2012 Whole Living Healthy Detox: Week 2

Well, week 2 is over, but it was much easier than week 1.  We made quite a few tasty meals.  We started  the week off with a family Christmas party - we brought baked salmon with chimichurri sauce.  We also revamped one of our favorites, lemon pepper shrimp, to be detox-friendly (and MUCH healthier).  Typically, this dish consists of whole wheat orzo and broccoli sauteed with garlic, topped with shrimp in a lemony, peppery, garlicky, buttery sauce.  We left out the orzo and we left out the butter, making the shrimp with only the lemon, pepper, garlic, and a bit of olive oil, so there wasn't much of a sauce.  We were very pleased with the results!

Throughout the week, we also ate our Dark Days meal of beans and cabbage, and I improved upon my favorite smoothie from last week, the Carrot Mango Smoothie, by adding some strawberries to it as well.  We used up the only soup in the freezer that we can eat, a veggie-filled base for Soup au Pistou, to which we added white beans and a cube of basil puree to give it flavor.  One day for lunch at work, I had half a bag of frozen edamame for lunch, which surprisingly filled me up a lot!

I also managed to squeeze in another recipe from Plenty, one of the two featured cookbooks for January.  The recipe is for Saffron Cauliflower, shown up above, which we ate as a side with salmon.  Because you cook the cauliflower, onions, and golden raisins in the oven, covered, the saffron flavor steams into them.  If you really like saffron (I find it overrated, but that's just me) you will probably like this dish.  I would have preferred if the cauliflower mix was left open to roast and crisp up a little, but it was an OK dish.  I probably won't make it again.

This week is week 3, the final week of the detox.  It's going to take all my willpower not to go straight back to sugar and coffee and bacon!  Wish me luck!

Roasted Strawberries

MMM... We made these tasty Roasted Strawberries from Super Natural Every Day.  We quadrupled(!) the recipe and baked them on stoneware.  Because we made so much, there was some extra juice, but we filled the jar with the berries and then with enough liquid to cover them.  We ate them warm over a scoop of fresh ricotta.  I think they would be great with ice cream too.

Heidi's Multigrain Pancakes

It's been a while since we've really cooked.  I find it easier to feel motivated in the beginning of the day, so I went with breakfast.  Heidi's Multigrain Pancakes from Super Natural Every Day - served with fresh local strawberries, sliced.  The leftover whole wheat, oat, and rye buttermilk batter made us a few Monday morning waffles.

Kiwi Strawberry Smoothie

I try to include some milk and yogurt in my diet, but since I don't like milk and you can only stomach so much yogurt, I often use dairy in smoothies to make it tastier.  I found this recipe for Kiwi Strawberry Smoothie in the NY Times Recipes for Health section.  I split a box of Costco kiwis with my mom last week, so I had quite a few of them to use up, and they were great in this smoothie.  It's sweet but mostly tangy and tastes kind of like candy.  It's refreshing but still filling.  I think I'll be making this every time I buy kiwis.

Strawberry Oatmeal

I like to mindlessly read health and fitness articles, and last night I came across a "program" with a "menu" of healthy meals and snacks.  Half of them were boring or contained things I won't so much as look at (canned tuna makes me want to throw up) but I got a few little points of inspiration.  The article also made me want to eat yogurt, which I will go out and get today.

Right now, I'm eating breakfast.  I have resolved (sort of "end-of-year resolutions") to eat more oatmeal and to eat bigger breakfasts in general.  I'm also trying to eat more fruits and vegetables.  I took some inspiration from the article I read last night for this oatmeal recipe (really just the strawberry part) and from an old Cooking Light recipe that had you add wheat germ to oatmeal (I do it all my own way now).


Strawberry Oatmeal
Makes 1 serving

1. In a small saucepan/pot, put 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup vanilla soymilk.
2. Take out a 1/2 cup dry measuring cup.  Spoon in 1 tablespoon wheat germ.  Fill the rest of the cup with old-fashioned rolled oats.  Add this to the saucepan when it starts to simmer, plus a pinch of salt.
3. Put 8 frozen strawberries in a small microwave safe bowl and microwave for 1 minute.  Drain as much liquid as possible (careful, I lost 2 strawberries in the process) and squish them up.
4. When your oatmeal is cooked to your desired consistency, mix in your strawberry smoosh.  Transfer the contents to a small bowl.
5. Take out the spoon you will use to eat with - you should be eating with a small "teaspoon" silverware (regular spoons).  "Measure" one spoonful of sliced almonds and top your bowl with it before digging in.

