This Week in Meals: Sleeper-Hit Eggplant Rice and Cult Mealoaf

I've already talked about my need for a regimented approach to meal planning in the interest of avoiding blood sugar tantrums and overall hunger-related life devastation.  With my schedule, this means making lots of food ahead of time and having it ready to re-heat/ tote to work at a moment's notice.

Fall is a great season for make-ahead food-- stews, casseroles and even kale salad actually taste better the second (or third) day. Where cooking in the Summer makes me feel kind of like a precious asshole (fresh heirloom tomatoes rotting on the counter because my plans changed), cooking ahead in the Fall makes me feel awesome and capable and prepared because the food is just hanging out in the fridge and it's already delicious!

I planned recipes on Saturday, shopped on Sunday, prepped (chopped and stored veggies, sorted ingredients into recipe bundles) on Tuesday morning and cooked on Wednesday and Thursday. Monday is the day from scheduling hell, so I ate chocolate zucchini cake from the Big Bear for dinner, and I'm not sorry. I'm a grownup!

Here's what I made:

Breakfast: Oatmeal. Green smoothies. Ezekiel bread with peanut butter. We have a thing going.

Lunch: Leftovers or this egg sandwich.

Dinner:

David Kinch's Eggplant Dirty Rice. The Amateur Gourmet made a big deal about this and he does not normally mess around, so I was bummed when I tasted it right out of the oven (it took 30 minutes to cook rather than the recommended 17) and it was meh. Then, I took a spoonful from the fridge the next morning and it was incredible-- really savory and complex and black-pepper spicy. This recipe is HUGE, so I divided into thirds. The first third fed the two of us, and I froze the other two portions separately to eat with poached fish in the next month.

Food 52's Rosemary Turkey Meatloaf. This meatloaf is approaching a cult-like status-- Rachel is obsessed. Jordy is obsessed. Rosalind is a vegan so she doesn't count. You know that yummy sweet topping that meatloaves have, and how you always with there were more? WITH THIS RECIPE THERE IS SO MUCH MORE TOPPING. Ftw. Again, we ate a third and I froze the rest in individual portions for sandwich purposes.

The chicken green curry recipe on the back of the Green Curry Paste bottle. Plus broccoli and red pepper. Half box chicken broth, one can lite coconut milk. Sautee a shallot and a jaleno pepper with fresh ginger before adding the chicken. Takes 30 minutes start to finish. Freezes great. Rachel reccomends serving this with rice noodles.

Sprouted Kitchen's Black Bean, Goat Cheese and Zucchini Enchiladas. Awesome awesome awesome. Don't change a thing.

A quick note:

You'll find that I use pre-made enchilada sauce and pre-made curry paste in two of these recipes. That is because I have a life and am not insane. Actually, I have spent 3+ hours making indonesian satay sauce by hand, but it was only marginally better than the stuff in the bottle. Since then, I decided to leave certain great pleasures to their respective experts. To whit-- dosas = Vimala's, yeast gravy= The Grit, matzoh ball soup = my mommy.

Makers: Each Peach Market and making space for food conversations

The best way to describe Each Peach Market is to say that it's like a tiny farmer's market. Indoors. That's open all of the time. Where you can call ahead and ask them to set aside the last package of chicken breasts for you.

I heard about Each Peach's Kickstarter campaign back in June, and I was so excited by the concept that Jeanlouise and Emily laid out: a community-oriented market with a mixed stock of reasonably priced staples and high-end fancy foods.

 A lot of the time a food store is either-or: you can get carrots and lettuce and flour and peaches, or you can get a eight-dollar jar of Rick's Picks beets. Why not place both on the same shelf?

I had a great conversation with Jeanlouise about her desire to build store inventory around the principle that some foods are for everyday, and others are special treats. Peaches and bread? Everyday. Fancy beet pickles? Probably a sometimes food.

It's impossible to talk about food stores without talking about the price  and availability of food, and the fact that, when it come to food opportunities, most people don't get what they deserve.

Add to that the fact that Each Peach is located in the incredible diverse and rapidly gentrifying Mount Pleasant neighborhood of DC, and you've got the making of a pretty lively conversation: What kinds of food can people buy within walking distance of their homes? Is it affordable in proportion to their salaries? What percentage of their budget should people be expected to spend on food? Should their be community standards for what "good" and "healthy" food looks like? Who should be in charge of setting them? How can people be made to feel welcome?


