Easy as Pie Test Kitchen

Warm, black, fruity tea

Every year around Christmas, my family makes this drink we like to call "Russian tea". My husband, who is part Russian, likes to point out that pineapples are not exactly native to Russia. It's still good, though. It's a pretty easy and forgiving recipe (unless my mom is watching you make it, in which case, there are very precise steps and measurements you MUST NOT deviate from at ANY COST!)

Russian Tea

Be sure to have a very large pot, and enough containers to store about a gallon of tea in when you're done. This recipe makes about a gallon of tea when all is said and done.
1 gallon water
3 lemons, halved
2 oranges, halved
8-10 cloves
6-8 bags black tea
1 46 ounce can pineapple juice
2 cups of sugar or equivalent (I use 2 teaspoons of stevia extract)

Bring the water to a boil in your large pot. Add lemons, oranges, cloves, and tea. Simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Remove the fruit and let them cool a bit, then squeeze what's left of the juice in them into the tea. Pour the tea through a strainer into a bowl or pitchers to remove the excess pulp. Rinse out the pot and pour the tea back into it. Add pineapple juice and sugar or other sweetener. If you're using sugar or honey that needs to be heated to dissolve, heat over medium or medium-high heat for another hour or so. You can usually just add artificial sweeteners or stevia without the extra cook time--just heat it up to serve it. Store in the refrigerator (if it's not gone before you get a chance to put it away).

Warm tummy

It's been unusually rainy and could here in southern California, and I'm trying to be thorough about using the food I have before I make another big trip to the store. So, we've been eating a lot of soup. Nothing else can quite give you that same toasty-from-the inside feeling, can it?

One of my favorite restaurants is a Lebanese place. We go there so often we are now good friends with the owner, and he was kind enough to share his secret to their delicious lentil soup. Well, okay, he didn't so much share the recipe as he said it's a matter of putting some onions and lentils in a pot, boiling them, and adding lemon juice. Turns out that's actually about all there is to it. If only the garlic sauce he serves was so easy to reproduce!

Mediterranean Lentil Soup ($5.20)

3 tablespoons oil
1/2 yellow onion ($.50)
1 tablespoon minced garlic ($.10)
1 lb red lentils ($1)
3 cups chicken broth ($3, or free if you make your own)
3 cups water
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 cup lemon juice ($.50)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley ($.10)

Saute the garlic and onion in oil over medium high heat until onions are getting tender. Add the lentils, chicken broth, water, cumin, lemon juice, and salt. Bring to a boil and simmer until lentils soften and come apart. Ladle into bowls and sprinkle parsley on the top.

GM foods

I've always been a little skeptical of the hoopla over genetically modified foods. After all, messing with crop genes is supposedly what got us from being hunter/gatherers to farmers in the first place. Norman Borlaug probably saved millions of lives by messing with crop genes. Genetically modified foods just seem like an accelerated, test tube version of the hybridization we've been doing for millennia to improve our food.

However, considering the damage arguably good things like antibiotics and soda have done do my intestines (I said arguably! who doesn't like soda??), I do keep an eye out for indications that there may be a real problem and not just hype. I see headlines like the one on this article that claims GM corn damaged caused organ damage in rats in a study, and I start to wonder if I should avoid the stuff. Then I read the article... They used GM corn that's not currently in any products. I suspect that not all GM foods are alike, so it is a little hard to tell what the implications of this might be. For all I know, they could have made up some kind of crazy mutant corn for the study that no one ever had the foggiest notion of putting into food. I think I'm going to throw this one on the "hype" pile. Maybe someone will do some useful research, like a study using GM foods people might actually eat.

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?

Where's Jack Frost?

So they're not chestnuts, and there's no open fire, but honey-roasted walnuts for our Christmas salad sure look good...

We're having lamb, cornbread stuffing with bacon, cauliflower soup, mashed butternut and potatoes, and flourless chocolate cake. What about you?

Busy doing Christmas shopping? Try this recipe.

Reader Jacob--who cannot eat wheat, sugar or any sweeteners, or preservatives-- shared this recipe with me over email. I added a little cilantro, corn, and tomatoes, plus some vegan mayo to get what you see in the photo, but it's a similar idea. Very easy. Very tasty. For a full meal, just add some meat. Thanks, Jacob!

