Uh, it's not done yet

Want a sneak preview of the new and much better Small Tomatoes? All you get is a logo:




In other news, my summer without sugar is starting to get interesting. For all reasons I'll leave out now, I'm really glad I tried to do this. Yeah, I skipped out on local Lavender ice cream yesterday. It was tragic. But other than that, it's really freaking interesting.

Can you imagine if you sat down at a restaurant and 70% of the items on the menu vanished as you scrutinized it?

Or if you sat down at a cafe, and 90% of the goodies on the shelf (even the supa-wierd VEGAN items) disappeared?

Or if you walked into a WAWA and it only contained coffee, cheese sticks, peanuts, and pre-hardboiled eggs? The entire state of New Jersey might riot.


Well, this is my life. Without table sugar. Or any of the other fake crap like asparatme or sucralose or malitol, and the list goes ON FOREVER.


More to come on the new SmallTomatoes site. Word.

YOU THOUGHT I WAS GONE...

While I'm busy being busy, and working on smalltomatoes.com, I decided to use this page as a place to repeat news found on the internet that I think is post-worthy. About food. Duh. In case your google reader or other news aggregator (read: facebook) didn't already tell you.

Check out the most popular article on New York Times right now: "Is Sugar Toxic?"


Also found this really interesting video on the process of making sugar... blew my mind! And I still often use granulated sugar because it makes or breaks the formation of a good cake or other baked good. I've dabbled in Agave nectar in honey, but haven't made the total switch... Check it out: How Sugar Cane is Processed

To be on the safe side, you should eat mineral and nutrient rich honey. Buy from a local honey farm to get the added benefits of immunotherapy. Basically, honey contains small amounts of the pollen spores that are floating around your region. When you eat honey made from local bees, your immune system will become accustomed to these pollen spores, which will decrease allergenic symptoms from your usual suspects. Word. Thanks bees.


Lastly, check it out, vegetarian spaghetti carbonara:

This creamy dish is sneakily healthy. Adding scrambled eggs, a little grated parmesean, a dab of guacamole, and 'pepitas' or pumpkin seeds packs a lot of protein AND flavor. holler.

Flooded Cran Apple Pie

Hey all.

So I've been mostly silent here for the past...uh month? I have a lot going on in my life right now. Mostly good things.

I also am working toward a new small tomatoes website. So to simplify my life, and not be AWOL on this blog, this is the last post for smalltomatoes.blogspot.com. It's been a good - well, mostly novice and shakey- run with blogger, but I'm ready to take this to the next level.

So, for my last post, at the request of a friend, I'll talk about the Flooded Cran/Apple Pie.

As usual, I claim that the tastiness of this pie comes from the integrity of the ingredients. I went to the Philly Fair Food stand in Reading Terminal one day, and saw some fresh cranberries. I'd never had a fresh cranberry before. When I went back, they only had frozen, but it's all the same for pies.

I discovered that I LOVE non-dried cranberries. While most pucker and spit, I enjoy the wild and tart flavor. I mean cmon, it's like a sourpatch kid, but hippy.

These crans are from the Pine Barrens in NJ... and I've actually stumbled upon the area on a strange and unusual summer trip to the Pine Barrens. It's the third-largest producer of cranberries in the country! And it was pretty crazy. This map shows the region. All the green squares are empty pools that that are filled with water and cranberries when the time is ripe.

The apples were from a PA farm. I used Fugi and something else... they were all bruised aka "for making pies". I made this first for a party, so to save time, I cheated and bought a whole wheat crust from Whole Foods.


Alright, this pie goes against my grain in one very particular way. I used the standard tricks of the trade to get food to taste good... I added salt and fat. I was baking for other people, and the pressure got to me.

Anyway, it was devoured in about 10 minutes, so I guess it works.