What impresses me most about Each Peach is that Jeanlouise and Emily aren't shying away from that conversation. They seem excited to be a part of it.

They are also excited about things that taste awesome, like District Kombucha, Number One Sons Pickles, responsibly raised meat,  and produce from local growers (it's worth noting, but the way, that the produce they sell costs the same or less than the produce at Whole Foods). If I'm going to commit to buying local or organic produce whenever I can, I'm so excited to be able to give my money to REAL PEOPLE.

Mark Gilbert once wrote, "We must risk delight". With all the pleasure that food can bring, I don't think that our dialogue about it, even in its hardest moments, needs to be austere. It can happen in beautiful places. Everyone can be invited. Every conversation, even the ones about fancy pickles, can be predicated on the notion that all of us deserve to eat well, near our homes, for a reasonable price.

I'm thrilled to see so many Makers in DC who are interested in talking about how food can bring us both pleasure and sustenance. The space at Each Peach Market invites contemplation of that nature- it is both beautiful and utilitarian, full of foods for body-fuel, for quotidian pleasure and for special occasions.

As food produces and curators like Each Peach get their legs, I think contemplation and conversation about food in our lives and our communities will keep expanding. The challenge will be to make it inclusive, and to make sure that it bears real fruit.

A Few Things I'm Excited about: Not Quite Fall Edition

School is in full swing. There are as yet no papers to grade. The late summer light stupid beautiful and golden and I've got two quarts of Number 1 Sons pickles in my fridge and a new episode of The Newsroom on queue. Just try and harsh my mellow.

My students have known each other for about two weeks now, so obviously it's time for them to start dating each other. In October, when the inevitable drama begins to unfold, I will share this genius toddler adage with them: WORRY BOUT YOURSELF.

I spent a little too much time this weekend ogling the rad food documentary site, to cure. This is the kind of food photography I want to take.

In this open letter to her older brother, Dr. Jasmine Elizabeth Johnson has written the most compelling and fascinating gentrification narrative I've ever read. A particularly poignant thing to stumble across while drinking a short americano at the Big Bear Cafe in Bloomingdale, freshly painted rowhouses on all sides:

I've come to appreciate jazz, wine, hookah, and designer pizza. I am sure you would have enjoyed these things too, if it were not for your absence that in part made space for it all.... 

...The park and still-swings that were backdrop to your morning murder are today the spot where first dates go. It's a clean green park where couples with coffee sit on benches and read. Or meander. They unwind and relax where you transitioned. They exercise a luxury of time in the place where you were refused more. Your death spot was my high school bus stop.

My former professor Michael Wenthe and his cadre of comic nerd genius co-artists are running a Kickstarter for Cartozia Tales,  "An all-ages fantasy anthology with all the stories set in a shared world, created by a team of top-notch indie cartoonists". It. Looks. Awesome. So many rad, hand-drawn backer gifts. I'm for sure getting a subscription to share with my 12 year-old sister, Ziggy.

Oh, Internet, first you give me this perfect, perfect, description of What's in Prince's Fridge, and then you tell me it was an April Fool's joke. Nevermind. Leave me alone. I'm too busy contemplating how yak milk can be "freely given" to worry about details like veracity.

Food Best Ever: LITERALLY the most wonderful egg sandwich in the world is at Swiss Bakery (objectively speaking) and some tips for college freshman

The college students are back, folks. With a vengeance. Everywhere. Still figuring out the crosswalks. I love them. I want to squeeze them. Let's teach them some rhetoric and then go out for breakfast, shall we?

A big part of teaching writing turns out to be helping adolescents to understand the difference between objective experience and subjective experience. To whit: what happened to you on Saturday night with the jello shots was not, in fact, LITERALLY the worst thing ever. It might be, OBJECTIVELY SPEAKING, the most horrible thing that happened TO YOU, but that doesn't take into account, ahem, the suffering of others.

These are the lessons I try impart on my freshman in the first crucial weeks of college: crosswalks (use them--somebody loves you), breakfast (eat it--or else you'll lose your mind), subjectivity (it's a thing--I promise).

Primarily, though, I try to drive home the fact that without breakfast, the other two are pretty much impossible.

