renal disease, nutrition expert I am not. I also know first hand the pain of weight gain, food prep, and the need to make healthy choices. I have been both plumper and thinner in my life as many have. I'm interested in health and health is partly about choices-- food and activity.

After college when I was at my meatiest, I promised myself to never diet again, but I realized that I had to cook. If I wanted sweets, making them myself slowed me down. I also gave up sweet tea and soda. Though I dislike strenuous exercise, I can usually manage a walk. My early cooking forays were mostly sweets, but slowly I came to cooking everyday foods that were better for me to eat. I'm still trying to get more there. Americans generally need to eat more vegetables, legumes, and fruit. We've got meats and desserts covered. Look for the recipes that encourage you to eat what will make you feel awesome and that means greens, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains for most of us. Knowing that I'm not alone, I share my interest and experiences.

I fell in love with flavor and when I discover a recipe that excites my tastebuds, I share it. My love of beautiful food is in recognition that my brain comes with a stomach, though I appreciate beautiful food, it is more often from the realm of magazines or restaurants than my kitchen table. I do like butter, yogurt, and eggs and shy away from substitutes for these items in particular. In short, I came to home cooking, kicking and screaming and with the hope to NOT have to exercise too hard to keep it all in check which just gets harder with age.

My cooking skills evolve with my tastebuds's desires. I am also warming up to the idea of adding vegetables, beans, and whole grains to the foods I cook because it is a simple way to get more of the healthy stuff into my diet. I don't need labor intensive recipes for every meal, but sometimes I cook for fuel and sometimes I cook for fun. I do work on recipes that I love to eat, and I tweak them over time to get a tad more nutrition added without overwhelming my tastebuds. Some cooks are further along this path than I.

What has worked? Cook what you eat. Exercise. Find ways to add vegetables and legumes into recipes. Use more herbs.

Herbs can be expensive, but oh boy do they add to the tasty factor of a dish. A sprinkle of fresh rosemary or a crush of Greek oregano can move the tastebuds from wanting only heavy salt toward a delightful and fresh herb taste with a pinch of salt. Growing the herbs makes them both handy and more economical. No one wants to dash out at dinner time for three dollar herbs that last a day or two, but if you do, tie them up and dry them that day, otherwise they tend to morph in to science projects in the fridge. Use them fresh or dried.

Recently, I listened to a talk by Michael Pollan, linked below. Some favorite quotes from it that stirred my thoughts because they hit upon things I've learned for myself and maybe you have too:

"The one diet for America. The one diet that would work? Eat anything you want, just cook it yourself." 

Harry Balzar as quoted by Michael Pollan

"Corporations cook very differently than people. They use vast amounts of salt, fat, and sugar, much more than you would ever use in your own cooking, and the reason they do that is that those are three incredibly attractive and incredibly cheap ingredients and when they are layered properly as in a chip or in various pastries and forms of junk food, they're incredibly addictive. In fact, people in the industry, they don't talk about addiction, in the food industry, even though they traffic in addiction, they talk about cravability, it's the same thing, and snackability is another term they use, it's a lovely word. Anyway, so I came to see that cooking has a huge bearing on our health. In fact, there's been a lot of research in America that shows that shows that even poor women who cook have healthier diets than wealthier women who don't." 

Michael Pollan

Fruit & Vegetable Muffins

INGREDIENTS

140 grams (1 1/8 cups) whole-wheat pastry flour

5 grams (1 teaspoon) baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1/2 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon honey

70 grams (1/3 cup) packed dark brown sugar

1 small apple, grated, and juices reserved (1/2 cup)

1/2 cup grated carrots or butternut squash or parsnips

1/2 cup grated zucchini or beets

55 grams (1/3 cup) raisins

40 grams (1/2 cup) unsweetened shredded coconut

PREPARATION

Heat oven to 350ºF. Grease mini-muffin tins.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

In a large bowl, combine the eggs, olive oil, honey, brown sugar, grated apple and juices, and grated vegetables.

Using a spatula, fold the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until just combined. Gently fold in the raisins and coconut.

