Carrot Ginger Soup for the Paper Pushers

It finally got cold in Philadelphia. Break out the crock pot! You have to wait till it got cold enough to feel the need to "shake off the chill" before you can start making soups and whatnots. Who wants to eat soup in a t-shirt?

And another thing. I'm sick of HEAVY CREAM soups. It's cheating. Why? Because the addition of any fat or any salt to ANYTHING makes it automatically taste better. Sugar is similar, but not as potent. So, if you want insta delish soup, just add tons of salt or heavy cream. But I think it's time we let the ingredients stand for themselves. Seriously, we don't need the calories anyway... we have parkas and heated buildings. If we were Eskimos that'd be a different story. We'd be eating straight whale blubber. But we're not. We write emails, essays, have conference calls, and get lost in black holes searching for answers on Google ... all from our chairs. And to those who don't do this... kudos... you deserve some heavy cream.

So, this is a light, bright carrot soup with enough kick to oust the chill. It's VERY simple, horray!

Ingredients:

3 large local carrots

~3/8" ~1/2" of fresh ginger (say, a piece with the length of your thumbnail plus the volume that section of your thumb. if you have big thumbs, use your pointer finger)

1/4 cup of broth

1/2 of an onion, vidalla would be good

salt to taste

1. Peel the carrots. Look, do yourself a favor and refrain from peeling your carrots into the dishwasher disposal. My former housemate Alison did this and we had to pull a mysterious alien orange mass from beyond the kitchen sink trap 2 weeks later. Then again, she peeled like 10 carrots, not 3. I'm still afraid so I peel straight into the actual garbage.

2. Slice carrots. Medium width is fine.
3. Chop onion into medium-fine pieces
4. Peel ginger then finely chop or grate
5. Dump into a crock pot
6. Add 1/4 cup of broth

7. Add water til it just about covers the mass of veggies

8. Add a few rotations of ground sea salt to the mix
9. Cook on high until the carrots are soft when poked with a fork. (If you don't have a crock pot, simmering on a stove would probably have similar effects.)
10. Remove from pot, put everything into a food processor. Blend until very smooth.
11. Add salt to taste

Makes ~4, 8 oz servings, which = ~2 meals


I was literally burning the midnight wax for this one... finals are around the corner.)

I found this soup to be very modular. Meaning, I added different stuff to it each time I ate it. I highly recommend grating sharp white cheddar cheese and raw beets on top. It was refreshing, spicy from the ginger, complemented by sweet crunchy bits of beet as well as the soft fatty goodness from the cheese.

Check it ->>> Modular soup!

(A short illustrative story about fat, salt, and sweets: Yesterday I was sitting behind a mom and a tiny girl on the subway. Mom obliviously yabbering away on the cell, child holding a big Philly pretzel in wax paper. I notice that she peels back the paper, puts the pretzel to her mouth, then pulls it away, but without biting it. She pulls the paper back more and repeats. 'Poor girl,' I think. 'The paper's getting in her way of eating the pretzel.' This continues for 4 or 5 more times... and then I realize... she's just licking the salt and sugar combo off the sweet cinnamon dosed pretzel. Priceless.)

Hands UP for the English Language!

I invented a new word! Ready? "nontrition"

I've been trying to get it into Urban Dictionary, because hey if it's on the internet it must be true. ha. So far it hasn't taken yet. Edit: it's officially up, check it out. But if it did, it would say this under "nontrition":

A quality of a food lacking nutrition. Most commonly found in foods packaged in shiny plastic or paper bags that fly out of drive-thru windows.

I.e. That microwave dinner is filled with nontrition. OR Better check the nontrition facts on that, I'm not sure that vend-a-snack has real food ingredients in it.

Also, remember when I shared a lecture with you from a very professional food authority, Michael Pollan? Well, I want to go the other way and share this little 5 minute video from a much less educated person. He may be reading from a prompter, but hey! whatever gets at people emotions. I love his point about paying the farmer or paying the hospital. So true!

Check out this ted talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/birke_baehr_what_s_wrong_with_our_food_system.html

I put some pictures of cows in this post because people like to look at pictures. So here's a friendly reminder of where your food comes from. Although, probably not because these are pictures I took of Fairmount Park cows. You get the idea.

More recipe posts coming soon...

You're So Vain, MSG

In this post I'm NOT going to talk about how much I hate faux- meat dishes. I'm not even going to mention the fact that I exchanged my stomach fluids for new ones after a Chinese lunch last Tuesday and now can't eat more than 1/4 of my normal caloric intake. You know, it's so stereotypical to blame MSG. My bean curd disguised as curry chicken was probably just left out in an alleyway for too long. It happens.

