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By Emily, September 3, 2010 5:10 pm

Last week, Rachel Wilkerson challenged her readers to own the things they feel guilty about, especially if they’re not actually sorry.   Sometimes I get caught up in the health blogging world and don’t want to post everything I’ve cooked because not everything I’ve made is healthy.  But this is a food blog.  It’s not a health blog, or a vegetarian blog, or a weight loss blog.  It’s about what happens in my kitchen.  Granted, that’s usually healthy, vegetarian food because that’s what we usually eat.  But not always.

Everyone likes butter and fat and sweet treats.  But unlike some people I know, I haven’t cut them out of my diet.  Just because we don’t really eat meat, it doesn’t mean we don’t eat cookies.  Michael Pollan, author of Food Rules, says “Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.”.  It may be my favorite rule in the book.

I love making baked goods and comfort food.  And I’m not giving them up any time soon.

Two of my all time, absolute favorite food bloggers are Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, and Deb Perelman of smitten kitchen.  Sorry I’m Not Sorry.

What sorts of recipes do these lovely women post?  From their “About” pages:  ”A lot of comfort foods stepped up a bit” (Deb) and “… all the cowboy-friendly dishes I’ve taught myself to cook through the years. There’s butter involved.” (Ree).   Their recipes are amazing and I’m going to continue making them.

That’s right:  no substitutions, agave, stevia, vegan cheese or fake butter here.  Just like grandma made ‘em.

So, with that said:

Wednesday I made Deb’s snickerdoodles.  It’s  the same recipe I used last September when I was out of work, which makes me wonder if they’re the official cookies of my unemployment.  Anyway, they’re awesome.  And I didn’t bother to halve the recipe.

Yesterday I made Mac and Cheese…and Panko a la Ree for dinner.  We ate about a third of it, and I expect the rest won’t last long.  The tomatoes make the dish.  (That’s summer squash in the background, I know it’s hard to tell.)  I hadn’t made mac and cheese for awhile and it’s so good!  By the way, once you start cooking for yourself, the stuff in the box with the powdery orange “cheese” doesn’t taste so great.

This morning I made the Peach Shortbread from smitten kitchen, for no other reason than it appeared in my Reader, I love peaches, we had peaches that were past their prime, and I didn’t have any other plans for the day.   There aren’t too many things I like better in this world than peaches or shortbread, so the recipe struck me as pretty genius.  Did I mention I’ve got time on my hands?

How do we do it?

We love our freezer, for one thing.  The cookies are hanging out there and we’re taking out a few every day to eat-a little trick I learned from my mother-in-law.  It’s the perfect way to always have fresh cookies.  Moderation still matters (but you knew that).

And I don’t always cook like this, only when I actually get some free time (thanks unemployment!).  Soon it’ll be back to vegetable soup, rice and beans, and pasta with tomato sauce.  But sometimes life (and meal planning) need a change of pace.  And I’m not going to not avoid posting something delicious because it’s not “healthy”.

I asked Brian the other day if we could open a bakery (because it’s as much about the creation as it is about the eating).  He said no.  So I guess I’ll just keep making things for the two of us.

I love making baked goods and comfort food.  And I’m not giving them up any time soon.

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By Emily, September 1, 2010 10:15 am

I am in love with galettes.  How did this happen?

A few weeks ago I needed to use up some zucchini and summer squash. (I know I’m not the only one with that problem.)  This 3-step recipe for a Summer Squash and Ricotta Galette from Serious Eats seemed like a nice change of pace from our standard pizza/calzone routine.

Two problems:

1. I’d never made a galette before and it looked a little tricky.
2. I have this thing about buying premade pie crust: I won’t do it. Why buy something you can make yourself?

So, I followed the link to the original Smitten Kitchen recipe (have I mentioned I love the internet?) and grabbed the pastry instructions.  This was the ultimate, beautiful, final result:

A few things to note:

1. It’s not that hard.  This was my first galette.  My first experience with this dough recipe.  It turned out fine.  If you’ve made any sort of dough before (pizza, cookie, pie), you can do this.  I think you get a lot of visual “bang” for your time and effort “buck”.  And I think the more I make this recipe, the more attractive it will become.
2. My Pastry Cutter is my friend.  I don’t know what I did without it (oh yes, made mediocre shortbread).
3. This recipe takes time.  If you make your own crust (and why wouldn’t you????), it needs to hang out in the fridge for at least an hour.  Baking the galette takes another 30-40 minutes.   So, you need to plan ahead if you want to make this.  At the same time, most of the time needed is unattended.
4. The crust is flaky, buttery, amazing and addicting.  Consider yourself warned.
5. The recipe is supposed to serve 6.  In our house, it was more like 2.  It was that good (and we were that hungry?)

