Recipe Free Cooking: Easy Vegetarian Curry

This will all be food soon.

People ask me all the time where I get my recipes for the blog. I think some of them think I'm cooking my way through a book, similar to the Julie/Julia project everyone saw in that stupid movie. And while I do frequently consult recipe books and cooking blogs for inspiration, I'm just as likely to walk into the kitchen, quickly scan the fridge and then start making something. I learned how to cook pretty young, so I'm very comfortable in the kitchen. My mom taught me to cook dinner with her, and I saw her modifying and adapting recipes on the fly to suit our family's tastes and so I picked up the idea that a recipe is just a guideline. 

Recipe free cooking makes you so much more flexible and versatile in the kitchen. Once you are familiar with your ingredients and confident in your skills, you will be doing it all the time. Instead of just knowing a few recipes, you know a couple of methods for creating a meal. And that's what makes a good cook. You'll get there with practice. 

There's a couple things that really lend themselves to recipe free, improvisational cooking. Soups, curries, and stir fries are my go to meals when I have a hodge poge of ingredients and desperate need to eat dinner. They all incorporate large amounts of healthy vegetables and are easy to prepare. They are flexible enough to include anything you've got on hand, and rely on easy to store pantry staples, like chicken broth, canned beans and brown rice. 

Check out the picture. All the things in this picture will combine together to make a delicious vegetarian meal. It's easy. I heat up a little oil in my pan, brown some onion, garlic and ginger if I've got it. No worries if I don't. Then I add a generous spoonful of curry powder. I don't measure. Stir everything around to make a paste, then add the peeled, chopped carrots, cauliflower, mushrooms and kale. Add a big pinch of kosher salt. Stir some more and add a can of rinsed and drained chickpeas, and a can of tomatoes if you've got it. If you don't, no one will die. Add the coconut milk, turn the heat down and let the whole thing simmer on low until the vegetables are tender. Serve over brown rice and enjoy. 

What else can you add? Broccoli is good. So are potatoes or kohlrabi. Any kind of winter green works.  Green beans are probably okay. Just throw something in! If you need meat to be happy, throw some leftover roast chicken or pork in at the end.  Skip the chickpeas if you don't like them, or swap out another bean. Use chicken or vegetable broth instead of the coconut milk. Use tomato sauce instead of the canned tomatoes. Pour it over quinoa instead of rice. Really, I don't care. You won't hurt my feelings any. Make yourself  happy. Improvise. Experiment. Enjoy. 

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A Decimated Grocery Store

It's hard to believe that just a couple days ago, Atlanta was frozen in place. Other than my roads being a little extra grave-ly this weekend and the odd piece of stray cardboard left by the roadside, there's not many visible signs of last week's snowpocalypse. So imagine my surprise when I ran into the Publix on Old Alabama yesterday morning for a quick errand and saw the shelves were still empty. Those who could had raided the grocery store shelves for supplies before holing up for the next three days. Here are some pictures I snapped while I was there.

Frozen pizzas seem pretty popular. 

Fancy breads were wiped out, but the regular kind was still full. Either they had stocked the bread aisle before we got there, or I live in a classy neighborhood. The stock boy was filling the soup aisle with cans as fast as he could yesterday, so who knows what else got bought out.

Shredded cheese? My guess is lots of chili was made during the snowpocalypse.

Yogurt and butter were pretty popular, along with canned cinnamon rolls and biscuits. 

Breakfast meats were almost all gone. Everyone planned to make a hearty breakfast after the storm. 

And every kind of meat was gone. 

In case you were wondering what we ate, Tuesday night was frozen potstickers. Wednesday morning was steel cut oats and quinoa and we had Chicken and Biscuits that night. Thursday was eggs and oven roasted potatoes, with Kale and Sausage soup for dinner. Lunches both days were leftovers. Things had thawed enough by Friday that I went out for both lunch and dinner. We had supplies to make tofu and broccoli for another meal, and I had one of the pineapple upside down cakes I've been playing with recently for dessert. Clearly, you need to be snowed in with me next time. 

