30 Days of blogging: Day 6

Day 6: Favorite super hero and why

Captain Planet and the Planeteers

He saves the world from evil pollutants like smog and nuclear radiation. The Planeteers: Wind, Water, Earth, Fire, and Heart battle it out on earth on their own, but when the evil doer is greater than these individuals, they combine their rings to summon...Captain Planet. What a nice little symbol for team work.  He can fly, is a shape shifter, is strong, and has telepathic abilities. He has green hair and wears his underwear outside his pants...the sign of a true super hero.

I watched this show with my brother as a kiddo...apparently reruns are shown on the Mother Nature Network. Maybe I will subscribe...but I would probably show greater reverence to Captain Planet by taking a trip to recycling than sitting around watching his show.

I still have some of  his song memorized. Sometimes I sing it to my friend's kids when their dad throws some sort of icky Styrofoam in his fireplace. It's my passive aggressive way of letting them know it's not okay.

Captain Planet, he's our hero. Gonna take pollution down to zero. Earth! Fire! Wind! Water! Heart! With your powers combined. I am CAPTAIN PLANET!


Remember kids....The power is yours.

Orange Zest Lamb Chops

If you are like me, or like anybody whose dinner focus usually revolves around some kind of meat, you get tired of chicken, pork, fish, and beef. I must clarify that I am never tired of bacon or steak. When feeling overwhelmed with what to make for dinner, you should definitely consider lamb. Lamb is decadent in taste, but easy to prepare and if the lamb is raised right, (free roaming/frolicking little lamb) it is pretty healthy too.

Last year this little household bought a whole lamb from a local lamb farm in Tracy and we've been enjoying lamb ever since. Frank's Basque Family Farm delivered the meat to our house as part of it's wonderful service. If you aren't sure about purchasing a whole lamb, they have smaller packages available. Here's the website for more information http://franksbasquefamilyfarm.com/Home_Page.html .

My lamb chop recipe came about because these were the ingredients I had in my pantry. It just happened to turn out amazing. Often lemon, mint, rosemary, or thyme are used when making lamb, to cut the very rich flavor of the meat. I did not have lemon so I gave orange a try. You can use orange or lemon in this recipe and your results will be magnificent.

Ingredients:

• 8 lamb rib chops or 4 lamb loin chops- I used rib chops which are not as easy to find as loin chops. Either will work just fine.

• The zest of 1 orange and it's juice

• 1-1.5 tablespoons of fresh rosemary

• 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil

• salt

• pepper

Directions:

• Set oven to broil

• Zest the orange using a microplane. This is the fun part, I feel very Ina Garten-esque when I use my microplane.

• Chop up a tablespoon or so of rosemary. Rosemary can be very strong so be careful not to go hog wild (or lamb wild?), but it's fresh taste helps to balance the richness of the lamb... so a little rosemary crazy with lamb is okay.

• Place chops on a shallow baking sheet.

• Drizzle each side of chops with olive oil.

• Sprinkle both sides of chops with rosemary. Add salt and pepper to taste. Spread the little bits of orange zesty goodness on each side. Squeeze the juice of the orange over the top of the chops.

• Place on top rack of oven. Broil each side of lamb rib chops for approx 5 minutes each. For regular lamb chops up the time to 6-7 minutes per side. This will result in a browned outside and a slightly pink middle.

Lamb Rib Chops

Rosemary

Zesty

Ignore my dirty oven.

mmm

Serve your amazing Orange Zest Lamb Chops with a crisp side salad

Dinner is served!

Blog Action Day 2010 Water: Environmentally Silly: Bottled Water vs Tap

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I’ve always cared about the environment. So has my husband Danny, however as of late, we are much more earth conscience. I’m not certain when our transformation began or why….but it’s becoming an everyday thought.

Recently Danny has had plastic water bottles on his mind. Of course they are full of allegedly “fresh clean” water and are convenient, but they are horrible for the environment. Unless people recycle (and many people still don’t), these bottles end up in landfills where they take forever to break down. When they do break down,  their toxic remnants are left in our soil and water. Essentially buying this "purified" water leads to the destruction of our tap water.

Another fact that makes me cringe is that the typical plastic bottle of water costs approximately 300 times more than tap water. Who can afford to pay 300 times the amount for anything in an already horrible economy?!

Approximately a billion people around the world are not as fortunate as us. They do not have the luxury of choosing between safe tap water or outrageously priced bottled water that is supposedly from Fiji. Instead of buying that Fijian water, that extra money could go to making sure everyone has access to clean safe water.