Fill each muffin cup 3/4 of the way up, and bake for about 15 to 18 minutes for mini-muffins and about 20 to 22 minutes for regular muffins. The muffins are finished baking when an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Within and Beyond, Safe Travels

A friend is heading off to the wild blue yonder not for a job, the reason most people I know move, but to see what lies beyond the confines of the hills that surround us— the thrill of adventure calls. 

Once upon a time I was hellbent on departing just as now, I’m hellbent on staying. “There’s no place like home,” has long been my mantra wherever I’ve lived and even when I’ve clearly not been a local— Spain, Bahrain, and Japan. I longed for those adventures and needed them to stretch my tolerance, appreciation, and widen my radar of awareness. Things that are you versus other are more obvious when you are outside of them. There even comes a day when you can’t return to a certain way of living or thinking— the confines of racism or the shackles of sexual repression come to mind-- they are embedded in some places but not in others. 

In some ways living abroad made me hyper aware of how American I was in terms of language, my approach to authority, and in daily rituals like meals. New experiences that touched undeveloped longings in me, were embraced with a sureness that some might have seen as adapting to another culture, but for me it was the centrality of the human experience that helped me to see with new eyes or to embrace something missing in my own cultural experiences, a new way home.

I face the task now of integrating seemingly random experiences from different cultures into one way of being which also changes with circumstance and other experiences like parenting, missteps, and new found joys. I picked a place to do this that has a mix of people rooted in other places and so it is tolerant with the roundabout approach to local ways. It is also a place with traditions and ways that rub and press in upon me both good and bad. However, I don’t have to go to say Italy to find my way to things I love or to let go of things I don't. Finally or at least more often, I can see at home what I once could only notice when I was away. I brought new eyes home.

The food front is an easy obvious place to explore. 

Travel means tasting new foods and combinations, so I did. From dancing shrimp on a table in Japan to grilled sparrow in Lebanon to roast bear in Russia, it’s enough to make a woman go vegetarian even if she doesn’t live in the hills of Ohio dotted with hippies. Sometimes I longed for American breakfasts of hash browned potatoes and omelets or particularly the comfort of milk tea and toast with butter and jam especially when faced with a breakfast of steamed rice and grilled fish or ful medames. Food is a universal and yet a local experience, but don’t mess with breakfast too many days in a row or you’ll find you revert to childhood. Meanwhile, food trends in America follow headlines like a tennis match— gluten free, thwack, low carb, unhh, vegan, sloomph!  You can go anywhere in a kitchen which is probably why I've found myself spending more time in my own kitchen over the years. There are other coves of discovery, but for now food is the easiest to share.

As my friend stretches outward, I seek to stretch inward-- to notice the subtle signs that call me. Adventures beckon us from both within and beyond. Safe travels wherever you are called! 

Zipsicles

I spent day outside in the sun and on the hills sweating with a Girl Scout troop hike.

I wanted to bring popsicles for an after-hike treat. This got me thinking about popsicle molds versus wrappers. I went in search of plastic wrappers and found zipsicles online at Amazon. You fill them with juice or fruit, stash them in the freezer upright, and then once frozen, take them where needed to be consumed (cool packs were used).

The day before the hike I unexpectedly had to spend the day at Boy Scout Camp so I texted my resident Girl Scout and asked her to make the popsicles. She rummaged through the shelves and stock and made a variety of flavors including barley tea, mango juice, and Blue Hawaii. She liked using the zipsicle bags and requested that everyone return the wrappers so that she could wash and reuse them.

They aren't ideal, thanks to the plastic waste, but they do work for events like a day hike and they were the perfect treat on a hot and sweaty day! Using our own juice and fruit was so much better than eating food dye and high fructose corn syrup.

Here's to a popsicle summer!

Eat Your Weeds

After returning from RAW Movement Day Camp, my child went into the yard and returned with a handful of what I knew as a garden weed. She prompted me to eat it. It's tart and rather astringent but pleasant. My kiddo is so pleased with herself! The edible weed? Sorrel. Add some to a green salad or with a side of eggs and toast.