The problem with MSG and other such additives is that if you do enough research, you'll find equal supporting evidence for either side of the argument. The skeptics are very detailed in their rants (complete with a million case studies), and the supporters are very non-committal in their official 'safety' reports of investor sponsorship.

In my opinion, the story of MSG is like that of so many other additives, really. It's a compound isolated from a plant or whatever that's normally found whole in nature. And something about that refining and adding process just isn't good for you. Identifying something we want from nature, isolating and extracting that thing, refining it into something mass produceable and 'usable', and then using it mindlessly... sounds like oil. Ah! Tangent! Tangent!

So yeah, that's NOT what this post is about. This post is about spicy tuna and shrimp tempura sushi. I know, fighting a weak stomach with raw fish. Good thing the seafood stand at Reading Terminal Market is legit. I lived.

Small Tomatoes Needs a Camera

Well, I've made a handful of exciting food things between last week and this week. But you know what? My phone, fondly called "Droid" just doesn't take internet-worthy photos. I could rant about pumpkin and cranberry pancakes topped with walnut crumbles and a side of cinnamon apples washed down with hard apple cider all I want, but it just doesn't look appetizing when it looks like this:

I guess it doesn't help that it's half eaten.

The same thing goes for the mushroom risotto, and the spaghetti carbonara. Both were supremely creamy and satisfying... but yeah, the lighting was bad.

The picture for my packed lunch came out all right. You're looking at a variation on a work in progress.

On my lunch menu: Spent grains flat bread with tender red-tip leaf lettuce, a shmear of apple butter, shards of a sharp cumin dusted cheese, and hard boiled egg. I've made it better toasted and with a poached egg, but runny yolks don't pack well. I can just see it now, egg yolk all over the inside of my bag... that's something that would happen to me.

I've been experimenting with spent grains bread (made from the mash leftover in the beer brewing process). This particular loaf was made with grains from Philly brewery which I won't mention yet, but unfortunately I fell asleep during the last phase of the rising sequence. Hence, it's a flat bread!

So here's a promise to put more effort into making my Droid work for me. Maybe I should dig out my old polaroid camera and go in the other direction. Who needs an SLR? Psh. But then I'd need a working scanner........ technology, ugh.

Jam Your Own and Loose Weight!

Remember last week how I posted about making your own grape jelly, and you were like, "yeah right, I'm gonna keep buying the 2 for 1 deal of Smuckers cuz I don't have time for this ridiculous canning scheme." ??

Well, I have some more ammo for my war on fake food.

Check out the ingredient list in the Smucker's Concord Grape Jelly: Concord grape juice, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, fruit pectin, citric acid, sodium citrate.

Alright, we've got TWO familiar ingredients... Concord Grape Juice, and fruit pectin. 2/6. Awesome. So what else are you eating here? Uh, synthetic corn something, synthetic acid something, synthetic synthetic something....... It's not all that terrible. Citric acid is a natural preservative used to maintain freshness... if you squeeze lemon juice on a cut of avocado, it will prevent it from browning as quickly. I'm not gonna pretend like I know anything about sodium citrate beyond the fact that it's a preservative.

But the real thing I wanna point out is the high fructose corn syrup. You're thinking, "yeah yeah that's only been the go-to buzzword for unhealthy food since last year". I know, it's old news. But it's STILL on our shelves, and people are STILL eating it. So to further support my bashing of the stuff, here's a great article from scientists at Princeton.

It basically says that eating high fructose corn syrup is NOT the same as eating sugar. The synthetic stuff contributes significantly to unhealthy weight gain.

You can find HFCS worming food everywhere, and can be hard to pick out. Take this little cup of yogurt. It's LOWFAT, it's got PROTEIN, its got BLUEBEERIES (oh the anti-oxidants!)... but wait, high fructose corn syrup is in the top line of ingredients. And stuff like this (low-fat yogurt) gets tagged as 'healthy'. Sickening.

So, in defense of jamming your own, or at the very least, paying a dollar extra for real jelly....

do it for your taste-buds... and for your gut.

PS. I hope everyone understands the sarcasm in my title line. (I don't understand sarcasm very well, so I feel compelled to spell it out for others in my predicament.) I'm commenting on the ridiculous diet trends that seems to govern our predilections for certain foods.

Hoard the Concord

Homemade Grape Jam

Assuming you're not 10 years old and reading this blog, I'm going to guess it's been a few years since you had grape Kool Aid or a purple slushie. But if you're like my mom, perhaps you've more recently consumed a grape soda. Yeah?