Some other facts about bottled water that you may find interesting are: It takes something like 1.5 million barrels of oil to produce the plastic water bottles made in America in one year, which can fuel 100,000 cars for a year. Don’t get me started on BPA.

Danny said every time he has to buy a bottle of water he cringes. Not that we buy them often, we mostly do if we are away from home and thirsty. Still, I feel bad too. If I filled up my water bottle with a quarter of oil, that’s how much it would take to produce that single bottle.

My tree hugging husband discussed his concerns with me and decided that we should buy aluminum or stainless steel water bottles. His other concern is that buying aluminum bottles is “trendy.” He doesn’t want to look like (for lack of a better word) a “tool.” I replied, “Some trends are good.” Still not convinced, he went on to explain that he doesn’t want to do something just because everyone else is doing it…blah blah blah. Basically, he is not trying to be all eco-crazy, but if it’s not too extreme and better for the environment, then he will do it. Still unsure about this “trend,” I told him “It’s okay to care about the world.” Reassured that he was still a manly man, he was off to the store to buy some metalish bottles.

Maybe a study will come out saying this new trend is also bad for the world. Maybe someone will call Danny a tool and he will go back to plastic …or he will hit them with his stainless steel bottle. Whatever the case, we are trying, trying to take care of the earth we live in, trying to conserve water because everyone needs it, and trying to do the right thing. We aren’t perfect in our quest, but our hearts are in the right place.

Check out these articles for other fun bottled water facts:
source: http://www.reusablebags.com/facts.php?id=18

http://food.change.org/blog/view/cities_cut_spending_on_bottled_water

blogactionday.change.org

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Adventures in Cooking: Roasted Butternut Squash with Rosemary and Balsamic Vinegar


The other night at work, during the fuzzy hours between 2 and 3 am, I was having a conversation about vegetables with my friend. We were discussing her Dad’s homemade pumpkin empanadas (I was drooling) and I was telling her how I received a surprise butternut squash in my CSA share that week. The next morning after catching some Zs, I was determined to work some magic on my butternut squash. I have made butternut squash a handful of times. Most recipes call for brown sugar which I try to stay away from, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found this roasted butternut squash recipe at Padma’s Kitchen. I added a few twists to her recipe, as I do to most recipes, and came up with a mouth watering, good for you, recipe that screams fall.

Ingredients:

• 1 butternut squash. The recipe calls for a “medium” sized squash. If I was in the field of judging the size of butternut squashes, I would say mine was large. No big deal, just add more time and a little more of the remaining ingredients.

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil. I just pour until it looks like enough. Pouring olive oil is pretty fun now that I have my Dutch olive oil container.


• 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar. Depending on your tastes you can add a little more.

• 1 tsp rosemary, finely chopped. I happened to have fresh rosemary from our CSA, which made me very happy. Don’t overdo the rosemary. No one likes an overkill of rosemary.


• Sea salt as desired

• Freshly ground black pepper


• A teaspoonish of nutmeg. This was my addition. It gives it that extra fall taste and makes you say, “Hmmm what is that?”


• A few pats of unsalted Kerrygold butter. If you are wondering why I use Kerrygold butter click this link for a fun little Paleo explanation:  http://lifeasrx.com/blog/?tag=money

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 400°F [200°C]. Cut the butternut squash in half and peel it with a knife. This was the worst part. The skin is very tough. I may be purchasing a new knife set rather soon. Cut into bite size pieces or you can use readymade store bought butternut squash. However, I have no idea where you can find the readymade store bought kind…

• Toss with extra virgin olive oil, salt, rosemary, balsamic vinegar, nutmeg and freshly ground black pepper. Spread them in a single layer either on a cookie sheet or large dish.

• Roast until squash turns soft and lightly caramelized about 40 minutes in the oven. For the large squash I added 10 minutes to my time

• Remove from oven add a small splash of additional balsamic vinegar, a few pats of Kerrygold butter, and if you want more salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.

Enjoy it while it is warm. It makes a great side dish with eggs for breakfast or accompanied with pork chops for dinner. It can be stored easily in the refrigerator and heats up nicely in the microwave. I even enjoyed it cold. Yum.

My main secret to cooking is to taste things along the way. If it needs more rosemary add some. More butter? Go ahead. I rarely follow recipes to a tee, which is probably why I’m not the best baker. This recipe can probably be morphed into many amazing possibilities, just give it a try. Even if something doesn’t taste amazing, my bottomless pit of a husband will eat it and if that plan fails there’s always the dogs.

