Thursday, June 27, 2013

Quinoa, Avocado and Nectarine Salad


The cup of red quinoa doubles in volume when cooked, but is still trumped by all the veggies, herbs, fruit and nuts in this delicious salad. Sub mangoes or cantaloup for nectarines. 
As a carb avoider, I try to mitigate starchy stuff, such as brown rice or quinoa, by adding loads of flavorful-vitamin-and-fiber-rich veggies and fruits, the idea being that fiber slows down weight-gain-inducing blood sugar spikes. Quinoa is a tad more virtuous than brown rice, and is much less sticky, hence I've been experimenting with a variety of quinoa salads inspired, in part, by a recipe from Two Peas and Their Pod. The quinoa salad recipe below is about one part quinoa to three parts veggies, fruit and nuts. It tastes divine and, with all the veggies, is relatively low carb.
Just two cups of quinoa (one cup uncooked) and piles of veggies and fruit dressed in lime, mint, cumin and olive oil make enough salad to please a potluck crowd.

Quinoa, Avocado, and Nectarine Salad

  • 1 cup uncooked quinoa. I like the nuttier flavor of red or black, but white is OK
  • 2 cups water
  • Pinch of salt

Cooking the quinoa

I've learned that most quinoa sold in the USA is already rinsed, but just in case, I rinse it anyway. Dump it into a fine strainer and swish it around in a bowl of water. Transfer into a pot with a lid, add the 2 cups of water and a dash of salt, heat covered over medium to a gentle boil, turn the heat to low, and cook for 15 minutes, or until water has disappeared. (If you start on high heat, the quinoa boils up and sticks to the side of the pan. you won't like it.) Remove lid and fluff with a fork. It works well to cook the quinoa ahead and let it cool before adding all the stuff below.

Warning: This recipe is designed for a crowd—it'll feed up to 12 people. Cut by a half or two-thirds for four servings or less. Most quinoa salads will keep well for a few days, but the avocados and nectarines give this salad a shorter life. 
Don't be scared off by all the ingredients, and do NOT run to the store if you're missing something. (Running to the garden is permitted.) You really can't go wrong. Substitute what you have on hand, or leave things out.  

Ingredients

  • 3 medium to large ripe nectarines or peaches, cut into chunks. They should be ripe but not soft. Mangoes are a great alternative in this salad. Add these and the avocados last.
  • 2 large red, yellow or orange sweet peppers, or enough small sweet peppers to equal 1 1/2 to 2 cups chopped into medium-sized pieces.
  • 1 medium sweet onion or four or five green onions, diced.
  • large handful of fresh pea pods, cut into pieces. (I used these only because they're going crazy in the garden. If you don't have them, no worries.) 
  • 2-3 medium avocados, cut into chunks and drizzled with lime juice. Set aside and add last. Slice a half of an avocado to decorate the top, if you want a jazzy presentation. Be sure to sluice slices with lime so they don't turn blackish and look like turds.
  • 1/2 cup slivered almonds
  • 6 or 7 chard leaves, center stem removed. Roll and slice into thin strips, then cut strips in half.
  • 1-2 tablespoons fresh spearmint, minced. Cilantro or basil are good substitutes.
  • 1-2 tablespoons fresh  flat Italian parsley, minced.

Dressing

  • 1/3 cup fresh lime juice
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • salt and pepper to taste

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Mid-June Garden is Messy. But Good


These cabbage plants were started from seed in the solarium months ago. I wish I had a photo of when they were transplanted because they looked sick, sad and saggy and I feared for their survival. After a month of clinging to life, I gave them a good shot of organic fertilizer, the sun decided to help out, and now they're prize specimens, despite the weeds nipping at their heels. We already have enough homemade sauerkraut to create gas for the entire neighborhood, so we'll likely eat these in salads and soups. They'll stay crisp and pretty in the garage refrigerator for a few months. In the background, peppers cry out for sun and heat, which we haven't had much of for several days.  
This is a mess of perennials. The yellow flowers were planted at least 25 years ago. The lilies, just emerging, are more recent, maybe 10 years. So much of what's out there has its own life, its own mind, its own mess. Especially the pernicious weeds, which are currently overcome by the perennials. Despite the appearance that the flowers are victorious over the weeds, I spend several hours a year beating back the invaders. 
Oh the joy! The first zukes create a big culinary
hot flash, but it's over quickly—as soon as 
production outpaces pent-up demand. This 
happens quickly.
We planted five or six onions varieties, some sweets to eat right away
and keepers that will last until next spring. Garlic is in the background.

