Archive for June, 2010
Friday Feast: Quinoa Puttanesca
I found this recipe on the Post Punk Kitchen Blog, and I knew I just had to try it! I’m all for figuring out new ways to eat ‘alternative’ grains, and quinoa is such a good one, since it’s a complete protein and gluten free. (I like to keep my gluten down.)
This recipe includes wine. Remember, when cooking with wine, the flavour intensifies, so choose a wine you like to drink.
I tweaked the recipe slightly – slightly increased the tomato, added sun-dried tomatoes and roasted capsicum, and reduced the capers – but otherwise it is the same thing. The taste of the olives and capers comes through strongly, so if you don’t like them (yes Mum, this would be you), then this dish would not be something I’d recommend. However, if you love the taste, as I do, then it’s fabulous.
I was surprised by how spicy (hot) it was. It seemed more like a matriciana than a puttanesca to me, but then it’s been a while, so maybe I’m remembering incorrectly. If you don’t like spicy food (yes Mum, that’s you again), I would suggest reducing or eliminating the crushed red pepper flakes. If, like me, you love spicy food – and I’m a spice wimp, but I still love it – then this is the perfect dish for you!
Quinoa Puttanesca
Quinoa Puttanesca, still hot and steamy.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon thyme
- 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- generous pinch tarragon
- generous pinch marjoram
- 1/4 cup wine (I used white because that’s what was open, but red would work too)
- 1/2 cup kalamata olives, roughly chopped (sliced in half is great)
- 1/4 cup capers
- 1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, chopped small
- 1/4 cup roasted capsicum, cut into strips
- 600g (21oz) can crushed tomatoes
- black pepper, to taste
- 2 to 3 cups of cooked quinoa*
Method
- Heat the oil in a good-sized pot over medium heat.
- Add the garlic and stir for about a minute, being careful not to burn it.
- Add herbs, spices and wine; cook for about a minute.
- Add olives, capers, crushed tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes and roasted capsicum. Simmer, uncovered, for about 15 minutes.
- Reserve a few ladelfuls of sauce to put on top of each serving.
- Mix the quinoa into the remaining sauce in the pot.
- Serve in individual bowls with a spoonful of the reserved sauce on top. Yum!
I used red quinoa because I thought it matched the sauce better, but you could use white or black quinoa and it would work just the same.
*Note: To cook the quinoa, rinse about a cup of uncooked quinoa to remove any residual bitterness. Put the quinoa in a pot with 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and cook uncovered for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the grain is tender and the water has been absorbed.
Friday Feast: Home Fries
This side dish (or main dish, take your pick) something that Yankee Elv makes, which she learned to make from her dad. It’s called Home Fries, because basically it’s something people make in their own home. You can put anything (but always potatoes) in a pan and fry it up and that’s all it is. Everyone has their own recipe for Home Fries and no-one is right and no-one is wrong. That’s the cool thing. You can’t really mess it up, unless you cook the potato too long and they get mushy or soggy, but otherwise… you’re set!
Home Fries
Freshly cooked home fries.
Ingredients:
- oil
- Potatoes, chopped roughly into 1 inch chunks (canned are easy if you can find them, or boiled/steamed until they’re soft enough to cut through easily)
- Onion(s), sliced into quarter rings
- Whatever other veges you want (the batch in the picture has capsicum, spinach and shallots)
Method:
1. Over medium heat, heat oil in a wide, deep fry pan.
2. Add onions and other firm veges, and cook until just soft.
3. Add softer veges and cook for several minutes.
4. Add potatoes and fry until everything is cooked well (should be soft but not too soft – you don’t want mush).
5. Serve up on a plate, either on their own or more commonly, as a side to another dish. (Works well as a side to scambled tofu).
Notes:
The veges you choose are up to you (aside from potato) I would recommend onion because it adds a great flavour, otherwise, you can put whatever you like in there. Yankee Elv has also made this dish with zucchini, mushroom, carrots, green beans, garlic, spices, chilli, whatever! Just go with what you feel like and what you think will go well with whatever else you’re eating. Increase or decrease amounts, cooking order and cooking time to suit the ingredients and amount you need.
