A little walk after breakfast, a koi pond sparkling clear, the house in fair order, Seishi riding herd on Eushu so Ysabel can sleep her days through, and most of the garden walks ‘pathed’ in basalt chips so the weeds won’t grow. Mornings are sweatshirt weather at 57 degrees, it warms to low 80’s to high 70’s, and while we could use a nice rain, the farmers are in wheat harvest right now, so I’ll hold off wishing for that until early September.
Elsewhere, people are in Reno having Worldcon, where they’re about the same at night, but the days are about ten degrees hotter. I’m just as happy being here this year, with Jane getting healthy and the cats learning the car on short trips.
Dunno what I’m going to cook for supper: I’m leaning toward rice. I like rice. We don’t get it too often: it doesn’t qualify as a vegetable, but as a bread. But I think I would like that.
I just found out that the small eutrophic pond that I live on had a fish kill when the ice melted last March. The neighbor who told me about it said that among the assorted Large Mouthed Bass he saw he photographed a black and white Koi that was at least 25 inches long!
That’s ‘trident missile koi’ size.
Actually, ‘Seawolf’ class. 😉
oh, too bad. Lack of oxygen.
Supper was, btw, an orange chicken stirfry with rice.
Was that the orange chicken with pineapple bits and other miscellaneous veggies? I’ve actually found frozen orange chicken in a bag; very nice for those nights when you don’t feel like extensive cooking prep.
It could have been, except pineapple isn’t on our diet: too high a sugar content. So a little tamer than that.
I use a lot of spices, but I also use sauce-in-a-bottle, if it passes a label-reading and only contains actual food and no MSG nor onions nor garlic. La Choy makes a fair orange sauce. House of Tsang, and Wok With Me both have pretty good ones. The 5-spice in a jar works well. When I’m really on, I grate my own ginger and use various peppers, etc.
My cooking lately tends to be chicken-in-ziploc; I pre-cook about 20 lbs of it in the George Foreman Grill, freeze part, have part in fridge, take out a piece and dice it while the pan is heating, then add 4 cups of various veggies and some sauce/spice. It’s not inspired, but it is variable. I also can take the same in a pan with enchilada sauce, pour into soft tortillas, add cheese and jalapenos, roll, add more, and bake/microwave. Turns out a credible chicken enchilada.
You must be feeling better, CJ. You’re back on the Genealogy Group.
Now and again. 😉
And then there’s the old rice cooker trick: I do this most of the time as I think it’s healthier than stir-fry. Cook up a pot of rice (usually long grain organic brown or wild rice blends) and toss in frozen diced organic free-range chicken or seafood (use wild Alaskan scallops a lot or wild razor clams)to cook with the rice. After the bell dings, pile in a whole bunch of raw arugula or baby spinach and let it ‘melt’ down. I can use onion so I usually have choppped onion cooking with the rice/protein as well). Sometimes I cook sunflower seeds in there as well. I don’t like spicy (other than maybe raw ginger), so I often top it with an avocado smooshed with organic non-fat live-culture yogurt and top with finely chopped raw cucumber. I’ve got lots of backyard grown snow peas right now which could go in with the leafy greens….yummy! Sometimes I use a boxed organic broth or soup (like creamy tomato) instead of water while cooking the rice, but that’s walking the inflammation tight-rope. Sometimes I just HAVE to have some tomato (sigh).
I like the pineapple idea…it’s such a healthy fruit and not too high in sugar and I like the bromelain! I’ll watch for the fresh organic ones to show up in piles at Central Market! Hmmmmm…..GREAT idea! I’m not sure whether I’d cook it with the rice or use it raw on top. Pineapple ALONE….no sugar added.
Oh…and you can use quinoa instead of rice if you want to up the protein levels. Cook it just like rice in the rice cooker, but if you aren’t getting a prerinsed quinoa, wash it first to remove the bitter saponins. It’s a better food than bread/rice etc for those of us who need to minimize grains and starchy carbs. I wish I could eat bread like CJ….I can’t. But quinoa, organic rice and oat flakes/steel cut oats seem to ‘work’.
Try this: chicken bits heated with peaches, or mandarin oranges or pineapple and cinnamon, maybe a little nutmeg or cardamom, over rice: you can also toss in a few pecan bits. Serve with side salad or asparagus. (which I can’t get away with because Jane hates ‘sparagus. Wah! But she likes lots of other chancy things.)
I like the fresh raw orange idea (not canned) and will take a peek at the organic produce section after work! I do admit I tend to cook it all in one pot….rice or quinoa + protein/melt on the leafy greens/top with raw stuff. They just had $10 off those big wild-caught Alaskan scallops at Central Market and I picked up a bagload so I think that’ll be my protein!
