Seems like an odd combo, doesn't it?
They are both ending up being lifesavers for me, however, so I've made them the theme for today's post.
I am still struggling mightily with some post-surgical issues from surgery I had in Sept. So finally, out of sheer desperation and despair, I went to see an acupuncturist yesterday. She not only does acupuncture, but also while she is heating the body with needles and infrared light, she does light massage and talks one through what she refers to as "a somatic journey". Really good stuff.
Of course, the really good alternative care-givers are never in ones insurance plan, so we have to figure out how to pay for it; but I am definitely going back to see her. She was absolutely worth every penny and so, of course, I have to thank my friend Patty Sgreci, for the recommendation. If anyone else close by is following this blog, her name is Wendy Goodwin, and she can be found at this link:
http://wendygoodwinacupuncture.com/
As for the buckwheat; I don't usually use other peoples recipes, unless I'm trying to familiarize myself with something new. Well, I haven't had much luck with buckwheat, thus far, but finally today, it's all come together.
Not without the help of Julia Jules Corbett, who wrote and distributed (for free, mind you), an ebook called "Recipes for Life". Thanks to her and her lovely little book, I've discovered the unique and divine pleasure of "buck-wheaties".
Wow. What a marvel they are. It's hard to believe something so simple could be so good, but there ya' go. So inexpensive too. I'm almost inclined to just sprout gallons of the things and dehydrate them, to sell as cereal. So incredibly good for you, and such a marvel. Did I say I liked em'? Yes, I surely am repeating myself, but I just can't get over it. I firmly believe that everyone should buy em, dry em and try em!
And if you need a scrumptious recipe to get you started, check out Julia's ebook, at the following site:
http://www.divianaalchemy.com
There's a recipe towards the end of this book, called "yum cookie dough" that nobody should go through life, without trying, in MHBMO. (My Humble Big Mouth Opinion).
Of course, you may want to invest in a dehydrator, but I almost bet you could dry these in an electric oven with the light on. It may take longer, but would most likely work out okay.
Well, yea, so that's it for today. I took a flop on the ice, earlier today, while walking the dog. I banged my head pretty hard and feel the need for more sleep (and that's AFTER I already took a nap). I guess when it rains, it pours. I'm just grateful the sun was out and it wasn't too cold.
Signing off from Rara Avis Fine Foods at The House of Found Goods.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
January 2, 2011
We are having our January thaw a bit early, apparently, so I went into the hoop house to get some more brussel sprouts and kale.
All is still quite well in there......the lettuce is coming along, the spinach too, and the collards and kale, while not growing very fast, are certainly holding their own.
Will be making some kale and buckwheat soup later, with maybe a substantial addition of mushrooms, just because they are on sale and we have a bunch. We also found a recipe for Maple Roasted Brussel Sprouts with toasted hazelnuts, that is divine. We'll probably make that to go with the soup..........can you say: "tummy rumble"?
All kidding aside, most cruciferous veggies are cellular protectants (or so it is believed), and I'm personally convinced that kale is our super-food green, here in the east. (They can keep their spirulina in the west). I've made some incredible dried powder, by mixing kale and collards, dehydrating them, and then powdering them up in the food processor. The two little coffee grinders that I keep for grinding spices and chocolate, come in handy for grinding up any stems that may be left. If I had a laboratory, I'd do some analyzing of the stuff...........
On another note: we both got the flu, either to close out the old year, or to welcome in the new. Neither one of us really gets sick that often, so hopefully, this'll be it, for awhile. I have lots to say, until I sit down at the computer. My post surgical issues are still here, and combined with the flu, I seem to have a pretty blank brain, so everything I thought was important enough to blog about, when I first sat down, is GONE..........c'est le vie, right?
I hope the New Year brings much health, happiness and peace for our mostly tortured world of homo sapiens and that the planet won't suffer unduly, from all the madness.