Growing Veges is Not My Forte
I think the title of this post says it all. If you don’t believe the title, have a look at the pictures.
These vegetables are itty bitty.
Clearly, not my forte.
I’m very good at starting gardens. I’m just not so great at finishing them. Well, actually, the finishing isn’t really a problem either. I guess you could say it’s the middle bit – the maintenance – that defies my abilities.
I created my vege garden in the one spot available in my little yard that didn’t already have an established garden. I prepared it beautifully, planted seeds, added fertiliser and watered diligently.
My freshly prepared garden, all ready for me to plant in.
I was very excited to find seedlings coming up.
Butternut pumpkin seedling.
I especially liked the pumpkin plants – they grew so fast! I’m very much an instant gratification kind of girl, so rapidly-growing plants really appeal to me.
Young butternut pumpkin plants.
The problem with gardens is you can’t just spend a few weeks taking care of them and then leave them. Which is inevitably what happens with me. It’s what happened this time. I watered and weeded very well until work went crazy and I started working stupid hours (like until 2am sometimes). Then sleep came ahead of weeding and watering, so the plants had to fend for themselves.
This happens to me every time I start a garden. Without fail. I knew this going in, so I purposely planted them in a place where they would get rain and sunshine so they could technically be a bit self-sufficient, and clearly the weeds had no problem growing, so they would be ok.
In fact, for a while, my veges were ok.
Then the pumpkin vines started to get white splotches on them (which one of my colleagues tells me was likely mould – apparently this is a common issue Queensland pumpkin-growers face). All the little pumpkins (except one) rotted. Something started eating the sweet potato leaves. The carrots and spring onions got lost amongst the weeds. The only thing that seemed to be hanging on was the nasturtiums.
Overgrown garden, with the butternut pumpkin vines in the foreground, as they begin their descent into death...
I pretty much gave it up as a bad job.
But several months after planting, I came across the little notations I’d optimistically made in my diary: ‘Carrot Harvest!’ and things like that. So I thought it wouldn’t hurt to dig the little suckers up and see what was under the ground.
When I got down to the garden, I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all. The carrot tops were long and green and lovely. Pity about the carrots underneath.
My stunted carrots - lovely long green tops, miniature roots.
Diva politely sat by the veges to give you a better idea of scale.
Diva showing the vegetables to scale.
Yes, the carrots are about 3cm (just over an inch) long.
Tiny carrots and pumpkin.
The lone butternut pumpkin – looking gargantuan beside the carrots – was about 12cm (nearly 5 inches) long.
My tiny pumpkin.
I also planted about 20 spring onions. They all died, except for one that grew to about the size of a chive.
No, it's not a chive. It's a spring onion. Yeah.
I didn’t pick it.
The sweet potatos are still going, but they are very chewed up. The nasturtiums are battling on (like Xena).
The thing about my gardening is that every time I do it, although I suck at it, I always suck a little bit less. I learn something every time. I will know, next time, to plant my pumpkins in a much airier place, so they don’t get too damp. I will know that green tops on the carrots doesn’t mean the roots are making much headway. I will know that spring onions hate me: they don’t grow in pots on the verandah for me, they don’t grow in the garden for me… but I am going to find a place where they do grow. Maybe in pots out in the open.
I’d be interested in anyone’s opinion on how to stop whatever it is eating my sweet potato vine. I think I can still salvage it. I saw a shiny, flea-sized bug on a leaf once, but otherwise I haven’t seen any bugs or caterpillars or anything on the leaves at all.
On the bright side, even though my vege gardening this time around was a fail, I still got to eat the pumpkin.
Tasty little pumpkin.
Yankee Elv cut it open and it looked just like a normal butternut pumpkin, just tiny.
The pumpkin looked normal inside, just miniscule.
So she made me butternut pumpkin chips. They were a delicious little snack!