Sorrel (wild) from the yard

Sunrise Tuscan Chicken & Food Talk

My second day at the Real Food Real Local Institute included a shout out to a local Athenian, Abby Cornwell whose entrée Sunrise Tuscan Chicken was submitted to Michelle Obama's Let's Move's Healthy Lunchtime Challenge earlier this year. Abby is the State of Ohio winner. She and her mother will be traveling to the White House for a "State Dinner" with Michelle Obama (see it here).

I connected with Ohio University Food Studies initiative leader, Theresa Moran. She mentioned several local events on the theme (keep an eye out for more events in the fall) and recommended readings like Consider the Fork by Bee Wilson. 

Did you know that Athens is one of the hubs of hipness in Ohio?

Tourism Ohio talked about branding work and the economic impact of tourism trends in Ohio based on food, history, and unique distinctive experiences. Their current marketing themes linclude "Sharing a 30 mile meal" and "Too much fun for just one day." 

The key note speaker, Anthony Flaccavento, spoke about local food as a movement. His term about the "vaguely concerned, sporadically motivated" was about cultivating the next layer of food citizens. One success tactic that he has seen across the USA, Community Supported Agriculture groups brining fresh produce to work sites. We talked about trusting the experience of good food to speak for itself, but the trick is finding easy ways to get the food into people and then allowing them to form their own opinion without ruining it by preaching. 

Athens County Commissioner and local farmer Chris Chmiel spoke about Athens County and Athens City participating in energy conservation and energy competition, Georgetown University Energy Prize, worth $5 million dollars to the community that wins. Athens, Ohio, is throwing its hat into the game which begins 1 January, 2015,  and it will be wagered for two years, stay tuned. Locals can find information on renewable energy through ARECC.

Abby Cornwell's winning Ohio entry for Healthy School Lunch contest!

Real Food, Real Local

I'm attending the Real Food, Real Local Food Institute near Athens at the Eclipse Company Store. I went to learn more about the local food economy. The conference highlights local food systems knowledge and serves to showcase it. I was wowed by the years of collaboration that have built the food scene in this community. Though by afternoon my overcooked brain was called elsewhere, I wanted to share some of the day's interesting but random details.

Flower children of the sixties lived in Ohio (not just San Francisco), became business entrepreneurs, and created local food economies that are now being studied, replicated, and expanded. Local Roots in Wooster, Ohio, has served as a model.

The Small Business Association gave its first loan to a Worker-Owned Cooperative in the mid eighties to a restaurant in Athens (Casa Nueva Restaurant & Cantina).

There is a news emphasis on local foods that are sustainable food businesses through agencies liked HUD, USDA, historic preservation funds, and other community agencies, but all of them want a business plan, numbers, and some skin in the game.

Getting local food into communities, beyond farmers markets, includes food hubs and indoor market spaces that work like a farmers market on consignment such as Wild Ramp in Huntington, West Virginia, which is open weekdays year-round.

Jill from Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream and Eat Well Distribution said that they look for local unique products made with fresh ingredients and no preservatives. Retailers want packages that stand out on shelves, demonstrations, marketing plans, and shelf life.

Alfonso Contriciani, the executive chef at Hocking College and owner of Plate Restaurant, talked about creating a heritage pork cooperative in Perry county involving fed with non-GMO corn, established pen sizes, and the value added to creating a brand of pork. This all piggybacked onto a discussion about the need for rebuilding or improving slaughter facilities that allow meat product farmers to preserve their identity by the USDA.

There were a lot of stories and the point of sharing them was to inspire and help others. Everyone wants to build infrastructure and has food business ideas.

What's yours?

Real Food Real Local

Plump & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

A friend posted a picture of the various states of Chocolate Chip cookies. I am intimately familiar with all of them. However, one recipe not mentioned uses cornstarch. See the recipe below. The addition of cornstarch makes these chocolate chip cookies plump and a bit chewy. It's my favorite! 

Plump & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes 24 cookies.