Blueberries planted five years ago are coming on strong. The
challenge is keeping them picked before the birds swoop in. 
The first raspberries of 2013. Goldens are super sweet, the best!
Lowly chard protected from evil finches with wire fencing AND wire mesh. We've left the poor beets uncovered, and they're being ravaged by those little bastards. Early chard is a miracle of tender sweetness and super productivity. This small patch can be harvested every other day!
 We eat it all in salads, stir fries and smoothies. Yes, smoothies. 

The peas have passed their peak and I noticed some yellowing leaves today as I was picking. (I also noticed slugs. See below) We planted too many peas. I quit freezing them because they just don't taste that good. But residents and caregivers at my mom's assisted living place love em fresh from the garden. The ability to give produce away is part of the fun of gardening. Did I say "fun"? Hmmm. Not quite. Let's say pleasure, satisfaction, gratification. What is fun? Dancing.
I rustled these juicy slugs from beneath the peas after today's rain 
flushed them out of hiding. They're about to die. No salt. 
Garden shears do the deed quickly. 
Every plant in this photo is a volunteer or a perennial. The birds "plant" sunflowers all around, perhaps in thanks for all the sunflower seeds they devour in their fall frenzy. 
A lot more labor intensive than the flower bed is the main garden: peppers, onions, peas, beans, tomatoes, eggplants, zucchinis, winter squash, melons, potatoes, cabbage, kale, chard, cucumbers. Weeds.
My second favorite volunteer after sunflowers—cosmos. I give them
 an assist by relocating them into clusters. 
We're having a cool wet spell, which is fine for the garden. When summer returns it will explode with growth, and ripe tomatoes will soon appear. I can't wait for the first Caprese salad. The basil and tomatoes are going to quiver with juiciness and joy, ecstatic when the sun comes back. Me too, as on my way to harvest tomatoes and basil, the lilies and poppies will shimmer with light and we will all smile in our own way.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Camp Cooking on the River

This simple but delicious camp meal was a breeze. I marinated the London broil and made the quinoa, avocado and mango salad at home. Our garden peas were stir fried tender crisp with butter and spring onions. 
I wasn't always a food Nazi, but now that I am, kinda, I see no reason to eat anything camping that I wouldn't ordinarily consume. PK and I are moving toward "later life", but we still sleep on the ground in a tent, stumble outside in the dark seeking nighttime bladder relief, and cook under what some might consider primitive conditions so we can spend a few days rafting and camping on the banks of Oregon's Wild and Scenic Rogue River, which is literally in our backyard. We've also done self-guided trips on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, on the Snake River between Oregon and Idaho, and on Idaho's Middle Fork of the Salmon through the Frank Church Wilderness. Every trip, we have to cook, and, most often, enjoy (or endure) the cooking of our companions. 
 A few of you may have read a post I wrote in August 2009 in which I declared a hiatus from river trips. Obviously I have come around. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip described here. Of course, we had benevolent weather and there were just four of us. It was heaven. It will be my one river trip this year. More than that, and I could get sick of river trips for the reasons described in the earlier post.