So, all these grape flavored things don't taste ANYTHING like a grape. What gives? As most of you know, grape flavor is modeled after the Concord grape, vitis labrusa to be exact. However, Concord grapes don't show up on the fruit stands in the supermarket... well, ever. Why? How did the snappy, watery, seedless grape trump the Concord? Because of the Concord's extreme flavor, large seeds, and gummy inside meat, it wasn't as convenient or appealing for a large market. I suppose the extreme convenience of seedless grapes won the heart of hungry snackers everywhere, because you can only find Concord grapes at farmer's markets.


However, I discovered the Concord grape thanks to the surprisingly subtle bounty of the farmhouse in Doylestown. One day, I had parked my car under some 'trees' in the yard. I stepped out and noticed that they were not trees at all! The most beautiful, dark violet grapes were hanging lavishly from a row of tall gnarled vines. These living relics stood, unassumingly and quiet, offering the jewels of another age. The grape was sweeter and more flavorful than anything I had eaten that year, I swear. Imagine the intensity of a candy Gusher, but with real components, not high fructose corn syrup and food coloring.


Many months later, I wanted to preserve the taste of my summer discovery. I also wanted to share my newfound affection for the Concord. So I made Grape jam. A REAL version of Smucker's.

Is it worth your time? Hell yes.

4ish hours of time = 3 months of cheaper-than-artesian-jam

How cheap?

Artesian jam from farmer's market or wholesome supermarket = $4.50 per 8 oz.

Your jam from scratch = $3.50 per 8 oz (Included stove heating and cost of rubberized lids in this calculation, but did not include jars because you can basically use these over and over again. You have to buy new rubberized lids every time.)

Here's how it goes:

I used:

• 3 quarts of fresh Concord grapes
• 1 packet of low-sugar fruit pectin (low sugar doesn't mean diet, it just means there is more fruit pectin used to bind the jam together, which requires less sugar. For more information on fruit pectin, click here. It's interesting.)
• 4 cups of organic granulated sugar
• Colander
• Food processor/blender or some sort of handheld masher (for mashing, duh)
• Tongs of some sort (to grab the jars out of hot water)
• Two pots, one large, one medium

The procedure for making jam can be broken down into 3 main steps. Sanitize the jars, cook the fruit, seal the jars. There are a bazillion websites that can tell you how to jam, but you're here so read on...

Sanitize the jars:

• Buy jamming jars. You can find them at most hardware store or kitchen supply stores (Ball is the conventional brand)
• Take your jars home and put on some tunes
• Wash the jars and the rings in hot water, then boil in a pot of water for 10 minutes OR sanitize in the dishwasher, leaving the dishwasher on warm so that the jars don't break when you put hot fruit in them later
• Wash the rings in hot soapy water (you can't boil or sanitize or the rubber will get funky)
• Keep the jars warm either in the hot water or dishwasher until you're ready to fill
• Do yourself a favor and keep the water in the pot very hot so that it's easy to bring to a boil again later. Also make sure there's enough water to cover at least 2 inches above your jar.

Cook the fruit:

• Rinse your grapes
• Chop them up in a blender or mash them with a utensil that gets the job done
• Put them in a pot on medium heat


• Bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes
• Sieve the cooked grapes by passing through a cheesecloth for clear jelly, or let stand for 20 minutes and decant the liquid off the top for a chunkier jam. (After I decanted the liquid, I dumped the remains into a colander positioned over the pot to strain off any more juice.)
• Mix 1/4 c. of sugar with packet of fruit pectin (to assure good distribution of pectin)
• Return grape juice to the pot, add the fruit pectin, and bring to a hard boil (aka. you cannot stir it away)
• Add the remaining sugar to the pan, and bring to a full boil again
• Boil HARD for 1 full minute

Nice color. Not nice for your clothes. Take heed.

Seal the Jars:

• Fill the jars with jelly up to the fill line. For most jars, this is where the pattern stops near the top.
• Wipe away any spills
• Put on the lids and the rings, tighten
• Put back into the boiling water
• Boil them for about 5 minutes. Longer for higher altitudes ;) This creates your vacuum seal so your fruit will indeed become "preserves"
• Lift them out of the hot water without scalding yourself
• Try not to bump them on anything, place on a surface that doesn't conduct heat well (aka put them on a cutting board) so that heat doesn't escape too rapidly. You want the jam to cool slowly. Listen for a popping sound... it's the sound of victory... a successfully created vacuum
• Check the jars for a seal the next morning (the top shouldn't pop up and down when pressed)
• While storing, you can remove the ring. That way, if bacteria does grow in your jar, the lid will pop off (due to the gasses 'exhaled' by the bacteria), which will let you know it's gone bad.