Ingredients
Unsalted Butter, ¾ cup (1 ½ sticks)
Granulated Sugar, ¼ cup
Light Brown Sugar, ¾ cup
Egg, 1
Vanilla, 2 tsp
All-purpose Flour, 2 cups
Cornstarch, 2 tsp
Baking Soda, 1 tsp
Salt, ½ tsp
Bitter (or Semisweet) Chocolate Chips, 1 cup


Directions
Use a standing mixer fitted with a paddle, blend butter and sugars until blended. Add egg, vanilla and salt, continue to blend until creamy, about 5 minutes.

In another bowl, stir together flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Gradually blend into the butter mix until just blended.

Stir in chocolate chips.

Roll into 1-inch balls. Makes about 24 cookies. Place onto cookie sheet lined with a silicon mat or parchment paper (for ease of cleaning).

Bake at 350ºF (170ºC) until golden brown and slightly soft in the center, 8 to 10 minutes.

Variations in Chocolate Chip Cookies

No Place Like Home

If I had ruby slippers, they would take me home in the present, every time.  I used up all my travel Jones with forty plus years as military baggage. I don't regret it, but that particular scratch, no longer itches. Now, I like puttering about the garden, working at my desk, and the quiet that exists no place else, plus my favorite people are here. 

Sure, I grumble about cooking and cleaning, but traveling makes me appreciate the food at home. As much as I loved eating ramen and coal fired pizza in New York City, I'm thrilled to be back at the farmers market and harvesting the containers on the deck.

While in New York, the intensity of processed and packaged foods overwhelmed me. It occurred to me that one of the most radical things to do is to cook at home, with real food. Buying local food, using local food, means supporting the local economy, instead of corporations that are really interested in the wallet, not health, plus the food is fresher and more flavorful. Cooking also gives you control of fat, sugar, and other additives that need to be limited.

Grow your own food. I once scoffed at this concept, but really, containers are small and manageable. I put three packages of pesto into the freezer which were made from the clippings of a hanging basket of basil that grew while we away. If you come to chez Jordan this summer, you might be eating pesto.

Today, we ate our first nastridiums, marigolds, and borage, grown on the deck in pots. It's high time to get a few things into the garden so that we can reap the benefits of uber local foods. If you haven't tried marigolds, they are a must! 

As exciting as other places are, there is no place like home.

Happy Mothers Day!

Two Bowls of Ramen

Deprivation, nearly two years, makes one do things like eat two bowls of ramen in one day. 

Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop is very good, though the location, Gotham West Market (600 11th Ave., NYC), feels a tad slick. My husband referred to the place as being "too Chipotle-fied." However, we did meet Ivan Orkin at the not yet open (May 9) second location (25 Clinton Street, NYC). He kindly chatted with us and said to come back. (They signed a ten year lease.) The Clinton location looks to be more of a neighborhood restaurant, and based on his awesome broth at the Slurp Shop, I'll be back.

Meeting Ivan Ramen, 25 Clinton Street, NYC

Because we ate early at the Slurp Shop, we decided to stop off at Totto Ramen and wait with the crowd. It's so much easier to wait when you're not hungry. The shop is small with the ambiance of Japan, minus the thumping music. Plus, I still wanted to get menma (bamboo shoots) and a soft boiled egg with my ramen.

After two bowls of ramen, our bellies sloshed back to the hotel.

I've seen a few produce stalls, but it seems woefully inadequate for a gastronomic city the size of New York. The search for produce led me to Chelsea Market which is full of bakeries and restaurants, but slim on produce.

My husband, ever more insightful and able to cook than I, reminded me of his college friend from New York City, who once said, "This is how you make fried rice in New York City!" The friend then picked up the phone. Apparently, not everyone cooks, the kitchens are small, but, there's plenty to eat on the streets and they deliver.

My husband is wondering if I've maxed out on ramen yet. Stay tuned, I've got a day or two left. 

Slurp Shop & Totto Ramen

Eating West Virginia

From Athens, Ohio, you have to drive past hillsides dotted with exposed earth, through West Virginia, to get to New York City. 

The first stop, a diner, is reached by a gravel road marked with potholes. The parking lot is full of pickup trucks. The restaurant is full of men. I momentarily fear a food buffet. The menu reveals cheap prices and lots of meat options. At home, I'm the holdout for meat (locally raised), but on the road, I avoid it (factory meat).

