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May 18, 2008 --  The Therapy Center at Doylestown and Rhubarb Sauce

Spring has lured me away from my computer and into the outdoors -- today I even managed to get my herb garden planted before the downpour, and I am anticipating a summer of herbed eggs, vegetables, marinades, teas… Herb gardening is my favorite, so fragrant, so not-finicky, and so satisfying.

However, an important announcement has brought me back: the opening of The Therapy Center at Doylestown, where I will now be practicing! I have joined six inspiring women to provide a variety of professional, quality therapies in a supporting and nurturing environment. My partners include:

LYNNE HENDERSON WELSH, M.S. Therapy for Women Dealing with Disordered Eating 215-317-3329

NANCY WINTHROP, CMT, CCH, CIMI Massage & Hypnosis for Women Struggling with Negative Body Image and Body Acceptance. Certified Infant Massage Instructor 215-696-1402

MARIANNE LANG, CMT, BA/SHIATSU - DEEP MUSCLE SPECIALIST On-site Corporate and Event Chair Massage and Private Office Appointments 484-686-4108

KATHY MCCAFFERTY, M.A. Therapy, Support & Networking Groups for New Mothers in their 40’s 215-962-3631

ELIZABETH COLEMAN, M.A., M.S. Psychotherapy for those experiencing the terminal illness or death of a loved one. Available for all ages. 215-771-7005

BETH MCBRIERTY, M.A.,CCP/SPEECH & LANGUAGE PATHOLOGIST Specializing in promoting communication in children with Autism, Apraxia and Developmental Delay 215-534-2615

Please come see us in the Annex at 199 N. Broad Street in Doylestown!

While I’m here I’ll share a yummy treat I made this week: rhubarb sauce. I first made this just a few years ago, inspired by my father-in-law who says there is nothing better than rhubarb sauce over vanilla ice cream. Well, except maybe hot pecan pie with vanilla ice cream, but that is another story.

I had never been a big rhubarb fan – as a child I saw it as something people frequently ruined a perfectly good strawberry pie with. And it didn’t help that it can look like celery. But as my taste for adventure has grown, as has my desire to eat seasonally, the rhubarb at the farmer’s market in Doylestown grabbed my attention. Beautiful and red and crisp, I knew I would try the sauce.

February 8, 2008 --  Pizza

Friday night is pizza and movie night at our house. We get the kids in their PJs early, clear off the coffee table, turn down the lights, and hopefully agree on a movie we will all enjoy with our dinner. This week the feature is a Pokemon – more the kids’ preference than ours, but at least we’ll have no complaints. Oh – and we make our own pizza. Believe it or not, it is easy – and we get a whole grain crust, any toppings we want, and get to eat it hot out of the oven. (And per Dave we don’t have to tip the delivery guy!)

Somewhere between lunch and 3:00 pm I like to start the dough. I make two pizzas, so I put 1 ½ cups of warm water in a bowl with a drizzle of honey and a tablespoon of yeast. While it proofs (starts to bubble) I get out the rest of the ingredients: flour, salt, olive oil. I keep my flour in the freezer, so its best if it warms up a bit.

These days I mix my dough in my Kitchen-Aid mixer with the dough hook – but for years before I received this fabulous gift I did it by hand. It’s a relaxing process, just a little messier. Anyway, I usually add about one cup of unbleached white bread flour. As much as I like to use all whole grain flour, 100 percent whole-wheat pizza dough is really tricky to handle. After the white flour I add a drizzle of olive oil (1-2 tablespoons) and about a teaspoon of salt. I set my mixer on low, and slowly add whole-wheat flour until the dough comes together. Usually I use standard red whole-wheat flour, but sometimes I use white whole wheat, which is lighter than the red whole wheat and a great transition flour for those adapting to whole grains. With either flour, it usually takes 2 to 2 ½ cups. You do want the dough to be a bit sticky – whole-grain flours continue to absorb liquid for quite a while and your crust will be dry, heavy, and difficult to roll out if its not left a bit moist.

Once all the ingredients have been added I let my mixer knead the dough for about ten minutes – this can also be done by hand by flattening the dough a bit, folding the bottom half over the top half, pressing into the dough with the heels of your hand, turning a quarter turn, and repeating until the dough is thoroughly combined and smooth.

Next I get out two medium ceramic bowls and put a teaspoon or so of olive oil in each. I divide the dough in half, knead each for a minute to make a smooth ball, and then set each in one bowl, swish it around to coat one side with oil, flip and swish to coat the other side. Then I cover both with a kitchen towel to let them rise.