Signing out from Rara Avis Fine Foods at The House of Found Goods. :)
All is still quite well in there......the lettuce is coming along, the spinach too, and the collards and kale, while not growing very fast, are certainly holding their own.
Will be making some kale and buckwheat soup later, with maybe a substantial addition of mushrooms, just because they are on sale and we have a bunch. We also found a recipe for Maple Roasted Brussel Sprouts with toasted hazelnuts, that is divine. We'll probably make that to go with the soup..........can you say: "tummy rumble"?
All kidding aside, most cruciferous veggies are cellular protectants (or so it is believed), and I'm personally convinced that kale is our super-food green, here in the east. (They can keep their spirulina in the west). I've made some incredible dried powder, by mixing kale and collards, dehydrating them, and then powdering them up in the food processor. The two little coffee grinders that I keep for grinding spices and chocolate, come in handy for grinding up any stems that may be left. If I had a laboratory, I'd do some analyzing of the stuff...........
On another note: we both got the flu, either to close out the old year, or to welcome in the new. Neither one of us really gets sick that often, so hopefully, this'll be it, for awhile. I have lots to say, until I sit down at the computer. My post surgical issues are still here, and combined with the flu, I seem to have a pretty blank brain, so everything I thought was important enough to blog about, when I first sat down, is GONE..........c'est le vie, right?
I hope the New Year brings much health, happiness and peace for our mostly tortured world of homo sapiens and that the planet won't suffer unduly, from all the madness.
Signing out from Rara Avis Fine Foods at The House of Found Goods. :)
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Ahhhh, Yessss.....A marriage made in heaven.....
Still looking at the Eating Well Magazine I got the other day and decide to try and make the chocolate pine-nut tart.
Oh, but yea, I forgot the pine-nuts.......hmmmmm..............what to do?
Just what do I have in the refrigerator, anyway?
Ahhhh, yes, there's the six pomegranates that I happened to get on sale for $2.00 each.
Gee, I wonder how they'd taste with chocolate?
Hmmmm, have I ever seen pomegranates mixed with chocolate? I feel like I must have, and since I love both those food choices, I decide to go for it. :)
...................and now look at me, it's well after 1:00 a.m., and I am still wide, wide, awake. Was it worth it? Ask me tomorrow but preemptively, I'd have to say................well........................ hell ya. :)
Oh, but yea, I forgot the pine-nuts.......hmmmmm..............what to do?
Just what do I have in the refrigerator, anyway?
Ahhhh, yes, there's the six pomegranates that I happened to get on sale for $2.00 each.
Gee, I wonder how they'd taste with chocolate?
Hmmmm, have I ever seen pomegranates mixed with chocolate? I feel like I must have, and since I love both those food choices, I decide to go for it. :)
Oh, my, as you can see; I had an awful time stopping at half the tart.........
...................and now look at me, it's well after 1:00 a.m., and I am still wide, wide, awake. Was it worth it? Ask me tomorrow but preemptively, I'd have to say................well........................ hell ya. :)
Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity | Video on TED.com
This is much too important not to share. This man is a genius. Hands down.
Tried my hand at GF Pumpernickel Bread last night.
Really, it's the darndest thing.
For years, I was quite unable to make bread, despite having made it over and over, when I was a young mother. I'd thought all this time that it was because I'd developed an allergy to yeast and the universe was trying to tell me something. I've been pretty obtuse to these things (messages from the universe) in my life, on many occasions. I'd therefore convinced myself that bread wasn't all that good for the human body anyhow, and I didn't sweat it. I mean, it's not like Vermont is not the artisan bread baker oasis of the entire US, which makes for plenty of reasonable opportunities to just buy really good varieties of the stuff.
So, yea. I didn't miss having the connection to fermentation that I had when I was young. Not too much, anyway.
I did sort of lament dumping expensive ingredients of my two winemaking and one mead attempts, since then. It's pretty disheartening when you don't know what you've done wrong, until 10 gallons of fermentation just don't, well........ work out. And of course, there's really no expert to be found to help, or show you how to fix your mistakes. I suppose there's a metaphor to life, in there, somewhere.