My husband orders an omelet with hash browns and whole wheat toast. I order the baked potato with a side of peas. The butter is fake. My husband jokes that my lunch, "looks Irish-- potatoes and mushy peas." Our meal is less than twelve dollars. 

I'm hoping for more interesting culinary adventures in the days ahead.

Homemade Nutella (No Palm Oil)

Kiddos, like other consumers, impact the world by their choices. A research project on Bornean Orangutans, an endangered animal, lead to the realization that orangutan habitat is being destroyed to make room for mono-plantations of palms, for the palm oil, in South East Asia. This led to some label reading and the discovery that the beloved nutella was made with palm oil (20% from what I gather).

Not wanting to eat palm oil, led to researching palm oil free nutella recipes. This one is by Adrien Gontier, a French geochemistry student that gave up palm oil and was featured on PRI. Palm oil is in many products beyond foods-- soaps, shampoos, etc. This is going to make selling Girl Scout cookies interesting. In the meantime, I'm hoping to find a sustainably harvested kind of nutella and there are a few jars stashed in the pantry to finish off.

Consider that beyond health concerns, palm oil usage in processed foods is destroying unique habitat. Saving habitat and avoiding palm oil is a choice that will impact more than a momentary cookie break or the fifteen minutes you spend making your own spread, reading labels, and making choices that matter.


Homemade Nutella (No Palm Oil)
Powdered Milk, 25 gm (~1oz)
Cocoa Powder, 60 gm (~2.5 oz)
Powdered Hazelnuts, 95 gm (~3 oz)
Agave Syrup, 100 gm (~3.5 oz)
Sugar cane syrup: (50 g water et 100g cane sugar) = cane syrup made with 3.5 oz cane sugar and 1.75 oz water

Directions
Mix all ingredients together and eat it on bananas, bread, or with a spoon.

Gaijin Tips for Eating Ramen

As a kid I carefully calibrated the ratio of water to flavor packet contents for just the right amount of salty broth to eat with packages of dried ramen noodles. Eventually I worked up to the styrofoam cups of soups that contained dehydrated vegetables and, my favorite, the bits of egg. Elevating ramen to the finest of foods seemed unimaginable back then, but in soup and noodle cultures the world over it has been and is being done. However, it has taken a while to land on the shores of America, and it might be awhile before it takes root in the hinterlands.

In Seattle I became acquainted with the Vietnamese version of beef broth and rice noodles known as pho. Seven years of pho eating in Washington, D.C., where there are a surprising number of pho restaurants, honed my family's passion for soup and noodles. Our son slurped his first rice noodles from a bowl of pho when he was six months old.

Our Japan hometown, Kamakura, is a tourist destination with lots of noodle options-- thick white udon noodles, dark and light buckwheat soba noodles, chewy curling yellow ramen noodles, and still more kinds like somen.  For five glorious years we ate noodles to our hearts' content. On weekends my family lined up at Miyoshi, a clean well-lit udon shop, for its smoky tori-jiro chicken stock and made as you watched udon noodles with a side of tempura. Our favorite soba was at Nakamura-an with its darker, country style, buckwheat noodles. However, we found the ramen master in Yokosuka, right outside the back gate of the Navy base.

First, we had to figure out how to buy a ticket for what we wanted. Ramen shops are small and often use a ticket machine instead of a cash register. Money is inserted, buttons are pushed, and a ticket is printed with the selected order to set before the chef. Though we were illiterate in Japanese, we were quick studies. Hit or miss, I ate what my ticket bought or traded it with my more adventurous husband.

While diners waited, the silent ramen master prepared each bowl with the choreographed moves of a dancer— shaking baskets of noodles, scooping sauces, and laying roast pork over clear broth with yellow noodles aesthetically arranged with a twirl of the chopsticks amidst the sounds of slurping diners, the ping of timers, and the simmering pots with thermometers nearby. Each bowl was garnished with green mizuna leaves, sheets of crisp black nori, and two red goji berries. These five colors of washoku Japanese home cooking-- black, white, yellow, green, and red-- made for a visually appealing bowl of hot steaming ramen that was also amazing to eat. Sadly, the shop moved.

