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Food Waste Reduction Challenge 2010: Week 1

Week 1 is done!!

I think I haven’t done too badly, but it’s just the beginning, yes?

I have been trying to plan out meals, buy just what we need and then use it. I also had a “use it up” pasta sauce that made good use of an interesting combination of leftover items.

I’ve also decided that I would do my best to use as much of an item as possible. For example, we regularly cut off the ends of broccoli and the whole peel of a lemon once juiced. I’ve already started zesting all of the lemons before I juice them (having some dried lemon zest on hand has been great!) and next week, I will start a freezer bag for veggie ends, to be made into an aromatic broth sometime in the future.

Some challenges encountered this past week:

Cilantro – can only buy this in a big bunch, and we only use a little bit. To our advantage, we planned two meals that make use of fresh cilantro. But what to do with the rest?? Fresh cilantro is always best, but I did freeze some and dry some. The only stuff we threw out were the handful of stems that had already started to go bad — it goes fast, so there was really no preventing it!
Spinach – I used it up, but there were a few baby leaves that were already on their way out.
1 -2 tbsp cut off pastry dough from a recipe I did — it just made more dough than I needed, and I couldn’t think of anything to do with it.
1-2 tbps Some sourdough starter that went funky

Snake Oil & Ginger Juice

Come up to the front of the stage – yes you! I have a cure for the common cold that will drive you wild!

OK, so I haven’t actually found a cure for the common cold, and I’m not charismatic enough to be a snake oil salesman. I have, however, come up with a sweet and spicy concoction that can help to soothe sore throats, loosen chest congestion a little… and all without chemicals or drugs.

Let me back this up a bit.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to slowly change parts of my life that are wasteful and I’ve been trying to weed out foods that aren’t healthy, or are full of chemicals or… just aren’t food. Here in Canada, many of us reach for a packet of Neo Citran when we feel the effects of a cold (yes, fellow Canadians, you will get strange looks if you ask for it in the USA). I’ve always liked it, but it’s also creeped me out. It’s a weirdly lemon-pledgey powdered mixture that tastes like there’s a ground up aspirin in it (because there kind of IS one).

Add to that, the fact that the acetaminophen in it doesn’t mix with other cold medications I may take.

I decided to make my own hot lemony drink. I know I’m not the only one, and I’m sure many others have magically come up with the same concoction that I use. I know this must be true, because of its simplicity — there are but four ingredients: water, grated fresh ginger, honey and freshly squeezed lemon.

The result is a sweet, spicy and lemony hot drink that is very soothing.

Get yourself a really big piece of fresh ginger – the chubbier the better, and look for a smooth skin with some shine to it — if it is wrinkly and dull, it is old and not as useful.

Ingredients:

1/2 c of grated fresh ginger
2tbsp honey (this is a good way to use up any honey that has started to crystallize)
1-3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 c water

I’ve made this a couple of different ways now, and we’ve found a method that seems to work well, except that I’m not sure if boiling the crap out of ginger will kill some of the good-for-you properties of it. I need to figure this out, but am not a scientician.

Here’s how I’ve been making it up lately:

Grate the ginger into a bowl, trying to keep as much of the liquid as possible.
Put the ginger and water into a pot on the stove, and simmer it for about 1/2 hour.
Strain the mixture through a fine mesh colander/strainer, pressing on the pulp of the ginger to get more liquid out. Get as much of the liquid out as you can.
Put the strained mixture back on the stove. The liquid should be opaque and a brownish colour. If the mixture is too transparent or light in colour, put the stove on high and boil off some of the water. Taste it – it should be a very very strong, bitter, gingery taste. It should taste terrible.
Once you have the perfect awful ginger juice, turn the stove down to a low-med temperature. Add the honey, and make sure it dissolves completely.
Add the lemon juice, stir it in. Take the mixture off of the stove now, and let it cool. Put it in a container in the fridge, where you can access it as needed.

To drink: Put 3 tbsp of the ginger mixture into a mug, top with hot/boiling water (doesn’t need to be boiling, as it doesn’t need to steep). Ejoy!

From the Spice Drawer: Nanami Togarashi

Today’s featured item from the spice drawer is a Japanese spice blend that may or may not be called ‘Nanami Togarashi’. This name doesn’t appear anywhere on this bottle, and similar blends from other brands have different names (another one I saw was called ‘Shichimi Togarashi‘, seems to have the same ingredients. Hm. Wait – Google to the rescue here.) Nanami Togarashi is generally made up of chili pepper, orange peel, sesame seeds, japanese pepper (sansho – tastes almost lemon balmy), seaweed, etc.