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Roswell Food Truck Park Season Ends

This weekend was the last one where food trucks will be parked at Don White Park in Roswell. Since this was somewhat of an experiment for the city, let's do an analysis of what worked and what didn't. After all, we like the idea of a food truck park in Roswell and we want it to come back, right?

What Worked: 

The venue. Don White is a great park, with lots of seating, parking, a beautiful view of the Chattahoochee and lots of access to walking trails that connect you to the Big Creek Greenway and Riverside park. It's a place you want to be on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

The location. There's not a ton of restaurants in east Roswell, so it was nice to have some dining out options within walking distance of my house. Canton street is fun, but I always have to get in my car to go there. I like walkable, neighborhood options.

Communication. Not only did the individual trucks have social media accounts you could follow to see where they were, but there was a Facebook page for the whole thing that posted regular updates as to who was at the park, when they'd be there and what they'd be serving. And it was monitored by someone who was friendly, knowledgeable and quick to respond. That's a big plus.

The concept itself. Food trucks at a gorgeous park on a weekend? Full of win.

What didn't work:

The variety. Namely that there wasn't much. After the first month, all the trucks seemed like repeats. And none of them really made me fall in love enough to come back a second time. I don't think I've been to the trucks since before Labor Day, though I did check every weekend to see who was there. And judging by the dwindling number of trucks each week (we started off with three different trucks every Saturday and Sunday and ended with just one truck both days), I'm not the only one who lost interest.

It seems like the same problem that hits the Riverside Farmers Market every fall. As soon as school starts and football season kicks in, folks start being too busy on the weekends for these kinds of things. Kinda sad, but such is fall in Georgia. To get people off the couch and away from their homes, you need to have something really amazing. Sadly, the variety of trucks wasn't enough to keep us interested.

Seating not always being available. But luckily, that was fixed.

So overall, I think the food truck experiment was a success, if not an overwhelming one . If I was Queen Empress of All Things Food, I'd adjust next summer by bringing in a wider variety of trucks every weekend and starting earlier to take advantage of everyone's relaxed summer schedules. Alpharetta's enormously popular Food Truck Alley manages to go strong every week, regardless of time of year, and I think they do it by having a strong variety of different trucks every week. There's no reason the organizers of the Roswell food truck park can't do the same thing in the future.  This is a great idea with tons of potential and I look forward to seeing it grow.

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Update on Roswell Food Truck Park

I was in San Antonio last week for the annual World Science Fiction Convention ("WorldCon"). Those of you who follow me on Facebook saw the pictures of me eating my way through Texas barbecue and delicious Tex Mex. While I was gone, I apparently caused a ruckus. I love causing a ruckus.

Delicious banh mi knock off from the Pho Sho truck.

So a few weeks ago, I blogged here about how annoyed I was with the seating situation at Don White park when the food trucks are present. Don White has a really nice pavilion with covered seating, but it had been rented out for a private event while I was visiting. My post was read by Joan Durbin at the Roswell Neighbor and passed on to the city. Well, while I was in San Antonio, Joan contacted me to let me know that the city agreed with my article and would be updating their policy to reflect that. Cool!

This is why I love the online world of blogs and forums so much. I can feel connected and contribute to a community while sitting on the couch in my jammies.

Anyways, it's a gorgeous Saturday and I need to go pick up my CSA. The food trucks are at the park this weekend and will be for a few more weeks. You can see the schedule on their Facebook page. Enjoy!


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Dining Out Town Hall Roswell event by Roswell NEXT

Last night I attended the Town Hall Roswell event sponsored by Roswell NEXT. Roswell NEXT is a great local civic organization that helps promote smart growth and development in Roswell. I'm not a member, but I've seen their name around town and on Michael Hadden's excellent blog. They seem like good people with a lot of pride in their city.

Anyways, they do monthly events and this one was open to the public. It was a panel discussion of restauranteurs in Roswell discussing what issues they face and why they do business in Roswell. It was a really interesting discussion, even if there were no huge revelations or verbal smack downs. This ain't no Jerry Spring sideshow.

