say it ain't so: solstice market cancelled.

ah, mother nature. she giveth the vegetables, and she taketh them away. the last portland farmer's market of the season (tomorrow) was cancelled due to the threat of inclement weather. we've been experiencing what the local news media likes to refer to as an ARCTIC BLAST for the last week or so, but thing might actually be messy on saturday. sigh.

organica deluxe cookies

so, my blog sponsor, foodbuzz? they asked me if they should send me free cookies in exchange for a review. "uh, okay," i said. never having said no to a free cookie before, i wasn't about to start now. so, they sent me two ginger cookies from organica deluxe to try out.

in this big shoebox-looking thing. filled with peanut packing. now, apparently, this packing situation means that your cookies arrive intact, but it just seems like overkill. does the technology not exist to ship cookies without breakage in a small envelope? no? anyone? any cookie packaging engineers out there?

also, when packing peanuts are involved, that means i have to make an extra trip to a shipping store to have them re-used. even if they're cornstarch and bio degradable. that's my time that could be better used elsewhere.

oh, well.

anyways.

the cookies were good! to be honest, i'm never going to reach for a ginger cookie first. the ginger flavor wasn't too strong, which was a plus for me, but maybe not for ginger lovers. they're soft cookies, with a wonderful melt-in-your mouth consistency. i have the feeling that there isn't much flour in them, or that maybe they use cake flour. the flavor balance was spot on for my tastes - a little molasses, a little ginger, a little vanilla, and great quality organic ingredients.

so, in short, a great cookie, but the packaging? nice effort, but needs work.

jealous?

our "plan a" for saturday night was foiled when the movie we wanted to see was sold out, so i came up with a delicious plan b: dessert at pix patisserie. for some reason, i'd never been there. it was about time.

i had an amelie, with orange vanilla crème brûlée, glazed chocolate mousse, caramelized hazelnuts, praline crisp, and cointreau génoise. oh yeah. brian had the shazam! with caramel mousse, salted almonds, and chocolate almond cake. maybe we should have shared a dessert, but we both made it through our individual cakes and coffees. all together, we paid just about what you would for two tickets to a mainstream movie theatre.

next time, i'm going for the tarte manage a trois. ooh la la, indeed! because we ARE going back.

and hey, look at that! they have gift certificates!

of course, i've been doing a little of my own cooking, too.

scrambled eggs with tortilla strips. scramble tip: don't shred your cheese. chunk it. that way, you'll use less and taste it more.

wontons from a trip to fubonn. you'll hear more about this.

congrats, mari!

i just got my january issue of vegetarian times in the mail, featuring a recipe by my friend mari. check out the reader recipe for black bean and plaintain burritos on page 12, and the recipe for spicy mango salsa online. check out her blog, too.

now i feel like i oughta cook something other than beans and rice or pasta. man, have i been unimaginative lately. i need a culinary kick in the pants.

mari makes this crazy cream cheese/coconut cream base for dessert pizza. it's the best.

maybe she'd like to send the recipe along?

hint?

portlanders: more chances to eat and cook local!

while most farmer's markets are closed for the season, in portland, we're lucky enough to have temperate climate good for growing diverse crops. those wagon trains didn't trek across the oregon trail for nothing.

the portland farmer's market at portland state university is running through december. there aren't nearly as many vendors as at the peak of summer, but the crowds are more sparse, too. a few weeks ago i picked up a box of cookies from two tarts at the market. never a bad choice. they have a storefront now, due to their success at the market, so check them out. one tiny, but beautifully made and carefully crafted cookie will satisfy better than a huge chocolate chip monstronsity. take it from someone who rarely says no to the monstronsity. i reccomend the pecan tessie - like a tiny pecan pie, but without the corn syrup.

when the portland market closes in december, no need to worry. there's a market in hillsdale running every two weeks through april. i haven't been to this one yet, and it's not as centrally located, but i look forward to something local and delicious in january.

happy thanksgiving!

i'll just run down the short list of what i'm thankful for this year. or this morning.

an awesome husband who, among other things, makes me coffee every morning. it's good today, babe.

not having to cook today.

being back in portland, with friends to go out with wednesday night, and family on thursday.

friends and family who might happen to be in other places.

rollerskates.

crisp apples.

apple pie.

portland farmer's market.

being temporarily employed.

having the opportunity to buy organic, fresh foods.

dry november days in the willamette valley.

the portland trailblazers' season.

president-elect barack obama.

what are your highlights?

lemon sticks?

when these candied citrus peels are made out of oranges, you call them orange sticks or orangettes. what about lemon? lemon sticks?