Butternut Squash...and my other addiction avocados



The insides...





It's not a cookie sheet, but it worked just fine



Spice and everything nice



I need a food stylist



Cooking Adventures: Marinara Sauce

Ever since our CSA started up again, I have been meaning to blog about all the wonderful things I make with my weekly vegetable bounty. Sometimes life’s silliness gets in the way of my plans, but I’m back on track and ready to cook up a storm.

I am not the best cook in the world, but I am willing to experiment and because of this about 75% of the things I make turn out pretty good. (I just made up that statistic.) Eating Paleo means that Danny and I exclude things like grains, dairy (a little is okay), sugars, and processed foods from our diet. That leaves meats (preferably free range and grass fed), fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and fats for us to consume. Being creative is the key to Paleo, because eating chicken with a side of vegetables every night is just boring.

When tomatoes are in season, our CSA sends us a plethora of them. I am not the type of person who can just eat a tomato like an apple, so I use them in a mixture of dishes. My favorite recipe thus far, is marinara sauce because it is simple, can be used in a multitude of dishes, and can be freezed for the harsh tomatoless winter months.

I found this simple recipe for Marinara Sauce on the Food Network’s Website. The recipe is courtesy of Michael Chiarello.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

• 3 large cloves garlic, minced (I always add extra…we get a lot of garlic in our CSA)

• 4 cups of tomato puree (If I have more, which usually I do, I just add it to the pot…and I’ve never noticed a difference. I make the tomato puree in my magic bullet, which is not that magical. You can use a food processor or a blender. Simply chop up the tomatoes and press blend or pulse…whatever)

• 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves (Again, something I often have on hand because of the good old CSA)

• 1 large fresh basil stem with leaves removed (I chop up the leaves and throw them in there, it looks, and tastes prettier that way)

• 1 teaspoon of sea salt, preferably gray salt (I don’t know what gray salt is, I use plain sea salt, and I don’t measure)

• The recipe does not call for pepper, but I add it because it just seems like a good idea

Directions:

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over moderate heat. Add the garlic and sauté until caramelized, about 5 minutes. Add the pureed tomatoes to the garlic and bring to a simmer. Add the parsley, basil, and salt. Simmer until reduced to a sauce like consistency, about 15 minutes. Add more time, if you add extra stuff like I do.

Michael says that if the sauce tastes too acidic, add baking soda and cook 5 more minutes. If it needs a touch of sweetness add sugar and cook for 5 more minutes. I find that as long as you have good tomatoes the sauce doesn’t need any sugar or baking soda, which is good considering I’m not supposed to have sugar. Remove the basil stem before serving.

I like to use the marinara sauce in a flourless chicken parmesan recipe, a Paleo lasagna, and as a side for vegetables. It is also wonderful for meatballs with spaghetti squash. If you aren’t on a Paleo diet, I would use it for mozzarella sticks or some delicious starchy pasta.

Enjoy!

Garlic and Fresh Basil

Chop it up!

Saute'!

Tomatoes

Not so Magical Bullet time

Pulse it!

Chip chop chip...the basil

No parsley this week from the CSA, had to result to the dried stuff

Stir

Wahhh La!

Knights Ferry: To and Fro

Summer break is coming to an end and for this little lady it means my husband will be going back to work as a P.E. teacher. With the school year lurking around the corner, Danny and I try to do a few end of the summer activities together. Once school starts, quality time consists of me going to a wrestling match to cheer on the coach and his team. This past Saturday we took a drive up to the beautiful Knights Ferry.

Knights Ferry is about a 30-45 minute drive from the lovely town of Ripon and a 10-15 minute drive past the cowboy town of Oakdale. I always enjoy the country drive to Knights Ferry, as it reminds me to going to various fishing lakes and on camping adventures as a child.

Somewhere between Oakdale and Knights Ferry, on the left side of Highway 108, there is a small memorial for a horse named Cricket along a barbed wire fence. I remember when Cricket was alive prior to 1993 and as certain as the rising sun; he would stand there hanging his head over the fence watching the cars go by. He was a roadside friend for many.

Just past the Cricket memorial, is Lovers Leap. Lovers Leap is a 200 ish feet peak off of 108. The edge of Lovers Leap hangs over the Stanislaus River. Legend has it that long ago two Native American tribes were at war in the area. One of the chief's sons and the other chief's daughter fell in love. In a Romeo and Juliet fashion, the two lovers jumped off the cliff to their death because they were forbidden to be together. Lovers Leap is now marked with an American flag and surrounded with barbed wire...very romantic.