The panel consisted of the owners of The Salt Factory/Opulent/Little Alley Steaks, Table & Main, Adele's, Lucky's Burgers & Brews and The Food Movement, which owns about a dozen or so food trucks around Atlanta. I like that the organizers had such a diverse range of restaurants and included food trucks.

One of the things discussed was how Roswell really intends to become a destination dining area, not just for metro Atlanta, but for the entire south east. The owner of The Salt Factory was especially complimentary of Roswell's friendliness to the restaurant business, mentioning that you don't really appreciate it until you try to open another one somewhere else. I can only assume he's talking about the second Salt Factory location in Alpharetta, which is coming soon. I'm a fan of this goal. I think Decatur still has us beat on sheer numbers of destination restaurants, but we're rapidly catching up. And Canton Street, with the shops and galleries around the restaurants gives you something to do while waiting for a table, or walking off a meal. There is better density of restaurants too. It's possible to walk around for a bit and look at a dozen menus before deciding where to eat.

Parking on Canton is definitely an issue and was discussed quite a bit. Folks seem to be learning you can park for free at the nearby City Hall, but the panel pointed out that that's a long walk to the north end of Canton and City Hall is poorly lit at night. It's not an inviting place. Several panelists and audience members expressed a hope that the planned City Walk development replacing the Frasier Street apartments will include more parking and perhaps a shuttle on weekends to take you from Alpharetta highway to Canton Street. That sounds like an expensive prospect for the city though. I don't think we can afford for them to run a free trolley bus outside of special events like Alive After 5. This is one area where I wish we had better transit in Roswell. If MARTA ran a bus from Martin's Landing to the Historic District, I'd probably ride that sucker every week. But folks coming to Canton Street aren't just locals. The panel moderator revealed that quite a bit of that street's business comes from East Cobb, Swanee and Duluth these days.

Alive After 5 is a big boon to the restaurants actually on Canton. But the ones off it? Not so much. Roswell runs trolley busses out to the Square, which is where the food trucks park, but nothing goes to Alpharetta highway. The owner of Lucky's was quite blunt that he sees no real benefit to participating in the festival beyond having an employee pass out paper menus. He doesn't want to set up a booth because he'd hate for his customer's first experience to be something substandard. The other owners had similar things to say about participating in Taste of Roswell. It's hard to be memorable at a festival and you can't bring your A game to something being "served from a tub", to quote Lucky's. That actually answered a question I'd had for years about why I never see the really INTERESTING things at A Taste of Roswell. It's always a bunch of crap like Moe's or Shane's Ribshack. I'm not getting my toes run over by a stroller mom for THAT.

Another topic raised was the impact of food bloggers. I admit, this one had me squirming in my seat a little. This is my fun hobby! I'm performing a community service here! Don't knock me! And yeah, they all had a love/hate relationship with food bloggers and social media. They love being able to interact with their customers and spread the word. They hate getting negative reviews from random idiots having a bad day on Yelp. But they all agree that its part of doing business now and I think most of them say they have a social media person on staff who is responsible for minding all the Twitters and Facebooks and whatnot.

I do get the reluctance about amateur reviews. I'm just some weirdo with a laptop. I have no food background or journalism training. But I still try to be ethical and responsible about how I blog. My dozens of readers demand it! I've been mulling over writing up a restaurant where I've had multiple bad experiences recently. I hate to do it, but that's what I have to say if I'm being honest. So I just haven't done it yet, even though I know a negative review posted here will get me more hits than a positive.

There was also a conversation about food trucks and how they've changed things. Everyone seemed to agree that as long as they are competing fairly, they are a great addition to street festivals and busy areas without dining options. The Food Movement has an exclusive contract with the city to park at Don White park on the weekends, which is an area without any restaurants to compete with. It's a great fit and it helps fulfill Roswell's dream of being a sophisticated foodie town.  I'd like to see more food trucks given permission to park there or at other area parks in the future, but this is a great start. I got the impression that The Food Movement approached the city about it, so kudos to them for it.