You can store these for quite a while. I don't know how long, I always eat them before I know it's been too long. The hard work pays off, seriously. I just ate some strawberry jelly in November that I made at the beginning of the summer. It was a little memoir of summer in a jar... sweet. I can't wait to open the last can of grape jelly in February.

Jam on people.

Supporting Evidence for Small Tomatoes

Hey all!

In my last post, I got on my soapbox and I told the world wide web what I think is important about food and why. You might think, 'alright, this girl is college educated, but she's no certified expert'.



This is a link to really great interview with Michael Pollan. He's the guy that wrote so many books you know. "Omnivore's Dilemma', 'In Defense of Food', etc. I haven't read his books, but after listening to this interview, I've affirmed that we have extremely similar views on the food industry. It's a long interview, but even if you watch the first 10-15 minutes, you'll hear this expert sort of backing up what my food blog is about. You might be thinking, 'this isn't really my bag' or 'yeah I don't have time'. But cmon', you are what you eat...this your body at stake! The only thing you REALLY own in this world. I really encourage you to listen to at least part of it... put it on in the background while you push papers, work out, procrastinate, etc.


Keep a lookout a new post coming this weekend-ish: the amazing Concord grape and the value of homemadejam.

About Small Tomatoes

What is 'Small Tomatoes'?

It is a food blog, stereotypically. Beyond the guise of peach rosemary sauce and handmade pasta, it’s a place to talk about food. Food as a source of energy for the human body. The human body as part of the food chain. The food chain as one of the most vital cycles necessary for all life. Small tomatoes is a commentary on how something very fundamental to all life has morphed into something that thrives on market drivers that often lack integrity.

(salad with heirloom plum tomatoes)

It’s going to the grocery store, and finding that apples exist year round, even though they have little taste and came from New Zealand. It’s the vicious cycle of people who try to lose weight and diet by eating fat-free yogurt. You can eat 2 cups of fat free yogurt, have a fully belly, and still feel unsatisfied. It’s having to drench your salad in creamy dressing to make it taste like anything, because the salad is simply not fresh. It’s nutrition-less and tasteless due to the fact that all its components were grown in California, refrigerated for two weeks, shipped across the United States, and sat in your supermarket for 5 days before you bought it. (Read this amazing excerpt about strawberries from "How to Pick a Peach" by Russ Parsons.) It’s the e.coli outbreak that repeatedly happens with bagged spinach and salad. How we foresake integrity in the name of ‘convenience’. It’s the salmonella outbreak that happened recently with mass produced eggs. It’s trying to find a sweetened beverage at the gas station that doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup in it. It’s going into the supermarket and trying to find the food you want without added preservatives, modified genes, or growth hormones.

(heirloom yellow tomato with mozzarella, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper)

But let’s face it, there are 6 billion mouths to feed across the world. The mentality now says ‘we must increase production’ to meet demand. It’s not that peculiar then, that we’ve decided to manufacture our food in the same way that we manufacture the year’s newest electronic gadget (before outsourcing of course... oh wait, no I’m sorry, we DO outsource our food production). It’s what we know, we think it’s a simple solution: Do whatever it takes to keep food firm enough for shipping, and then make as much as possible.

(goods from the Clark Park farmer's market in Philly)

Unfortunately, much of this translates into food that has very little taste, reduced nutrition, and a million added ingredients that you can’t pronounce. Somehow, the food industry Goliath has been lumbering around in the background, changing the shape of our food markets with very little attention or resistance from the people that it force feeds.

(quiche with local tomatoes, spinach, eggs, and goat cheese with a whole wheat spiced crust)

So, at a super simple level, small tomatoes is about buying food that’s appropriately sized. I hope to draw your attention to the difference between filling and satisfying. A smaller tomato (or rather, an appropriately sized tomato) will most likely have more flavor than an oversized tomato. On more complex level, small tomatoes is about making a small but significant difference in the world. Choosing to know about where your food came from can be a very powerful thing. It can raise the attention to others, and hopefully raise the quality standards for food far beyond your kitchen. And though it may seem like small potatoes to buy your weekly produce from the farmers’ market, at least you’re encouraging the farmer to sell her small tomatoes.

The Happy Life Cake

A healthier white cake with seasonal fruit and homemade whipped cream

Alright yall. Listen up if you want to read a story about the "Happy Life" cake.

