this week in pictures

I'm on a rice paper kick! With a fish and veg filling yesterday.

The hot filling kind of helps cook and soften the noodle-paper. You could deep fry them, I guess, but we just ate them straight, with sriracha. Today I made egg & veg ones with a sauce of peach, olive oil and sriracha. Yum!

Ambrose took this picture of me at dinner.

This one too. Blurry but adorable.

We went for a walk in the wildish path behind our house before lunch today and foraged some grapes from our neighbour's vine, growing over the fence into the path. They were amazing. Champagne grapes maybe? The more I taste of real, fresh, fragrant, homegrown food, the more I realize how bland, starchy, and awful most grocery store produce is.

I decided zucchini season is over, so I harvested the last of the goods and ripped out the vines to clear the patch. I then tossed the plants back over the bed to compost in place. The potted plant behind the flowers you see is a free oregano plant I got from a neighbour.

This is how carrots peek out of the garden.

Little man working in the garden. You can see the new configuration of stones, the maturing kale, and the zucchini vines ripped up in a heap.

Harvesting carrots - taken by Tony. The harvest was decent, given how little TLC I gave to this whole side of the garden.

Fucking beautiful.

Bounty.

I don't have a weekly schedule to show you because I've been working a lot and it's a bit fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants. But I am glad I have some of them archived here; I think for the next little while I will do a very regular two-week rotation of the top favourites, plotting crock pot meals on evenings I work, other nights being leftovers or a bit more ambitious.

BEET FERMENTATION MYSTERY

So I have been wanting to ferment some beets since I tried the dragon/buddha/macro bowl at Aux Vivres. Those bowls are like a party of happy doing the macarena on your taste buds.

beets. why u so mysterious?

So I decided it was time to get to business, seeing God had it in his plan that I should date a Missouri farm boy. So I got me some beets pulled out of the ground yesterday (I will never, ever stop talking about this, because those of you who know me KNOW I kill everything I plant and seeing something pulled out of the ground to eat is a spiritual experience EVERY TIME) and they are impatiently waiting to be made into pro-biotic versions of Los del Mar.

BUT when I've looked up recipes, there's SO much conflicting info!

Some recipes call for FULLY cooked beets, some call for 5 minute shock-boiling, then slicing and peeling, some call to leave the peel on because there are living organisms ON THEM (mortified squeak), but I'm like "Y'all, I just wanted to ferment some beets! Why does this have to be so difficult?"

So ladies, I need help...what's the deal? How do I ferment these beet babies? Do I cook them? Should I leave on the peel? What will be most nutritious? Do I use whey? Isn't whey...not a whole food? Do I omit whey and use more salt instead?

I would like to have them shredded so I can make gorgeous salads with them!

Lunch time all the time

So I'm trying something new, which is to make all my lunches for the work week at once, something that would save me tons of time prepping (and save me from forgetting the night before and rushing madly the morning of) but I've largely refrained from doing so because Im really scared of the monotony that would create. Eating the same thing over and over 5 days in a row doesn't sound very appealing, but what the heck, I cant judge something without trying it.

So this is what I made, a sort of chili I guess you would call it.

 For the meat base, I used a meatloaf I never got around to cooking, mixture of ground turkey and ground beef with minced broccoli and cauliflower and spices, I'm not sure which I put in there. Sliced an onion, a red pepper, a zucchini (thanks Amy!!), added green and yellow string beans, some carrots, cubed sweet potato and added some chopped fresh tomatoes as well as the last of last year's canned tomato sauce I made, and finally a mix of beans (red, white kidney beans, some chickpeas and I think some split peas as well). Added oregano, paprika, dried chili, chili powder, and jalapeno hot sauce. Shoved all that in the crockpot for a few hours on high. The result is exactly like chili, or maybe a tomato stew. So now I have lunch for the whole week (and a couple bowls that we ate for supper as well). Although I'm loving the result, I know that by Wednesday I'm going to start dreading lunch time haha so I think what I will do is make two recipes every week, freeze the individual portions and mix and match.

Do you have large scale crockpot recipes that are easily freezable and microwavable you would suggest?

Basic Slicable Loafpan Gluten-Free Bread

I am happy to present a revised, simplified gluten-free loaf of bread, xanthan and guar gum-free as ever, faster than the soaked recipe I posted previously to prepare. Family-approved. I've been using some version of this for months, but as Ambrose's preschool teacher requested a formal recipe I rolled up my sleeves and wrote down some numbers as I went. Enjoy!

.
1 1/2 c warm water
1 tbsp dry active yeast
1/2 tbsp salt
2 c white rice flour
1/2 c buckwheat flour
1/4 ground flax
2 eggs

Mix the dry ingredients first, then stir everything else in willy-nilly. No need to knead. Turn into a buttered bread pan (if your home isn't gluten-free, be sure there are no traces of wheat bread crumbs on the pan!). Let rise 2 hours. Bake 400 F for 30 m, then pop out of the pan and continue to bake on bread stone, or oven wire racks, for 10-15 minutes till golden-brown and very fragrant. Let cool fully before slicing.

this week

Mr T enjoying a meat bagel sandwich. They were great!

We'll definitely do them again. Every other week or so, I imagine. Highly recommend if you are allergic to gluten or are grain-free or whatever. Recipe here.

Cabbage on the grill - delicious! This was made right after bacon, and I drizzled over a little extra bacon fat to cook it. So good.

The bases for these blueberry tarts! Instead of coconut flour I used 1 scant cup ground pecans, and instead of arrowroot powder I used 1/4 c white rice flour.

Aren't they pretty!? Even with an ugly cookie sheet under them! Next time I will omit the salt in the blueberry mixture though. Really unecessary.

This week's menu. I am stuck about Sunday lunch. Any ideas? Cheap and yummy please. Make-in-advance okay.

Also, no picture for this, but I hosted an ice cream party/workshop this week with a couple of friends. It was fun. Making ice cream from coconut bars is so dead easy. We did straight vanilla, then carob & cinnamon. Delish. I have been very into adding extra coconut oil when making an egg-free ice cream, whether with dairy or coconut milk, but we're out now, and it was really fine. It was a fun day and was a very perfect sort of party to have near the end of the summer.