Optional: add a small spoonful of ground flaxseed.  This is another resolution of mine that I always forget about until the bowl is empty :(

CSA: June 2010

Week 4 (6/3/2010):
- 1 quart strawberries (PYO)
- 1 quart snow peas (PYO)
- 1 lb spinach
- 1 lb swiss chard (rainbow colors!)
- 4 heads of lettuce (2 green leaf, one smaller, tighter head type, and one called "deer tongue!")
- 1/2 lb arugula
- 2 bunches kale (I believe it is the Red Russian variety, different from last week's)

With the last kale of May, we made the kale chips.  They would have been delicious if they weren't so salty!  We may try again sometime, but we have been getting a different variety lately and are not sure how it would work with this type (Red Russian, I think).  The lettuce was, of course, used for salad.  Having just gotten used to having six heads, we went through it pretty fast.  Some spinach and arugula were tossed in for a mixed salad.  The strawberries were eaten quickly.  My sister Deanna made a pasta dish using the spinach, a combination of Jamie Oliver's classic tomato spaghetti and a recipe from Giada with spinach and asiago cheese (the cheese is a new family favorite).

Here is where we started to get lazy.  The kale and chard went unused as did much of the arugula.  The snow peas weren't used until Thursday when the next batch of veg had already stormed our fridge (see below).  We (well, I should probably say I) resolved to make a better effort in the upcoming week.

Berry Pine Nut Salad (29 Minutes to Dinner)

Week 5 (6/10/2010):
- 1 lb spinach
- 1 lb chard
- 6 heads lettuce (1 little weird one, 2 deer tongue, 1 green leaf, 2 red leaf)
- 2 bunches kale
- 1 bunch scallions
- 1 bunch radishes
- 2 heads radicchio
- 1 qt snow/snap peas, 1 pt each (PYO)
- a few sprigs of mint
- 4 summer squash (2 light green zucchini, 2 pattypan)

We made Asian chicken rolls (from the Pampered Chef book Grill it Quick!) on the grill - these are chicken tenderloins rolled up with a long, thin slice of carrot and one of the zucchini as well, secured with a toothpick and coated with Asian seasoning mix and a delicious glaze.  Bits of zucchini and carrot were chopped up in a rice pilaf, with some scallions mixed in.  To go along with this, I made sesame snap peas with carrots and red peppers using last week's snap peas.  That seemed to be a hit, but I thought the peas were too bitter - maybe because we waited so long to use them.  Deanna used up the zucchini we didn't use for the recipe in an omelet. 

My mom had a barbecue with her friends on Saturday, which is when I found the mint which I had forgotten in the bottom of my cooler.  (Oops...)  Fortunately, Ken had trimmed the mint at his parents' house so we were able to make mojitos!  (My favorite drink.  Yum!)  With some of the mixed lettuce and snap peas, we made a Berry Pine Nut Salad from a Pampered Chef cookbook (Berry-Pine Nut Chicken Salad, minus the chicken, from 29 Minutes to Dinner), which also had toasted pine nuts, red onions, blueberries, and a raspberry vinaigrette.  It was a beautiful salad (I made quite a nice presentation, thank you) and everyone seemed to really enjoy it.  (I had it the next day, though, and I did not like it.  Oh well!)  Since it was a barbecue, we also made grilled radicchio.  Some people liked it, some didn't - I think it might have been better if we were able to marinate it.  The next day we had a lot of barbecue leftovers for a lunch with the grandparents, and we added in the roasted spring vegetables, which has become a family favorite and was the exact reason I chose radishes from the choice group this week.  Instead of chives, my mom sprinkled scallions on top.  Later in the week, I used some of the remaining scallions to make the Otsu from Super Natural Cooking (also available on 101 Cookbooks). 