Mid afternoon, maybe an hour or so before baking, I punch them down and sometimes flip them if the top seems to be drying out.

When its time to bake I put my pizza stone in the oven and preheat to 450 degrees. Then I sprinkle corn meal on my peal (the flat wooden paddle used to get the pizza in and out of the oven) and between my hands to prevent sticking. These days I set the ball of dough on the peal and use a rolling pin to make a large circle. Its not as pretty as forming by hand, but it makes a thinner crust. You can also carefully pull, stretch, and flatten by hand. If you don’t have a stone, just prepare your crust on an oiled baking sheet. Don’t worry about holes, just pinch the edges together and after the dough sits a few minutes the evidence will disappear.

Cover with toppings of your choice, and bake 10-20 minutes until crispy and hot in the middle.

This week we topped ours with roasted eggplant and a garlicky French sausage from Hendricks dairy with red sauce and mozzarella – yum! Another favorite of mine is a Mexican pizza – I use olive oil with garlic, chopped jalapeno, cumin seeds, salt, and pepper as the base. Then I sprinkle with black beans, diced tomato, cilantro, and pepper-jack cheese. I think we’ll have to do that next Friday. Happy baking!
 

January 24, 2008 --  Sauerkraut , the Meal: with Braised Pork and Mashed Potatoes

This week I declared the sauerkraut ready. I removed the weighted jar from the top of the kraut, put a lid on the large jar, and moved it to the fridge. Whew.

The meal itself was easy – I seared the pork loin chops, about 5 minutes to each side, in garlic and olive oil. Then I sprinkled on rosemary and poured on a splash of Beaujolais. I added some water, too, to ensure there was enough liquid, and covered the pan to simmer for about 20 minutes. I did flip the chops half way though, and checked them with a meat thermometer before removing from the heat. I put the pork on a separate plate and covered them until the rest of the meal was ready, and poured the remaining sauce into a bowl to serve at the table.

The mashed potatoes were, I have to say, the best I’ve ever made. I wish I could take credit, but for the most part I did the same thing I always do – scrubbed red potatoes, chopped them into cubes (no peeling! There are good nutrients and fiber in the skins and the red adds color), boiled them in salted water, and mashed with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, a scoop of sour cream, and a splash of milk. Actually, I would usually add some butter, but I didn’t, because the sour cream was SO good. I went Hendricks for the first time today. ( Oh why did I wait so long??) Hendricks is a farm in Telford that raises grass-fed cows and sells their own raw dairy products, as well as grass-fed meat, free-range heritage chickens, and more. What is so good about the sour cream? It is richer and more buttery than any I have ever had – no gums and stabilizers, no commercial processing, I imagine. I didn’t think sour cream could be that good.

And the sauerkraut – no preparation necessary. I didn’t want to heat it and destroy all the good enzymes that were the impetus for this experiment in the first place, so I put some in a serving bowl when I began preparing dinner so that it would be room temperature rather than cold. It was a little crunchier than sauerkraut I’ve had in the past, and not so vinegary ( I’ve heard some commercial sauerkraut uses vinegar to mimic the flavor of natural fermentation). Delicious, especially mixed with those potatoes. They say it improves over time – I’ll let you know.

A little Solebury Orchard’s applesauce to balance out the meal, and it was perfect. I can’t wait for the leftovers.

January 19, 2008 -- Thai Peanut-Squash Soup and Sauerkraut Update

For my birthday my mother took my 5-year-old daughter (who, I am proud to say, politely and even convivially enjoyed the two-hour meal) and me to one of my favorite restaurants, the Blue Sage Vegetarian Grille in Southampton. They serve fresh, innovative food – my favorite lunch is the El Fino, a wrap stuffed with baby greens, grilled pears, toasted maple-glazed pecans, dried cranberries, gorgonzola, grilled onions and a caramelized onion mayonnaise. It is amazing. Anyway, one of the lunch specials this time was a Thai sweet-potato peanut soup, which inspired last nights dinner.

In the corner of my kitchen a hubbard squash had been patiently waiting to be prepared, so I based my soup on this. I first roasted it, reserving the juices for the soup. Then I sautéed celeriac root, onion, fresh ginger, and jalapeno. When they were soft I pureed them in the food processor with the squash. I transferred the puree to a soup pot, and added a few cups of broth, some tamari, fish sauce, Thai red chili paste, and a scoop of peanut butter. I adjusted the seasonings, and added a can of coconut milk before serving. I sprinkled each bowl with peanuts, cilantro, and red pepper flakes (well, the adult bowls anyway). Mmmm. Now my daughter says it didn’t taste like that at the Blue Sage, but I think that they had restaurant appeal on their side. This soup was good and hearty enough for dinner with a big green salad. I will definitely be making it again.