i intended to make orangettes last weekend, but the organic oranges at our local store looked terrible. yellow, sickly, sad...no go. please, if you're going to go candy some citrus, make it organic. poisons aren't going to get blanched out. or, maybe they would, but would you take that chance? anyways, i got a few lemons instead for my little experiment. i got the basic recipe from the smitten kitchen, but blanched the peels three times. by the second time, the blanching water started turning yellow.

yum! there was still a little bitterness to the lemon, but just enough to keep it sophisticated. bitter enough that you wanted to eat one, but not 5 at one sitting. they also mellowed quite a bit in the next few days.

does anyone have any super-cool dipping tricks? i just used my fingers, not having given it any thought whatsoever, and being in a hurry. i'm definitely going to do this again, probably with meyer lemons and oranges, so any tips would be much appreciated.

thanksgiving is coming!

yep, your turkey has to die before you can eat it. who wants salad? i'm in the process of blanching some peels for candied lemon right now - i'll let you know if it turns out!

davd lebovitz to the rescue!

if you're looking for an interesting idea for a fruit dessert, you might as well go to the source. we have a quince in the kitchen that's a few days away from being ripe, and i wasn't quite sure how to dispose of the thing.

note: do not eat quince raw. i've never tried one, but my googling makes that quite clear.

mine hasn't filled our kitchen with a delightful scent just yet, but i've learned that it's about to do so. right now, it just kind of smells like a pear if you sniff hard enough.

brian: "it has a smell."

yep. it does.

i think that i'm going to do is class up my normal apple crisp by grating in some raw quince with the apple slices.

anyone have experience with quince that they'd like to share?

i kind of just like the name of it. quince. or that they eat it in old novels.

i'm a nerd that way.

getting in the swing of things

even though i've been unemployed, and therefore should technically have all the time in the world to figure these things out, i've had a terrible time getting into a good grocery routine since we've moved back to portland. we have so many more choices, though none quite so convenient as the co-op across the street from my office in bloomington.

for a while, i was making occasional trips to the store without a real plan, and grabbing things for dinner every day or two. bad plan. the more trips to the store i make, the more i spend. and unfortunately, the most convenient store is very overpriced. with groceries as expensive as they are, that habit had to go.

so, last week i made up a monthly grocery list and spent a couple hours and a couple hundred dollars to get our staples for the month. first stop was the grocery outlet, a discount store, which luckily has an organics aisle. i scored cereal, crackers, beans, and was glad to walk away with 2 big bags for under $25. next up, trader joes. their packaging can leave something to be desired, and i don't buy that produced all wrapped up in plastic, but they have some great prices on organics. and damn if i don't love that cornbread mix. it's not really budget-friendly, but at least the bag is paper! stocked up on canned pumpkin. filled up a cart for something like $110. last on the trip was fred meyer, for staple produce and bulk bin items.

after i FINALLY got to the farmer's market this weekend, i have a house full of food stocked away, and it feels great. we don't have a lot of storage, so i took what didn't fit into our cupboards, and placed it in a bin under the kitchen table. man, i feel so organized. i even went to the farmer's market for the first time in weeks this weekend. pretty soon, we'll see what you're supposed to do with quince. it's not quite ripe yet.

so, long story short, i hope this new monthly shopping system will save us some money in the long run. yes, i'll run to the store for coffee and milk about once a week, but that should be in the plan as well.

how do you save money on your grocery budget without sacrificing food quality?

a vote for barack obama is a vote for the environment.

a vote for ralph nader is a vote for john mccain. it's too close for protest votes. http://www.lcv.org/campaigns/endorsements/ i've already voted. it was awesome. . in food-and-election-related news, i'm working at the county elections office, and i verified the signature of a prominent vegan cookbook author (cough, who recently moved to portland, cough) today. go vegan vote!

hello, world!

new posts forthcoming! sorry, i've been living other parts of life lately, but it's time to put more energy back into the kitchen.

here's what i've been doing:

now that the rainy season seems to have set in for the year, i'm starting to feel a little more domestic. it was just too beautiful there for a while.

off to the midwest

yep, i'm flying away tomorrow to play some roller derby in indiana. ready for my game day bagel and salad... ...see you back here early next week!

review: soy curls rule!

so it took me a while, but i finally made it down to food fight to pick up soy curls. (among other things, like vegan vitamins.) and, guess what? i love them.

sorry for the bad picture - i wasn't expecting to blog this, but it was really tasty.

good things about soy curls:

• since they're dry, they're easy to keep on hand.
• you can cook a lot or just a little at a time without worrying about the leftovers (i'm looking at you, half-blocks of tofu).
• they're fast - 10 minutes to rehydrate
• easy to flavor and use. just saute with a little sauce, and voila.
• they're local (to me), made in grand ronde, or.
• available in bulk. at least at food fight.