Tiny little chips from a tiny little pumpkin. (Roasted and sprinkled with salt.)
The Story of Stuff
I just read a great article about Annie Leonard, who created The Story of Stuff. The Story of Stuff is a short, animated film that explains our consumer lifestyle and how it is affected us and the planet – from go to whoa. Here’s the video if you haven’t seen it before (you can choose different languages and captions if you click through to the site).
I like how the article allows Annie to better explain some of the points people have refuted. I also like how it gives us a bit of background to how she got into environmental activism. I especially like how the article is appearing in a major magazine – Elle – so lots of people will get to hear more about The Story of Stuff. Good stuff, Elle!
P.S. I really like the idea of a kampung. Does anyone know of any western (specifically Australian) types of these? Mostly I’ve seen eco-villages, but they don’t allow you to keeps cats and dogs and that doesn’t work for me (although I understand their reasons). I would love to live near like-minded people, eventually, and the whole sharing of resources and community appeals to me.
Happy Birthday Loodle!
This is not really an eco-anything post. This is a post to say happy birthday to my dog. He turned 13 on Saturday.
This is Loodle.
He’ had his 13th birthday on Saturday.
He’s such an old man.
He used to be a hearing dog. He let Yankee Elv know when there was a noise she should be aware of, like a doorbell or the baby crying. (He also made a good pillow for said baby… even as the ‘baby’ got older.) Some people refer to a hearing dog as ‘an alarm clock with a tail’. Mostly, Loodle was the snooze button with doggy breath, right in your face.
He liked it (except maybe the snooze button part). He was always happy when he was ‘working’. It was a pretty nice job… lie around, get treats, let everyone adore you, and paw your best friend when you hear a noise she should know about. Who wouldn’t want that job?
He especially liked getting to go wherever Yankee Elv went. His favourite places to go were parks or cafes. His least favourite was shopping. He liked going to Yankee Elv’s work, too.
During his time off, he liked to go swimming.
Especially at the beach.
He really liked the beach. It’s hard for him now. The waves are too strong, and they push him over. He hasn’t gone to the beach in a long while.
Loodle is retired. He’s deaf himself now, and arthritic, and losing his sight. Fortunately he knows some sign language, but we have to sign in exagerated motions so he can see it. Sometimes we just sign to him generally so he knows we are talking to him.
He gets very tired. (We have to drive him to the dog park now, because it’s too far for him to walk.)
He likes to sleep a lot, especially in the sunshine.
Sometimes with his best cat friend, Pou.
Sometimes he wants to be a snuggle-bunny with his human family.
He likes peanut-butter and doggy treats.
But he is just as happy taking care of my leftovers, like stale bread. (The face of the eco-friendly garbage disposal!)
Most of all, Loodle likes being the best dog ever. We love him.
Happy birthday, Loodle!
Teenage Boys Are Not Eco-Friendly
The title of this post says it all really. I can be as eco-friendly as I want. My son is not. This is a juxtaposition, ja?
Mr Teeny-bop is emo, with coffee and crossword. (I got a snap of him smiling after this... emo defeated!)
Sometimes, it’s not his fault. Sometimes it is… sort of. Here are the top 10 reasons why, in no particular order.
1. Teenage boys grow, seemingly exponentially. Buying lots of clothes is not eco-friendly, and of course, teenage boys are too fashionable to want second-hand clothes. Ooh la la.
2. Teenage boys eat a lot. Normally, this wouldn’t bother me so much, but my teenage boy is a picky, picky eater. He likes processed foods, like Kraft’s Mac&Cheese (the kind in the blue box), when he could just as easily eat the fresh, homemade kind his mother (not me, the other mother) makes. Pretty much the only non-processed nutrition he consumes comes from fruit, veges and soy milk. Ok, and cheese and meat and cereal and pasta and bread. But that’s it. And I don’t mean lots of kinds of these things. There are two kinds of cheese (one wrapped in plastic), several kinds of meat and cereal, two kinds of pasta (including Mac&Cheese) and white, low GI bread. Oh, and pierogi. No other non-processed food. Does coffee count as processed or non-processed? He drinks that too now (one cup a day only; he’s the only person in the house who likes it.) You might think I’m a terrible mother for letting him eat like this, but remember – when you’re a teenage boy, you know it all, and that includes what food you like. Besides, compared to what he used to eat, we are having victories every day. He tried sushi recently. He didn’t love it, but he tried it, and apparently it’s better than baked beans (another recent attempt). It seems resistance is futile after all.
