farm fresh & randoms

My friend C shocked me the other day by declaring how much meat she and her husband eat. I guess given our mostly vegetarian diet I forgot that we’re a minority. I’m still wrapping my head around it and hope I didn’t offend her. I’ll try to provide better indications of what we eat to maybe give her (and others) inspiration but if I haven’t written it down that day I’ll probably forget.

I love farm fresh foods. I grew up near a nice farm and my mum (and to some degree, I) spent several summers working there (it wasn’t pleasant at all, farm stands are much nicer these days — mum spent most of the day in the hot of the sun standing (I discovered later with her knees locked] and dealing with rude people coming out to “the country” from “the city” [which I now call home]. We weren’t paid very well either, but it was better than no income.). I’m still pretty much sick of corn (we got it for free), but have a very difficult time with most of the produce found in the local stores. Some stores are better than others. I’ve been making an effort to frequent the farmer’s markets in NYC (hopefully healthier meals and I help smaller businesses). Friday I stopped by the Union Square market and picked up fresh lettuces, spinach, cucumber, radishes, and some awesome strawberries. A few weeks ago I bought edamame there and put it in the freezer as I just couldn’t work it into my “planning”. The “good” store near me had Canadian tomatoes so I picked those up while looking forward to the first flats to come in.

For lunch on Friday I made a simple meal of grilled tilapa and a browned herbed butter into which i sautéed some fresh spinach. Oh it was amazing. I grew up eating a large amount of fish (as it was really fresh, abundant, and thus cheap) but E doesn’t like fish unless in stick form so I haven’t had much lately. Since I work from home on Fridays (which is how I had the leisure to visit the Union Square market) I took advantage of it to enjoy some fish from my freezer since the smell would be gone when E came home. Not as fresh as I’d like but I’ll take what I can get.

Last night for shabbos, I made a wonderful simple Edamame Rice. I didn’t have any sake** on hand so I substituted rice vinegar instead. This turned out to be a wonderful light dinner after a hot late spring day. We concluded the meal with fresh strawberries. How wonderful! I should add that I altered the recipe by only cooking a cup of rice instead of what the recipe calls for. We still had leftovers (which suprised me, it didn’t look like much).

[photopress:edamame1.jpg,thumb,pp_image] [photopress:edamame2.jpg,thumb,pp_image] [photopress:edamamerice.jpg,thumb,pp_image]

For lunch (I have no pictures since it was shabbos) we had a salad from my pickings and topped it was roasted garlic and basil goat cheese. YUM! (The only thing missing was a yummy fresh thick crusty bread. Something I probably shouldn’t be eating anyway).

** heschered sake is possible to find but is generally out of my normal route. Plus E rarely will drink it and while I don’t mind a bottle of sake it is too much for me alone.

I’ve been tagged a ton for the 7 random things meme (I feel special and loved. Thank you). I decided to make this response to it food related.

1. I will not put milk in my cereal. I was allergic to milk until age 6. As the wonderful soy and rice milks didn’t exist where I lived then (did they exist at all?) I was on baby formula. Trust me, you do not want to put that on cereal. Along with that I like cheerios and grape nuts the best. see #4 below.
2. I *LOVE* ginger ale. I hate pickled ginger.
3. I love most mushrooms.
4. I think plain rice, rice cakes, matzoh, etc have amazing flavours. see also #1 above.
5. I had a hard time dipping ANYTHING into a liquid for years. I now love grilled cheese into tomato soup. see also #1 above.
6. I love cheeses. They have been the more difficult thing for me since becoming fully kosher in college. I miss a good mozzarella and parmesan, also a proper swiss and sharp cheddar. I’m very picky about which brands of kosher cheese I like. Haolam is the best for most cheeses.
7. I am trying to eat better. To me this means less processed foods and a better balance of portions throughout the day. It also means making sure I get the nutrients I should be. I am not sure if this makes me weird or not.
8. I supposedly have a wheat intolerance. I fight with it every day as I love fresh bread.

If you want to do this meme consider yourself tagged. If you tagged me, I will be doing another one of these eventually (I think that will cover my 3 tags).. Thank you for making me feel loved. :)

• Category: food