And that's about all I recall clearly enough to feel confident putting down here. Again, a great event. The mayor and several councilmen were in attendance, along with other business and community leaders. If another event like this comes around, I recommend attending it.  

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Well, I'm back

I had to take some time off from blogging. In fact, I disappeared almost entirely from the internet for the month of December. The holidays were part of it, but not entirely.

Back in September, my father in law was diagnosed with the late stages of stomach cancer.  When we went to visit the family in east Texas for Thanksgiving, he was being checked into a hospice. There was no way we could go back to Atlanta at that point, so we massively rearranged our lives so we could stay in Texas until the end. Joseph Liang passed away quietly on December 18th.  Since then, I've been trying to make up missed school work and get caught up on the rest of my life that I missed. Blogging here did not seem like a priority.

Though I would like to talk about Joseph for a bit. My father in law was a very kind man. He could have been furious that his only son chose to marry a white woman and live with her three states away, rather than marry a good Chinese girl nearby. If he ever disapproved of our choices, he never let on. Instead, he treated me like a daughter from the moment my husband said we were getting married.  Oh, he made no secret that he wanted us living closer, but it was never said in a hurtful way. 

Joseph came from a long line of professional chefs. My husband is actually the first Liang in several generations to not be a chef. Joseph's own father cooked for Nixon when the President made his historic visit to China.  The Liang's settled in Tyler, Texas, and opened the eponymous restaurant they are best know for there. My husband and his sisters grew up in that restaurant, waiting tables, working the register and folding wontons and eggrolls in the kitchen.  They sold it just before I met my husband to retire, but got bored and opened a new fast casual place called "Ming's Cafe".

People always ask if I learned how to cook anything from my father in law. I do have some of his recipes. Passing on recipes to me was always problematic. Joseph cooks like me, without a written guide, improvising on the spot. I'd have to watch him several times to get something down and infrequent visits during the holidays were not conducive to learning to cook.

Also, no matter how hard I try, I will never get it right. There was a certain magic to the way Joseph worked, a kind of wizardry I can't replicate. He tried to show me once how to fold a pork dumpling. My clumsy hands couldn't replicate it. My husband can't quite manage it either, but his come much closer to the neat, fluted pleats his father made.  So while I do make Chinese at home, I don't say that I make Liang family recipes. Those belong to other people.

One of the Chinese traditions that I like is the ancestor shrine. We have a big framed picture of Joseph in our kitchen now. Jimmy placed an offering of three oranges on a plate in front of him. I gave him a shot of whiskey. The picture is from Jimmy's college graduation party. Joseph is in his kitchen at home, cooking. There's big bowls of mu shu pork around him, and it looks like he's pouring a noodle dish out of his wok and onto a plate. This is how I'll always remember him, in the kitchen, happy.

Changing Seasons at the Farmers Market

It's easy to tell when the seasons start to change when you eat locally. Yesterday I made my weekly trip to the Riverside Farmers Market (conveniently located a good mile or so from the actual river) here in Roswell. I'd missed the market last weekend due to my annual pilgrimage to Dragon*Con. The change in available produce seemed very abrubt.

Gone were the sacks of crisp, delicious, just picked peaches and baskets of the sweetest blueberries I've ever tasted. Our friends at Moss Hill Farm no longer had pounds and pounds of gorgeous heirloom tomatoes for us to browse either. While many of our summer favorites are still available, like green beans and peppers, we're also starting to see the beginnings of the fall crop. I bought a couple crisp Rome apples yesterday, perfect for slicing up and eating alongside a sharp cheese. Eggplants are still going strong, and we snagged a nice looking cabbage that will be the perfect side for a home made mac and cheese dinner tonight. We also picked up some beets and mustard greens and regretfully put down a head of swiss chard. (It looks beautiful, but neither one of us cares for it)

The summer fruits haven't quite given way to fall yet. Yesterday we picked up the biggest watermelon I have ever seen in my life. It was at least 30 pounds. My husband adores watermelon. It is, along with steamed white rice, his very favorite food. I told him we could buy it only if he promised he would eat watermelon with every meal this week. Even then, I'm not sure if we can eat it all before it goes bad. I took some to my gaming group last night, but I still have a fridge full of diced melon.  We'll see how well our war against it will go.