I've made two of these cakes in the past month. I made Happy Life cake #1 (aka HL1) at like 12 am during a party in Doylestown, then brought it to Philly. I made HL2 in Philadelphia and brought it to a party in Doyestown where we ate it at 12am. HL1 was made with blueberry compote filling, and HL2 was made with fig compote filling.

This is .... a creative cake. No oil, no butter.

For the cake:

• 1.5 cup all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup whole yogurt (I used vanilla, but plain is fine)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp packed lemon zest (grated finely... about 1.5 lemons will probably do the job)
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup pear butter (or whatever fruit butter is fine... shout out to friends that live around Medford, NJ... I guess this pear butter is from there)

1. Mix well together the flour, salt, and baking powder
2. Whisk yogurt, sugar, eggs, lemon zest, pear butter, and vanilla until well blended
3. Gradually add the dry mix, don't over beat
4. Pour into whatever baking apparatus you want. Just make sure you grease it up with some kind of fat (I used butter.)

Here are some not-necessarily helpful quips:

• Ordered from most effective to lease effective pan lubricants: Crisco, lard, butter, spray canola, margarine, canola oil spread with a paper towel, olive oil, grease drippings from your cheesesteak.

• Note about pan choice: a loaf type pan would probably be great for this since it's a heavy cake, but I used two cake pans. The cake came out thin, but I didn't mind. This cake doesn't really fluff up a whole lot. I could probably change that with amount of levants and whipping the egg whites, but I didn't this time. Just a warning to any of yall who like vertically volumous cakes. Volumous is a word now.

Now for the filling:

Compotes are easy and beautiful to make. No seriously, have you ever watched a pan full of blueberries liquidize before your eyes? You've never seen a prettier indigo. The thing with compotes is that when you mix up fruit, water, sugar, and heat, you'll get a soupy, fruity sauce. Once you let it cool a bit, it will congeal. Why does this happen? Well, there's this naturally

occurring chemical compound in fruit called pectin. Now, honestly, chemistry was never my strong subject. But here's my best guess: Empirical evidence leads me to suggest that heating up fruit isolates the natural fruit pectin. When you add sugar, this must enhance the binding agents of the pectin, because fruits with low pectin require more sugar for jamming and jelling. Then, when the substance cools (and all the heat-energy excited molecules stop vibrating quite so vigorously) the pectin binds the molecules of fruit together. And wohala! Gelatinous! If anyone has a better scientific explanation, PLEASE comment.

Whoa. So THAT tangent aside, here's what you do:

1. Pick your fruit, and use about 2 cups of it
2. For larger fruits, slice and dice. For berries and such, skip this step
3. Throw into a large pan with some water. You're looking for a thin layer of water around the fruits.
4. Heat on medium heat until the fruit starts to break down.
5. Once the fruit gets kinda mushy, it's helpful to mash it up a bit with a potato masher or something similar.
6. Bring to a par boil.
7. Add about 3/4 c. sugar or 1/2 c. honey, and two pinches of salt. (For the figs, I used sugar and a drop of molasses.)
8. Bring to a boil. Let it bubble for a minute or two.
9. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.
10. Gelatinous fruit should be your prize. Watch this to understand how to pronounce "gelatinous"

Now for the composition of the cake, and the frosting:

1. Wait until the gelatinous fruit has cooled and congealed.
2. Layer cake with fruit compote in the middle.
3. Whip the heavy whipping cream in a perfectly clean bowl. You can do this by hand or with a mixer. If you do it by hand... don't stir it like batter, beat it like you're making scrambled eggs. Tip from a culinary friend says, 'you actually have to beat the air into the cream'
4. Once peaks have formed, either drizzle 1/4 c. of honey in and stir gently to blend, or add 1/2 c. of powdered sugar and stir gently to blend
5. Slather on the whipped topping once the cake is fully cooled. Keep in the fridge until you're ready to serve... otherwise any sort of warm day will melt your frosting!

Alright, and voila that's the happy life cake!

I have to admit, the first time we tried this cake it tasted pretty good (blueberry cake). But I made a few adjustments the second time (the plum cake), and I don't know if anyone remembers what it tastes like. Note to self: eat cake earlier in the night next party.

Obviously there was some alcohol involved by the time this picture was taken.

Eggplant Parmigiana

Holler. Sometimes I really don't know how to start these things. How about this: I made Eggplant Parmigiana the other day. Did you know that eggplants come in all shapes and sizes? They do! Mine looked like this:

but they can also look like this. Makes mine look like a snoozefest. Whatever.