Fast forward to a couple weeks later:

I stumble upon this recipe for Zucchini and Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Parmesan Tart on Closet Cooking.  It looks pretty darn delicious.

One problem: I have this thing about buying premade puff pastry dough: I won’t do it (this time because I think it’s over-priced).

Solution: make another galette:

The same Smitten Kitchen crust, filled with the ingredients from the Closet Kitchen recipe.  So good.  Making the dough the second time was even easier than the first and I thought it was better looking. too.

Employment Update:

So…I didn’t get the job.  I’ve recovered pretty well from the initial shock and, instead of the first day of school I was looking forward to, I’m spending the day reorganizing my recipe binder (a “summer” project), baking cookies, cleaning up the apartment, perhaps doing some behind the scenes blog work, watching Veronica Mars on Netflix and pondering what my next move might be.  Last year, despite initial unemployment, I was working everyday starting in October.  Things have a habit of working out, even if not the way initially planned.

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By Emily, July 27, 2010 8:18 pm

Disclaimer: this post isn’t about food.  It’s barely about this site.  It’s mostly about me not wanting to do my work.

Ever visit Wordle?

I hadn’t in a while, but just popped over there as part of a project for work.  I plugged in the URL for Relishments and this is what I got:I really like creating these things.  Larger words are ones which occur more often and you can alter the orientation and color scheme.  Apparently I use the word “kitchen” a lot.  Too much?  How about “post”?  Strangely addicting.  I’ve used Wordle for Christmas cards and my original site header was a Wordle design.  It’s also fun to use in a classroom, which is what I’m supposed to be doing right now.

Instead, I’m seeing what happens when I plug in The Kitchn:

And G4TV (Brian’s suggestion):

Okay…apparently it’s time for me to get back to work.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll post about food.

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By Emily, July 22, 2010 8:58 pm

Dear Kitchen Elf,

We know you exist.  You may have tried to keep your existence a secret, but let’s be frank: you did a pretty poor job of it.

Your presence was made obvious by the fact that our utensils, especially the vegetable peeler, keep disappearing from their assigned drawers.  I’m not doing it, and Brian says he’s not either, so clearly you are the one moving our utensils.  I’m sure you think it’s funny to watch us search for the vegetable peeler on a daily basis.

Just like you think that putting spells on our appliances is funny.  You make our refrigerator shrink while I’m grocery shopping so there’s no room for my purchases when I return home and cause our stove top to never have the correct burner turned on.  Moving tools is one thing, but playing with appliances that belong to our landlord is an entirely different matter.

Speaking of grocery shopping, I also know you’re hiding things in our pantry.  I check to see what we have before I go food shopping, so why do we suddenly have 5 cans of tomatoes when I just went and bought 4 more?  Items that I was sure we had seem to mysteriously disappear as well.  Please stop rearranging and/or hiding our food (or eating it, if that’s the case).

Honestly though, you keep things interesting around here.  It’s good to know that it’s not Brian or I doing any of the above behaviors.  And we wouldn’t mind you sticking around.  We just have one request:  once in a while, could you please do the dishes?

Sincerely,

Emily

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By Emily, July 8, 2010 5:20 pm

I love the blogosphere.

Caitlin, over at her blog Healthy Tipping Point posted great answer to the question What Does “Ethical Eating” Mean? yesterday

I’ll get to Caitlin’s thoughts, and my own in a minute.  But you need to know, this post pretty much made my day.  It’s basically the post I’ve been trying to write on this blog for weeks.  Over the past few weeks (possibly the past few months), I’ve been going through another phase of debate over what I should (or shouldn’t) be eating.  There’s so much information out there and so many opinions.  It seems as though the more informed you are, the harder it is to make the right decision.  Should you buy all organic, or is organic an irrelevant label?  Is sugar, stevia or agave healthier?  Is some meat okay?  Just humanely raised meat?  Should I go vegan?  (I have articles to support all of the above opinions, and more, if you want them).  It’s easy to feel confused and its even easier to feel guilty.