Anyway, I guess that's neither here nor there, and it's time to move on to the positive outcomes. For the pumpernickel bread, I'd actually sprouted some rye seed, which made it quite interestingly chewy. I also deviated from the recipe in The Gluten-Free Gourmet, and added some corn-meal that needed to get used up. Not having a really great bread pan, as I'd given away the aluminum ones I had, filled with treats, for Christmas, I ended up using smallish muffin/loaf type pans for some of it. These actually came out better then the dilapidated big loaf I had made. (I ended up piecing together two aluminum pans and lining them with foil, for the large loaf). In light of the fact that the little ones were so much better, I may just skip the big loaf altogether, in future, and make all little ones.
The little ones remind me of being a youngest child of six, in an extremely impoverished household, where scarcity was the order of the day. Every so often, however, my grandmother would come over on a Friday night, with little loaves of bread with our initials scratched in them. My grandmother probably wasn't the most grandmotherly woman, having serious and deep-seated psychological issues of her own, (my mother went to her deathbed resenting her for many of them), but in this one regard (of realizing that the only way the youngest child's needs would be attended); she rocked! It's one of my fondest memories, and more then likely one of the reasons I bake so much, today.
The life metaphor to be found in this is the thing I've always said:
"It's the little stuff that'll kill ya'. It's also the little mercies that will set you free and allow you to soar".
There weren't too many of these little mercies to be found in my childhood, but the ones that came right when they were most necessary, well, they were literally lifesavers. Some only metaphorically speaking, it's true, but the fact that they were there, cloaked in mystery sometimes, but present nonetheless, is probably also why I became mainly Buddhist, in my approach to life.
Well, yea, so, having made successful pumpernickel bread might not set anybody free, or send them soaring (except for maybe their taste buds), but I am encouraged enough to keep trying. Maybe I was STILL being obtuse and the message was not as complicated as a yeast allergy, but more subtle then that, and directing me towards a gluten one, instead.
Well, just goes to show, when someone has spent a great deal of their lives being mostly obtuse, subtleties are a bitch to learn about. :)
Signing off from Rara Avis Fine Foods @ The House of Found Goods.
For years, I was quite unable to make bread, despite having made it over and over, when I was a young mother. I'd thought all this time that it was because I'd developed an allergy to yeast and the universe was trying to tell me something. I've been pretty obtuse to these things (messages from the universe) in my life, on many occasions. I'd therefore convinced myself that bread wasn't all that good for the human body anyhow, and I didn't sweat it. I mean, it's not like Vermont is not the artisan bread baker oasis of the entire US, which makes for plenty of reasonable opportunities to just buy really good varieties of the stuff.
So, yea. I didn't miss having the connection to fermentation that I had when I was young. Not too much, anyway.
I did sort of lament dumping expensive ingredients of my two winemaking and one mead attempts, since then. It's pretty disheartening when you don't know what you've done wrong, until 10 gallons of fermentation just don't, well........ work out. And of course, there's really no expert to be found to help, or show you how to fix your mistakes. I suppose there's a metaphor to life, in there, somewhere.
Anyway, I guess that's neither here nor there, and it's time to move on to the positive outcomes. For the pumpernickel bread, I'd actually sprouted some rye seed, which made it quite interestingly chewy. I also deviated from the recipe in The Gluten-Free Gourmet, and added some corn-meal that needed to get used up. Not having a really great bread pan, as I'd given away the aluminum ones I had, filled with treats, for Christmas, I ended up using smallish muffin/loaf type pans for some of it. These actually came out better then the dilapidated big loaf I had made. (I ended up piecing together two aluminum pans and lining them with foil, for the large loaf). In light of the fact that the little ones were so much better, I may just skip the big loaf altogether, in future, and make all little ones.