Knights Ferry was once the site of a ferry crossing during the gold rush days. It has the longest covered bridge this side of the Mississippi. There are plenty of old mill and jail ruins to play in. Picnic tables, BBQs, and different beach access areas line both sides of the river.  Also, Knights Ferry is now the begining of a river rafting adventure tour.

My mom used to take my brother and I, along with a friend or two, to Knights Ferry during the summer. One of my favorite things to do was to climb rocks. I felt so adventuresome. Years later I forced Danny to go rock climbing with me so I could relive my childhood experiences.

My mom was quite the adventuresome lady and would come to Knights Ferry before it was a popular recreation area. She would swim in the snow melt river and climb the rocks. She likes to tell a story about how it was at Knights Ferry that she first knew my dad was in love with her. Apparently at the time they had been hanging out a lot. My mom took my dad to her special Knights Ferry. My mom dove into the snow melt water and  swam across the rapid river. My dad was quite impressed and quite frankly, didn’t want to get in the ice cold water, but he crossed the river anyway to meet my mom on the other side. My mom says she thought to herself, “Wow, he must really love me.” My dad tells us now he just didn’t want to seem like a wimp compared to my mom. Either way, I’m sure it was love.

Danny and I started our Knights Ferry adventure with a picnic consisting of his homemade ceviche. It was cool, light, and delicious. For dessert we had CSA strawberries, which were seriously the best strawberries I have ever had.

After our light lunch, we found a private beach area surrounded by wild blackberries. I wanted to try one, but Danny kept saying I would die or at least have food posioning. He may be a manly man about some things, but at times he is the biggest sissy I have ever met. We took off our shoes and stepped into the ice cold water. We then found multiple flat rocks and skipped them. My best skip was a three skipper. Danny got a 5 skipper. Danny then decided to wade further in the water while I read my book I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced. As I was reading about this sad little girl’s life, I couldn’t help but be thankful for my own.

Danny soon was waist deep in the water, when I decided it would be funny for him to go in all the way. At first I attempted reverse psychology techniques, but telling your husband, “I bet you can’t handle the cold,” isn't as effective as saying it to, say for example, a 3 year old.

We then saw a Styrofoam lid to an ice chest slowly floating down the river. Now was my chance. Danny simply had to save the beloved environment from the well known horrors of Styrofoam! And he did! He braved the ice cold waters just like my dad did for my mom 30 some odd years ago.

On our way back to Ripon, we decided to splurge and get dinner at the House of Beef. The meat was good, the salad/soup bar was lacking, but my Diet Pepsi glass was never empty and for that, I was a happy girl. The steaks may be good at House of Beef, but if you like finer dining and don’t particularly care for the décor of butcher knives and NASCAR memorabilia, I would suggest skipping it. The House of Beef has expanded its empire into the daycare center arena.  The building next door is called the House of Tykes. I’m just glad we didn’t confuse which one served dinner.

While driving our meat filled selves back on River Road, we noticed a self serve fruit stand. The fruit stand owner was also selling fresh eggs so we picked up a dozen for 3 dollars (a good deal for cage free, organic fed goodness) and sampled the dried nectarines. There are plenty of other fruit stands along the way, that are sure to have some fresh eats.

It was a wonderful, relaxing, end of the summer day. Next time you are bored, broke, or want to fall in love go to Knights Ferry. There is plenty to do, or not do, and exciting things along the way and back.

Multitasking Marcher

There are times when I do two things at once. I can cook dinner and do the dishes. I can do laundry and workout. I can read and listen to Danny tell me about his day. I can walk for a good cause and help the environment. Danny says that there is no such thing as multi tasking, that in fact I am doing one thing, stopping what I am doing and doing the other. Until recently I understood where he was coming from, but pretended to be a good multitasker anyways. After all I am a woman, and that’s what we are supposed to be good at.

This past Saturday I participated in the March of Dimes walk for babies. Being a NICU nurse, the cause is one I hold near to my heart. Plus I could get a nice little walk in after my long night at work…then go home and sleep like a baby.

I walked with some of my friends/coworkers and their beautiful babies. My godson Ryan came along for the ride. He was a late pre term infant…who has been growing like a weed into a big healthy boy. During our march, it was brought up that the March of Dimes was started by Franklin D Roosevelt in his fight to find a cure for polio. (Yay vaccines!) People were asked to donate a dime towards the cause. My sleepless/ignorant mind had no idea that this was how the March of Dimes started. Of course I knew FDR had been paralyzed from polio, but clearly I should have looked into the cause I am supporting a little more.

