Life, Interrupted

There's not a lot I can eat off the shelf anymore. I won't bore you with details--just trust me that I would not go to all this trouble every single time I needed food unless there was no other way. I do love to cook, but sometimes I don't have the strength for it.

So when I do cook? I just keep going. There was scratch fried rice this week, with finely diced carrots and zucchini, made with a mixture of forbidden rice and white Basmati rice, giving me lavender tints to the meal. I just added four scrambled farmhouse eggs to a portion of rice whenever I needed extra carbs. This was a week of extra carbs. I don't have to make pasta from scratch, but I do prefer GF Jovial when I can get it. Lately it's just been wrapped with some lovely Spanish EVOO and fresh basil, sometimes with my butter coffee, sometimes later in the day. When I feel off, my body demands carbs. I've wanted mashed avocado and rice chips, my kale dip, or a bison or grass-fed beef hamburger. There was also a lovely moment with some sliced fresh Fredericksburg peaches and balsamic vinegar. Oh, that was heaven!

I bought some lovely Copper RIver salmon--my favorite--but my body doesn't want it now. It waits in the freezer. Keeps very well, I am pleased to say.

I made kale dip earlier today, ate half of it, and now will use the rest as seasoning in the stew I'm making. No recipe--I buy what is freshest and looks good at the Natural Grocer, when I miss market, and then when I'm ready I start chopping. All organic. It makes a difference. Maybe stew, maybe soup.

This time, I dumped in another jar of the bone broth I made in January and froze, and added six inches of diced leek, four or five carrots, mixed varieties, and 4 oz. of grass fed beef fat I collect whenever I make hamburgers, etc. (water method--I skim the fat off the water later and put it in a closed container in the fridge.) After a bit, I added a pound of grass fed & finished bison stew meat, in cubes, and 500 2+ cups of spring water. When the pot was boiling, I added about a cup of uncooked wild rice. Reduce to a simmer. In thirty minutes or so I will dice up a zucchini, a yellow summer squash, and throw the rest of the green kale/minced garlic/EVOO & sea salt paste into the pot. Another 20-30 minutes, and dinner is served.

I expect it to be smashing.

Time to start dicing again.

By popular demand, here's what I was up to the other day. This recipe is not from a macrobiotic cookbook, it's from Food Cures: Breakthrough Nutritional Prescriptions for Everything from Colds to Cancer by Readers Digest. But the principals of macrobiotic cooking hold for this soup -- use the freshest ingredients you can get, organic if you can, in season if possible, and chow down on a magnificent nutrient-fest! This soup contains ginger and turmeric, both known for having inflammation-fighting properties.
( Goodness Awaits you! )
I have frozen one ball jar of this, but don't know how well that will work. We'll see. Eat it within three days or so for optimal taste and nutrients. So far this book has been quite interesting. This is my first soup from it, but I will be trying some of the others, too.

It occurs to me that I've tried a bunch of these products, although not as many as a lot of you, because these products all contain potato starch.

And I really try to lean macrobiotic in all my purchases. Plus, the Lyme arthritis thing. Nightshades and arthritis are NOT friends.

[So -- I've had a white potato once in the past six years. Mashed, at a classy restaurant, with cheese, and it was awesome -- perfectly cooked, a master's hand had touched it. It was at the Blu Moon in Ludington, Michigan. The chef there in late July-early August had a lovely touch with veggies. I was able to eat safely and with some flair, and for gluten-free that's always a struggle in a touristy area. They had not one but two awesome GF desserts, a pot au chocolate and a slightly warm creme brulee that sang. Overpriced, but my experiences were good, properly cooked food. The non-GF offerings included some nicely priced dishes like meatloaf, BBQ ribs with their own sauce, etc. My companion tried the BBQ ribs (they were already out of the meatloaf -- on a weeknight!) and said they were excellent.

But their web site is a terrible FAIL, with moving parts. Considering that the restaurant decor is modified loft with black and white photos, interesting and even attractive, the website is frightening. But then I'm a Jakob Nielsen acolyte; I hate cutesy web sites So that link is to Urban Spoon. You can find the restaurant from there.