Now for the sauerkraut. It began bubbling nicely after about 24 hours, and after about 48 started fading from the pale green of cabbage to the golden of sauerkraut. On day three I mustered all my bravery, and, as instructed, and after some procrastination, tasted it! It was good, although still more like cabbage than sauerkraut. It was interesting to ponder the live enzymes I was intentionally growing here, on this old cabbage fermenting on the table. I think it felt good. I did check very carefully for discoloration. The nay-sayers have me worried. Anyway, the sauerkraut was threatening to float up above the surface of the brine, so, again as suggested, I added some salted water. I stirred it in, and packed it down. The bubbling slowed down for a day or so, but it seems to be back on course now. I think I can start planning the big meal.

January 15, 2008 -- Sauerkraut

My husband got me a wonderful book for Christmas – Full Moon Feast by Jessica Prentice. The author weaves together traditional and cultural eating through the seasons by following the cycles of the moon. She challenges many of our common beliefs about food and nutrition, touting the health benefits of animal fats from humanely raised animals on their natural diets, home brewed ales, raw cheeses, and cultured and fermented foods such as crème fraiche and sauerkraut. It is a beautiful and inspirational book, peppered with recipes and blessings.

It left me craving sauerkraut with mashed potatoes and roast pork – something I haven’t had in years. I found a locally grown cabbage at Bolton’s, a turkey farm and market nearby, and am on my way. As Prentice suggested, I found two glass jars, one that will set inside the other to weigh down the fermenting cabbage. I shredded the cabbage, sprinkled with salt, and mixed and squeezed by hand to get the juices flowing. I added some caraway seed, mixed again, and then packed it tightly into the larger jar. I filled the smaller with water, covered, and pressed it into the larger jar so that the brine came above the cabbage. I put it in the corner of the kitchen (away from the appliances – about 70 degrees is ideal) and am sitting in wait.

Now, the more I read about making sauerkraut the more nervous I get. The process is a controlled rotting of sorts, and if done wrong can be toxic. Apparently the surface of the water sometimes molds (or, more euphemistically, “flowers”) and needs to be skimmed. The kraut may turn reddish or black, or soft and slimy depending on air hitting the cabbage and the right (well, wrong) organisms growing or being too cool or too hot or the salt ratio being off. Some insist you need to cook or pasteurize or can your sauerkraut to make it safe, while others claim you lose the live-food benefit of the kraut this way – the lacto-fermented enzymes, probiotic beneficial bacteria, and a good dose of vitamin C. Did you know that in addition to limes, sailors in past days ate sauerkraut to prevent scurvy?

Many others, such as Prentice, insist that making sauerkraut is easy and can be done by anyone at home. We will soon find out. My sauerkraut should be happily bubbling away in about three days – hopefully without any unfriendly microbes. I’ll keep you posted – wish me luck!

December 12, 2007 -- Spring Rolls

It all began with a head of cabbage in the fridge that needed to be eaten. I was determined not to let it go to waste, but getting my family to eat cabbage is, well, a challenge. Then I thought of spring rolls – my kids (and husband) go crazy for them when we eat Thai or Chinese. You could probably wrap just about anything in dough, deep fry it, serve it with a sweet sauce and they would eat it. Maybe next time I’ll work kale into the mix…

Anyway, I found a use for my cabbage. I pulled out my Thai cookbook, read the recipe on the back of the spring roll wrappers, and used my imagination. In addition to the cabbage I shredded carrots and broccoli stems. I also minced some garlic and ginger. I sautéed all this for maybe ten minutes until it was tender and added a splash of tamari, a squeeze of honey (most Thai recipes include sugar but this is not my style) and a handful of chopped cilantro leaves. I’ve since tried this with shrimp and without cilantro, and the fact is its all good. It comes back to the theory of if you fry it in dough and have a sweet sauce…

Wrapping the spring rolls was much easier than I expected. I did let the filling cool a bit, then I lay the wrappers in front of me like a diamond, spread some filling horizontally across the middle then folded the bottom up and the sides in. Next I dipped my finger in water and ran it over the top point to moisten, then wrapped it around to seal. They stuck. Some of the advice about wrapping the spring rolls I encountered said to use two wrappers to each roll so that they stayed together and sliced nicely when done. This wasn’t necessary, but my husband loved the extra crust.