The little ones remind me of being a youngest child of six, in an extremely impoverished household, where scarcity was the order of the day. Every so often, however, my grandmother would come over on a Friday night, with little loaves of bread with our initials scratched in them. My grandmother probably wasn't the most grandmotherly woman, having serious and deep-seated psychological issues of her own, (my mother went to her deathbed resenting her for many of them), but in this one regard (of realizing that the only way the youngest child's needs would be attended); she rocked! It's one of my fondest memories, and more then likely one of the reasons I bake so much, today.
The life metaphor to be found in this is the thing I've always said:
"It's the little stuff that'll kill ya'. It's also the little mercies that will set you free and allow you to soar".
There weren't too many of these little mercies to be found in my childhood, but the ones that came right when they were most necessary, well, they were literally lifesavers. Some only metaphorically speaking, it's true, but the fact that they were there, cloaked in mystery sometimes, but present nonetheless, is probably also why I became mainly Buddhist, in my approach to life.
Well, yea, so, having made successful pumpernickel bread might not set anybody free, or send them soaring (except for maybe their taste buds), but I am encouraged enough to keep trying. Maybe I was STILL being obtuse and the message was not as complicated as a yeast allergy, but more subtle then that, and directing me towards a gluten one, instead.
Well, just goes to show, when someone has spent a great deal of their lives being mostly obtuse, subtleties are a bitch to learn about. :)
Signing off from Rara Avis Fine Foods @ The House of Found Goods.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Post Holiday Monday.
Random weather report:
Well, it snowed here, but this time, we didn't get nearly as much. I understand the rest of the east coast got hammered, but we're just too far inland to get much from coast-line storms. It's only fair, as last time, we got well over a foot. Granted, it was all lake-effect snow, so only those of us in the path of the wind, actually got any accumulation, but it was a doozy. So, yea, now the whole state has at least some snow, and we don't feel so chilled.........yup, misery loves company, don't ya' know? :)
Random news from the kitchen:
Isn't it funny when you own something for a long time, in hopes that someday, you might actually use it? Well, a couple of years ago, I really, really wanted an expresso maker, so it was on one of my christmas lists, and actually did show up, only to sit on a side cabinet in my kitchen all this time. Usually, I guess I consider it a pain to set up, and go out for latte; I can't actually count the times I've done this, since owning the little beast. Because it was so cold today, and there was snow to shovel, I did the lazy thing and broke it out. I have to say that home-made latte's are just as good as the cafe' bought ones, really, and the price is right. :)
For some reason last night, I was in the mood for chocolate. I guess because I'd gotten a new Eating Right magazine in the mail, and it had some pretty good redux recipes that I thought might be easy to convert to Gluten Free. There were two recipes I could make with the stuff I had on hand, so I made the mistake of asking Rich which one he'd rather I conjure up; Chocolate Decadence Cake, or Rocky Road Brownies. He said he'd rather have the brownies and I got going on them, but when I got to the toppings, he asked me what the heck I was doing. That's when I realized he probably didn't actually know what a rocky road brownie might be, exactly. When I asked him if he'd ever had one, he said: "Well, no, it just sounded really good". Funny. But now I've got these exceedingly rich and chocolate brownies, with mounds of sugar on top, to get rid of. Perhaps I'll take them down to the dentist's office later, as they called with a cancellation opening. Since I usually try and gift everyone I have dealings with at this time of the year, and that's what I've got on hand, so be it. They all have pretty good senses of humor, so I'm sure they'll appreciate the irony. :)
Signing off from Rara Avis Fine Foods @ The House of Found Goods.