But the food? I loved the food. I'll go back next year, if they survive the winter.]
( On to the Mix Review )
And now, some fiction before I start chopping up veggies and making soup. I am trusting that winter is coming, and a creamy butternut soup and a miso, carrot and daikon soup for the freezer are just the ticket! I'm going to try Pacific's vegetable broth if I need stock (it has tomatoes, but an occasional tomato or pepper doesn't cause the reaction of a potato or cigarette smoke.) I'd still like a flavorful, GF nightshade-free stock, though. Anybody know of one?

Save money and improve your health. Beans are one of the best ways to go!
( Tips on cooking beans. )
Have fun with beans! From hummus appetizers to red beans & rice, beans are tasty, colorful, nutritious and inexpensive! They are the cheapest protein you’ll probably find. These tips may not work every time for every cook, but they’ve worked for me, and I hope they work for you.

Let’s talk about one of my cornerstones of healing – Vega Morning Tea. The basics of this come from a medicinal tea created by Herman and Cornelia Aihara, the great teachers and cheerleaders of the American Macrobiotic movement. They designed it for cancer patients, but I think that anyone suffering from a chronic illness, or anyone who feels drained, exhausted, stressed and unable to comfortably digest food, can benefit from this drink.
( Getting down to details )
Take control of your health – try Vega Morning Tea. You can find kudzu starch, umeboshi paste, shoyu/tamari sauce, and kukicha tea all on-line at Eden Foods and/or Gold Mine Natural Foods.

I wish for you healing.

Hey, there's a Casa de Luz video at YouTube! See the serenity for yourself --

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai7bqL-isIw

I meant to go to meet with Peter Beagle after his appearance at the Arboretum B&N. Went completely out of my head. I did, however, get enough paperwork picked up that I can dig out the final papers for taxes. I hate waiting this long, but it was wait or wipe myself out again.

I sure hope the entire FACT group did not also space that it's Tuesday, and it's Peter Beagle Day....

Did make it to dinner with marthawells, morfin, atcampbell and their friends R&PB last Saturday night. It was great to see everyone, and meet R&P properly. Poor AT had the "allergies are going to kill me, give me more drugs" look, and we broke up early so they could get him some place he could lie down.

Other than that, I am trying to space out the special cooking to one or two things a day. It doesn't tire me as much. Today I can report that a fruit mix of gala apples and plums with a touch of maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and tapioca root starch as a thickener makes a great fruit mix for a crisp or on cereal. (I'm supposed to eat things cooked, not raw, right now. TLC for the body.) Also -- the beef, sweet potato, carrot, onion and rutabaga stew was so good, made with Imagine organic beef-flavored broth (actually containing beef broth!) that I didn't even season it. It needed nothing.

CORRECTION: I used a turnip, not a rutabaga. It was white with a lavender belt. Shades of Jillian Footseer....

Leftover cubes of sweet potato were cooked with a couple of fat shallots and a drizzle of maple sugar, and sprinkled with sea salt at the past. Awecome. It made two servings, and I also used it tonight with brown short and basmati rice, black-eyed peas and hummus on an Ezekiel burrito tortilla.

I should not even have to tell you how wonderful THAT was....

Well, I finally found the spice boxes (YES!) in a box in the bottom of the office papers box stack. The only missing major cooking piece I could use is my electric kettle. Still no sign. I refuse to spend $80 for another one. It's just not that far anymore from the kitchen to the office.

Now dumping empty boxes on the balcony, and seeing more light between box piles.

Good news -- have major spices out now in pull-down rack a friend installed for me.

Bad news -- with jars in the top shelf, it won't fold back into the cabinet.

Good news -- these shelves can be adjusted!

Bad news -- my hands just can't mess with things like that anymore.

Good news -- he's coming back to install a wineglass rack, so we can probably drop it down a notch.

Decadence awaits. I have decided -- it's a night for a macro pancake. I have fresh Ezekiel tortillas, and I'm not afraid to slice and dice them!