Here's the quick and dirty breakdown. I bought an eggplant at the farmer's market. I'd never made eggplant parm in my life, and I'm Italian. Even though being American means shedding your heritage to adopt the cultural ideas of a shmorgasborg obsessed with 'living the dream', I just feel like I'm doing my ancestors some kind of injustice. So I made eggplant parmigiana. It turned out really well, which I attribute mostly to the quality of the ingredients.

In spirit of my last paragraph, here's some information I think you should know. In America, we know this dish as Egglplant Parmesan, cuz most people make it with Parmesan. This is simply a modification on an orginal dish that gave no preference for the cheese used. The name is REALLY Eggplant Parmigiana, for different reasons, according to different legends. My favorite (and most probable) is because the Italian word 'parmicana' (which refers to slats of wood that compose a shutter) overlap in the same way that the slices of eggplant do in this dish. Cool. Also, for all of you meat lovers who consider this dish a "vegetarian alternative" to Chicken or Veal Parm, that's a misconception. Well what does an Italian American do to a dish after 'making it' in the promised land of milk and honey? She adds meat to it! The impacts of affluence are shocking. Anyway, I just wanted to subtly champion vegetables... eggplant parm came first!

For this recipe you need the following:

• 1 medium sized eggplant
• 28 oz. can crushed tomatos (mine from Jersey!)
• 3 medium sized balls of mozzarella. If you can get them from a local source and in their original liquid, it tends to be A LOT more tasty
• handful of fresh basil
• breadcrumbs (try to get something more real than 'shake n' bake')
• olive oil
• eggs
• flour

My awesome new roommate took some pictures for me. The process went something like this:

1. Gather goods from farmer's market, and the corner store that sells local goods a couple days before.
2. Drive like an idiot to the nearest Wine & Spirits' store (before they close) to buy a bottle of vino for dinner.
3. Get a $76 ticket for having the tail end of my car hanging over the 'no park' line for 8 minutes
4. Drive like an idiot home thinking about how much I would really need that bottle of wine.
5. Get home an pour a nice glass of wine.

Ok, for real this time... the instructions:

1. Crush/mince 3 cloves of garlic.
2. Sautee in olive oil till just browning.
3. Add can of tomatos.
4. Flavor with salt and black pepper to taste.
5. Drizzle a thick trail of sugar around the pan. Just do this once... it'll cut the acidity of the tomatos.
6. Give a few shakes of red pepper flakes.
7. Stir, and let sauce simmer till it thickens a bit. (About 20 minutes.)
8. Slice eggplant into 1/2" slices. Set aside.
9. Beat three eggs in a shallow bowl or deep dish.
10. Put white flour in a shallow bowl or deep dish.
11. Put bread crumbs in a shallow bowl or deep dish. Hope you get the idea there.
12. Press eggplant slices into flour on each side. Get it to stick.
13. Flip into the egg on both sides.
14. Dredge eggy eggplant in breadcrumbs to coat. Set aside.
15. Repeat for all slices.
16. Take some sauce from your sauce pan and spread a thin layer over your baking dish. (Usually best with a glass dish.)
17. Heat a thick layer of olive oil on high.
18. Working in batches, fry each side of the eggplant till golden.
19. Transfer to glass dish when each side has been browned.
20. Do this for all slices.
21. Cover eggplant with tomato sauce.
22. Places lots of slices of mozzarella on top.
23. Tear piece of basil and place on top.
24. Cover with aluminum foil if you know what's good for you.
25. Put in the oven at 350 for about 20-30 minutes. You're looking for the cheese to bubble.
26. Remove and let stand for a bit, or dig in and burn your tongue. (Due to the wine, or my hunger, or both, I totally neglected to take pictures of the final result!)

So I paired this dish nicely with a bottle of "Goats do Roam" red wine. Sike. More like I was RUNNING through the liquor store when I wondered what South Africa's grapes tasted like. I mean, this bottle was on sale, it had a twist off cap, and was simply labeled "Red 2008". (Evidently it's a balanced mix of grapes.) The shocking thing was that I polished off a whole bottle (with some help), supremely enjoyed it, experienced no headache, and bought the same wine 4 days later to bring to a party. As far as I can tell, South Africa has some nice grapes.

Roam on, goats.

Figs exist outside the Newton

Fig and Plum Compote with Honey Whipped Cream:

A succulent desert with heavy sweetness, and fluffy fairytale cream. Serve hot or cold. Give the fresh figs a try too.

Hello world! The migration from farm to city is complete. Been too busy to blog or cook anything but sprouted whole grain spaghetti. One exception was a dinner made with a cornucopia of backyard farm fresh peppers and tomatoes and such, but haven't gotten the pictures yet.