Ads on the Blog

My regular readers, who only know me from this blog and not my other social networks, will probably not know this. But I've been laid off. Prior to now, I taught social studies at a small private school here in Roswell. With the economy the way it is, the small school got smaller and they had to cut staff for the upcoming school year.  Since about 3000 other teachers were laid off from the public schools at the same time I was, job hunting has been less than fruitful.

Rather than lay on the floor and cry over it though, I've decided to see this as an opportunity to do things I've always wanted to do, but had trouble doing so because of my teaching schedule. The biggest one is getting my Master's degree. I'm also looking at part time jobs with flexible hours, so look for a post with happy news there in the future.

However, despite the best face I can put on things, we're still looking at a drastic cut in our household income after I receive my last paycheck at the end of this month.  So I've decided to monetize this blog.  I've never really taken the whole blogging thing seriously, which is why Northside Food has a small audience. However, things being what they are, I really can't ignore a potential source of mortgage payments.  So you'll be seeing some ads here now and some links to Amazon if I'm talking about a product you can buy there.  Don't feel obligated to click on anything (In fact, by my service agreement with AdSense, I'm not allowed to encourage you to click on ads.), but do understand that they are here to support me in my state of underemployment.

The upside of the ads is that now that they are here, I feel sort of obligated to stick to a reliable update schedule and make an effort to build my audience.  So you'll be hearing from me more frequently now.

Holiday Links

I think this nice, in between time between Christmas and New Years is my favorite part of the holidays. I'm off from work, but everything is done. There's no presents to buy, no cookies to bake, nothing that needs decorating. My husband has some time off, so we get to see movies together and have leisurely, late breakfasts of hot rolls and baked oatmeal. Usually I start futzing around for New Year's Eve celebrations at our house right about now, but my friend Diane is taking that on for us. So I get a nice, quiet week to catch up on housework and other projects.

In the spirit of that, here are some holiday appropriate links.

On the subject of brunch, I read two really great articles about preparing easy holiday brunches. Smitten Kitchen writes what I consider to be the definitive guide to holiday brunching. Her thesis? Easy, make ahead recipes that you can prep ahead of time, then throw in the oven the morning of while you shower. Gayle, of Grocery Cart Challenge fame, also submits some breakfast casserole recipes for holiday brunching in her weekly The Daily News column. While her recipe offerings tend to be a little heavy on the processed foods for my taste, two of these rely on fresh or frozen ingredients, which make them winners in my book.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I've seen some interesting links about holiday food drives that I thought I'd share. The first was a recent NYT article about the secret preference that food banks won't tell you about: Cash. But if you think about it, it makes sense. What on earth can they do with three cans of pickled artichoke hearts and a cellophane package of ditalini? We feel good taking cans out of our own pantry to give to those in need, but I think too many use it just as an excuse to dump unwanted food guilt free. There's a really good discussion on Chowhound regarding donations to food banks, that I found to be worth skimming.

For myself, I just cleaned out my pantry on Monday and set aside some cans for donating to the North Fulton Community Charities, a non-denominational non-profit that helps families in North Fulton meet their basic needs. What am I donating? Cans of green beans and creamed corn. Our tastes have shifted after eating farm fresh vegetables all summer and canned veggies just taste like mush to us now. So I have about a dozen or so cans bought before, that are neatly boxed up and waiting for a chance to deliver them. Or it may be time to help my students organize another canned food drive.

And to round things out a bit, here's a couple links from online humor site, Cracked.com. First up, is a great discussion of tipping on the Cracked forums. Personally, I always try to tip at least 20 percent when I go out. I have far too many friends and family who work in food service and rely on tips to be comfortable otherwise. And one of today's feature articles is an examination of useless kitchen gadgets, some of which I'm sure were given or received as gifts this year. I've been mercifully gadget free in my kitchen the last few years, but it's only a matter of time before someone decides I just *need* an automatic donut machine. (Though I will say those pizza scissors look pretty sweet...)