Hey, I hate asparagus too but I’m trying to force myself to eat it. But I have to mask the icky flavor with lots of other good things (wink). Like you I’m pushing the non-starchy veggies. I hope to grow more of my own next year if I can get around to making some raised beds. Right now I’m limited to what I can grow in my upstairs deck containers cuz then I don’t have to worry about rabbit ravages.
Pictures:
Well it said “You can use these HTML tags”
Pictures at my blog http://crowan-scat.sunderland.ac.uk/~harryerw/ViewFromEngland/?p=1148 titled “A Walk in the Morning”
Beautiful!
just had a very strange image of chickens free ranging in ziploc bags…
and the chicken recipe sounds great, I adore peaches.. and one day I might have some- if the horses and goats would stop mangling the tree/s before they can get big enough to actually ever have fruit… 🙂
quinoa is a great grain, peruvian, grows at really high elevations, in crappy conditions and is a super food, no literally, it’s considered a super food. I never bother washing/ rinsing it- as 1, I consider that if it’s in the growth, chances are, it has something beneficial, 2, I never noticed it tasting all that bad/ bitter, and 3.. i’m not that fastidious:)
no idea what supper will be, although had a good late lunch, fresh raw goat’s milk yogurt ( and yes, it’s raw yogurt.. doesn’t need to be heated to 115? 130-140.. and better tasting:).. as opposed to yogurt that is made with raw milk.. but then heated.. making it not-raw.. never figured that one out:)
btw- whats wrong with onions and garlic? and why watching sugars closely? you both seem pretty active/fit(?)… and so long as not processed foods… most foods won’t kill you, at least not immediately:)
CJ-ji and Jane have bad allergic reactions to onions. Garlic is okay in very small quantities, and it must be fresh, not powdered or processed. They are both fit because of carefully adjusting their respective diets and avoiding things that disagree with them! that and the skating and the gardening and…
We are, alas, what’s called, in horses, ‘easy keepers’. Give us any chance and we’ll put on weight. But adjusting our diet to mostly leafy and watery veggies, with a very little protien (we share half a chicken breast, diced up stir fry, eg.) and with bread I bake (bread machine: five minute job) we get along quite well. I’ve yet to try quinoa or amaranth, but I have a bread recipe for quinoa; and as a cereal it looks attractive. We eat well: we use only olive oil and very occasionally sesame oil or walnut oil, and go from scratch on most preparations, no preservatives. I don’t care to be mummified like a Twinkie. 😉
Actually, anyone with inflammatory problems does better by limiting sugars to raw organic fruit and, at least in my case, carefully chosen organic dairy (kefir, raw cheese and yogurt). It doesn’t always have to do with weight issues. I know I react badly to the sugars my body makes out of starchy carbs as well…hence the necessity to avoid bread etc. Luckily, CJ can eat bread.
I like quinoa better than rice…especially when I mix colors to make it look even more interesting! And ‘melting’ in some baby arugula or spinach right at the end really jazzes it up. I wish I could add finely chopped tomatoes or peppers but those are inflammatory foods as well.
btw- patak’s has great “sauce in a bottle” type stuff that transforms anything into.. wow:)
I think I can get Patak’s at our specialty grocery. I’ll try it!
Hmm, have had a very trying week, quite frazzled, and if I get myself to cook this weekend, these sound easy and tasty. Hmm, no enchilada sauce, but I might have some Wolf brand chili. Hope the peaches or oranges (last week) are good. — Will come up with something.
What do snow peas need to grow, climate, sun, soil, water,etc? I can get them in my produce section, part of the week, but I hope to grow tomatoes and two or three other veggies next year. Snow peas or sugar snap peas would be welcome.
We may have drought conditions next year, so says the weatherman.
I bought some good brown rice, Texmati brand, craving it, so this is likely to be used this weekend.
I’m about to watch an ep of Bleach (few seasons back) and then read in Invader. Somewhere past Ch. 10.
I think sugar snap peas are easier to grow: pretty well anything above zone 2—someone recommends 2 days after St Paddy’s Day for planting. I say start in a cold frame, if you have our fickle weather!
In the ‘wet side’ of WA state, snow peas are easy. At least in the greater Seattle area. Unless you have bunnies on patrol. I give my mother seeds and she’s got an easement onto power line property with lots of veggie beds we’ve worked for several decades. She gets lots of sun, waters them when needed (this year didn’t need much watering….lots of rain came naturally), and they like cooler temperatures, so do better with early spring planting and fade off as it gets hotter. I bartered my next-door neighbor goose eggs for a big bag of snow peas but the bunnies raided her beds so that was a bummer. Not as big a crop. I did grow some in my deck planters but they seem to do better in a raised bed with trellis. Maybe I’ll get raised beds in next year…only been at the new place since 2007. They might be a bit trickier to grow in eastern WA….smaller window of ideal weather.