Once they were wrapped, we fried them in about half an inch of safflower oil, turning them to crisp. I say we, but Dave is the professional fryer in our house – I wrapped and passed them on assembly-line style.

Now, being the from-scratch cook that I am, I made our dipping sauce too, and it was incredibly easy. I boiled 1 cup of organic apple cider vinegar with 2/3 cup of honey. Sugar is more common, but honey tasted great and contributed to the orange color of dipping sauces that my kids were familiar with. So I boiled it for 10 minutes or so until it thickened a bit, removed it from the heat and added about ½ a teaspoon of sea salt. This is a basic sweet and sour sauce, but my husband and I like ours spicy, so I put half of the sauce in a separate bowl and added about a teaspoon of ginger chili paste. The vinegar smell while boiling will be intense – so be prepared. But the sauce is delicious.

We cut the rolls on the diagonal and arranged on a serving plate with the dipping sauces – they were pretty enough to serve at a party. We had a few uncut leftovers that I later reheated by baking for 10-15 minutes, and they came out beautifully. These were so good and so easy we already have more cabbage in the kitchen waiting for me to make more.  

November 25, 2007 -- The End of the Turkey

Whew – twenty-three pounds of turkey later we are almost finished. The local, organic Turkey we had for our Thanksgiving dinner was the best we’d ever had – tender and full of flavor. We had it with shitake apple stuffing made with a complete round from Crossroads Bake Shop in Doylestown (this is a high-protein whole grain bread made with quinoa and chickpea flour, among others), cranberry sauce sweetened with fresh orange juice and maple syrup, mashed potatoes, winter squash gratin, green beans, shredded beets made with their greens and an orange mustard dressing – amazing. And we ate plates of that for the next day or so. We had sandwiches next, and a turkey-barley soup. Then I got serious and made an enormous Turkey potpie and invited family back to join us.

The last dish I made today, a curried turkey salad. It was my husband’s idea (thanks, Dave!) as the curried chicken salad I’ve made in the past is one of his favorites. As you would expect, I start with chunks of turkey. I like to add shredded carrot and diced kohlrabi for crunch. I add a little minced onion, a handful of raisins, and a handful of cashews. I add some dried nettles and flax-seed meal, too. A bit of sea salt, a few grinds of black pepper, and a spoon or two of curry powder. I blend it together, then add a spoon of Spectrum mayonnaise. It wonderful, and the flavor gets better as it sits. Try it on top of a green salad – a perfect lunch.

Now I am ready for a week of seafood and pasta and beans!  

Last night my husband, Dave, made a fabulous dinner – grilled chicken, boiled new potatoes, and mixed vegetables: zucchini, crookneck summer squash, carrots, onions, sweet red frying peppers.  It was the vegetables that caught me off guard.  The rainbow of colors was striking.  I tasted.  “How did you make these?” I asked, “Why are they so good?”  My mind was racing with all the tricks I use to add flavor – the herbs, garlic, or ginger, the splash of tamari or orange juice, the pinch of cinnamon or cardamom – but I couldn’t identify the flavor in this dish.  “Nothing”, he said.  “Nothing? But they are SO good!”  I grilled him, sure that he had forgotten some important detail.   

In the end I determined this:  he warmed extra-virgin olive oil in a cast iron skillet, added the onions and pepper, a few minutes later added the carrots and squash and a few twists of sea salt and black pepper, sautéed for a few more minutes, and called it done.  I never would have had this restraint.  Thyme is so good on zucchini, orange juice and cinnamon so good with carrots.  But these fresh-from-the-farm vegetables didn’t need any embellishment – their own flavor and sweetness had carried them.   

And this is so important to remember – the delectable taste of fresh vegetables.  Many of us learned as children not to like vegetables because the vegetables we were exposed to were not the really good ones.  Frozen peas are completely unlike the candy-sweet peas found in a spring garden.  A canned green bean bears no resemblance to a fresh picked and blanched garden bean.  Kids know the difference.  My kids generally won’t touch peas unless they are fresh from the field, and they tell me carrots are so much better crunchy and sweet with the green tops still own.  Green beans picked at their peak and cooked until bright green and crisp-tender will be eaten by the handful, but picked late or slightly overcooked and they will take one taste and say no thank you. 

