For Your Sweet Tooth

Since I last posted, Bryan and I have embarked on a low-carb, low-sugar, mostly gluten-free diet. We're both pretty thin, so this wasn't a move in the interest of cosmetics à la the Atkins fanatics. Our awesome nutritionist suggested it for our overall health, and since following it, I've experienced markedly better digestion and lessened anxiety. (You really don't get how sugar keys you up until you forgo it for a week and then have a bowl of ice cream. Experiment. You'll be amazed!) But we're still human and crave the taste of sweets. (Again, give up sugar for a week, and you'll be surprised that you don't even want it after a few days. It's got some pretty undeniable narcotic effects.) So instead of cookies, I've started keeping natural sweet treats around that all start with a date-based "dough." This is loosely based on a few recipes I've seen around, but I finally wrote it into my own proportions so I'm calling it mine. Sue me. You can do a ton of things with this starter recipe: energy bars, truffles, crusts, etc. Be creative. But also don't be misled. Pie, this ain't. If you put down a cupcake on Monday, and pick these up on Tuesday, you'll be sorely disappointed. They do taste healthy, but they also taste great. Still, if you're looking for something to replace that Mississippi Mud Pie, this isn't your destination.

Heather's Date Dough

about 20 Medjool dates
about 1 tsp of vanilla
about 1/2 cup of diced or sliced almonds OR
about 1/4 cup of almond butter

1. Pit your dates. I'm embarrassed I even had to write that. About 20 pitted Medjools placed in your Pyrex should hit a little over 3 cups. Don't be obsessive about measuring. This is definitely a recipe you have to feel your way around, depending on how sticky or dry you want your dough.

2. Place the dates and the almonds or almond butter in your food processor. Do NOT use a blender unless you have some mega horse powered type machine that can pulverize rice to dust. I burned out my Cuisinart attempting that, and now it smells like a refinery fire anytime I make a smoothie. Oh, and add vanilla.

3. Blend. Blend. Don't! Stop! Blending! I know you. You'll pulse it a few times, cock your head, and say, "This looks like crap." Well, it's because you didn't blend it enough. My favorite part of this recipe is the blending stage. You blend and blend and it just looks like you have a whirlwind of chopped dates. Then... then... all of a sudden... a beautiful thing happens... like the exact moment when your melted sugar threads or your meringue starts peaking... the dates give way, pull away from the sides of your processor, and embrace to form a rolling ball of sweet dough.

That's pretty much it.

Add some cinnamon if you want. Cocoa is nice. Cinnamon and cocoa is really nice. Add coconut or flax seeds. I like chunky sea salt. Add it all. Just do it at the beginning before the dates are pulverized for easier blending. One the dates have mated, there's no going back.

Now, roll it into balls. Roll those balls in cocoa or coconut for truffles. My favorite combination is dough with cinnamon and sea salt, rolled in cocoa. If the dough is really sticky, beware that the cocoa will go on VERY thick and you might end up choking on a cloud of bitter chocolate when you take your first bite.

Or make a drier dough by adding more almonds and seeds (avoid almond butter), and press into a greased baking dish. Cut into rectangles for energy bars. Or press into a baking dish, cover with sauteed fruit (apples and raisins are nice), and bake. Fruit squares!

Up to Speed

I started this blog last year with the intent of overhauling my lifestyle and going back to a simpler way of living. Over-consumption offends me, yet my hippie-leaning husband and I had somehow been swept into the undertow of American consumerism at its worst. Granted, we've never been extravagant people, preferring a nice hike and a good dinner over techy gadgets and clothes, but we ceased being mindful. And mindfulness is what we've striven for ever since we awakened to such a concept. We're mindful of what we eat, how we move our bodies, what we throw away, but still, our lives feel heavy.

My inspiration for simple living came along in a book called The Freedom Manifesto, a brilliant tome by the rebel thinker/liver Tom Hodgkinson. Since reading it over a year ago, I dedicated myself to this philosophy. Then, shortly after starting this blog, tragedy struck our family as Bryan's dad died and we spent 2010 trying to come to terms with even bigger ideas of life. Simplicity and freedom imply one thing in the context of consumerism but quite another when contemplating one's entire existence.

It would be misleading to say that we've come to any sort of conclusions as to the pesky existence question. But in the midst of our sorrows and soul-searching, one idea stayed intact: we must travel lightly. Life is already complicated enough that it is a mistake to surround yourself with things and situations that complicate it more. Well, duh, I hear you saying, but stay with me. It's not so simple as all that. The trick is identifying precisely what makes your life more complicated, which is much more difficult than it seems since a majority of our possessions and time are seemingly devoted to making our lives easier. Ironically, most of these things actually complicate our lives more. My aunt, for example, recently let her assistant go after five years. She realized that she spent much more time preparing tasks for her assistant and keeping tabs on her than doing the things she needed to do. Her assistant was wearing her out. Bad assistant? Maybe. Maybe not. How many food gadgets does the average American buy to speed up his or her kitchen experience... only to have a cabinet full of gadgets (such as the "corn stripper"???) and be unable to locate the measuring cups? Let's eat out!