Later a ramen shop opened in Kamakura that made a double soup, two stocks such as fish and chicken, combined just before serving. As far as I know, it's still there by the Tokyu. I went mostly during the day, eating beside delivery truck drivers, business men, and the occasional woman. 

Then my husband retired from the military and our days in Japan ended. 

Our new hometown is a college town, and probably like many university campuses has an influx of Asian students, mainly from China. They are not the passionate foodies I witnessed in Japan sniffing out the out of the way places, willing to wait hours for good food, and snapping photos of every meal. Instead, I see tables littered with partially eaten food and soup bowls coated with grease. You have to ask for the Chinese Chinese menu to even get a noodle bowl, but then they cater to these indiscriminate eaters. Though craving ramen, how to make it has eluded me. Until I spend the time refining my recipes for noodles, soup stocks, and making the components, I'll keep wishing that someone else will do it for me.


Gaijin tips for eating ramen:

• Don't talk, Eat!
• Eat it hot!
• Eat it quick, it’s supposed to be hot
• Slurp! Suck in cool air along with a mouthful of hot noodles and fat
• Don’t mind the noise, eat the food
• Don't talk, Eat!
• Ramen is not gluten free
• Dribbles on your chin are to be expected
• Drink all of the broth
• Noodles should be chewy, springy
• Ramen is everyone's food, rich or poor, man or woman
• If you're desperate for ramen, you can make your own

This is a clip from the udon shop, Miyoshi, in Kamkura-- we are eating zaru udon or cold udon. I never thought to take a photo of hot ready to slurp ramen.

Eating zaru udon at Miyoshi

Ivan Ramen

One morning I heard my husband, the late riser, laughing in bed. He had happened upon a funny video that combined a harsh Long Island Jewish guy with a double shio ramen from Japan. I posted the video to my Facebook page, and a Japanese friend asked, "Is it true story of this guy?" Turns out, he is real. He's a chef, a Japanophile, he has ramen shops in Japan and New York, and he has a new cookbook! The mystery of ramen is revealed in Ivan Ramen a new memoir and cookbook by Ivan Orkin.

This is not about styrofoam cups of instant ramen or dry bricks with the "flavor packet" one finds at the grocery store. This kind of ramen is about layers of flavor, hours of labor, and the magical experience of slurping (and you must slurp in air and thus make noise in order to eat) the hot broth and noodles. His ramen is a double shio salt ramen made with two kinds of stock which is my absolute favorite!

Five years of eating ramen noodles in Japan puts my authenticity button into the ozone. I'm a noodle snob. This book is the closest I've come to comprehending the scoops, techniques, and composition that go into making a bowl of ramen like those found in Japan. It's a rare book that captures what it is to eat ramen. It explains in fascinating detail the evolution, the who's who, and how to not only prepare, but eat ramen-- you must slurp the hot and the fat from a bowl of ramen into your mouth, and yes, it may dribble on your chin. 

Recipes for each component of the ramen he serves are included: chicken fat, pork fat, shio tare salt seasoning, sofrito aromatic vegetable base, katsuobushi seasoned salt, double soup stock, toasted rye noodles, menma cured bamboo shoots, chashu braised pork belly, and the beloved in Japan half-cooked egg. His story about how he got to this point in life, in the kitchen, and in the dual locations of New York and Japan are shared in a warm open hearted way that contrast with his sharp city demeanor on display in the video.

Ivan Orkin is a Culinary Institute of America in New York graduate and chef who brings careful attention to a food he loves. His ramen is prepared with the exacting standards he utilized in kitchens like Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill and the famous French restaurant Lutèce in Manhattan. He explains how to make ramen at home, but you will need great ingredients, lots of time, a weight scale, and a thermometer.

I could kiss his toes for writing this book and giving me the hope that someday I can create a bowl of ramen worthy of the ones I ate in Japan, but in my own kitchen here in the hills of Ohio.

Let the noodling begin!

Ivan Ramen