1 large onion

1 large green bell pepper

1 large red bell pepper

4 cloves garlic

1 chili pepper

1 lime

1 can black beans (ingredients of black beans, water and salt only)

onion powder

garlic powder

sea salt

pepper

¼ cup olive oil

 Chop onions and bell peppers in any size you want.  Put in a large bowl.  Chop garlic and chili pepper and add to bowl.  Squeeze lime juice into mixture.  Add onion powder, garlic powder, sea salt and pepper to taste.  Mix and let stand 30 minutes.

Add olive oil to a pan.  Heat to med-high.  Add mixture and cook until vegetables are soft.  Drain and rinse can of black beans and add to pan.  Cook for another 5 minutes.  Serve hot.

Punkin' cake

Loyal reader Krista told me awhile back that she makes cake from a mix using pumpkin instead of the usual eggs and oil you are supposed to add. If you are a regular reader, you will know how much I LOVE pumpkin, so I jumped at the chance to try it out in a new and simple way. Basically, you combine a 15-ounce can of pumpkin with a box of cake mix, then follow the baking directions on the box. I did this with gluten-free vanilla cake mix, added a little nutmeg and cinnamon, and iced it with some dairy-free frosting (with almond milk instead of soy milk). Mmm... I ate a piece (Yes, even though I am not supposed to eat sugar. Then I took a nap. The sacrifices I must make for this blog!) Then left the remainder at home alone with my burly Alaskan husband. It was gone the next time I checked.

Have trouble finding cake mix? 1-2-3 Gluten Free will ship a variety of cake mixes that are friendly to all kinds of allergies. (They don't pay me to say that. They just make good cake mix.)

Lard??

I knew do-it-yourself food traditions have been making a comeback in this economy. I hear a lot about canning and gardening. But now I've heard about rendering your own lard at home twice in is many days. I've never even cooked with lard, let alone made it at home. Apparently when it's made right, it's low in un-saturated fat. It's supposed to be healthier than trans fat by far. Go figure. I'm going to have to find some and try it out. Do any of my readers use lard? Any tips for me?

Fan photos

This week, I'm going to share some things from my readers, starting with some photos.

My brother is a great cook (much better than I am), and his wife bakes well, so I was flattered when they made one of my recipes and took photos of it. My brother says they modified the recipe. I'm not sure what all they did, other than assuming they added a lot of dairy, since that's what he does. I do know they turned the shepherd's pie into a work of art with a frosting tube (or whatever you call them. I don't know much about decorating cakes.) They made the Yam Shepherd's Pie.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner

Are any of my readers allergic to turkey? Just curious. Here's the first in a series of Thanksgiving-y recipes to help you through the holiday. Not hosting? Volunteer to bring an allergy-friendly recipe of whatever is worst for your diet in its natural state.

One of the biggies, of course, is stuffing, what with its eggs and bread and everything. And it's such an essential part of the holiday meal. The sneaky thing about Thanksgiving food is that what makes it Thanksgiving-y isn't the main ingredients, but the spices. Think sage, nutmeg, cinnamon. Mmm... Are you getting that warm feeling in your tummy without even eating anything? If not, go take a whiff of the sage, nutmeg, and cinnamon from your spice rack. Then come back when you're *really* in the mood. Those are the essential ingredients for making something taste like down-home Thanksgiving. Bacon or sausage always helps, too, of course, but that's more of a general, year-round principle and not exclusive to Thanksgiving.

Here's my rice stuffing exploding from a chicken, since I didn't want to make a whole turkey quite this early. I have roasted game hens (tiny chickens) with rice stuffing in them, but I suspect it's too heavy to try cooking in the bird when you're using a turkey. You really don't need to put this in the oven at all, unless you want to heat it up right before eating. If you really want the look of it in the turkey, put it in afterward.

Cranberry Rice Stuffing

3 tablespoons oil
1 small yellow onion, chopped
2 cups rice (I used brown rice)
1 stick cinnamon
1/2 cup wine
6 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon dried ground sage
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup cranberries

Heat the oil in a large pot. Brown the onion pieces in the oil. Add the rice and stir until it has soaked up the oil. Add the wine and cook, stirring occasionally, until the rice has soaked up the wine. Throw in the cinnamon stick. Add the chicken broth, 1/2 cup at a time, waiting to add more until the rice has soaked up the last 1/2 cup. When you add the last 1/2 cup of broth, also add the sage, salt, walnuts, and cranberries. Serve hot, of course.