And since we all know that the best part of teaching is breaking your own rules, so I also tell them that, objectively speaking, the best egg sandwich in the world can be had at the Swiss Bakery in Springfield, VA.  Literally. Ever. If you happen to think that another egg sandwich is better, you are wrong.

Perfect square of omelette, melty cheese, a soft, tender cloud of a bun call a SNOWFLAKE ROLL. Don't argue with me-- just go get one. And a swiss coffee. And an amaretti cookie.

 Objectively speaking, in these first rough weeks of the semester, you deserve it.

How to Cook Good Things Good: Salmon

Here's the truth about how I cook: I love recipes, but on weeknights I rarely follow them. Most of the time I just make something naturally tasty and healthy in a very simple way and leave it at that. Jo Robinson's new book, Eating on the Wild Side, is a great resource for foods to focus on. I also like Marion Nestle's What to Eat.

I've got a handful of staples in my wheelhouse, and once I find a way of cooking something that pleases me, I stick to it. A few sweet potatoes, divided into wedges and roasted. A bunch of kale. A beautiful piece of salmon, poached.

This approach makes cooking daily much more approachable-- no directions to follow, no extra ingredients to assemble. All I need to do is master the technique once, and I can use it indefinitely.

Poaching is a great fallback for salmon because it's forgiving, deliciously silky, and takes 10 minutes from the start to finish. You can roast salmon, you can pan sear it, you can make it into burgers. I've done all those things. But this is my fave; I never get tired of it.

Steps:

1. Set a large, shallow pan on the stove, adding  2 C water,  1/2 C white wine and a teaspoon of salt. You don't need to add anything else, but this time I also threw in a twist of lemon rind a sprig of parsley. Peppercorns, cloves, caraway seeds, garlic, orange rind or other fresh herbs would also be great. Up to you.

2.  Bring the liquid to a simmer and place the salmon in the pan. You might have to cut it into two piece to make it fit. It's ok if it's not totally submerged. Cover the pan.

3. Let the salmon cook for five minutes. Remove to a platter (I usually use a pancake flipper).

That's it. Now you can eat. A dollop of yogurt or a drizzle of good olive oil is yummy, but if you've got good fish, it's gonna taste great.

How to Eat Food: Breakfast Roundup

My Fall semester classes start Wednesday. I have so. Many. Feelings about that. Instead of talking about them, let's just talk about breakfast, shall we? I think that's best.

 I've got an 8 am class this semester, which means I've really got to get my life right in terms of a blood sugar sustaining breakfast or I am going to have a shit-fit tantrum every Monday and Wednesday around 8:15. That would be bad timing.

Among the harder lessons I've learned re: breakfast? Toast is not enough. See above warning about shit-fit tantrum. I tend to feel super happy about toast and jam and coffee for about two hours and then I want to cry. So. I've got four breakfast staples in my wheelhouse right now, and I'm on the hunt for more. Here's the rundown:

-Greek yogurt with granola (I love this Earlybird Foods recipe with the olive oil cut in half) and bananas.

-Soft boiled eggs, following these obsessive directions from Wired. With caraway Finn Crisp crackers. Top with salt, pepper and a teeny knob of butter.

-Chocolate cherry smoothie (made in a high powered blender so everything gets really smooth): two handfuls raw baby spinach, one handful frozen cherries, one frozen banana, two tablespoons cocoa powder, 3/4 cup coconut water, ten whole almonds. Advantage: very car-friendly. Drawback: chocolate mustache is inevitable.

-Steel-cut oats and quinoa cooked with dried apricots, topped with chia seeds, flax seeds, toasted almonds and blueberries. I tend to burn through this a little faster  than I'd like, so I'm usually hungry for a snack by 10 am. Is something the matter with me?

In the coming weeks, I'm planning on adding baked oatmeal! and an eggwhite fritatta to the rotation. Let's keep our fingers crossed for a even-blood-sugared Fall! What do ya'll like to eat for breakfast?

A Few Things I'm Excited About (Beach Week Edition): corn cakes, bonfire perfume, donated ideas, japanese persimmon cloth and a plea for well-cooked babies!