Bottom line: When you have too much, you can't be mindful. You can't fully appreciate what you have. You can't come to know the essence of any one thing, much less this crazy life. If we're ever to know what this life is about, we have to rid ourselves of any distractions, any excess. We have to take the time to really know the things that are around us and serve us. That's where we think Life is. Bryan and I are ready to get back to the details. We're ready to find the joy in life again.

Step 1: I quit my job.

Agave Sweetened Mint Limeade

Part of this week's Iron Chef challenge (AKA Whatever is Delivered by Farmhouse Delivery) are keylimes. You know... the tiny, grape-sized limes that cuted their way into the citrus family. Since I hadn't done anything with them yet, dear husband suggested that I make a variation on the lemonade recipe I crafted/stole last year from the Babycakes cookbook: lemon juice, agave nectar, and water. That's tasty stuff. At the time, we had a rather thriving orange-mint plant, so I added mint to the recipe. Breakin' the rules! Oh the delicious anarchy! The green concoction was met with rave reviews.

But back to my new enemy: key limes. Sure, hubby, I say! Great idea! We're cutting back on drinking these days, and a nice minty limeade truly does sound like a perfect Fourth of July beverage. For forty-five fucking minutes, I cut these little dudes, try to pry out the tiny seeds, scrape out any pulp that wasn't selfishly hanging on to the skin, and squeeze until my fingers were shriveled like dead worms. I end up with, I'm not joking here, less than a half-cup of pulpy lime juice, and this is of course before I have to pick out all the seeds I missed, which much have displaced a good one-fourth cup themselves. Needless to say, this exercise was about as productive as milking a guinea pig for cheese. I realize this was a fool's errand. I should have given up. But what the hell else were we going to do with the limes? Make one of those key lime pies everyone talks about? I don't even know how those exist at this point. Why aren't these pies rare and costly?

But I'm done bitching. On to some instruction! After harvesting a tiny tit's worth of lime juice, I muddled about a dozen large mint leaves from our herb pots in the bottom of the bowl. Next, realizing that there was no way this would be enough lime, I added some lemon juice we had in the fridge. Awful stuff. I don't know how you can make "real" lemon juice taste processed, but evidently you can. A tear might have dropped into the mixture as I tasted the new formula only to find that the lemon stuff completely masked my 45 minutes of limey hell. From here, there's really not much more to say than add a crap load of agave nectar--keeping in mind that it's sweeter than sugar, so don't go too overboard--and a crap load of water. Just keep tasting and modifying to your liking. While the beverage itself is healthy and delicious, I can't say it wins in the ol' aesthetics department. At best, it looks like a urine test gone horribly wrong... so make sure you enjoy such a libation with friends who are open-minded, as our dinner partners are tonight.

If a tree falls in your backyard and no one's around to hear it...

Bryan and I are both tree lovers. We don't just hug trees. We say nice things to them, ask advice from them, and let them guide our daily meditations. After all, the Buddha didn't become enlightened until he stuck it out under a bodhi tree for 49 days. And it wasn't from the Shrub or the Cactus of Knowledge that our Judeo Christian God forbade Adam and Eve to eat. Tress are important. Like others, I've always gained a certain peace from trees and hold them in reverence. My childhood is peppered with tree-themed memories... planting them, climbing them, picking pears and peaches from them, hanging upside down in them, falling from them. My parents even let me choose "my tree" when we were clearing the plot of land upon which we would build our ranch. I spent hours on my swing set under "my tree." My beloved cat Murfee was buried underneath it. This year, I was excited to find that Texas vanity plates now offered a delightful "Texas Trees" option alongside the bizarrely popular "Fight Terrorism" and the just plain confusing "Louisiana State Alumni Association."

So yeah, you get it. I like trees.

Which is why I'm saddened to have two wonderful trees cut down in our yard. They were old and sick and started dropping large limbs. They were a danger to our house, our fence, our neighbor's house, our neighbor's fence, and not to mention the kids and pets who play near them everyday. Though I insisted initially that this was something Bryan and I could do ourselves, Bryan pointed out that even on my most coordinated of days, climbing to the top of a tree with a chainsaw is just an ER visit waiting to happen. So we could either pay that bill or we could pay a professional several hundred dollars to do the job. We chose door number two. If you've never seen anyone cut down a tall tree, take the opportunity if you get it. It's a fascinating system of levers, pulleys, unlikely acrobatics, and large power tools dangling on wires. There's definitely an art to it, as I suppose there's an art to embalming the dead. And just in a few hours, the lanky, twisted tree that took 70 years to stretch taller than a two story building lays in tidy piles in the backyard. RIP, Sweet Tree. We hardly knew ya'.