What Should I Make For Dinner?

I have no idea what to make tonight. This usually means ordering pizza. I do not want to eat pizza. I need something fast, because I'll be coaching a late game tonight and won't be home until close to six.

I have...

Kidney beans soaking
Cauliflower
Yellow squash
Corn chips
Rice
Bacon
Green beans
Shredded cheese
Sour cream

And assume I have pantry items like olive oil, canned tomatoes, etc. What should I make?

I have a though of making nachos with the corn chips, cheese, beans and bacon. But I really want a vegetable tonight. Maybe a curry? Or a soup?

Tell me what to eat.

Good morning!

I never mean to be away long when I decide to take a break from here. A week at most is what I promise myself. And then it turns into seven. As you might have guessed, I've been busy. My all consuming second job as a meth dealer,, Big Name Fan of the Wheel of Time series kicked into high gear with the release of the latest book in the series. It's a good book. If you are a fan of the series, you should read it. Anyways, I've still been eating and cooking and reading about food, if perhaps not quite with the dedication my other hobby is getting these days.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, which my parents hosted. It was a very traditional affair and I ate three desserts. My sister, Allison, is an incredible baker. No one can resist her treats.

My contribution was a sweet potato casserole. My family was never big on sweet potatoes growing up, until we realized they didn't HAVE to be boiled to death, then slathered with marshmallow. I think I'm the only one that eats them with regularity, but they are not foreign objects on the dinner table for my parents and siblings.

This casserole recipe is adapted from one given to me by a student. In my Food Appreciation class this month, we've been focusing on Thanksgiving foods. So we've made pie from scratch, this casserole, pumpkin cookies, etc. When I let the students know we'd be making sweet potato casserole, he brought this recipe and I liked it better than my usual one. So we made it, I liked it and now it's mine.

The adaptions are mainly just to lighten it up a bit. The original called for a crazy amount of butter, eggs and sugar, which I have reduced greatly. Sweet potatoes are naturally delicious and really don't require much gussying up to be presentable.


Sweet Potato Casserole

3 cups mashed, cooked sweet potato (I roast mine in the oven, I think it tastes better)
1 egg
1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 orange juice
1 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup dark brown sugar

Combine sweet potatoes, egg, butter and orange juice in a casserole dish. Top with pecans and and brown sugar. Bake at 350 for thirty minutes and serve warm.

The magic ingredient in this, as far as I'm concerned is the orange juice. Citrus and sweet potatoes go surprisingly well with each other. The acidity brings out the natural sweetness of the potato. I'll probably make this again in a few days when we need another Thanksgiving fix.

Learning to Eat More Veggies

One of my projects this summer has been learning to eat more vegetables than I did before. Don't get me wrong, I eat my veggies. I love green beans, corn, carrots, broccoli, brussel sprouts, spinach and more. I think I do pretty well on eating a variety of vegetables. However, there's always room for improvement. I was especially motivated to improve my palate when I realized I was passing up so much of the beautiful, freshly grown produce at the local farmers market. I feel like I missed out on some great stuff, just because I was too picky to try it.

For some things, the problem was that of exposure. I've always said I didn't like beets, but I'd really never tried them. My mom never cooked with them. They only time I ever saw them was when they were quivering on my school cafeteria tray, oozing an unappetizing pink juice. Yuck. But I saw a couple slices on a tapas plate at Veranda in the spring and impulsively decided to try it. It was...not poison. Still wasn't sure I liked it, but I was willing to try again. It turns out I do like beets. Raw beets in a salad are delicious, but I especially like them roasted in the oven with olive oil and salt. Yum.

Zucchini...Not a success. My mom loves it, so it was on the table frequently as a kid, usually steamed. I cannot stand it steamed. Recently, I tried it grilled at home and breaded and deep fried at Figo. No good. There's something...not food about it. The flavor is too mild, the texture too soft. My brain rejects it. I think I'll try it again as zucchini bread, but then I'm done. It's too bad, because my husband loves it, but he doesn't want me to make it just for him.