 

As adults it is so easy to believe that we already know what a green bean tastes like and to not really pay attention when we eat one.  But by eating mindfully and tasting what is present we open ourselves to a new realm of enjoyment and appreciation, one in which even the ever-abundant zucchini is a delicacy. 

July 28, 2007 -- Staying Cool with Smoothies

On hot summer days when it’s too hot to cook and the call of ice cream is loud I frequently turn to smoothies.  And since they are primarily fruit I will serve them with lunch, which as you might imagine goes over very well with the kids.

There are as many ways to make smoothies as there are people that make them.  My favorite way is thick and creamy enough to eat with a spoon.  Other times I make milk-shake style smoothies that require a straw, and sometimes a thinner, more thirst-quenching version. 

Others use smoothies as a breakfast alternative with protein, fruit, and/or vegetable powder.  Some versions use yogurt and milk, and some are dairy free.  Some use ice to make them cold and light, and some (like me!) use frozen bananas for creaminess. 

In a good year we will have local strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and peaches in the freezer.  And whenever we have bananas that get a little too ripe, we peel them, cut into three or four pieces, and add them to a freezer bag in the freezer, too.  (Frozen bananas are great not only for smoothies but for baked goods like banana bread, muffins, and pancakes.)  Using frozen fruit – particularly bananas – in smoothies is essential for a thick, ice cream-like consistency and intense flavor.   

I like to add a spoon of almond butter, which adds protein that prevents the blood-sugar swings that fruit alone can cause.  I also add a handful of fresh mint for its cool, bright flavor, and just a little liquid (try ¼ cup to 3 cups of fruit) such as fruit juice or some kind of milk. 

Now unless you have some kind of super-blender, you will need to let your frozen fruit sit out just a few minutes to begin to soften before blending.  And then you will spend a few anticipatory minutes blending, stopping, stirring, and blending again.  But it will all be worth it when you have the tastiest summer treat that is 100% good for you.

July 21, 2007 -- Summer Salads

Oh the abundance of summer!  Today my everything-in-the-fridge lunch salad included the following:

• Green leaf lettuce from this morning’s farmers market
• Boiled sliced beets from Blooming Glen Farm
• Green beans from last night’s dinner, also from Blooming Glen Farm
• Cucumber, again from Blooming Glen Farm
• Blueberries, the end of my last pint from the farm stand down the road
• Raspberries, from my yard!
• Chick peas
• Cashews
• Capricho de Cabra, a soft and creamy goat’s milk cheese
• Annie’s Organic Papaya Poppy seed Dressing

• Freshly ground black pepper

This unexpected combination has left my belly singing with happiness since noontime (it’s now 4 pm), and it may be the only one I have like it all summer, with the blueberries, raspberries, and even local lettuce coming to the end of their seasons and other favorites up ahead.  But that is the beauty of summer salads, every week brings different delicacies to put together in different combinations – each unexpected by us but fully planned by nature. 

July 16, 2007 -- Stuffed Eggplant

I have loved eggplant for many years – eggplant Parmesan, ratatouille, babaganoush, baingan bharta – but I still remember the first really good eggplant I had.  It was 1997 and we had just purchased our first home in Norton, Massachusetts.  It was built in the 1940’s and full of character, and was surrounded by 2.14 acres of woods and swamp (wetland Dave always corrected me).  We were able to carve out a 10 by 12 foot plot for a small garden – our first of many.  We ambitiously included half-a-dozen eggplant seedlings. 

I knew nothing of flea beetles at that point in my life, and gratefully didn’t learn that year.  Flea beetles are small black beetles that look very much like fleas and will quickly turn eggplant leaves to lace effectively stunting their growth.  Once they attack they are difficult to deter – naturally that is – I’m sure there is a very effective toxic chemical that could handle it – so the best way to handle flea beetles is prevention.  But ignorance can be bliss and our eggplants grew unencumbered by flea beetles and without too much assistance from us.  

By July we had beautiful dark purple eggplants – they were creamy and sweet, nothing like any eggplant we had had before.

It was when we moved to Pennsylvania that we learned all about flea beetles.  For five years (how embarrassing) we tried to grow eggplant with no success.  We tried hand picking  the beetles,  all the organic preparations, transplanting the seedlings when they were larger, and tempting the flea beetles with other crops.  We rotated our eggplant plot (and all the others) every year.  We never did get a row cover up, which may have done the trick, but we were hugely relieved when the Blooming Glen Farm sprouted down the street.