For years in Los Angeles, I took avocados for granted; I lived with a huge avocado tree in the backyard, and had a dancer’s big appetite to go with it. Avocado featured prominently in just about everything I cooked: egg frittata with gobs of avocado and cream cheese (the industrial kind—before I discovered cows and…
Tag: Cooking
Favorite veggies—and how to roast them
Prepared and cooked well, this recipe gives you wedges of slightly firm beets, potatoes, carrots, and onions. But, if you’re not careful in preparing (that is, cutting to the right sizes)—and roasting—these succulent morsels, you run the danger of ending up with sweet, mushy, charcoal-like vegetable tidbits, rather than the sizeable chunks of delectable vegetables…
Wondrous Potatoes
My idea of Experience includes cooking. Cooking can be boiling the water, stirring the beans, or peeling the potatoes you dug up that morning or bought from the local convenience store or Costco. And, at the end of the day, sitting down to a meal—and enjoying the tastes, no matter how simple or familiar—with the…
La Gloria Bodega, food trucks in Whatcom County
Just a week or so ago, Petra Sarabia, guest lectured in my Business and Sustainability class at Western Washington University, offering delicious food and telling a deeply personal story of a successful Latina business in Whatcom County. The parsley is fresh, as is all the food, much of which is vegan. For Petra, reducing food…
A bumper crop of dilly beans
I’ve talked about dilly beans in previous posts. They’re one of my favorite vegetables, especially when they’re freshly grown and prepared just-barely-ripe. They’re also one of my favorite pot luck dishes for Bunko with my good friends Nora and Diane and family. The three-page recipe for my dilly beans is on pp. 173-175 of FoodWISE….
Really Local
Returning from teaching in Italy is always a pleasure—we’re bursting with local here in the Pacific Northwest, as I write about in FoodWISE. Washington is one of the states with the highest percentages of direct food sales in the U.S. We’re particularly suited to grow berries, and Barbie’s Berries provides a bounty of the soft,…
Sustainable Food–Living off the land, the garden, the ferment
Now almost a month after our Western Washington University “cook-in” and “dig-in,” our class is finally over and I’m posting a few pictures of sustainable food. Below, “natural” yoghurt drains, releasing its nutritious whey (for other lacto-fermentation projects), with soft cheese remaining (for spreads). Many recipes for this can be found in both FoodWISE and…
Sorrel soup!
Make delicious sorrel soup, sautéing spring onions, then adding freshly-cut sorrel and broth. Just salt, pepper, and a little thyme creates a delicious meal, especially with some of that bread in the previous post! Now, for a heavier version, one with vegetables and potatoes, more in the Ukraine style, see here.
Fermented bread, Tassajara style, requires a sponge first!
My favorite recipe is from Tassajara….but it’s the fermented grains that make it a whole food…..You can buy them, or just soak the wheat berries overnight, dry, then mill. The sponge is created with gentle stirring and kneading, creating a wet mixture, ready for rising. Add the rest of the rye and wheat flours, oats,…
San Miguel de Allende, Gigi’s Global Learning Program—one year ago today
Just one year ago this September, an incredible group of ten students and I plus able-bodied assistant Hazel, spent two weeks in a study program in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. We couldn’t have done any of the trip without our amazing guide, Monserrat. Here, students are on the Otomi archaeological site of Cañada de…