My Food, Inc. Farmers Market Experiment

The other day I finally watched Food, Inc.

And I was horrified.

Not because of the animal treatment stuff, b/c really, I knew all that already. I guess I actually knew all of it, but seeing it presented in a movie was pretty shocking. How the government subsidizes corn and that's why our beef feeds on corn and that's why our beef has so much e.coli in it. And how Monsanto literally owns the soybean and how they go after anyone who dares try stay GMO-free. And how half of Monsanto's former executive team is infested in our government (including a former counsel on our SUPREME COURT). And the pork packing employees who are RECRUITED in Mexico, helped here illegally, treated like utter garbage, then Smithfield and cohorts make deals with the government to arrest 15 people periodically, so that the company isn't investigated for their recruitment efforts. Anytime you eat Smithfield pork, you're encouraging illegal immigration. UGH.  The problem is that most of the time we are eating it and don't even know it, because they pack stuff for so many other companies. I buy Fresh & Easy bacon often, but I know Tyson packs it (I saw the boxes). I wish I knew who packed Trader Joe's bacon.

Last week after trying local, no hormone, no antibiotic, grass-fed beef at the Studio City Farmers Market, I already decided I would be buying this beef from now on, merely because the taste was incomparable to any supermarket meat.

But what concerns me is that I eat a lot of fruits and veggies. Which is great. But I don't buy much organic, and I'm concerned about all the pesticides I eat. If I eat 4-5 servings EACH of fruits and veggies a day, every single day, that's a lot of pesticides. 

So now, my experiment is to see how much it will cost me every week to buy most of my stuff at the farmers market instead. I'm not that concerned about something like say, grapefruit with a very thick skin. Plus, those are coming from California anyway so I don't feel so badly. the killer will be tomatoes, which I can get cheap at Jon's and not at the farmer's market. But lettuce, things like that, I don't think will cost me very much more. I usually spend about $15 a week at Jon's on fruits and vegetables.  So I will avoid Jon's for the next couple weeks except for a few very select items and see what the difference is. I've always said it would be too expensive to go all farmers market, but I've never really tried.

So we will see.  If it's not that much more expensive, I don't really have an excuse.

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Walnut Swirl Bread

I've made this bread, from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, a couple times now. Felt like making it again. Makes great french toast. This time I added some flaxseed meal into the starter.

Not much more to say than that.....

I made the starter doughs on Saturday per the recipe. Then you mix them together with the final ingredients to make the final dough, then let it rise. In this picture, it has already risen, then you flatten it into a square, put some cinnamon sugar on it, and roll it up to make the swirl inside...

This is what it looked like rolled up, in the loaf pan, before the 2nd rise....

and after the 2nd rise....

and out of the oven....the loaf weighs TWO POUNDS!!! It doesn't look like it should, but it's heavy for its size.

and sliced open....

and delicious! I think this is the third or so time I've made this bread and this is the best one by far. Really tender. I think maybe because I used white whole wheat flour instead of regular hard wheat flour. Anyway, Awesome.

So this is the end of the crazy cooking weekend of April 2010. I'm impressed with myself that I actually managed to get these posts up in a timely manner. Not sure what I will embark on next, but I do know that the library is holding four more Alice Medrich (aka, CHOCOLATE) books for me, with a fifth and a King Arthur Flour Whole Grain book on the way!

By the way, as I made this post, Anthony Bourdain's Food Porn 2 episode is airing. He was at a steakhouse in NYC with a 24-pound perfectly-cooked prime (truly prime) rib. In HD. I want it.

Pizza (can never have enough.)

Yesterday, I made the starter doughs per the recipe in Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. Today, I put them together and completed the dough. Froze 5 of the balls and let one sit in the fridge for tonight's dinner. This time, instead of making 2-3 ounce balls of dough, which makes like one pizza, I made 5.5-6 ounce balls of dough so I can have leftovers each time. Yay!

I also made fresh tomato sauce last night since I was almost out. Today, I also wrestled with my food processor to shred the mozzarella. I refuse to buy pre-shredded cheese because it's got other ingredients in it to keep it dry and separate, plus it's never made with whole milk cheese. And that is the difference between ok pizza and awesome pizza, I have decided. Put it all together and it's ready to go into the oven. Here it is on the pizza stone...

Out of the oven....I made the crust *slightly* thicker than usual, which made it so much easier to handle.