Next up is eggplant, which I'm working on currently. I bought one last week and turned it into home made eggplant Parmesan. I did like it, but not as much as I thought I would. I don't think the fault was the vegetable, but the breading. It was a little bland for me. The actual eggplant wasn't terrible, just unfamiliar. I'm going to try it again, stir fried with garlic sauce. My husband loves ordering this at Chinese restaurants, so I'm hoping I'll enjoy it too.

Next summer, I may tackle the most terrifying of all vegetables: okra.

I am of the opinion...

That when I bring my own bags to a grocery store, I should get a discount. Not a huge discount. No more than the cost of the bags they would have used to bag my groceries. But I'm saving them money when I bring my own bags, in addition to making less waste. And I'd like to be rewarded for my extra efforts. I'm always seeing people say that we should let market forces find us the best solution to our problems. So why not a monetary incentive to bring your own bags?

Some stores already have incentives in place. IKEA started charging for bags a few years ago. Trader Joes puts your name in a drawing for free groceries. Even more recently, Whole Foods stopped offering thin plastic bags and now only provides reusable bags you buy at the check out line. I still do the majority of my grocery shopping at Publix, but I'd like to see them shave a few cents off my grocery bill for bringing my own bags each week.

Why can't every day be a vacation?

In my readings today, I found this old article from the AJC on buying a second home in Serenbe. Serenbe, for those of you from out of town, is a sustainable community developed just south of Atlanta. The community is centered around an organic farm, that feeds the residents and the excess is sold off at area farmers markets. It's a model community in many ways.

So here's my question: Why is this a vacation spot?

A very good critique of the farm to table movement is that it's elitest. "Oh sure, it's easy to have an organice vegetable garden, Mrs. Obama. You have an army of gardeners to take care of it for you." That kind of thing. And sure, good fresh food and living sustainably takes a bit more thought, planning and effort than just microwaving yourself a corndog for dinner, but not so much that it should be considered an occasional effort.

There's just something about the idea of buying a second home in a sustainable community that strikes me as Just Not Getting It.

Ingredients Matter

One of the things that's so easy to forget, is that ingredients matter. I mean, sure, it's really easy to open a box, add water, then stir and call it dinner. And if you're mindlessly wolfing down food while watching TV, or driving, I suppose that's alright. I prefer to taste my food though.

Even though I know ingredients matter, I still have meals that remind me of it rather forcefully. Last night, for dinner, we had BLTs. Very simple, very basic, nothing to get excited over, right? But made with freshly baked bread from Artisan Foods, fresh salad greens and tomatoes from the Roswell and Alpharetta Farmer's Markets, and a good quality swiss cheese from Trader Joe's, it's more than just a sandwich, it's a dinner worth blogging about.

So ingredients DO matter.

Picture Dump... Again.

I got a new camera for Christmas and I've slowly been getting the hang of it. Here's a couple things I've been working on.

From blog

This is a lentil and kale soup I made last month. I got the recipe from Adam at The Amateur Gourmet. This was a great soup, a little spicy, a little sweet. Perfect for a cold night.

From blog

Hot cocoa with a homemade marshmellow. Cute mug, right? It was a gift from one of the girls in my homeroom this year. It's just the right size for when I need a sweet drink, but don't want to feel too gluttonous.

From blog

This is a cheese spread I made using the leftovers from my New Year's Eve cheese plate. It's called "fromage fort" and this version comes from Alton Brown. The gist of it is leftover cheese in a food processor, with white wine, garlic and parsley. I think I actually took this intending to use it in a "Grow Your Own" post, but it sat too long on my camera. It's awesome on those little whole wheat Kashi crackers you see there, or you can smear it on fresh apple slices for a slightly healthier treat.

From blog

I came home late one night from a basketball game last month and I needed a fast dinner, so I made pizza. The crust is the Olive Oil Dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The sauce was a quick amalgamation of canned tomatoes, rosemary, red wine, onions and garlic. It should have reduced a bit more. It was thinner than I like. The Italian sausage was leftover from something else. This was really, really good. I need to smoosh the crust thinner though.