In the pie:

• about 5 apples sliced medium thin
• about 2 handfuls of FROZEN cranberries (you can use fresh, but don't thaw frozen)
• 1 Tbs of flour
• 1 cup of organic sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp of cinnamon

Baking the pie:

1. thaw the pre-made crusts so that they're pliable
2. line the bottom with crust, fill with filling, duh.
3. dot in some places with butter
4. invert the other pie crust over top
5. wet your fingers, rub the bottom outer crust so that it's slightly wet
6. press the two crusts together
7. Brush with milk, egg, or cooled-off melted butter
8. Bake at 350 for 30 mins, then bake for 30 more mins with a crust shield on so the edges don't burn ( i use crumpled aluminum foil b/c I don't have one of those!
9. Take out of the oven and let cool

I originally intended to top this with drizzled salted caramel. I messed up, but the effect was pretty cool.

The flooded topping:

• 1/2 stick of butter
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup of heavy cream
• salt

1. Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan
2. Heat on medium heat until sugar dissolves
3. Add butter in chunks, let them melt
4. Continue stirring continuously as mixture begins to turn brown
5. Let mixture darken, and reduce in volume as some water burns off about 10 minutes
6. To stop the browning process, add a splash or two of heavy cream
7. turn off heat immediately
8. Let the mixture cool slightly, and then pour all over the top of the pie
9. Top off with some sprinkles of coarse sea salt

It's sweet, it's fruity, tart, occasionally savory, buttery, and flakey. But as my partner put it, "it looks like you just flooded your pie." And that's how the story goes.



So long for now. I'll be back in a month, and it's going to be real legit (fingers crossed).

Thanks for reading smalltomatoes!

Spent Grains Teaser

Good morning.

I've alluded to this project in previous posts... the spent grains project. I believe in this post.

The Grains.

Supporting Ingredients.

There's no formal recipe yet, but I will tell you this: it involves beer by-products (aka "spent" grains), water, YEAST, some salt and honey.

It's packed with protein and vitamins. It's so flavorful, you're not sure you're eating bread. It's satisfying, and contains no high fructose corn syrup.

Stay tuned for more to come from this evolving bread. It's my little side project (one of 100) to make use of things that are wasted, and to fill a gap where adequate nutrition is lacking.

We all get tripped up on PI day sometimes

Dear nerds of the world wide web.... HAPPY INTERNATIONAL PI DAY...YESTERDAY! I wrote this post yesterday, but blogger's server wasn't letting me publish, so here it is, a day after Pi day, and what follows is a frankenstien post about the saddest pizza ever made on Pi day.

From yesterday: "I'm sure there are about 100 million other websites that say the same thing, but I am joining them.

How many digits can you recite? I can only do 3.141592... which isn't very far, but I type the number "3.1415" on a regular basis, so I feel good about that."

Incidentally, myself and my brother and his friend all made a pizza. It is not round. We cannot calculate the arc length of our crust in radians, because I don't have a pizza stone. Aw. But ooo is it good. edit: terrible! ( Actually, I'm lying, I don't know yet, because it's in the oven and I'm planning ahead for a speedy post. I gotta catch PI day while it's hot.)
After it came out of the oven:
This was the worst freakin pizza ever. The saran wrap came loose during the rise, and the dough dried out, and it never rose. We were hungry and thought, "hey, flatbread pizza?"

NOPE, WE MADE A BRICK PIZZA. I JUST ATE A BRICK.

The toppings were awesome: fresh basil, fresh mozzaralla, half pancetta, cracked pepper, TJ's pizza sauce. Too bad the dough was like playdough. Yuck.

But we ate it damnit, because we made it. Now do you trust me? I'll try again soon.

What other food bloggers blog about their failures? No too many. It's kinda sickening actually, every post is like "ooo look how amazing and delish this is!" Give me a little credit for showing you that crafts in the kitchen aren't always a shining success.

Edit: The next day, I went to go reheat some mashed potatoes. I opened the door of the microwave, and -much to my chagrin- I found this little bowl of yeast:
I put it in the microwave during the activation of the yeast to keep it warm and prevent air from blowing over it. We all had a pretty long laugh when we realized that we never added the yeast to the dough... NO WONDER it didn't rise. haha

Winter Harvest Part 2

Last but not least, the squash. Squash is one of those words where the longer you look at it, the funnier it is. SQUASH. umm, Winter squash is often labeled in the store as just 'winter squash', but 'butternut squash' or 'spaghetti squash' are other common varieties. They can be prepared many ways.