This stuff is amazing, and I’m totally addicted to it.

In Japanese restaurants, they usually offer this to sprinkle on your soup. Once I discovered it, I started to put it on everything even remotely Japanese inspired. My favourite use is on stir fried udon noodles. As it is primarily made of chili pepper, it does add a bit of heat, so be careful when adding it to dishes. The inclusion of citrus and the almost citrusy tasting Sansho pepper give it a nice tang.

Nanami Togarashi isn’t available in most grocery stores, and can commonly be found in Japanese supermarkets and some pan-Asian supermarkets. I used to only be able to find the tiny bottles of it, and had even asked one of the grocers about whether I could order bigger bottles. At the time, it seemed that you couldn’t get it in any other size. On my most recent trip to Sanko, my favourite Japanese grocery store here in Toronto, I was pleased* to find not only a larger bottle, but also a large bag of Nanami Togarashi. I bought one of each.

Next time you see one of these cute little red bottles, give it a try!

Cheers!

*pleased = almost peed myself, I was so happy about the silly spices

Market Mayhem: A Trip To St. Lawrence Market (Part 1)

This past weekend, we took a trip to one of our favourite markets – St. Lawrence Market, in Toronto. We had a chance to pick up some of our “usual fare”, and took some pics while we were at it. Future posts will detail some of the specific finds there, such as Kozlik’s mustard and the fantastic selection of seafood. For now, we’d like to bring you a quick zip through the market, on a cold, cold Saturday.

We came home with armloads of greatness…

Enjoy!

Food Waste Reduction Challenge 2010

This month, I will be participating in Crunchy Chicken’s Food Waste Reduction Challenge. Since I haven’t had the guts to try one of her challenges yet, I thought this would be a good one to start with. Blogging about it will hopefully encourage me to keep up with it, and really take a look at what we’re wasting.

The two-second overview: to really look at what edible food we throw out over the course of the month. This doesn’t include inedible food waste, like coffee grounds, banana peels, or eggshells. To get a sense of the bigger picture, please see the writeup on Crunchy Chicken’s blog.

I honestly think we do pretty well with food – we buy quite a lot of fresh produce, and usually use it up before it spoils. I know we have trouble with some fruits and veggies — seriously, limes do not keep well and avocadoes are a big question mark for me. It’s hard to know how long we have to eat them – but I am learning.

Part of this challenge isn’t just to monitor what you throw out, but to make a real effort to limit what you throw out. This involves some thinking and planning – only buy what you need, keep an eye on the freshness of your food, and use it or freeze it before it spoils.

I hope that some of you will consider taking this challenge with me. If you do, and you are blogging about it, please leave the link to your blog in the comments! I’d love to see how you do!

Cheers,

Monthly Mélange: January 2010

Noodles!!

Here’s a rundown of some of my culinary highlights of January 2010. If there’s anyone out there reading my blog, feel free to comment with your own rundown of the month!

How did January 2010 taste?

Monthly Spice
Herbes de Provence. I had never bought it before, and my mom (who isn’t as insane about herbs and spices as I am) recommended I try it. So good! I think the timing was perfect, too, because the lovely woodsy taste works well in the winter, when you’re trying to create comfort food. Usually a blend of herbs like lavender, rosemary, thyme, savory and basil, it creates a nice balance between deep, woody herbs and lighter, leafier ones.

Mystery Ingredient
Ginger! It does a body good! My husband came down with a cold, and I made up my usual concoction of ginger, honey and lemon (more about that next week). I used a LOT of ginger this time, and he seemed to like it… so much so that I needed to make another batch the next day. Off to the grocery store I went, in the pouring rain I might add, to procure another PILE of ginger.

Party in My Mouth
Lindt just came out with a new Intense Blueberry dark chocolate. So good! Not as dark as I would like (‘Intense’ is a little misleading). A little disappointed to see other fruits in the ingredient list, like apple and pineapple, along with blueberry. This makes me wonder if the ‘blueberries’ in the chocolate are the kind of frankenblueberries (reconstituted-blueberry-flavoured-“fruit”-substance) that you find in breakfast cereal. Boo! That said, it tastes really good, and has a little crunch from almond slivers. On the fence, but just about to fall into the pit of denial, which is full of yummy, yummy chocolate.