After not eating our kale or chard last week, I decided to take action and get creative.  Since we are sharing all this produce, I usually don't take any of it home - we most often cook at my mom's and eat there, or I bring home the leftovers.  This week, I took home the kale.  I've never really had kale before but I know that it is a nutritional powerhouse, so I really wanted to like it.  I've heard it tastes like and is in the same family as broccoli, so I decided we should try it in one of my favorite dishes - lemon pepper shrimp.  We threw in a little broccoli, just to give us that familiar flavor in case the kale was a flop.  It was delicious!!!  We used one bunch of the kale for that, so we had a bunch left over for the next night's dinner.  I had a bunch of things that I wanted to try, but I settled on a variation of the Matchstick Pasta on 101 Cookbooks.  I left out the pomegranate seeds, crushed all the pistachios for the sauce instead of sprinkling half of them on whole, and didn't break up the pasta.  Mine certainly wasn't as pretty, but it was a very delicious quick and easy weeknight dinner.

 Lemon Pepper Shrimp

Week 6 (6/17/2010):
- 4 heads lettuce (2 green leaf, 2 red leaf)
- 2 bunches kale (1 Red Russian, 1 "regular")
- 2 bunches fennel (about 4 bulbs)
- 4 summer squash (1 light green zucchini, 3 dark green)
- 4 green garlic (bulbs and loooong stems)
- 12 heads broccoli
- 1/2 lb arugula
- a few sprigs each of rosemary, thyme, and oregano, and a bunch of chives (without flowers)

I was excited to see kale in the farm stand this week, since we discovered last week that we loved it, and I hadn't seen it on the list of available items on the farm's distribution blog.  We used it immediately in our lemon-pepper shrimp recipe, along with a few heads of the broccoli and some of the green garlic.  I chose the fennel from the choice group (the other option was the radicchio we weren't crazy about last week) as kind of a Father's Day present for my dad, who loves it and will eat it raw, roasted or grilled.  He finished it all off raw this time.  Deanna came with me this week and was super excited about the fresh herbs.

At the beach, we grilled some of the zucchini and last week's pattypan squash.  We chopped a bulb of the garlic to eat with steamed green beans - delicious!  For a quick and easy dinner when we got home on Sunday night, we made the Almond Soba Noodles from 101 Cookbooks using some of the broccoli.

Grilled Zucchini and Pattypan Squash

Week 7 (6/24/2010):
- 4 bulbs green garlic
- 2 heads broccoli
- 1 lb chard
- 2 bunches kale (regular variety)
- 2 bunches fennel
- 1 Chinese cabbage
- 1 bunch onions
- 6 heads lettuce (4 red, 1 different type of red, 1 deer tongue)

I have been trying to share with my family - it's hard for me not to snatch up everything I want and take it home with me.  I try to leave some, maybe even most, of the weekly produce for them.  However, I am discovering more and more that I eat a lot more vegetables than they do.  Last week after splitting the 12 heads of broccoli (6 for the two of us, 6 for the four of them) we used ours up fairly quickly, while they had some left over.  (We took it down the shore and made a salmon version of our lemon pepper shrimp to finish it off.)  I was disappointed to see only 2 heads of broccoli this week - it's one of my favorites.  We finished it off in our lemon pepper shrimp recipe, of course, with some kale in there as well.

I chose fennel again for my dad, which he ate raw again, and he says he's not sick of it yet.  I brought home the kale and chard for myself this week - I don't think we've eaten any chard yet this season and we've been collecting it for weeks.  It has a much better shot of getting cooked, much less eaten, at my house than at my mom's.  Plus, last week's bunch of regular-variety kale, which Deanna insisted on taking to make kale chips at the expense of my enjoying the red variety, is still in their fridge.  We ended up having some chard sauteed with garlic, kind of like spinach.  It was pretty good, but didn't blow me away.  I used up the rest of the chard, including the stems, in Walnut Miso Noodles.

The lettuce and onions were used in a salad - the onions were particularly delicious.  (My dressing recipe has evolved into something amazing: 1/2 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup white balsamic, a clove or two of garlic, a shallot, two moderate and controlled squeezes of dijon mustard, and salt and pepper.  Easy, classy and so delicious.)  The garlic was, unfortunately, forgotten at the beach, so hopefully it's still good next weekend.  I would like to look for more raw uses.  The Chinese cabbage was forgotten by everyone, so maybe it will turn up in next month's post.

Ma France Creperie

This is my blog, and so I can write about whatever I want.  Whether or not anyone reads it, I write it mostly for myself and so I can choose whatever topics I want.  Mostly I write about things I have made, but I want to write about some things that inspire me as well.

When I visited France, I was a vegetarian.  They don't understand what that means.  Most conversations went like this:
"I'm a vegetarian, I don't eat meat."
"So chicken, OK?"
"No, I don't eat meat.  Chicken is meat."
"Then fish?"
"No, I don't eat meat.  Fish is meat."