However! I did find some pretty cute small purple things at Whole Fodder for Hippies. (aka Whole Foods) First, figs. To my understanding, pretty much everyone's relationship with figs starts at age 5 and ends with 'TON'. After that, you may get kinda nostalgic and pick up a pack. They're pretty delicious, but a leave something to be desired. Those little bars just aren't as big as they used to be. (Check out this old school package! "Hi! I'm Big Fun!" Hilarious.)

My relationship with figs went a little further in college, I think-due to my good friend Julia. I really can thank her for her sensual relationship with food, because she brought so many things to my pallet. Whole, plain yogurt, figs, and organic rice cakes with peanut butter and Nutella come to mind. (REALLY, try the rice cakes thing... it's amazing.)

ANYWAY, I started to eat figs. But they were mostly dried figs. I mean, it's pretty rare that you find a fig in any other form. So when little cartons of fresh figs were sitting quietly amongst the mangoes and other common place exotic

fruit, I 'oooooh'd' and bought them without even thinking about it. They look like this on a tree (not my picture)

The other small, purple, curious find is small plums. I first discovered small plums at the farmer's market in Ardmore. I'm not talking about 'The Whackme-is-still-trying-to-sell-plums-out-of-season-and-they're-puny, small. These were to plums as banaitos are to bananas. But the flavor packed in these tiny fruits was equivalent to the intensity of a gusher. Remember gushers? So, I found them again at WFH. Evidently they're from Tioga Farms, 140 miles from the store, as advertised. A little out of season and still a victim of the grocery store, they were a little less red, sweet, and juicy as the farmer market plums. But they were still superior to normal plums.

Long story short, I mixed the two, ate them both fresh and cooked, and served them up for desert. Here's what happened.

• Sliced 5 figs
• Sliced 5 plums
• Put some water in a pan to cover the bottom
• Put a handful of brown sugar into the water, mixed on low heat
• Dropped about 1 tsp of molasses into the pan
• Heated on low to mix
• Added plums, figs, and a pinch of salt
• Heated on medium and stirred until that ish started to bubble
• Kept it bubbling for a good 5 -7, or until the sugar mix was congealing, the color of the mix darkened, and the figs and plums started to break apart a bit
• Let it cool for about 5 minutes, put on a plate

I ended up eating this with some handmade honey whipped cream I made for a cake the weekend before. Get this: YOU CAN MAKE WHIPPED CREAM WITHOUT AN ELECTRIC MIXER. I never knew!

• Buy a carton of heavy whipping cream
• Put into a perfectly clean bowl
• Using a perfectly clean whisk... whisk it as fast as it's humanely possible
• Apply a healthy amount of patience
• Wow! It actually starts to whip up into a whipped cream!
• Keep whipping!
• Once the mixture starts to form peaks and becomes a little stiff, STOP. You don't want to over beat the cream and have it break down again.
• Drizzle about 1 1/2 Tbs (or add and taste to your liking) of your choice of honey into the mixture and stir to blend. Honey has a very powerful flavor, and it won't take much to affect your whipped cream.

Again, I apologize for the crappy pictures. I'm still trying to figure out how to maximize the quality of a camera phone. Oie!

Product Review: Sprouted Grains

Yo, so I'm moving again. Which means little time for creative food ventures. Also, my awesome Droid phone died. Which means I can't take any pictures of said ventures. Not having a phone is kind of like being on vacation, but instead of being somewhere awesome, I'm still sitting in a cubicle at work. I will say that I enjoy the complete lack of attachement and anxiety that comes with a phone. (Did I get a text message? Did I call that person back? Why didn't he call me last night? Why won't the post office supervisor pick up his phone?!?)

Until I get a new phone, I have to share a discovery I made.

So, I'm shopping for a quick meal item -pasta- in the whole hippy section of Giant, and I come across what might be the headiest of all heady pastas. Behold, Whole Sprouted Grain Pasta from "Food for Life". The ingredients are as follows: Organic Sprouted Whole Wheat, Millet, Barley, Lentils, Sobeans, and Spelt. They're ALL 'organic, sprouted, and whole'. What does that even mean? I was pretty clueless until I went to their website. I'm not even going to kindof try to paraphrase it, so here's a direct quote

Sprouting is the only way to release all the vital nutrients stored in whole grains. The sprouting process activates beneficial enzymes which cause the grains to sprout and become living and nutrient-rich. Stores of vitamins and minerals dramatically increase over the amount available in flour. Sprouting also converts the carbohydrates in grains into maltose, which is ordinarily done by the body during digestion, thereby predigesting nutrients for you. The enzymatic action enables the body to assimilate the vitamins and minerals more efficiently. Plus, the sprouting process naturally increases the protein content and decreases the calories and carbohydrates found in the original grain.