I Made This!
I think the best thing I made from scratch this month was…. not sure, but my husband said it was mussels. Like most things, I started by looking at a couple of recipes and mostly used them to get an idea of the cooking time and what order things should go in. Then I did my own thing with the seasoning. Should I be offended that the best thing I made didn’t involve all that much difficult stuff? It’s not like he told me the best thing I had made was toast. Now THAT would be offensive.

Shameful Secrets
I am addicted to Skittles and Jelly Belly jellybeans. OK, the jellybeans aren’t that shameful in and of themselves… they are fantastic!! The problem is that I eat them until my stomach hurts. That, and they are in no way part of the ‘whole foods’ thing I’m trying to maintain, they aren’t especially natural, and I SIMPLY CAN’T STOP EATING THEM! I blame my recent bad behaviour on my friend Matt, who likes to hit the candy store after lunch. I had been doing so well!!

… and with my stomach torn to shreds, we head into February.

Have a great weekend!

A Life of Spice

Thinking about my cooking.

I’ve already admitted that I’m not a good cook, but I think I might be good at adding herbs and spices.

I have more spices than any rational person should have, but I do use them! I’ve been trying to grow herbs for years – only being able to successfully grow a basil plant on my balcony after I moved to a new home this year (lack of sunlight = weinerbasil). My recent move also brought me some excitement in the form of a “spice drawer”.

In my old apartment, my spices were strewn all willy-nilly around the kitchen. I had two revolving spice racks, a narrow shelf on top of the stove, a masala tin, and other little pockets of spice. During the move, we were trying to figure out what to put in all of the drawers when my mom suggested I have a spice drawer. My jaw dropped, my eyes lit up and a wee tear trickled down my face… ok, that last one was made up. You get the picture – I was ecstatic. I hadn’t thought of that possibility, and now I could have all of my spices at my fingertips.

Masala Dabba
I still kept my masala tin – that thing kicks butt, and is a sign of a true spice fanatic.

I’ll be featuring different spices from my collection every once in a while, and I’d love some feedback about new things to try!

Cheers,

Found Favourites: Playgroup Granola Bars

To start things off, I’d like to share a recipe from my now defunct recipe database, that I found many years ago. I’ve pretty much stuck to the original recipe, except that I use dried cranberries instead of raisins, and I often add things like quinoa flakes, hemp seeds, flax seeds, etc. to the mix.

I can’t say I’ve ever been able to cut them into 24, as the recipe suggests, but I probably make them too big.

These are yummy and filling, so go easy!

Original Source: Allrecipes.com – Playgroup Granola Bars
(actually, I first got this from someone on Live Journal, but I can’t seem to find the original recipe… It’s basically the same, except the wheatgerm wasn’t in the first one I tried.)

Ingredients:

2 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat germ
3/4 cup dried cranberries or raisins
1/2 cup chocolate chips
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup honey
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Generously grease a 9×13 inch baking pan.

2. In a large bowl, mix together the oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, flour, wheat germ, cranberries (or raisins), chocolate chips and salt. Make a well in the center, and pour in the honey, egg, oil and vanilla. Mix well using your hands. Pat the mixture evenly into the prepared pan.

3. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes in the preheated oven, until the bars begin to turn golden at the edges.

4. Cool for 5 minutes, then cut into bars while still warm. Do not allow the bars to cool completely before cutting, or they will be to hard to cut.

Servings: 24 (depends how you cut them)

A New Start to the Affair

It started with the loss of my recipe database – one that I’ve kept for the last 10 years.

I’ve relied on it for access to a number of recipes I’ve collected, modified, and loved. Now it’s gone.

Tonight, I watched the movie Julie & Julia, and had a forehead smacking moment. I blog. I run a blog system. I help others to blog. DUH! A blog is actually the perfect replacement for my poor old database, which I often used to house more than just recipes.

Thus I have started a new blog, for myself, and I hope to maintain it and pay a little more attention to it than some of my other attempts at blogging. I figure this one should fare a little better – I’m addicted to food, I enjoy cooking… and I’m in need of some motivation to become a better cook. I am not a great cook. I can make things that taste pretty good, but I’m lacking in some of the basic skills. I have spices beyond belief, but can’t poach an egg.

I will not be de-boning a duck any time soon, so don’t worry that I’m just stealing the Julie & Julia storyline. You will find that meat is not on the menu, for the most part, as I generally do not eat it.

This blog will be a way to rebuild my recipe database, to track my trials (& errors) with new recipes, and to set some culinary goals.

Anyone who knows me is probably wondering why I didn’t do this long ago… I use food as examples in everything I teach, I talk food, I live food.

Cheers!