52 Churches

We’re learning to love legumes.  This is a huge step forward for Michael, who’s always been the “no cream; no bean” guy.  He’s eating chickpea, black beans, and green lentils, which gives us a lot more to work with on this Fuhrman adventure.

For lunch, I made this:

The avocado came out a little washed out. It’s a can of black beans, and half a tin of mild chilis, heated. Then I added a sprinkle of nutritional yeast, a handful of chopped cilantro, one small, green tomato (it’s a green variety, not under-ripe), and avocado.

I think I make a terrible vegan, because I keep thinking how much nicer it would have been with a little sour cream and some cheddar cheese sprinkled on it.

BTW, the big guy is on the road . . . it’s his 35th. If you want to ping him with greetings, send to
garrisonstuber (at) garriber (dot) org.

Of late, we both keep eating pieces of fruit for breakfast, but I have two heads of lettuce in the hyphen, so I figured, as Michael was working from home, that a breakfast salad was in order. When I first proposed it, he queried, “Lettuce with fruit on top?” and I answered, “No, lettuce with eggs and a side of bacon on top, with a biscuit for the side.” He said, “Yum!”

But there are no eggs, bacon, or biscuits on or with this salad.

It has lettuce, halved grape tomatoes, diced orange, jicama sticks, red onion, black fig vinegar, and a sprinkling of ground flax seed.

Yum.

The Baldwinis came to dinner last Thursday, and I endeavored to serve them a wild and tasty variety of food that would mostly stick to the Fuhrman rules. I started with Nacho Cheese Dip and Stone Ground Tortilla strips and cut fresh veggies.

I followed it with stuffed mushrooms, spinach Koftas, and steamed Chard with a winter pesto adapted from my favourite food blogger, Molly Wizenberg, aka Orangette. See her new book! A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table

Winter “Pesto” with Parsley and Cashews

2 handfuls raw cashews
1 bunch Italian parsley, roughly chopped
4 Tbsp. olive oil
1/2 a lemon’s worth of fresh lemon juice
¼ tsp. salt
1 small garlic clove

In a blender or a food processor (I don’t have the latter), Add the olive oil, lemon juice, nuts, salt, and garlic, and parsley. Blend into a paste. It will have small chunks. Taste to adjust salt, lemon juice, and/or olive oil.

I’ve been looking to boost the flavour of our veggies, as we’ve just finished the first of six weeks of hard-core Fuhrman. We like Indian, and there are many Indian recipes that are vegetarian, so we figured that was a good place to start.

(That’s steam coming off the Koftas in the foreground).

Spinach Koftas in Yogurt Sauce
(adapted from Cooking Curries by Jane Lawson)

Yogurt Sauce
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt
1/3 cup chickpea (garbanzo) flour
1 Tbsp. oil
2 tsp. yellow mustard seeds
1 tsp. fenugreek seeds
2 Tbsp. curry powder
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped

To make the yogurt sauce, whisk yogurt and chickpea flour together with 1 1/2 cups of water to make a smooth paste.

Heat oil in heavy skillet over low heat. Add mustard and fenugreek seeds. Cover and allow seeds to pop for 1 minute. Add the curry powder and the onion and garlic and cook until soft.

Add the yogurt mixture, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.

Koftas

1 package of frozen chopped spinach (1 pound)
1 1/2 cups chickpea flour
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 ripe tomato, diced
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 tsp. cumin seeds
2 Tbsp chopped cilantro
oil for frying (or pan for baking)

Defrost the spinach over night in the refrigerator, or pour boiling water over frozen leaves and drain. Combine with remaining ingredients. If it’s too dry, add water, 1 tsp at a time. You’re looking for something roughly the consistency of meatloaf. If the mixture is too sloppy and won’t hold together, add more chickpea flour.

Shape mixture into balls. It should make about 12 Koftas.

At this point, you can either fry the Koftas in a heavy skillet filled 1/3 with oil at about 350F. Or you can pan fry them in the same skillet with far less oil. Or you can bake them in a 350 oven for 15-20 minutes.

Remove the koftas from the oil or the oven, and add them to the yogurt sauce, taking care not to break them. Gently reheat the yogurt sauce, garnish with cilantro leaves, and serve.

We ate 3 Koftas each with a large salad. Michael dumped his Koftas and sauce onto his salad.

My Cousin asked me how I keep all the veggies we’re eating, and how often I shop.
I probably shop 2-3 times a week. We usually go by the grocery on Sunday after church, and on Tuesday or Wednesday I pick up a
Happy Family Box from Fresh Abundance, which forces me to get creative with whatever rolled in.

The very first appliance Michael and I bought new was a fridge, because old ones always kill veggies.

I run the fridge slightly warm, for the veggies. This time of year, I also store veggies in the hypen (the unheated foyer that connects the house and the garage). I lost a bag of potatoes this winter to a deep freeze out there, though. The night temp had dropped into the single digits, and the hypen froze. (Frozen potatoes are gross–it’s like instant rotting–and rotten potatoes are hard to top on the “ick factor” scale).

If we run out of something, we either change the plan, or whomever is out and about in town picks that item up. (We have four adults in the house, so that’s a lot of drivers. My mom gets a little stir-crazy up here, so she’s forever going out for this or that). Michael also works from the office when he’s in town, and, although he completely struck out on last night’s grocery list:

raw cashews
tofu (unflavoured)
nutritional yeast
chickpea flour (probably Bob’s, if they have it)
black rice vinegar (don’t sweat this one: they have it or they don’t — probably not crucial)

. . . he’s usually happy to run by and get stuff. (It’s not his fault Safeway is dull–it turns out I had the black rice vinegar in the pantry, which worked out for the Sichuan Tofu).

My other “secret” is to use whatever looks like it’s not going to last first. (Which I know seems really obvious, but sometimes it’s hard to shift away from what you wanted now to what you were thinking of for later). The internet is good for this . . . google your two main ingredients and the word “recipe” for ideas.

If I have too much all at once, I’ve also gone ahead and cooked two or three meals (thus saving the produce, and the work tomorrow!), and refrigerated them as finished product.

We’ve been trying to keep to Fuhrman, but it’s a paradigm shift we made without a clutch. I don’t really know how to cook things that don’t involve dairy and olive oil and bits of meat. Fuhrman suggests both tofu and mushrooms as mouth-feel alternatives, so I gave stuffed mushrooms a shot.

The mushrooms were stuffed with their own stems, some spinach, shallot, and then I cheated and used some Penzey’s Cheese Sprinkle for a little more flavour. They came out pretty good.
I served them with spinach salad topped with pineapple salsa, and the end of the other night’s curry, topped with peanuts.