Corn and Pablano Chowder

3 pablano peppers
2-3 cups of chicken stock
Butter
1 chopped up onion
5 cups of corn kernels
Sour cream

Put the peppers on baking sheet and broil in the oven. Turn them after the skin has gotten nice and black. Let cool, and then pull the skins off and de-seed. I heard on a show one time that, though it's tempting, one shouldn't wash the skins off in the sink. Washing them mutes the flavor. Whether this is true or not, I don't know. How would I know what the pepper would have tasted like otherwise?

Saute the onion in the butter. Add the corn, peppers, and chicken stock. Bring to a boil and then simmer until everything is tender.

Puree with an emersion blender. Serve with a big dollop of sour cream!

Sourdough Bread

Betty Crocker's Crusty Sourdough Bread for the Bread Machine

1 cup of sourdough starter
1/2 cup of warm water
3 cups of flour
2 tablespoons of sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
1 teaspoon of quick active dry yeast

Put ingredients in bread machine. Take bread out when beeper goes off.

Anarchist Homemaker's Crusty Sourdough Bread for the Bread Machine

I use the recipe above. But wait! I typically use a mix of whole wheat and unbleached white flour. The bread is denser, but who doesn't love roughage? Instead of sugar, I use turbinado or honey. Turbinado is less processed, therefore retains more nutrients. It also contains less calories, which I don't give a crap about, but it's a fun factoid nonetheless. Our sourdough starter is a bit of an heirloom, and I encourage anyone to find a good starter with some history. Not only does it taste better, but you can't help but think of its heritage as you slice a fresh loaf or enjoy a salty waffle. Ours came from Bryan's dad Bill who received a jar of starter in 1978 when he moved to Amarillo as a gift from a friend. We have honored this delicious legacy for four years now and have almost killed it several times, but those little buggers keep pluggin' away. Sometimes, they show their displeasure at our neglect by turning out a flat pancake, but even those are good... and the little dudes perk up after a nice meal of flour and milk.

Richard Packham has provided a wonderful resource for sourdough neophytes.

Yum-Ho

I wonder if my children will know who Betty Crocker was or if they'll say things like "Just call me Rachael Ray" when they've have a particularly successful day in the ol' cocina. I have nothing against Rachael Ray--I got one of my best recipes from her--except that I find her ubuiquity bizarre and unsettling. Why'd she have to become an empire? Why'd she have to have a talk show and a magazine in addition to two shows and a line of cookingware? It's only a matter of time until Yum-O is trademarked if it isn't already.

Of course, one should be reminded that Betty Crocker wasn't even a real woman. She was a brand invented by General Mills--reinvented several times as evidenced by the many incarnations of Betty. (In fact, in 1945, Fortune magazine named Betty Crocker as the second most popular woman in America behind Eleanor Rossevelt.) I guess that there's not much difference between Betty and Rachael. Rachael just happened to be alive before she became a brand.

All this said: Just call me Betty Crocker! I've been kicking some serious kitchen ass. (I shall post recipes and links in separate posts for easier searching.) The other day, Bryan and I remembered when my only cooking appliances were an electric wok and a couple of butter knives. I made everything in that wok, yet only one recipe was Asian: pad thai. Drunk macarroni and cheese graced the wok more than any other dish, and when I say drunk, that describes the cook, not the meal. I've loved being crafty my entire life, but it's only in the past year or so that I've really started working my way around the kitchen... taking risks... using real butter... having fun. Last year, Bryan and I started making our own cheese after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Then, we started brining chicken after reading Omnivore's Dilemna. And we procured a bread machine somewhere in between. The cooking life just seemed so rich, and it certainly is what it seems. We've always been foodies, loving fine dinners out (though if one more restaurant describes their cuisine as Asian fusion or American electic, I just might give up "fine" restaurant dining entirely). We still talk lovingly of our first "expensive meal" that we enjoyed together on Bryan's 22nd birthday in Taos--a delightful place called Joseph's Table. (They catered Julia Roberts' wedding, so the rumor goes!) The restaurant closed down for a while, but another rumor says it's back. Whatever the case, it ignited a wonderful longing in us for slow, beautiful meals. Listen up, kids: they aren't just for Europeans anymore!

And I'm rambling. The point is that a commitment to good homemade food has been stewing--ba bing!--for a while. And in some ways, it's becoming second nature. I say this with full recognition that Bryan and I are blessed to be in positions where we can devote time to these kinds of things. When I was working in an office, I couldn't plan a dinner the way I can now. In the office, my short breaks consisted of chatting someone up the breakroom or running to Walgreens for tampons. Today, my breaks consisted of throwing a pablano pepper in the oven to broil and shucking a few ears of corn. By the time work was through, all of my ingredients were ready to throw in a pot for a badass fresh summer corn chowder. Hate me. It's okay. I understand. But perhaps it will make you feel better to know that the sourdough bread I was making came out too doughy in the middle.

No?

Well, maybe a few fun recipes will lift your spirits! Put on your aprons and consult your trademark lawyer 'cause we 'bout to say "Yum-O!"