I love Caitlin’s definition of an ethical eater:

“ethical eating” means you strive to make educated decisions about your food choices and the impact such choices have on our community, animals, and our environment, and then you strive to reach the best conclusion for YOU…Because I believe that every positive effort you make is important and worthwhile.

At this point, I’m still a flexitarian (in other words, still eating meat).  We just used up the last of our supermarket purchased ground turkey (which had been in our freezer for some time because I just don’t think to use meat anymore) and the plan is if we want to cook meat in the future, we’ll buy it from one of the local farms so we know where its coming from and how the animals were treated.  But I don’t think that ethical eating is only about meat.  There are so many other types of food that impact our health and our environment.  We’ve stopped buying products with High Fructose Corn Syrup.  I make things from scratch as much as possible and read ingredient labels.  We rarely eat out, which helps us know as much as possible where our food is coming from.  I try to make it to the CSA, farms and farmers markets regularly.  Those are our choices, based on the conclusions we’ve made.

Caitlin goes on to say,

When I say that I am an “ethical eater,” I mean that I strive to understand WHERE my food comes from and the IMPACT that my choices have.  That does NOT mean that I am perfect.

Well said.  I too want to share what I’ve learned (hence the blog) and show other people that eating ethically isn’t as hard as they imagine, but (another Caitlin quote),  “Mama Pea said it best when she said, “I think being militant about any lifestyle choice is one of the biggest deterrents to invoking change in others.””

For me, this issue of ethical eating also involves the purpose of eating.  Food should be more than just about nutrients and health (though those are really important), it should be enjoyed and it should be a social event whenever possible (I’ve been reading Michael Pollan lately, maybe you can tell?).  Therefore, I don’t want my eating decisions to make me unhappy or cause others to not want to spend time with me.  Now, when I say I don’t want my decisions to make me unhappy, I don’t mean I’m going to eat whatever makes me feel good.  Being overweight would not make me feel good.  Knowing that the meat I’m consuming was mistreated does not make me feel good.  Not knowing what’s in my food does not make me feel good.  Taking on the  vegetarian label (which I almost did a month or so ago) is taking on a lot of negative connotations and a lot of expectations.  I’m not sure I want to do that.  I’d rather just be that girl who loves to cook yummy food, and most of its pretty healthy too.

As Caitlin makes clear, eating ethically is a tricky thing, especially when everyone’s got their own definitions.  I’m far from perfect, but as Food, Inc and many other sources note, we vote for what we want our food system to be like 3 times a day, but there are a lot of gray areas.  I try to make the best decisions I can, but I’m a newlywed (or not…) on a budget, still learning to cook, just starting my teaching career (which is more work than you can imagine) and I’m not going to make myself insane trying to do all the “right things” at once.  Change doesn’t have to happen over night and I’m making the best decisions I can for myself based on what I’ve learned so far.

I’ll echo Caitlin’s question here: What do you think of the ethical eating debate?

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By Emily, June 8, 2010 8:49 pm

So, mostly I’m ambivalent about summer.  I know, I know…it’s summer and I’m a teacher, so I should be super excited to have the summer off.  Except, and apparently only people who teach are aware of this, I don’t really have the summer off.  Granted, I signed up for everything I’ll be doing and I’m pretty excited about all of them, but let’s abolish the notion that teachers spend the summer with their feet up watching TV.  Plus there’s the heat, as I complained about on Saturday.  I just don’t like summer heat.  I don’t like being sweaty.  I like good nights of sleep.  I’d much, much rather wear pants than shorts.  If I had to choose, it would be fall (like, late September), all year round.

Nevertheless, there are 2 things (besides all my work-related jobs) that I’m really excited about this summer.