Well, it snowed here, but this time, we didn't get nearly as much. I understand the rest of the east coast got hammered, but we're just too far inland to get much from coast-line storms. It's only fair, as last time, we got well over a foot. Granted, it was all lake-effect snow, so only those of us in the path of the wind, actually got any accumulation, but it was a doozy. So, yea, now the whole state has at least some snow, and we don't feel so chilled.........yup, misery loves company, don't ya' know? :)
Random news from the kitchen:
Isn't it funny when you own something for a long time, in hopes that someday, you might actually use it? Well, a couple of years ago, I really, really wanted an expresso maker, so it was on one of my christmas lists, and actually did show up, only to sit on a side cabinet in my kitchen all this time. Usually, I guess I consider it a pain to set up, and go out for latte; I can't actually count the times I've done this, since owning the little beast. Because it was so cold today, and there was snow to shovel, I did the lazy thing and broke it out. I have to say that home-made latte's are just as good as the cafe' bought ones, really, and the price is right. :)
For some reason last night, I was in the mood for chocolate. I guess because I'd gotten a new Eating Right magazine in the mail, and it had some pretty good redux recipes that I thought might be easy to convert to Gluten Free. There were two recipes I could make with the stuff I had on hand, so I made the mistake of asking Rich which one he'd rather I conjure up; Chocolate Decadence Cake, or Rocky Road Brownies. He said he'd rather have the brownies and I got going on them, but when I got to the toppings, he asked me what the heck I was doing. That's when I realized he probably didn't actually know what a rocky road brownie might be, exactly. When I asked him if he'd ever had one, he said: "Well, no, it just sounded really good". Funny. But now I've got these exceedingly rich and chocolate brownies, with mounds of sugar on top, to get rid of. Perhaps I'll take them down to the dentist's office later, as they called with a cancellation opening. Since I usually try and gift everyone I have dealings with at this time of the year, and that's what I've got on hand, so be it. They all have pretty good senses of humor, so I'm sure they'll appreciate the irony. :)
Signing off from Rara Avis Fine Foods @ The House of Found Goods.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Re: All things luminary.
Well, because we live on a very dark street that gets a fair amount of traffic, we did luminaries last year for Christmas Eve. It didn't slow traffic down much ( a constant problem here, despite the town always changing signs), but hopefully, it gave drivers some pause for thought, as they were going wherever they were going in such a fever.
Here's some photo's of 09's luminary.
I wanted to take it one step further this year, so I did cutouts that spell out Merry Christmas. I ran out of time before the 7 o'clock hour approached, (when I had instructed invitees to arrive), so I had to shorten it to X-mas, but the result was still pretty good. It's one of the loveliest things I've done in awhile and helps me to deal with the fact that I am pretty much house-bound this year, due to surgical complications.
Here's a photo of that attempt.
I tried putting these out there, facing the highway, but they are too small (only 6 inches), so I turned them around so only people driving down our street (and us), could see them. Next year, we'll do really big letters on grocery bags, (if they still exist), so they can be seen from route 7.
That's it for today, since it's Christmas and I gotta go make some Posole' (with all our own vegetables), for dinner, later.
Signing off from Rara Avis Fine Foods at The House of Found Goods. Mona, Rich, Fritz, Clover, Atty, Sparky, & Floc. May you all have the best of Christmases and the Healthiest of New Years!
Here's some photo's of 09's luminary.
I wanted to take it one step further this year, so I did cutouts that spell out Merry Christmas. I ran out of time before the 7 o'clock hour approached, (when I had instructed invitees to arrive), so I had to shorten it to X-mas, but the result was still pretty good. It's one of the loveliest things I've done in awhile and helps me to deal with the fact that I am pretty much house-bound this year, due to surgical complications.
Here's a photo of that attempt.
I tried putting these out there, facing the highway, but they are too small (only 6 inches), so I turned them around so only people driving down our street (and us), could see them. Next year, we'll do really big letters on grocery bags, (if they still exist), so they can be seen from route 7.
That's it for today, since it's Christmas and I gotta go make some Posole' (with all our own vegetables), for dinner, later.
Signing off from Rara Avis Fine Foods at The House of Found Goods. Mona, Rich, Fritz, Clover, Atty, Sparky, & Floc. May you all have the best of Christmases and the Healthiest of New Years!
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