Here, I doused a halved spaghetti squash with olive oil, maple syrup, onion. I roasted in aluminum foil for about an hour, then raked out the insides with a fork.
Below is spaghetti squash topped with some almond butter, a sweet potato and roasted garlic, and some fried tempeh. Yeah, that weird vegetarian stuff that I still don't really know how to cook so I just make it hot.

Another wintertime favorite: the kale.

Kale IS rubbery and squeaky when you eat it raw. And because I have this weird acquired taste for raw foods, sometimes I just chew on kale stalks like a freakin rabbit. But YOU don't have to go through such trauma. I know I've talked about preparing kale salads before in this post. But now I have a new variation! See, i get these REALLY bomb pickles from the market around the corner. They're not your average Dill pickle with the stork on the front. So much so that I put the leftover pickle juice on my sandwiches or whatever happens to be going in my mouth. It's so good! But then one day I realized a lot of what goes into pickling is vinegar... which is what I used to "wilt" the kale. Boom! Into the kale salad goes the pickle juice. It's baller. Try it. Seriously. Or come over and I'll make you one.

Anyway, kale doesn't have to be rubbed with vinegar to make it taste good. You can saute it, bake it, or make salty chips out of it!
This was a kale salad rubbed with pickle juice, topped with leftover pan seared salmon, local goat cheese, and salted pumpkin seeds. So, kale is a great wintertime leafy green that is 10 times more nutritious than romaine or iceberg, and it can be insanely tasty if made right... or you can always eat it like this guy:

Winter Harvest Part 1

Hello reader! This post got long, so I'm breaking it into two parts. Because let's be honest, no one spends more than 5 minutes on a webpage...unless it's facebook, of course.

So it's almost spring, but there are still days in Philly when I could wear my winter jacket. And although my agricultural knowledge is sparse, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to see a single local berry, cucumber, tomato, or peach anytime soon. The picture below is my illustration of winter time. Does it work for you?


Stereotypically, winter harvest is SUPER un-sexy. Let's see... would you like some roots yanked out of the ground or some tough leafy greens that make squeaky rubber sounds when you chew? Well, I'm telling you that this is just the stereotype, and not the truth! Winter foods can actually be quite exotic and enticing. Don't roll your eyes. I saw that.

Below is a "blue potato". Can you believe that it's purple on the inside?!

I used it in this big, chunky soup and it carried a wonderful flavor. This soup also featured some heady carrots. I do solemnly swear never to eat another baby carrot again. Seriously, they're always slimey, too hard, require some sort of ranch dressing... and you know what? They're not really baby carrots... they're just shaped like that by a machine. Screw that. Check out these colorful, tender, non-slimey carrots below:



Next up, the little sweet potato. So, I've done an informal survey, and I've found a strange pattern. Most girls are crazy about sweet potatoes, but most dudes just could care less about the tater. So, for all the chicks out there... here are some sweet potatoes roasted with olive oil, garlic, fennel and cumin. This is the easiest thing in the world to make: just slice the potatoes, sprinkle your spice of choice on top, wrap in aluminum foil, and bake at 350 in a toaster oven (if it fits) for about 45 mins. Sorry dudes, you're missing out.

There's a lot of reasons why eating local, seasonal food is really good for you and area in which you live. And I try to support that. (I DO sometimes cheat and get citrus fruits, because let's face it, PA is just never going to grow a grapefruit. But Texas and California will be exporting them all year round.)

Anyway, I recommend trying the seasonal produce, but make sure it's from a local farm. Buying a super-sized potato from the supermarket WILL taste like nothing (without oodles of butter/sour cream/etc.) But try a small, sexy potato from the farmers' market, and I think you'll be surprised.
Next time: the squash and kale.