1) Our (temporary) CSA membership

Brian and I are really lucky.  A couple of our friends are traveling for the first part of the summer and letting us make use of their CSA share, which means we get a bag full of whatever’s being harvested every week.  We went to the farm a couple weeks ago for orientation and I didn’t want to leave.  It’s beautiful and there’s a ton of variety.  Today was the first distribution day.  Of course, I left my camera in the car (my brain has ceased functioning this week), but there will be pictures of distribution next week, perhaps.  This week’s take included:

Bok choy, rhubarb, radishes, mixed greens (I can’t remember all the names) and a big head of lettuce (not pictured).  I didn’t want to take more than I thought we might consume, though I also felt like we should take as much as possible and worry about what to do with it later.  The farm also has “you pick” herbs and berries, which we may head back for later in the week.  The rhubarb is definitely turning in to a pie this weekend.  I’m hoping as the season progresses that there are more non-leafy vegetables, because I’m not usually a lettuce fan, but at the same time I’m looking forward to loving lettuce more and finding things to do with it.  Yay for fresh, organic, local vegetables.

2) My (itty bitty) container garden

I have been talking about creating a container garden on our balcony/deck (what is the difference?) since the winter and I finally got around to doing something about it last weekend.  I went to the garden center, alone, and got completely overwhelmed.  Purchased a couple plants, then headed to Walmart.  Surprisingly, Walmart seemed to have a lot more individual plants (as opposed to packs of 6), plus easily accessible potting soil and pots.  In the end, I ended up with an herb garden (dill, basil, oregano and chives) and a pair of pepper plants, bell and jalapeno.  Sometime, maybe soon, I’ll start the tomato seeds I bought a month or so ago…

I’m really excited about my little garden (and pleased that I haven’t killed it yet), but I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing.  But you can’t win if you don’t play…if all goes well this year, who knows what I’ll have outside next summer.

What are you excited about this summer?

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By Emily, May 24, 2010 9:02 pm

You can tell it’s time for school to be out and/or that maybe you’re just a little too into some of the blogs you read when you dream about meeting Ree Drummond.  Yes, I think Ree is so awesome that I think about her in my sleep.  Perhaps I should seek professional help?

Oh well, even if I can’t meet Ree anytime soon (or invite myself to live on the ranch with her), I am going to meet a whole bunch of fantastic bloggers at the Healthy Living Summit in Chicago in August.  I am so so so excited.

Also, it’s really hot here and I’m way overtired from a combination of Friday night Dungeons and Dragons and Sunday night Lost.  And that’s my excuse for this extremely random blog post.

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By Emily, April 23, 2010 3:33 pm

I’ve really been enjoying participating in the Outside The Box Challenge.  The challenge, organized by Rachel of Shedding It and Getting It and Leah of Your Nutritionista, has encouraged me to try new herbs, keep track of what I eat, make things from scratch, research where my food comes from and try new machines at the gym.  It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve looked forward to each new challenge.

Until this week, when Challenge #8 was posted:

We’re challenging you to go without added sweetener for a whole day. We’re defining added sweetener as any form of concentrated sweetener, natural or not (this means maple syrup, agave, and honey are all no-nos!). This also includes artificial sweetener. Whole fruit is okay, as is any other non-concentrated food that happens to taste sweet. Watch for processed foods with added sweetener, though.

After reading that, I did what any mature, healthy food-seeking, challenge-loving person would do.  I immediately messaged Rachael and Leah on Twitter and told them that they were crazy for thinking I could give up sugar.  And then I complained to Brian about it.  And then I overthought every food choice I made for 2 days (one of which I spent eating ice cream and chocolate).  I mean, I grew up in a house where we always had dessert after dinner.  I’m the type of girl who has m&m’s in her purse “in case of an emergency”.  I’m still confused about why Brian doesn’t sweeten the iced tea (though I drink it either way).   I enjoy going meatless.  I try not buy things that contain High Fructose Corn Syrup.  I like cooking from scratch.  I buy low-salt whenever I can.  And yet, asking me to give up sweetener for a day seemed ridiculous and impossible.

Then I did it: I gave up added sweetener for an entire day.  And I made some interesting observations in the process.