3. Teenage boys break headphones. Sometimes I wonder if teenage boys realise there are actually a finite number of headphones in the world. And what do you do with broken headphones? There’s really no use for them. Can anyone think of a use for them? Mr Teeny-bop has just gone through three pairs in a month. I shudder when I think of the plastic-y, metal-y waste. I think I had one pair of headphones in all my teenage years. Then again, people didn’t walk around with their own personal soundtrack to life playing constantly inside their head (or from their iPod – however you’d like to describe it.) Maybe the next eco-unfriendly thing is increased hearing aid waste due to iPod-induced deafness. (I say waste, because I know teenage boys wearing hearing aids will lose or break the aids as quickly as they destroy headphones.)
4. Teenage boys do half-arsed chores around the house and call it done. For example, teenage boys mow the lawn and leave the cut grass out as green manure… on the concrete driveway. Call me sceptical, but I don’t think it’s going to enrich the soil too much there. Teenage boys don’t take as much care as they could when choosing which bin to tip the recycling into, because they are too busy thinking about lame Facebook applications and text messaging. Teenage boys don’t turn off the lights when they leave rooms. Teenage boys forget to turn the iron off (when they bother to iron). You may be sensing a pattern here. Yes, it’s the pattern of my irritation. Mothers of teenage boys have their own issues.
5. Teenage boys are even rougher on their shoes than pre-teen boys. I did not think this was possible, but apparently it is. Like broken headphones, what do you do with worn out shoes, I ask you? We have to buy new ones every term (roughly 12 weeks).
6. Teenage boys like lots of screen time. Wii, GameCube, YouTube, Facebook, MSN, text messaging, TV, DVD, camcorders, email… (I am looking at a screen a lot too, to be fair, but a lot of that is for my job.) Screen time takes electricity, and more of it means more electricity. Teenage boys also forget to turn appliances off. Before bed every night I do a round of the house, turning off computers, consoles, DVD players, TVs…
7. Teenage boys wear bigger clothes. This is fine, except it means I wash the same number of items, but I need to run more loads of laundry to fit everything in. I also run out of room on the clothes line. Trust me when I say that you should not try to circumvent this by overstuffing the washing machine. Teenage boys also smell, and if you don’t leave enough room for the clothes to get well scrubbed, the smell is going to linger. Even front loaders (which I have, and which apparently are supposed to be full during use as the agitation action is caused by the clothes rubbing together) do not do well being overstuffed.
8. As previously mentioned, teenage boys smell. Self-aware teenage boys (like my dear Mr Teeny-bop), try to circumvent this with deodorant. Unfortunately, mass marketing and peer pressure means Lynx body spray (not anti-perspirant), in a pressurised can, is the deodorant of choice. At least BO smells a little better when mixed with Lynx… even if it is sprayed so thickly I can taste it if I go into the bathroom after Mr Teeny-bop in the morning. Does anyone know what happens to spray cans when they are thrown away?
9. Teenage boys have a social life, which I am all for. Fortunately, living in a city permits a social life via bus, most of the time. However, the car trips we make to drop off/pick up are still considerably more than those made in pre-teen days. There’s just no way around the car and its links to suburbia unless there is dramatic social, demographic and economic change.
10. Teenage boys are rough on clothes. Socks wear out fast. The hems of shorts come down ‘by accident’. Shirts get stained. Jeans get ripped. Jumpers get covered in dog and cat fur. Hats get lost. Undies… well, ok. Undies wear pretty normally. But this brings us back to the first point – buying more clothes. Again. For a different reason. It’s a race to see whether he outgrows them or trashes them first.