This news was very exciting to me. In fact it reenergized me. I mean we basically cured polio! How amazing is this?! I definitely started walking with more purpose. If a group of people donating dimes and marching 4.2 miles can help some scientist discover a vaccine against polio, think of what else we can do.

As we were passing one of the rest stops, I noticed tons of tiny Dixie cups littering the sidewalks. I was hoping that the litter was the result of little children and not adults. Either way, it needed to be picked up. As awesome as the March of Dimes is, I’m sure they don’t have a street cleaner like New Orleans does during Mardi Gras.

I decided to take action. If we can cure polio we can do anything. I can pick up all these Dixie cups while marching for babies. My friends helped out with my additional cause. We can help the world in more ways than one, in a single instance. We can multitask.

CSA Time

Community sponsored agriculture groups are the coolest. Not only do you get a bunch of random fresh vegetables for a decent price every week, but being part of one is excellent for the earth. What’s good for the earth is good for you and me.

What exactly is a CSA you may ask? A Community Sponsored Agriculture group is exactly what its name says. Farmers sell a share of their vegetables (sometimes fruit too) to people interested in vegetables and all the goodness they have to offer. The vegetables usually come in a large box/crate. The vegetables are always seasonal and therefore super fresh (and full of all those good vitamins and minerals).

What’s so much better about a CSA than the conventional grocery store you ask? Because CSA’s work on Mother Nature’s time, like I previously mentioned, everything is fresh. Of course you can go to the local super market and get a tomato that appears fresh, but that tomato has a hidden secret.

The grocery store tomato may appear perfectly shaped, perfectly colored, and have the perfect amount of shine to it, but these are typically false advertisements. How do those perfectly red tomatoes make it to our local grocer in the middle of winter? They are either shipped from somewhere ridiculously far away like Israel, or they are picked green and gassed with ethylene to make them appear ripe. The tomatoes are then refrigerated to make it from across the country. According to tomato experts, (even non tomato experts like myself) tomatoes should never be refrigerated. The red tomato never really was red.

I won’t get into pesticides and all the horrible things surrounding their use. I will mention that because the CSA grows such a variety of vegetables, they don’t have to use pesticides. If they do, they are the all-natural-not-going-to-hurt-you pesticides. Many grocery stores are selling organic, pesticide free, veggies now which are good, but not great, as they have to travel from far off places (which I will discuss in a moment). The “red” tomato at the grocery store, unless labeled organic, definitely has been treated with pesticides. Pesticides kill bugs…what makes us think we are so much better than a bug….

Since all this CSA veggie goodness is grown locally, the food doesn’t have to travel far to your lovely dinner plate. That means there is less oil consumption, less pollution, etc. For those of you who would rather vomit than care about the earth, that means less diesel trucks on the freeway so you can get to where you are going faster.

A selfish reason for joining a CSA is that the vegetables simply taste better! And why wouldn’t they? A scientifically ripened tomato will never taste as good as an all natural one.

CSAs are also affordable. Danny and I get a half share of vegetables every week. We pay for 12 weeks at a time which is $200. That may sound like a lot of cash, but if you do the math that’s only $16.67 per week for a huge box of veggies that will last all week and feeds a family of 2-4. I guarantee if you eat vegetables on a semi regular basis, this is cheaper than the super market.

Perhaps the coolest part about a CSA is that every week is a surprise. Since the farmer doesn’t force anything to be red when it’s not supposed to be, you eat what is in season. If the tomato needs another week to ripen, so be it. Granted I don’t like every single thing that I get in the share, but I always give it a try or find someone who does like it. Eating something that doesn’t send me begging for seconds every time isn’t going to kill me, in fact it probably has a nutrient in it that will help to not kill me. (Shout out to you beets!) Generally though, all the weird squashes and funky looking leaves taste pretty darn good.

Did I mention because we have a share on the farm, we can visit it when we want to? That’s right Danny and I can go hang out with Farmer Bob Whitaker. (I know what an awesome farmer name!) We can actually meet the man growing our food…and not the machine shaking it off the bush.

There is so much more to say about the benefits of a CSA, but I will let your wondering minds discover the benefits yourself. And if the CSA thing is too much for you, or you are not a huge veggie fan and just want your red tomato, then plant a tomato plant. That’s the ultimate gift to yourself and our world.

Here is a link to the CSA I am a part of in French Camp, CA http://www.freshedibles.org/

Or you can check out http://www.localharvest.org/ for a CSA closer to you.