• Some really good foods don’t contain sugar (at least as far as this challenge was concerned).  Produce is yummy.  Soy sauce, herbs and seasonings (cinnamon, adobo, etc) can go a long way adding the flavor sugarless meals are missing.  Plain yogurt, oatmeal, rice and nuts are also good choices.
• Some foods you might not expect do contain sugar. We were rather shocked to find that all of the varieties of Campbell’s Selects Soup which we purchase (because I thought they were so virtuous) contain sugar! And our lone can of condensed Campbell’s Tomato Soup has High Fructose Corn Syrup!  All the Chobani flavored yogurt has sugar (not surprising, but still saddening).
• I missed tea. Granted, I had my morning cup of tea, but after 2 days of attempting black tea without sugar, I opted for green tea on the day of my official challenge.  And it made me sad, because tea (with milk and sugar) is one of my favorite things-a staple, a comfort, part of my routine.  Tea without sugar just doesn’t do it for me.
• Not everything needs sugar.  I wasn’t thrilled with my morning oatmeal.  I gave up putting sugar on it some time ago, but the dried cranberries I use are sweetened, so I went without them.  I substituted a diced apple, but it wasn’t the same.  Nevertheless, I could probably get used to it.  And I didn’t even have to think about leaving sugar out of my dinner-the original meal I’d planned (stir-fry) didn’t have any.

In the end, I’m much more aware of what products in my pantry contain sugar, whether it makes sense or not.  Lunch and dinner were fine, it was breakfast and snacking that was difficult.  I craved sugar, but I think that was mainly a product of the fact that I knew I couldn’t have any.  Given the realization that so many products contain sugar (or other sweeteners), I should probably be more thoughtful about what I add sugar to (in other words…I could probably shovel a little less into my tea).

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By Emily, April 13, 2010 7:51 pm

I figure a follow-up post is only fair, since my rant last week detailing my sister’s eating habits and how different they are from mine.

She ended up changing her schedule and only coming for one night, which really relieved my stress in the meal planning department. Sometimes I stress about things that really aren’t that crucial.

So, what did we eat?*

Saturday afternoon: I usually do my food shopping on Saturday and Sunday, so options in the house were pretty slim.  We opted to get subs from a local establishment, which meant everyone could eat what they wanted (Me: A grilled veggie sub. Her: roast beef sub with veggies.  Brian: Sausage and veggies, if you’re interested)

Saturday night: A revisit of my veggie lasagna, with the addition of ground turkey.  I also made a quick bread from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, which I really should post about.  Apparently it was fine, because my sister ate it without complaint.  After going to see one of her high school friends in a play, we returned and snacked on an experiment I was trying: frozen chocolate mousse.  It was pretty darn good.

Saturday morning: She snacked on toast and butter when she got up (3 hours after me…we’re also really different in our sleep habits.  I think I had a bagel and cream cheese).  We headed to Cricket Creek Farm which is still one of my favorite places to visit the calves.  I offered to stop by the store to get my sister some lunch, but she opted for another piece of lasagna (I’m telling you–you have to try it!)

So, my little sister didn’t starve while she was here.  She just needs to visit longer next time so I can make more food for her.  And because she’s awesome.

*If you’re new to Relishments, be advised that I don’t usually post lists of what I’ve eaten.  It just seemed to make sense in this case.

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By Emily, April 7, 2010 7:19 pm

My little sister and I, in the early 90s.  She’s silly, I’m serious.  Some things never change.

The other day, I was talking to my sister on Facebook chat and she reminded me, for the umpteenth time, that I am old and boring.

She is young and not boring (exciting?).  In her last semester in college, my sister thrives on going on adventures, getting lost, staying up late and having impromptu dance parties.  She’s pretty sure I have the most boring life possible.  For starters, I’m almost always in bed by 9:00.  My favorite hobby is cooking.  If I go out, it’s to the supermarket.  Boring, perhaps.  But I’m definitely not bored.  I could use a few more hours in my day to accomplish all the things on my list and I’m super happy with my life right now.  It’s just not for everyone.

If it seems like this post is sister-bashing, it was her idea: “Next weeks blog entry: finding something healthy my gross little sister will eat.” (Her words, I swear!)  And, for the past several days, I have been trying to do just that because she’s visiting us this weekend (YAY!).  All our lives, we’ve taken on pretty defined eater roles: I’m the one who’ll try anything; when she was young, my sister subsisted solely on bread, bacon, plain spaghetti or hamburgers (We only went to restaurants that had those as menu options).

Now, more than ever our diets seem so different.  What do you feed someone who loves Slim Jims?  Who thinks whole wheat pasta is gross (its the only kind we have!) I hope she doesn’t starve while she’s here.

Anyone have any brilliant ideas for cooking for people who don’t eat the way you do?