Sometimes I think my efforts towards eco-consciousness are circumvented by my son. Sometimes my pattern of irritation feels ready to erupt into firey temper tantrums. (Yes, mothers have temper tantrums, they just look a lot different to kids’ temper tantrums.) Then my teenage boy does something sweet, like invent an imaginary Italian bed and breakfast, complete with hand-written menu and fake accent, just so he can wear a manly apron and cook pancakes for me as Mother’s Day breakfast in bed, instead of adding to the consumer culture and buying me a gift I don’t really need.
Most days, he’s grumpy and self-absorbed, but sometimes I get a glimpse of who he used to be, and who he’ll become, and I know it’ll be worth these angsty teenage years in the end. No-one who can be that loving and gentle with an aging ginger cat can stay angsty forever.
At least, I hope so!
Mr Teeny-bop and that aging ginger cat, Old Man Fatso, sleeping on the couch.
Friday Feast: Carrot, Pineapple and Soybean Stir-fry
Ok, I know this combination of ingredients sounds weird, but it’s good, trust me. This is one of Yankee Elv’s recipes, and she first made it while she was in the USA. I think it’s some kind of weird US North Pacific Rim fusion sort of meal. Anyway, it’s really easy and tastes great, so give it a go!
Carrot, Soybean, and Pineapple Stirfry
Carrot, Pineapple and Soybean Stir-fry, with rice.
Ingredients:
• 2 tablespoon oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced (or as much as you want)
• 2 medium carrots, sliced
• 1 240g (8oz) can pineapple chunks WITH juice – don’t drain
• 1 – 1 1/2 cups frozen green soybeans (edamame)
• 2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (less or more to adjust spiciness)
• 2 teaspoon sesame seeds (optional)
• cooked rice (preferably cooked at least a day before, so it is less sticky)
Method:
1. Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan over medium-high heat.
2. Add garlic and carrots and stir-fry for about 4 to 5 minutes
3. Add the pineapple with the juice. Saute on medium-high until juice is almost gone; about 5 to 10 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, defrost the frozen soybeans so they are no longer frozen (but they can still be cold) by heating them in the microwave, in water to cover, for 1 minute (if you don’t have a microwave, you can do it on the stove).
5. When the pineapple juice is almost gone, add the soybeans, soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, and red pepper. Heat for 3 to 5 minutes, until the spices are mixed and the beans are warmed through.
6. You can either mix in the rice and cook it some more with the stirfry (gives the rice some extra flavor), or just ladle the stir-fry over the rice.
Optional: sprinkle sesame seeds over the meal for a bit of a crunch.
Moving the BP Oil Disaster
I got some serious news about my health recently. I’m still waiting on a definite diagnosis, but I probably have a degenerative disease with a likely outcome of paralysis or blindness. Fun stuff. Imagine Yankee Elv with her hearing dog and me with a guide and/or assistance dog. Won’t we make a pair? I’m hoping I’m one of the lucky ones who misses out on those symptoms, but there’s no way to know, there’s no cure and I haven’t responded well to treatment so far.
As you may imagine, this has had me a bit distracted. That’s partly why recently there have been lots of posts about happy, achievable things, like saving chickens and eating vegan food – I haven’t felt up to delving into the serious stuff. Plus, aside from eating healthily, exercising regularly and avoiding illness and tiredness, the best way to look after myself is to reduce stress. Just for a little while, reducing stress has included not keeping up with the really nasty environmental crap – like the disaster of the BP oil spill. It just didn’t seem like something I should stress about. So that’s why you haven’t seen anything from me about arguably the greatest single event of human-created ecological catastrophe in memory.
However, a friend of mine posted about this site on Facebook, and I thought it was too good not to share. It’s called IfItWasMyHome.com and it allows you to digitally move the oil spill around on a map. You think it’s bad in the Gulf of Mexico? Well, of course it is. But is it better or worse if it’s in a major city? What about if it was where you live? On this site, you can try it out.