neat. their texture is kind of like fajita meat - chewy strips. i liked them a lot with the teriyaki sauce, especially. mmm. the teriyaki soy curl/roasted cauliflower meal was borne of desperation, but turned out really great.

it's my new food crush. you come here to me, soy curls.

shelling bean mania

the shelling bean is something new to me this year, but i've become pretty enamoured of them. just look how pretty!

i've seen them described as "teenage" beans - not young enough to eat the pod, ala edamame, or old enough to keep like dry beans, but just old enough to mouth off and get into trouble. i mean, old enough that you just simmer them for 20 or so minutes for creamy delicious beany delight.

at first, i thought i'd do a soup with these tonight, but i couldn't think of any grains we had on hand that would go well. so i decided on beans and rice, but we were out of rice. so pasta it was. the pictures don't really do it justice - we had green spinach, red peppers, and these purple-ish beans that held their color fairly well. throw in some garlic, red pepper flake and lemon juice, and you've got yourself a meal. all the produce was from yesterday's farmer's market except the lemon. yum.

help: compost.

help me. we have tons of kitchen waste that's going straight into the trash these days, and i'd like to compost. but i'm a city girl, meaning, i get grossed out by creepy-crawlies. i have considered worm composting, but never for more than a few minutes at a time. go ahead and tell me it's not gross. it's probably not. but it's not happening in my house.

also, i live in an apartment, so i'd need to have something contained that won't attract pests. we have some room outside for something that could get rained on.

has anyone used the envirocycle? it seems like something that would be

a) easy to use, and
b) low on the gross-out factor for my dainty sensibilities.

any opinions?

weekend update: i found the camera!

a really, really big head of red lettuce

prepping fruit to make leather - recipe forthcoming, pending tweaking

croissant and homemade jam....

welcome, foodies! or, weekend tidbits.

hi, there! a bunch of people are coming over to the almost sustainable kitchen from the foodie blogroll today. it's nice to have you. stick around!

another lovely weekend of food and friends around here. the weather was fantastic, too. august and september are typically warm and dry in these parts. it's supposed to be 87 today. holy cow! better eat my breakfast so i can get out and exercise before it gets too late/hot. i'm a real baby about sweating it out in the sun.

saturday morning's farmer's market haul: strawberries, baby bok choy, a gigantic head of red lettuce, a croissant, summer squash, shelling beans (tongue of fire, i think), tomatoes and red peppers. i'm still reeling from the fact that strawberries and red peppers are available at the same time here. nuts! and they're both good!

i made a new chocolate and peanut better no-bake recipe for a potluck yesterday. these are really rich, and could even be cut smaller. which i rarely advocate. another hint: natural peanut butter doesn't seem to want to "heat until runny." save yourself the trouble if you're using the freshly-ground type.

i seem to have set our camera down somewhere that made sense at the time. ahem. so, it's temporarily out of service. but can i mention that i took that farmer's market croissant from fleur de lis, and we that enjoyed the first taste of my blackberry jam with it? wow. the fresh and punchy blackberry meeting the soft and buttery croissant was just out of this world.

sunday morning, it was whole wheat waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. man, life is good!

wheat waffles
modified from the food network

3 tb melted butter
3/4 cup white flour
3/4 cup wheat flour *** or up to 1 1/4 cups wheat flour to total 1 1/2 cups total
pinch of salt
3 tb sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
2 eggs

preheat waffle maker. i like 'em crispy! sift dry stuff together in big bowl. beat milk and eggs together. add to dry stuff until just combined. stir in melted butter. measure scant 1/2 cup of batter onto waffle iron and cook until steam stops coming out, or your little light turns green, or however your waffle iron works.

i cook all the waffles at once, then reheat as needed by placing them back on the iron for 10-15 seconds. this crisps them back up.

enough for two fairly hungry people. great for sunday mornings before roller derby practice - without the whipped cream.

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excuse me if this looks a little funny - blogger is forcing me to learn html on my feet, since it's not behaving very well.

Thanks, Paul Newman

sad news today. paul newman brought natural and organic foods to the marketplace before it was fashionable, and "recycled the profits" to charitable causes. if i could die with that kind of legacy, i could die happy, knowing i did more than my part. thanks.

don't buy fiji water.

hi. the last i checked, there was an ad for fiji water on the top of this page. i'm checking into that, because there aren't supposed to be product-specific ads on the banner at the top. in the meantime, if you're interested, here's an article from treehugger explaining why fiji water is not so great. thanks! *almost immediate update: the foodbuzz people e-mailed back, and said they'd remove the ad right away. aces! thanks, foodbuzz!