But back to camp cooking. We do not suffer. Through the years we've developed a proper kitchen that weighs a ton and is getting harder to sling around as the years accumulate. However, once it's set up, it's deluxe.
This custom-made aluminum box holds enough cookware, cutlery and
dinnerware for preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner for about 16 people. 
But eeeuuwww. I don't like those big groups anymore.
Fellow camper and friend of 30-some years, Linda Shonk, is up at the crack heating water for our morning beverages in the camp kitchen. The rectangular thing on the ground by the camp chairs is a fire pan, a mandated piece of equipment to save beaches from fire rings. We barbecued our London broil over it, using a portable grill. The small boat between the rafts got away from another group. We secured it on the beach for them to find. Hope they did!
We haul a giant cooler packed with anything we want to eat or drink. And I mean anything. On one trip, another couple prepared a salt-encrusted prime rib roast on a 100-degree day! (They later divorced, and that may have been the reason.) We've had stuffed cornish game hens, eggs Benedict with hollandaise made from scratch, pork roast, lasagna, cherry cobbler, chocolate cake—whatever will fit into a Dutch oven, over a grill or into industrial-sized cooking pots or fry pans.
The homemade table folds up as does the muslin utensil organizer.
As usual, rocks become part of the kitchen. 
Here's PK, always ready to ply his companions with quality tequila.
After the big rapids, of course. 
Cocktail hour after a tough day of floating class 2 and 3 rapids. Linda and I also hiked several miles on the Rogue River Trail. Note the crowds. For an appetizer we made fresh guacamole with plenty of lime, salt and chopped sweet onion eaten with blue corn chips. 
Our home for the night in our vintage Moss tent. Ahhhh.
PK packing up the kitchen on day two as we prepare to move downstream.
Here I am at our second and last camp enjoying a cold drink and cool river on a hot day.
My bikini days are long over, by the way. I'm now a cover-up girl.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Poems for Ordinary People - guest blog

I love the book Poems for Ordinary People by Carol Allis. So does my sister, Monette Johnson, who turned me on to Carol's poetry a year ago, at least, when Carol's book was published. She offered then to write a guest blog, but I said, oh no, I love Carol's  poetry, and poetry in general, and I will do it. Well. I didn't. My feelings about poetry are complicated. I have a long history with it. I love it. I hate it. I want it. Anyway. Here's a lovely piece written by my dear sister. I hope you enjoy, and that you consider installing Carol Allis' book in your library. Mary K. 

By Monette Johnson
If you're like me and mostly avoid poetry because you find much of it esoteric, pretentious, bewildering and just plain don't get it, meet Carol Allis. 
Carol writes "Poems for Ordinary People" as her first book title announces, and there's not an esoteric, pretentious or bewildering line to be found. Her poems speak to ordinary folks like most of us --

ordinary poets
Is there poetry for ordinary people
You know
Waitresses and nurses
People who clean floors and fix roads
And string cable and make sandwiches
And sing good-night songs
And go off to work every day
To pay for groceries and bicycles
Just ordinary people
Who hear the rhythm and music
Of ordinary life every day
Who don't have time
To ponder navels
Dissect complex phrases
Or analyze a line to death
People who think in poetry every day
But don’t have time to write it down
And not much time to read
Catching lines on the fly
That kind of poetry


Carol Allis
Carol grew up in a household where poems were read regularly at her grandmother's dinner table. She started writing them herself after her father gave her a manual typewriter when she was seven, teaching herself to type using both index fingers (a method that serves her well to this day).

I've known Carol since the 1980s when I hired her to work as a writer in the hospital Public Relations Department I headed. She was a late applicant because of a bureaucratic screw-up by the County Personnel (before we all became human resources) Department which had informed her she failed the writing test.

Testament to her persistence, she challenged their results ("I've never failed a test in my life.") and sure enough, they'd made a mistake. I knew within two minutes of starting her interview that she was the right person for the job. What I didn't know until reading her inscription in my copy of her book ("Thank you for mentoring me in my first writing job; you helped me believe in myself.") is that, well, it was her first writing job.

Didn't matter a bit.  Not only was she the best writer I ever hired, she was the fastest and most productive. I believe she invented multi-tasking before it became a catchword.

Even though we worked together for five years, I didn't know she wrote poetry until a year or so before her book was published when I read some of her poems online. My first thought was damn, these are good, hope she finds a publisher.

Fortunately the North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc., St. Cloud, Minnesota, came through and published the book late last year. Readings at area bookstores and book clubs ensued with the books selling out at each location. (She began taking more copies to each reading.)

Her book is divided into topics: Ordinary Poets, Outrage, Love, Family, Thinking too Much, Hurting, Hooked, Loss, Respite, Reflections, and The Light Side. When I started writing this, I paged through and re-read a number of poems at random. Despite having read them before, I found myself choking up over several, smiling at more.  Here's one of the smilers:


body parts
Write a poem
About a body part
(the assignent was)

I thought and thought
Which part?
Which one is my favorite?
Some of mine
Haven't been used lately . . .