I found it interesting because I lived on the Gulf Coast in Texas for a while. In reality, it’s getting close to places I’ve been, so I can picture what it’s doing.
The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The little red circle shows where I used to live.
I also moved the oil spill to Brisbane. It helps me understand, more tangibly, how big it actually is. It covers up the entire south east of Queensland region, including where I live now, where I grew up, where I go camping… everything. It’s huge.
Here's what the oil spill would look like if it had happened in Brisbane.
Here it is in New York. The place where Yankee Elv grew up is covered in oil.
Here's what the oil spill would look like if it had happened in New York.
Possibly the most shocking and frightening image came up when I moved the spill to Rome.
Here's what the oil spill would look like if it had happened in Rome.
The width of the spill is greater than the width of the entire country of Italy. The BP oil disaster is bigger – significantly bigger – than a number of European countries. You can see them right there on the map. Get that in your head…
…then think about how the oil has been gushing out unchecked for well over a month. So far, BP has not done much. What kind of company doesn’t have a contingency plan for a disaster like this? Did they really think nothing like this would ever happen? Why didn’t they have plans in place, just in case? So far, the most help has come from Kevin Costner. Good on him, his brother and their company – but why on earth is a movie star better qualified to clean this up than the enormous company who got the world into this position? And if he’s so much better qualified, why didn’t they get him on board before this happened?
See why I have been trying not to think about this? I get into a stressy, rant-y place. But really, even if BP can’t figure out how to stop the tragedy, why aren’t they at least paying people to get out and clean it up? That’s something achievable that, sadly, people have experience with.
Why isn't BP paying people to clean up the affected areas and wildlife, like these poor pelicans in Louisiana?*
*Photos by Charlie Riedel for The Big Picture.
Friday Feast: Vegan Quiche
I was reading my local Vegsoc forum and came across a thread about vegan chickpea omlettes. The thread included a recipe for a batter based on chickpea flour (rather than eggs), plus a tonne of rave reviews. Apparently, this batter can be used to make lots of things: omlettes, fritters, faux scrambled eggs, pizza bases, frittatas and quiches. Considering I hadn’t had any of this eggy stuff for at least 6 years, I thought I might give it a go. I made a quiche, and it was pretty good! I thought it tasted quite quiche-like. Yankee Elv, who still eats eggs, didn’t think it tasted exactly like quiche, but she liked it a lot anyway.
I made mine in a pie dish, so it was quite shallow. If you wanted a thicker quiche, you could put it in a smaller dish or double the mixture. You might have to increase the cooking time too. I didn’t make mine with pastry, but other people have made it with vegan puff pastry and it worked well. I might try that next time.
Vegan Quiche
My very first vegan quiche (no longer an oxymoron) - made primarily with chickpea flour and topped with pine nuts.
Ingredients
**batter**
- 1 cup besan (chickpea) flour
- 1.5 cups water
- 2 tabs olive oil
- salt/pepper to taste (be generous)
- vegan margarine (to grease the dish)
**my filling** (this is all optional, change as you like – you want to add flavourful stuff though or it will be bland)
- sun-dried tomatoes, finely diced
- roasted capsicum, finely diced
- black olives, finely diced (consider the strong flavour of these when deciding how many to add)
- shallots (green onions), finely diced
- nutritional yeast (I used about 1/8 cup)
- garlic powder
- onion powder
- Italian herbs
- pine nuts (to sprinkle on top)
Method:
- Preheat oven to 200°C (390°F).
- Sift besan flour into a bowl. Add other batter ingredients (aside from vegan margarine) and combine very well.
- Add filling ingredients (except pine nuts) and combine.
- Pour mixture into a greased dish. (Use vegan margarine to grease.)
- Bake for 25 to 30 mins, then sprinkle pine nuts on top and return to the oven.
- Continue to bake for about another 10-15 mins, or until set and golden brown around the edges (and on top, if you want).
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