Olo Fragrance's new scent, Palo Santo, is the number one Things I Would Like to Smell today. I do not much like flowery stuff (rose is a notable exception), so this woody blend really appeals.  I found it at the very hip Accident and Artifact in SF. I also love Olo's Victory Wolf, which really does smells like someone's hair after a night around a bonfire. Stop laughing at me.

I'm impressed: rather than donating finite goods, Toyota donated their efficiency system to a Harlem soup kitchen. The resulting changes allowed the charity to help a great many more people. I love the idea of donating ideas rather than materials. It feels less like charity and more like cooperation.

I made these corn cakes for dinner last night and now we can't stop brainstorming different ways to eat them. Current thoughts: with caviar and creme fraiche, with ricotta, maple syrup and berries, with crumbled bacon mixed into the batter (duh).

Fabric obsession: Japenese Kakishubu, dyed with fermented persimmon juice. According to Hickorees, it's antibacterial? Someone please convince to me that I do not have the time or skill to attempt this on my own.

File under Not Surprised: a new peer-reviewed study has established substantive linkage between induced or augmented labor (often through i.v pitocin) and the instance of autism. My doctor parents point out that we really don't understand how the stronger contractions caused by pitocin affect the amount of oxygen baby receives, so this makes intuitive sense. Obviously more research is needed, but this is worth a lot more investigation than the ass-hatted (and failed) attempts to connect autism to vaccines (see jennymccarthybodycount.com). Also worth a read: Jodi the Doula's discussion of why even "natural" induction is usually a bad idea, and we should just let babies cook as long as they want.

Self Care: The Magic! Of! Phytonutrients! and why we are actually smart enough to understand them

I'm a sucker for food geekery. I'm a sucker for literature that makes me feel smart and in-control. Hey guess what? The magic! Of! Phytonutrients!

 Driving down to the beach this weekend, I flipped out over a Splendid Table interview with Jo Robinson, an investigative journalist who focuses on food and recent wrote the book Eating on the Wild Side. I've been at the beach with my family for three days now and I've already been informed that I am no longer allowed to discuss phytonutrients at dinnertime. Whatever.

Here's the idea behind Robinson's project: plants create phytonutrients to protect their cells from damage, and when we eat those plants we ABSORB THEIR POWER, and the phytonutrients protect our cells in turn. The best moment of the broadcast?

LRK: Antioxidants do what?

JR: They keep us alive.

LRK: That's basic.

Oh, Lynn.

Robinson goes on to explain that, over time, humans have increasingly bred plants high in sugar and low in phytonutrients. What a surprise.  BUT! There are plenty of plants in the produce aisle that still have what we need. As a doula, I tend to tell clients to just eat foods that are naturally bright in color, as many different colors as possible per day, but the science behind it has been hard for me to explain. This is the book I'll recommend to clients who want to understand more.

What I really appreciate about Robinson's approach is that she has taken 6,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies and aggregated their results to produced a single volume with clear instructions about how to eat AND WHY. These are not her own conclusions-- this is what the nutritional discipline has concluded. She's made dense science something that laypeople like me can really understand and implement.

For example! A few cool ideas:

--Don't cook garlic immediately after crushing or chopping it. Instead, allow it to sit for ten minutes. It will develop a compound called alicin, the major source of garlic's health benefits.

--In order to retain the phytonutrients in frozen blueberries, defrost them quickly in the microwave rather than slowly on the counter.

--Eat plants that have lead a rough life. The plants with the greatest amount of phytonutrients are those that have been exposed to a little hardship, and therefor have needed to produce chemical defenses. That's why plants bred to be pest-repellent or those treated with chemicals or grown in greenhouses contain fewer phytonutrients than organically grown or heirloom plants.

I find these specifics really cool because they push beyond the basics of low glycemic index and bright color. The premise of Robinson's book is that people are smart enough to understand the science behind all the nutritional advice they're given. It's a different approach from many nutrition books, which just offer lists of foods to eat and foods to avoid. I'm suspicious of that stuff. I mean, what if it's all bullshit? There's a lot of nutritional psuedoscience floating around and it often makes people feel more mystified and afraid. Robinson's research separates the wheat from the chaff, and presents it in a way that puts the reader in control. What a novel idea: to privilege our ability to care for our bodies by appealing to our brains.