Tennis muscles
Racquetball ligaments
Torn hamstrings
Hairline-fractured ankles
And . . . other parts . . .
Parts that go unused
When love is on the skids . . . 

Well, one thing's functioning
The heart beats on
Despite the varied struggles
Of injured, aching, waning
Body parts
And the brain, of course

But here are all these other body parts
Waiting for jump starts

Carol retired a couple of months ago from her job as a public information officer "translating governmentalize into words ordinary people can understand."  Now she can spend more time translating life experience into the kind of poetry ordinary people can understand.

For more poems:  PoemsforOrdinaryPeople.com
The book is available at Amazon.com.

Read one of my favorites from Carol's book. MK

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Spring Smoothie - A Sorta Low-Carb Breakfast


I've developed a major taste for breakfast smoothies. Why didn't I catch on to this easy, delicious and nutrient-packed meal-in-a-glass earlier? Better late..., as the saying goes. I have the luxury of not having to charge off to work or feed kids or pack lunches—retired, ya know—but smoothies are an excellent and relatively carefree answer to making sure everybody gets out the door with enough fuel to last until lunch without the mid-morning crash created by the typical bowl of cereal.

For low-carbers, smoothies are the bomb. You can omit bananas and use just berries and/or cantaloupe for fruit. I've been doing the low-carb thing for so many years I kinda just know what to eat and what's off limits. I'm not trying to lose weight (except by cutting way back on drinking wine) so I throw a frozen banana in for sweetness and texture. What the hell. A half of a banana isn't going to plump me too much. We are enjoying fresh strawberries now, and will until fall, but frozen berries from the store are perfectly fine.

Kale in smoothies? You betcha. I load it up and defy anyone to detect it.
It does add a green tinge and TONS of vitamins and minerals and fiber. I am sad for
the day, coming soon, when kale will be out of season in our garden.
 But wait! We'll have chard! 

Two coffee cups full of smoothie goodness. More awaits in the blender.

A cracker or two spread with peanut or almond butter goes
great with smoothies. These are tasty and ridiculously low-carb.
Two crackers = 13.1 g carbs and 3.8 g fiber.  
This smoothie could be enjoyed any time of the year, it's just that we have so much KALE and the strawberries are coming on and well, it is May, so this a spring smoothie. And it is breakfast several days a week, enjoyed with two rye crackers spread with peanut or almond butter.
Spring Smoothie
As usual, this "recipe" is a guide. Use what you have and what you like. A lot of smoothie recipes—and there are THOUSANDS online, list four or five ice cubes as ingredients. I'm not sure why. I'd rather toss in some frozen fruit. I've never found water to be particularly satisfying.
This amount serves three easily. I don't have a big enough blender for a crowd. I don't precisely measure anything—these are approximations. That's the great thing about smoothies. You can make them up as you go along and correct after all is blended. Have fun! And remember to add kale, spinach, chard, or another nutrient-packed green. Don't tell anybody and see if they can detect it. Bet not.

Ingredients

2 cups, more or less, berries: black, blue, straw, rasp, and maybe some stone-free cherries thrown in for sweetness

1 RIPE banana, frozen is best
1 small handful of raw walnuts, almonds, cashews or other nuts
2-3  cups of torn-up kale, stems removed
1/2 - 1 tsp vanilla to pump up flavor
2 cups coconut, almond or soy milk* approximately, or a combination thereof
1/2 cup half and half (skip if you're calorie adverse. Add ice cubes instead! Or more coconut milk.)
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 scoop protein powder, I use vanilla-flavored whey protein and/or organic pumpkin protein, a local product that I discovered at the Growers and Crafters market in Grants Pass, OR.
1-2 tablespoons of pure maple syrup or honey. Substitute equivalent stevia powder or other sugar substitute to save calories/carbs. Adjust to taste.

*I've recently been advised by a healthcare practitioner to eliminate dairy products. I have not complied all the way, but have cut back by using these alternatives. I like them!

Directions
If you're using frozen fruit, put some in the blender at night to thaw and add the rest  in the morning. Toss in the banana, pour in the liquids and yogurt and kale and protein powders and everything else and blend thoroughly. Serve in cups or bowls. Refrigerate leftovers and use within a couple of days.