Then I ended up eating delicious, but not so nutritious "crepes avec Nutella" literally every day for lunch.

There is a little place in Ocean City called Ma France Creperie that brings that back for me.  Even after a week of "crepes avec Nutella" I wasn't sick of them.  Sweet crepes... mmm.  We've been there a handful of times and I've gotten to try some delicious varieties of dessert crepes.  (Savory crepes, and savory breakfasts in general, do not appeal to me at all.)  I've had the simply prepared sweet crepes with lemon juice and powdered sugar, the "tatin," with grated apple, the "Melba," with sliced pears and a delectable homemade dark chocolate sauce.

 La Pomme Figue

This past weekend Ken wanted to go, which worked out perfectly since I was hungry, and he ordered a classic - La Pomme Figue, which I'm fairly certain is the only thing he's ever ordered there, and if you could taste it you would understand why.  Sliced apples, sliced dried figs, brie cheese and almonds folded neatly in a dark, buckwheat crepe.  This is what I meant when I said I wanted to write about things that inspire me - I would love to find a way to recreate this at home.  I'm not sure it's possible, but I would certainly like to try.

Crepes with Nutella, fresh fruit and whipped cream

I ordered the crepes with Nutella, fresh fruit and whipped cream.  I walked in desperately wanting Nutella and bananas, but that particular combination wasn't on the menu.  When my plate arrived in front of me I saw a mound of sliced strawberries - yum.  I was fairly satisfied, but as I dug deeper into the dish I found the sliced bananas I had been wanting.  It was amazing.  The whipped cream was delicious, too - something I can normally do without, but it had a fantastic texture and wasn't too sweet at all.


They have some lovely espresso drinks as well - Ken likes the caffe ligeois, espresso with whipped cream.  I had a soy mocha.  I love how they serve the lattes in a bowl.  :)

CSA: May 2010

My family joined an organic CSA this year.  I had been looking into doing this anyway, but I don't like doing things all by myself, especially when they involve waking up early and driving long distances weekly and having to cook more food than I can eat without really knowing what it will be until I get it.  So since my family has been going organic and trying to eat more healthy foods (thanks to my influence, although I haven't been able to blockade the house from Oreos and such) I talked to my mom about it and she signed us up.  She wasn't (and still isn't) quite as excited about it as I am, and probably isn't pleased with the flood of emails I am sending her every time the farm updates its website showing what is available this week, or the fact that I try to confirm our departure time (8:30AM, right? right? will you be ready?) every time we speak.  But we have had a good time so far, especially with the pick-your-own strawberries :)

I thought it might be nice, and probably helpful to us or someone else later on, if I document what we've been getting in our share and how we used it.  I figure I'll keep it to a monthly update so as not to bore you TOO much.

Week 1 (5/13/2010)
- 1 quart strawberries (PYO)
- a handful of mint
- 1/2 lb arugula

Week 2 (5/20/2010)
- 1 pint strawberries (PYO)
- a few sprigs of mint, thyme, oregano, catnip
- a bunch of chives with purple flowers :)  (see photo)
- 1 lb arugula
- 6 heads (!) green leaf lettuce

Week 3 (5/27/2010)
- 1/2 lb arugula
- 2 lbs spinach
- 6 heads of lettuce (2 green, 4 red)
- a few sprigs of mint and rosemary
- a bunch of chives
- 2 quarts strawberries (PYO)
- 1 pint snap peas (PYO)
- 1 bunch kale
- 1 bunch radishes
- 2 heads of bok choy

The strawberries have been eaten out of hand.  There haven't been enough so far to frustrate us into doing anything else with them.  Jersey strawberries are notably different from the giant monster California strawberries in the supermarket in that they are vine-ripened by the sun.  How can you tell?  That white core in the middle of your supermarket strawberries shouldn't be there.  You should have a red berry all the way through.  Those berries are picked white in California or Florida and shipped over to you, ripening in the truck on the way and sitting in the back of the store if they're not ripe enough.  Just another reason to choose local foods whenever possible.  Now that I've said my piece, I am hoping the strawberries will be around for another few weeks in copious amounts so that I can try my hand at canning in a hot water bath to preserve some of these delicious treats for the winter.

