Easy as Pie Test Kitchen

Getting some sage advice

A few weeks back, I got an email from a woman named Heather who has food issues similar to mine, who also loves to cook (and is probably way better at it than I am). Turns out she went to college in my home town AND she lives right down the street from our new place. We got together for tea last week, and she showed me some neat little places in town that I never would have found on my own. She also brought me some pineapple sage from Heavenly Acres Farm. I'd heard of pineapple sage, but I'd never actually tried it. I always thought of sage as kind of a savory seasoning that I just couldn't imagine with pineapple. Well, one whiff of the herbs told me I was in for a pleasant surprise. To get the old creative juices flowing, I've been trying to cook with what I have in the kitchen instead of planning my meals. I basically had pork, some two-buck-chuck white zinfandel, and the usual kitchen staples, so I decided to make some breaded pork with pineapple sage and wine sauce. It turned out fabulously, getting a rare "this is REALLY great" from my husband not once, but twice. The sauce went pretty well on rice, too. I'm now a huge fan of pineapple sage. I even saved a cutting so I can try to plant it in my container herb garden. Heather also informed me that ghee (a prepared butter from India) doesn't have the milk protein in it that bugs my tummy, so I'll be trying that soon and blogging about it, too.

 

Breaded Pork Loin with Pineapple Sage Sauce

1 pound pork loin, sliced in 1/2" thick pieces
1/4 cup flour, (wheat or rice depending on your diet)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup white zinfandel
3 sprigs pineapple sage, chopped
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions:

Heat butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Seal pork in a ziploc bag and pound it to tenderize it. Add flour, salt and pepper to the bag and shake until the pork is coated with a thin layer of flour. Once the butter has melted, add the pork to the pan and cook until it is golden brown on both sides, about 4-5 minutes on each side. Remove pork to a plate and cover it to keep it warm. Keep the burner on medium high. Add the sage, rosemary, and wine to the remaining butter in the pan and scrape the remnants of the pork from the bottom of the pan. Cook about 3-minutes, then add the lemon juice. Cook one minute more. Pour the sauce over the pork to serve.

Looking for my fairy food-mother.

Since I make most of my food from scratch, getting fresh organic produce delivered every week or so right to my front door sounds like heaven. In theory, I could limit my grocery store trips to one visit to Costco and one to Trader Joe's each month to get meat, cheese, and grains. Since we just moved to a new place, I decided to resume my previously futile attempts to find my fairy food-mother.

I tried out Spud! for awhile. The great thing about their site is that they have a huge selection of products, and you can order as much or as little as you want as often as you like. Or you can just set it up to send you certain things automatically at a set frequency. In practice, the business seems to be having growing pains. They changed my delivery from FedEx to a courier, which saved me money, but they never updated the delivery dates on my online profile. It was a little frustrating when I wasn't sure whether my food would be delivered in time for key holiday meals. I had to wrangle with them to give me the $5 off from the coupon they sent with my order that just said "simply visit www.spud.com and place your next order to get an appreciation discount." They forgot to pick up my old packaging. Things like that. They have friendly customer service people who took care of things quickly, but it was still kind of a pain to have to ask them to in the first place. They have some good ideas, though, so I might try them again in 6 months or so once they've had a chance to get their feet wet.

In the meantime, I'm excited to try Farm Fresh to You in a few weeks. Their claim is that most of what I'll be getting comes from a farm north of here. They don't have as much flexibility as Spud! does, but the service is cheaper, and I've already heard good things about the produce they deliver and the reliability of the service from a couple of co-workers.

Who magically leaves food at your doorstep? What do you like/dislike about the service?

Extreme leftovers

I sometimes write about meals I've made with week-old vegetables. It's time for me to come clean. Sometimes they're even older than that. I have a personal rule that I think of as the "Little House on the Prairie Rule." If I can remember (or imagine) Laura Ingalls Wilder or her sister Mary fetching a piece of food from the root cellar in the winter, I figure it's probably okay to let it age awhile before I cook it.

Earlier this week, it was time to break out the butternut squash I bought in early September. (I won't say how early in September. I have to preserve SOME dignity, folks!) I bought it to make soup, but I made a lot of soup in September. In October, I've just been tired, and I've been nuking spaghetti squash and eating Jack-in-the-Box salad instead. (More on nuking spaghetti squash later. It's great.) I was finally feeling better, and up to the challenge of cutting up squash. Maybe aging helps, because it actually wasn't all that hard to cut. Here's the squash before I prepared it. It has a little character from being on my counter for, um, awhile:

I cut it open, and it seemed a little dry but mostly okay.

To roast:

I cut it in 1" cubes, put them on foil on a baking sheet, sprayed with cooking spray, and roasted at 450 for 25 minutes.

Then I whisked up a quick mustard sauce:

3 tablespoons Dijon mustard, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

And drizzled it over the top. I love mustard with anything sweet.

It was not dry or tough or rotten tasting. In fact, it was very good. So eat old squash without (too much) fear, faithful readers!

