Lettuce and arugula salad with apples and one radish. Yogurt honey mustard hemp seed dressing. Kimchi on the side.
stigmastylepistil
garden:forage:cook:costume:craft
Category Archives: cook
Blue corn atole
Atole is traditionally served as a drink, but I like to make it a little thicker as a breakfast porridge with hemp seeds mixed in after it’s cooked. It’s about 1 unit of corn to 3 units of water, but I’m always adjusting the ratio as I cook, adding more corn meal or water. I whisk it pretty consistently the whole time it’s cooking, adding a little coconut oil and honey or agave nectar to taste. It takes about 15-20 minutes of cooking on low flame to taste right to me. Cinnamon and other spices are nice but I just like the plain corn flavor. With Yerba mate to drink it’s a fabulous breakfast.
Skipping the Super Bowl: hike
I know that football game happened but I don’t know who played. Today we are experiencing a subtropical moisture plume making Northern Arizona strangely overcast. We made vegan tacos for breakfast and then headed out into the mist. In Oak Creek Canyon I had a “therapy session” with my sweetheart, practicing jumping from rock to rock in the creek and pushing my limits – going beyond my comfort zone. I got to the point where I was showing off. On the way back north we stopped at a seasonal waterfall and icy little canyon in the pines.
Building the Taco: Corn tortilla, homemade beans, homemade guacamole, sweet potatoes, homemade salsa, vegan mayonnaise, chulula hot sauce.
Pictures from the hike
Live chocolate pie
Om nom nom. Raw chocolate pie. Live coconut cashew whipped “cream”. Nut crust. I made two. There are lots of good recipes out there for vegan raw cream pies. Fear not the Irish moss. Yeah, it’s seaweed, but this is miles beyond any cooked cows mill pudding pie. With this in the fridge you can eat a million vegetables.
Juicy weekend
I’ve been under the weather for a week now. I’ve been trying to load up on healing foods.
Heat up juice
Carrot
Apple
Beet
Fresh garlic
Fresh ginger root
Fresh turmeric root
This morning I also had a fresh young coconut banana blueberry smoothie.
We save the pulp from the juice and make a corn bread with about equal parts corn meal and juice pulp plus some salt and baking powder. Goes well with black bean green chili soup.
Plum brandy
In the fall I pick tiny plums from old neglected plum trees from around downtown. This fall I had a bag that I just stuck in the freezer to do something with later. Then, while cleaning the freezer I accidentally left these plums out and they thawed. Since I have a little cough I decided to do something easy with them to enjoy and celebrate with later. Plum brandy! I have loads plum sauce put up already. I’ll soak the plums in brandy for a while then mash the plums with the brandy and soak some more over the course of several weeks and then strain through a very fine cloth. I use a ‘nut milk bag’. I did this last year with both gin and brandy and gave it out and took it as a camp warm up on backpacking trips. No sugar just the plums and liquor. Amazing and fruity!
Blood orange marmalade
I just made my first 5 gallons of marmalade. 54 oranges and 8 pounds of honey! Someone mentioned trying a smaller batch first and they were probably right, but I feel like that’s doing things twice. My recipe was an experiment so I’ll not outline it step by step. There are other marmalade chefs out there who are more organized than me. I used only honey to sweeten it and I used orange juice for half the water. Just as my first cheese making was, the marmalade pitted me against my dark side, taking forever to cook and not setting up just as I’d have liked. But in the end it was a triumph, tasting awesome on toast. I think it will be a good sauce base for stir fry, too.
That’s the finished product in the jar
stigmastylepistil 