I happen to love arugula and its peppery flavor so I was THRILLED when I saw it in the farm stand.  In the beginning of the season, there usually isn't much down there, and you mostly go for the PYO stuff.  I was so excited to see something down there!  I first reached for one of my favorite recipes, Ottolenghi Red Rice and Quinoa, which is meant to be served over arugula.  The recipe makes quite a bit and I was able to eat this several times over the next few days.  This was awesome because I got to really taste the arugula - it was the BEST arugula I have ever had, hands down.  What a difference it makes to eat fresh greens the very day they were picked.  The following week I made an arugula pesto using a recipe from my mom's new Cooking Light book (one of my new favorites) which is organized by season.  By week 3 I was getting sick of it, since apparently I'm the only one who wants to eat arugula.  I ended up making another pesto from a neat book I got as a gift called New Flavors for Vegetables.  It's a Williams-Sonoma book.  It's meant for a recipe where you saute little yellow pear tomatoes and toss them with the pesto and feta cheese, but I just stuck it in the freezer (tomatoes aren't here yet).  I did taste a bit and it was delicious - I liked it better than the first pesto I made.  (You can read more about my arugula pesto in my post about it - when I get to posting it!)

The herbs are such a departure from those sold in the supermarket and even in our local farm markets.  It is amazing what a difference it makes!  The thyme was used in another recipe from the above mentioned Cooking Light book, a chicken breast stuffed with caramelized scallions, thyme and goat cheese with a delicious pan sauce poured over top.  The chives were served at the same meal, in another dish from the same book, sprinkled atop balsamic roasted spring vegetables.  The mint was used in mojitos, a zucchini fritatta, and cucumber and mint tea sandwiches for Mom's reading group.  The oregano was substituted for dried in our Four-Cheese Baked Penne (from Ellie Krieger's So Easy).  And of course Chipotle got the catnip :)

What do you do with 6 heads of lettuce?  Eat a LOT of salad.  Luckily, with 7 people down the shore we were able to finish off a big bowl of it.  I made a delicious balsamic vinaigrette from Clean Food, where I replaced the agave nectar with dijon mustard and emulsified it in a blender.  My little sister loved it so much she actually took home the tiny bit that was left over.  The great thing about freshly picked lettuce such as this is that it keeps longer than the lettuce you see in the store, so we weren't rushing to finish it and even after a few days it still looked much fresher than the storebought lettuce I had gotten a few days earlier (before I knew we would soon be swimming in greens).  By the second week of lettuce, I was doing mental calculations about how much we would each have to eat to get rid of all this lettuce by the next week - as a family, we would have to eat a head per day.  One woman in the farm stand said she was eating lettuce for breakfast, lunch and dinner!  I am glad we didn't take it quite that far.

I made a wrap on lavash bread using some of the lettuce, a few leaves of spinach, feta, roasted red peppers, and hummus.  It was pretty yummy.  The greens tasted really fresh.  I used only 3 or 4 leaves of the spinach, though.  Luckily, 2 lbs of spinach may sound like a lot, but it cooks down substantially! We had it cooked with garlic and olive oil with steak and potatoes.

I made the bok choy according to a recipe from New Flavors for Vegetables.  The recipe has you sautee the bok choy with sliced garlic and red pepper flakes and tosses it with toasted sesame seeds.  It was too spicy, so next time I would use less for sure, but I might make it again.  It would be nice with a drizzle of sesame oil to finish as well. 

Snap peas were much more fun to pick than strawberries!  Less leaves, less bugs, easier to reach.  We used them in one of our current favorite recipes for a Pork and Mango Stir Fry from So Easy.  (Someone has posted the recipe here.)

There were two types of radishes available - regular red ones and French breakfast - and we selected the more interesting bunch.  The week before, we had purchased regular radishes for a roasted baby spring vegetable recipe from the seasonal Cooking Light book, so we tried it again with these.  They were a bit more bitter.  I would probably choose the regular type next time.  None of us like raw radishes, but they are yummy when roasted.

We forgot about our little bunch of kale -- we were only reminded by two new bunches from the first June pickup.  We plan to use the older bunch to make kale chips.

Strawberry Spinach Salad

Today for lunch I made a delicious salad with baby spinach, sliced strawberries, a handful of sliced almonds, and a honey balsamic vinaigrette (the recipe: 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp balsamic, generous squeeze of honey, at least 1 tsp).

Sorry there are no pictures, but it looked so good I totally forgot about it.