Hmm, predigestion? I haven't even formulated any opinions on this craziness yet.

Other things you should know about "Food for Life": they categorize their foods by bible versus which inspired each product. For example, the pasta has written on it "Ezekiel 4:9".

Upon desiring to eat this strange new food, I read that it cooks in 4 1/2 minutes (instead of 8-12), and grows to 100% it's original size once cooked. WHAT? Behold, GOD PASTA.

My review? Well, being a full blooded Italian, I'm a little picky with my pasta. It didn't quite have the 'al dente' effect, and was a bit more mushy than expected. But not in a 'this pasta has been overcooked and sitting in a hot tray in the lunch line for 2 hours' way. More like a 'I'm eating a crapload of whole grains and it's kinda chewy' way. Other than that, it had amazing flavor and was really filling. I ate one small serving of it with vegetable pasta sauce, but then went back for seconds eating it only with olive oil and parmesan cheese, which tasted SO good.

So, if you're looking to push the envelope on whole grains, I recommend Food for Life.

Whole Hippy Pancakes (with peach rosemary sauce)

I've come to the conclusion that at every age in your life, you need the occasional weekend hot stack. When you're a kid and you go to IHOP, a pile of chocolate chip mickey mouse pancakes cures any case of the Sunday morning blues (derived from lack of cartoons and hours in church.) When you're a teenager, you're hungry all the time so... enough said. When you're in college, a healthy dose of buttermilk can take the edge off a hangover (usually), and bring enough people to the table to piece together last nights' adventures. After that, well, they're just caloric monsters for your ailing metabolism, but they make you forget about work so whatever. And I'll bet if you're 80 and eating pancakes, it'll probably be at a restaurant with your lifetime partner. And going out to breakfast may very well be the event of your day.... so here's to pancakes!

I use to make pancakes all the time, but hadn't in a while. So without further rambling, I give you Whole Hippy Pancakes with Rosemary Peach Sauce. They were modified from the original king of dank pancakes, the Harvest Grain and Nut IHOP imitation cake. Otherwise known as 'the heaviest pancake ever'.

I took out the nuts, kept the grain (whole wheat flour and oats), added some peach sauce, fresh whipped cream, and pure maple syrup. Not particularly unusual suspects, I'll admit. Topped it with slices of fresh peach, and washed it down with creamy local chocolate milk. Soapbox sentence: I bought the peaches, heavy cream, and milk from a farm market down the street, and they were all locally made. The egg came from my hens. Without the usual rant, the bottom line is that everything had a lot of flavor, and I supported my neighbor.

This is what the hen does when it's hot sometimes. Why it sits on the stone, I'll never understand. Anyway, it's an ingredient maker:

If you want to bring Whole Hippy Pancakes to your weekend breakfast table, here's how:

Order of Business #1: The Flapjacks

• 3/4 c. rolled oats
• 3/4 c wheat flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 c buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 1/4 c sugar (I used brown)

1. Grind oats in blender/processor until fine
2. Combine wet ingredients, mix well
   
3. Combine dry ingredients in different bowl
4. Combine wet and dry and stir
5. Use a healthy of dose of non-stick something to cover griddle or pan, because I omitted the oil from the recipe for a lighter cake.
6. Just in case you're a bad flapjack flipper: put the batter on the griddle, wait until the edges look firm and the middle isn't so wet looking, flip let sit for a minute or so, remove. Be careful to try and drain any oil that's browned, because it will burn subsequent pancakes.

OoB #2: Peach sauce

• two peaches
• rosemary
• honey

1. puree a peach and a half
2. add a girthy drizzle of honey
3. a heavy pinch of rosemary (if you can grind it, I think that would work better)
4. heat in a saucepan on medium low stirring occasionally
5. mixture should congeal a little bit
6. keep warm until pancakes are ready

OoB #3: Whip Your Own Cream

1. Pour a cup of heavy cream into an electric mixer
2. Whip on high until cream starts forming
3. Stop the mixer, sprinkle on a light layer of confectioners sugar
4. Continue whipping on high until cream gets stiff... you know, whipped.

Mix and match all your sides, or eat it plain, or drown it in maple syrup even if there's only a little bit left and everyone else still needs some.... it's fine, you can't help it sometimes.

P.S. Have you ever noticed how ridiculously small the 'handle' is on the maple syrup bottle? It's just silly.