Beets, again! (and that's not a complaint)

I am really learning to love beets, and my husband is too. I guess it's going to take me awhile to blog about 365 different vegetables to eat when I'm still stuck on the first one.

I ran across a recipe in Deborah Madison's vegetarian cookbook (the best cookbook ever, IMHO) for baked beets with horseradish sauce and decided I'd try it. Of course, I followed her recipe more in spirit than actuality (I did not use fresh horseradish, I baked the beets completely different, and I did my usual thing to vegetarian recipes, adding some kind of pork.) But I've gotta giver her props because I never would have thought of horseradish on beets. It was so good, I decided I had to take a photo of it on my good china.

Incidentally, Deborah Madison has joined the blogosphere. She has some delicious whole foods types of recipes posted already. Check out her blog at www.deborahmadison.com/blog

1 of 365 Veggies to Choose from

Did you know that Indians recognize 365 different types of vegetables? I think I'd be lucky to name 100 off the top of my head. Anyone trying to stick to a healthy diet would be happy with a wider variety of vegetables to choose from, but our nutrient-rich vegetable friends are especially helpful to people with food allergies, since there are fewer potential allergens in this food group than some others.

So, I've been exploring vegetables outside of my usual cooking routine to try to give my recipes a little extra variety. A few weeks back, I blogged about buying really great beet greens at the farmers market. I did cook them, and they were great. They had more beet flavor than I was expecting, but still not as much as the root has. I loved the purple color of the dish when it was done! Here's how I cooked them:

Sauteed Beet Greens
greens from 6-8 beets, (about 4 cups)
1 onion, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon minced garlic
8-10 green olives, sliced

Directions:
Prepare greens by removing the stems, rinsing them thoroughly, and cutting or tearing them into pieces (about 3" X 3" max).

Heat oil in the wok over medium high heat. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the beet greens and cook for a few more minutes, until they start to wilt. Add green olives and cook one minute more. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Easy as Pie Challenge--Dinner #1

On the menu:

Spinach Salad with Basil
Roast Chicken
Creamy Pesto Sauce (used as a salad dressing and a spread for the chicken)
Corn on the Cob

All right, I've got to admit this one was a pretty soft pitch for me. I cooked it myself and served it to just my parents, my brother, and my husband for dinner. To remind everyone of the challenge this time, it had to meet my diet (no sugar, dairy, eggs, or wheat), be low-carb (for my parents) and be something my dad would eat. He's pretty picky.

I used a standby in my repertoire--roast chicken--and nearly botched that. I'm not used to my mom's oven, we roasted two chickens at once, yada yada. Suffice it to say it was not done when I thought it was. Nonetheless, dinner was good, in part because of some great fresh Ohio produce--corn and tomatoes from the farm market and basil from my mom's garden (see photo). My brother liked the pesto sauce so much he ate what was left with a spoon for dessert. My dad said it was "fine," ate a lot of corn, and even tried some of the pesto after he weaseled the name of the previously secret ingredient (tofu) out of my brother and me.

Roast Chicken
1 2-3 pound whole chicken

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Rinse the chicken, then dry it very well with paper towels, inside and out. Truss the chicken. (Click here for my instructional video on trussing a chicken.) Put the chicken in a casserole dish or roasting pan. Roast until it is done (20 minutes per pound) or until a meat thermometer inserted in meatiest part reads at least 185. There is no need to baste the chicken or do anything else with it while it is roasting.

When it is done, remove chicken from oven and add remaining rosemary to juices at bottom of pan. Spoon the juices over the top of the chicken and allow to sit for 15 minutes, continuing to spoon juices over it every so often.

Spinach Salad with Basil
1 bag baby spinach
1 1/2 large tomatoes, sliced or diced
1/2 large red onion, thinly sliced

Toss the ingredients together in a large salad bowl.

Creamy Pesto Sauce
2 cups fresh basil
2 tablespoons silken tofu (or yogurt or sour cream, if you eat dairy)
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
3 heads garlic
2/3 cup pine nuts (I prefer walnuts, but they don’t agree with my mom)
3 tablespoons olive oil

Combine all of the ingredients in a food processor until they are creamy. Drizzle on the salad and spread on the chicken.

Corn on the Cob
Remove husks and silk. Boil in salted water for 8-10 minutes until tender.

Beets me

My husband still claims not to be convinced of the superiority of organic produce (the real stuff, not the fakers that get by on technicalities). I've got to say, it's not always better, but the more widely available it gets, the bigger the difference seems to be between organic and other produce. He has got to be convinced after what I bought this evening, though. I mean, guess which bunch of beets was the $1.60 "normal" bunch and guess which is the $2 organic bunch. Hm. I'll take the healthy-looking leafy ones that will probably get me 3 side dishes instead of just 1, thank you very much.

Of course, if you're more of a beet aficionado than I am, maybe you could tell me that I have different types of beets and that's why they look so different. I bet not, though.

As a side note, I bought these to experiment with cooking beet greens, which I have heard are tasty but which I've never tried myself. I'll let you all know how they taste.