From blog

Another Olive Oil Dough creation. This was a stromboli that I whipped up. It's stuffed with cheese, more italian sausage, garlic and thawed, frozen spinach. I must make this again. Soon.

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This is a Chicken Tortilla Soup that ended up being so spicy I couldn't eat it. I froze the leftovers and I'm waiting for a victim to foist it off on. I added the chopped chiles too early, so they had too long to infect the broth. Even my husband thought it was too spicy. It had a great flavor under it though, just spicy.

Lunch at Shallots

I've been busy lately. But not too busy to pay for my lunch in gold doubloons.


I had to break a twenty to ride MARTA last weekend. Did you know MARTA gives your change back to you as... change? I used them to pay for lunch out with my co workers on a teacher work day.

I felt like a pirate.

Baked Potato Soup

My husband and I love soup, especially on a cold winter night when the heater on is on the fritz. So tonight, we curled up with steaming bowls of loaded baked potato soup.

3 cups white potatoes. Any waxy potato like Yukon gold or red will work too. I'd steer away from russets, just because they crumble into mush when you boil them. Obviously, if these were REAL loaded baked potatoes, you should ignore that advice.
2 cups chicken broth
2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup white wine
4 strips bacon
three cloves garlic
1/2c cup cheese (I had a mix of cheddar and swiss on hand. )
1/2 cup sour cream
Salt and pepper to taste

You should also add an onion. My last onion has gone all sprouty, so I left it out.

Fry bacon until crispy in your soup pot. Remove from pan and drain. Lightly fry your chopped, white potatoes in the grease. They won't get cooked all the way, but you'll add a little color. If you have an onion, it goes in here. Add the garlic, then add the chicken broth, milk and wine. Bring to a boil, then simmer until potatoes are tender. Melt in the cheese, then use an immersion blender to blend all the potatoes together. The last time I made a potato soup, I didn't do this and my husband got all pouty faced over it. He likes his soup slurpy. You can skip doing this if you prefer a chunkier soup or don't a have an immersion blender. Wisk in the sour cream and add the crumbled bacon. Add salt and pepper and serve. I think green onions or chives on top would be very pretty.

This dish, like so many I make these days, comes from me looking at my kitchen and thinking "What can I make with what I've got?" The potatoes needed to be eaten up before they went sprouty. I always have bacon. The sour cream and cheese were leftover from a Battlestar Frak Party chili Diane brought us on Friday. There was brief discussion of spaghetti tonight, but I don't have all the things I like to have with spaghetti. That's one of the things I like about scratch cooking. You can be endlessly creative with what you have in the pantry.

Will Obama Change Food Policy?

Not only does he seem to possess a more-sophisticated palate than some of his recent predecessors, but he will also take office in an age when organic food is mainstream, cooking competitions are among the top-rated TV shows and books calling for an overhaul in the American food system are best sellers.

Is a New Food Policy on Obama's List?

The New York Times explores what changes, if any, Obama might make to our agricultural policies, and towards food in general. I think it's safe to say, this is an area he definitely lead by example.

Hear! Hear!

I also beg to differ with the premise that a healthy cookie is "an untenable paradox." Who said that cookies are inherently unhealthy, anyway? I think folks should re-examine what "healthy" is. Is a low-fat cookie packed with sugar and hydrogenated fat better for you than a gingersnap made with butter and freshly ground spices? For that matter, I don't think a sweet treat made with real butter, eggs, and chocolate is all that bad for you. People should be selective about what they eat and go for quality over quantity, which is ultimately more satisfying.

--David Leibovitz

Slate is hosting a conversation between several food writers this month on the state of the modern cookie. That quote is a snippet of the conversation posted on Monday. I absolutely agree with his sentiments. I do tons of baking. We always have fresh baked cookies, or bread, or cake around. Ever since I switched to real butter and real sugar in my baking, I've been losing weight and feeling healthier. Granted, I've been doing better portion control this year too, but isn't it easier to say "I've had enough" when the smaller treat satisfies your taste buds?

Enjoy food. Stop avoiding it.