Ready for eating......mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......in Italy, they serve it with raw prosciutto, so, what kind of wannabe Italian would I be if I didn't serve it the same way ;)

Chocolate Nibby Espresso Cookies

Recently took Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate, which is all about cooking with really good dark chocolate, out of the library after having made brownies from the book as posted by one of my favorite blogs Smitten Kitchen. Not too many of the recipes really struck me, but I scanned a few to save, this being one of them. I had bought some cocoa nibs not long ago and had no idea what to do with them, so this recipe seemed perfect. The "espresso" comes from ground coffee beans. I didn't have unsweetened chocolate, but luckily she provides substitution instructions for using 70%, etc., chocolate instead.

When I made the dough on Saturday, I was worried because it was more like a batter than a cookie dough. But the recipe called for it to sit in the fridge anywhere from an hour to four days. So I figured we'd see how it turned out overnight.

Of course, it had a lot of melted butter and chocolate in it so I knew it would harden, and of course, it hardened too much so I left it out to warm up a bit. Then I got impatient so I made a mess digging and scooping and whatnot. Anyway, this is what they looked like beforehand:

Cooked them about 9 min.....as you can see they spread a bit and blistered a little on the top, but I could tell they were still quite soft inside. Fine by me, I'd rather undercook than overcook.

Tried putting some chocolate covered coffee beans I had lying around in some of them while they were still hot...

Needless to say, they're amazing. There's not quite enough coffee flavor, but it's there. And the nibs add a cocoa-y crunch. Delicious.

Falafel (the start of a banner cooking weekend)

No idea what got into me yesterday, but I started cooking, and cooking and cooking. I prepared starter doughs for two breads (pizza dough and cinnamon walnut swirl bread - both whole wheat), made cookie dough, made tomato sauce, and put some dried chick peas in water to soak.

Every time I go to the library, which seems to be quite often lately, I check out the cookbooks for something new and different or something I hadn't seen before. A few days ago I tried The Flexitarian Table: Inspired, Flexible Meals for Vegetarians, Meat Lovers, and Everyone in Between. Not too many recipes interesting to me, but a few caught my eye.

Now that I have a real Cuisinart 7-Cup Food Processor, I could make proper falafel. I liked the flexitarian recipe because it used dried chickpeas and had a lot of good seasonings. I followed the recipe in the book pretty closely except that I used less onion and more garlic. I was a little concerned when i started taking the dough out of the food processor b/c there was no flour or egg or anything, so I wasn't sure how it was going to stick together.... but it did!!! I shallow fried it in grapeseed oil, and it got this nice really crispy crust on it. I was worried I overcooked it....

But then I bit into it, and as you can see, it was just right! Nice and moist and soft inside, REALLY crispy/crunchy outside (I thank the grapeseed oil for that, love frying with it). And all around really good! I froze the rest for 2 future easy quick dinners, hopefully it cooks up after being frozen just as nicely.

Yum! I will be posting photos from the other things I made this weekend soon.

I eat weird lunches

I eat weird lunches
Originally uploaded by debstah1

I think the subject says it all.....3 gourmet cheeses, whole wheat tuscan toast with homemade olive tapenade, farmers market sugar snaps, carrots, a tomato, a handful of raw mixed nuts, and farmers market strawberries, with a can of San Pellegrino limonata (not pictured)... just another weekend lunch for me!

(btw, posted this via Flickr's "blog this" function, worked pretty well!)

Resurrection?

I need to resurrect this blog; I can't believe it has been almost a year and a half since I posted. completely unacceptable, especially since I've been cooking a lot. Baking, making bread, pasta, pizza, chicken, chocolate, lots of chocolate, you name it. I guess I'm just lazy. I had one of the best food experiences of my life in Italy last fall, going to Parma and seeing them make Parmigiano-Reggiano. Now, I refuse to buy anything else. I found a couple of Italian markets in Santa Monica where I have gone a couple times for goodies like amazing olives, pancetta, and even limonata. No, not LEMON SODA :( but San Pellegrino Limonata is pretty close.

Heck, I've even moved since I last posted. This kitchen is small but I have been able to make do.

I even bought a new camera that blows away the one I had before. But I've already had that baby almost a year. No excuses.

I've been going to the Studio City Farmer's Market more and more, almost every Sunday now. It's April, which means strawberry season in California. Picked these babies (delicious babies) up today.





I'm going to try to do better. I must.