Try ‘coyote in a cannister’, aka coyote urine sprinkled around the garden perimeter, far from the food crop. You have to renew it after rains, so that might be hard in Seattle, but you also know when those peas are reaching attractive-to-bunnies.
My solution would be more permanent….boundary fencing. That’s what my neighbor did after 10+ years of gardening here without bunny problems. Some sturdy hatchling (smaller holes) chickenwire stapled to some nice wood framing. Just high enough to step over easily. We have eastern cottontails (not native) but she said this is the first year they’ve actually had a noticeable impact on her garden. Their St. Bernards and Newfies provide boundary urine (wink). In my case, it would be Siberian husky. Renewed daily….
I have this marvelous great set of nested crockery casserole dishes. I select the size I want and put in raw rice, plus the required amount of liquid to cook it, chopped raw veggies (or drained canned veggies) such as peas, potatoes, carrots, celery, string beans, squash, chopped black olives, onions (if not allergic), scallions (ditto) etc., in any combination, mushrooms of choice, fresh spices to taste, plus meat of choice — lean chops of pork or cubed beef, or whole chicken breasts laid on top. Cover, cook for 1 hour at 350. The rice absorbs flavors from the meat and veggies. You can make a big casserole full and freeze what you won’t eat right away in single serving portions in either plastic containers or those food saver thingies that seal the food in plastic. These can be microwaved frozen or thawed, (or boiled in bag) and eaten for a very quick meal.
Yum!
Yes, I agree: yum!
All the recipes sound pretty intriguing. I’ve never heard of quinoa though. I had read the word a couple times, I was sure it was “quill” – must still be tired!
My husband’s diabetic so low-carb is better for him…in his case rice is OK, bread is fine, it’s the pasta that gets to him worst. It seems that some starches are just “worse” for certain diabetics than others. I wonder if it links to what they once ate too much of…but I digress.
Because we keep to a pretty tight budget here, I tend to use a great deal of rice; but with chicken I keep a sharp eye out for the weekly sales. Whenever I get them for a price that’s within my budget I buy sizable amounts of chicken thighs or breasts. I’m far too inept with sharp objects to cut up a whole chicken. But once I have my chosen limbs, I either pre-cook them and then bag and freeze what I’m not using that night, or I debone the pieces raw and freeze it that way. The raw deboning is a treat for my animals, because I can give them one thigh bone if it has not been cooked…but I don’t do that terribly often. My cats are “working cats” as it were and frequently spend nights outdoors, hunting. Sometimes they even share what they catch. O.o
I think quinoa is nutritionally a lot more like rice than like wheat. I could be wrong.
Last night I grilled up peaches for dessert, following a Boston Globe (Wed, Aug 17th) recipe in its G section: yummy and quick. Heat grill/broiler on high. Cut peaches (nectarines, plums or whatever stone fruit you want or a mixture) and pop out the pit. Brush the cut face with melted butter. Grill/broil face down for three minutes (I didn’t bother timing it but that’s what they call for). Flip over so the face is up: place a chunk of dark chocolate in the “hole” and grill/broil for a minute more with the grill cover down (so apparently the cover is up before?), pull off and sprinkle with a bit of sea salt or confectioners sugar if you feel like it, and eat!
I used a small spoonful of dark chocolate chips because that’s what we had. I sprinkled cinnamon on the buttered faces before cooking for experimenting: cinnamon flavour washed out in grilling and chocolate, but if I had read the recipe again before cooking I might have sprinkled it properly afterwards. In my opinion, liking chocolate but not being a chocoholic, you could easily skip the choc and have a fine, fine dessert still.
And, plug for some of the best cinnamon and other spices in the world: Penzies: http://www.penzeys.com !
quinoa- now I got curious- snippets below:)
technically, quinoa is a seed, not a grain and it’s grown high in the Andes Mountains of South America.
Eat one cup of quinoa (a single serving size), and you’ll consume:
220 calories (70 percent carbs, 15 percent fat, 15 percent protein)
40 grams of carbohydrates (13 percent daily value)
8 grams of protein (16 percent of daily value)
3.5 grams of fat (5 percent daily value with no saturated fat)
A glycemic load (blood sugar spike) of only 18 out of 250
5 grams of fiber (20 percent of daily value)
20 percent of daily value of folate (various forms of Vitamin B)
30 percent of magnesium daily value (beneficial for people with migraine headaches); 28 percent daily value of phosphorous; iron (15 percent); copper (18 percent); and manganese (almost 60 percent)
Quinoa is stocked with life-sustaining nutrients all across the board, including all eight essential amino acids. There are other highly beneficial compounds, vitamins and minerals in this food that the Incas reverently called “chisaya mama” (mother of all grains).
Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), and like oats, quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it a complete protein source, unusual among plant foods.
the only drawback in eating quinoa, is that it has now been “discovered” by the west.. and many bolivians cannot afford quinoa anymore as a result of foreign markets raising prices. oi!