A Few Things I'm Excited About: cobbler, Sorkin, sissy bounce, NC-made clothing, women's health and a little self promotion

This cobbler. I made it this weekend with blackberries as well as peaches and the topping is perfect. Nothing has ever tasted so much like Bisquick that not was not actually made with Bisquick. To my mind, that is a very good thing.

HBO's 'The Newsroom'. Like many of my favorite shows, it took me a hot second to get into the storylines and characters. Now I'm on a roll. Such a fascinating and optimistic look into what the news is, with some great ideas about what the news could be. Also, Aaron Sorkin's dialogue.

Centennial Trading Company is making beautiful menswear in North Carolina. I want to wear it all, but I fear the jeans would not work with my butt. They've got a Kickstarter going right now, with some great deals on forthcoming products. I would work the shit out of that popover with a belt.

This article on The Toast about being a pro-choice doula. The reasoning in this article has some flaws, but her central argument-- that being a doula represents body autonomy in the same way that abortion rights does-- is right on. For the record, practicing as a doula has helped me become almost totally comfortable with abortion as medical procedure and a moral issue.

I launched my photography website today. I'd like people to pay me a small amount of money to take their picture. Tell your friends!

Big Freedia Queen Diva. Don't ask me what sissy bounce is-- just listen.

Food: Canning Sour Cherry Jam

The best books for kids (or maybe ever) are the Little House on the Prairie series, and the best parts of all of those books are about food. Do not try to convince me otherwise.

I am particularly fond of the chapters devoted to "putting food by" for a long hard winter. Like the time Laura's family killed a whole pig and spent the day boiling its hide and playing soccer with its bladder and roasting its tail as a crispy and delicious treat and oh my god nothing has ever sounded so fun to me in my entire life.

Well, maybe seeing Taylor Swift live in concert. But the day after that, driving back to DC, blasting Fearless with four pounds of sour cherries riding shotgun was pretty great, too.

I am not particularly good at making jam. It takes patience and an eye for detail, neither of which I really have.

I used a recipe from Marisa McClellan's fantastic website Food in Jars, as I almost always do when I make jam or pickle. The recipes are easy to follow, low-sugar and safety-focused.

Taking the jars from the water bath feels like magic every time. They make this pinging sound as they cool, and that's how you know they've sealed. Then they keep for a year or more on your shelf! Sadly, there is no crispy and delicious tail to roast.

Or a hide to de-bristle. But there is toast!

And enough jars to dole out as little gifts through the end of the year.

 I'd never had sour cherry before, it has a really nice cherry-pie flavor, brighter, more aromatic and a little more bitter than dark cherries.

  

Man, I can't wait till the hipsters in Bloomingdale start up the pig bladder soccer league. Until then, I'm going to pickle some okra.

The raspberries that made me an asshole

When I was in San Francisco last week, I ate these golden raspberries and they drove me insane. They were so good that I couldn't stop comparing their flavor to other things. Halfway through the pint, I had already determined that, in addition to tasting like raspberries,  they tasted like lemon and seawater and peaches. For real.

After a morning wandering in the Mission, I stopped off to browse Bi Rite Market's famed produce section before grabbing a cone from their creamery, and I ended up skipping over the ice cream altogether in favor of these goddam raspberries. What?

It was a great call. That ice cream trumped raspberries even in my imagination was shocking enough. That my raspberry fantasy could actually come true? Mind blown.

I bought the raspberries. I ate the raspberries. I loved the raspberries to the extent that I called Bi-Rite Market days later to ask who farmed the raspberries. Why do I feel like an asshole?

My aesthetic experience of the golden raspberries was pure pleasure (mixed with curiosity-- can raspberries taste this good? (Yes, they can).  It was my social reaction to those berries-- my need to share that I had  just eaten the best six-dollar raspberries ever- that made me feel queasy with myself. I do not want to be that dude.

I guess I fear that talking about the best raspberries ever will put distance between myself and others, when it's really the sensation of pleasure that should be paramount-- an experience so subjective and internal that it brings the self closer to the self.

As David Foster Wallace writes in his most wonderful essay,  Consider the Lobster, "...these questions lead straightaway into such deep and treacherous waters that it’s probably best to stop the public discussion right here. There are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other."

Those raspberries. Fuckin' A. Grown by Yerena Farms in Watsonville. Sold at Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco. Immortal forever in my memory. Be jealous.