Onions are Guilty and Should be Locked Up in Jail.

Well, cooking camp is a huge success so far. So successful, in fact, that I barely have the energy to drag my body into bed at the end of the day.

The title of today's post is a quote from one of my favorite students. She uttered it shortly after getting my attention today and intoned it with utter conviction and sincerity. What does it mean? Yea, I have no idea; she didn't enlighten me.

I don't have the energy to write up much more, but I'll post camp menu so far. Will post links to the recipes and maybe reviews when I get a bit more juice in me:

1. colored bread dough sculptures (turned out so well!)

2. three pizzas (traditional pizza, white pizza, homemade dough, dessert pizza)

3. hummus, baba ganoush, and spinach cheese dip

4. peanut soup & sugar and spice nuts

5. m&m cookie mix and cocoa mix

Random food musings

I have to admit it; lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about food.

Now, this usually isn’t all that unusual for me. I think about food a lot. However, as of late I’ve been thinking about food a bit more broadly than simply pondering what to cook and eat next (a preoccupation that takes a not-insignificant portion of my days).

At least part of my culinary ruminating stems from my preparing to teach cooking lessons at a local summer camp. The camp itself is situated in a local community garden, which means I have access to all sorts of fresh and exotic ingredients. In walking the facility and planning the menus I initially wound up with an entirely vegetarian menu. Reflecting on this, I think it has as much to do with a desire to connect these kids back to the natural cycles that provide us with food as it does with healthful eating, access to the gardens, etc. I was struck by two thoughts today in market:
1. How very little we know about what’s going into the things most of us choose to eat
2. How very little we know about how to prepare the fresh, whole foods that are readily available
I’d like to work more fresh fruit and veggies into my diet. The funny thing is… I get pretty intimidated in the produce section. I’ve always thought of myself as a foodie and cook, so if I’m overwhelmed by simple, fresh produce, how do most other people feel?

Which leads me to the other part of ruminations. I’m reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, an account of how various food products are raised/produced, grown/assembled, and eaten/distributed. I definitely fall into the target demographic for this book (young, moderately health-conscious, and yearning for simple improvements to make in my own life), and it is having its intended effect on me (unabated culinary paranoia and a distrust in the industrial food complex). Will it have any lasting effect on me? Maybe. I did cut fast food out of my life shortly after reading Fast Food Nation. It wasn’t that their science opened my eyes to unseen evils. I think it’s fairly universally accepted that Fast Food is only marginally food at best. And, truth told, I find the science of both books falls short at times (as a statistician and self-proclaimed evaluator, the last sentence applies to just about everything I read, anyway). However, what these books seem to accomplish is to provide me with a reason to take actions that I already knew I should take.
My most recent plans are to start regularly hitting the local farmers’ market, increase the variety of fruits and veggies I eat (I don’t eat meat too often, but my faux vegetarian palate has been pretty limited), and to maybe (maybe) start a small compost pile on my patio garden.

Anyway, I’ve emphasizing the negatives (fear of processed foods, uncertainty in the produce aisles) for a bit of contrast with a happier experience I had today. Part of the Omnivore’s Dilemma is the discussion of the meanings of food. It argues that eating food says something about who we are: what we choose to buy, where we choose to shop, etc all serve to define us to some degree. It’s a concept that I rarely think about, and (as often as not) dismiss as mumbo-jumbo. Yea, there’s a difference between being a strict organic vegan and living off an exclusively off Pizza Hut, but are there really any meaningful distinctions for “normal” everyday people?

Well, today I had a weird bonding moment over food. I was being rung up at the grocery store when my cashier stopped, looked down at the fruit I was buying, and started grinning.

“Sapotes? You really like Sapotes? I didn’t even know we had these here – I haven’t seen one since my childhood. My grandmother used to have a tree growing out in her yard…”

My cashier was a young Hispanic man. I had watched, in the way we all sort of vacantly look around while waiting in lines, as he had dully rung up the last few customers without a word. At the sight of these sapotes, however, he decided we had some small, instant camaraderie. In just a few moments as he spoke of growing up in Mexico and seeing sapote trees everywhere, he shared a little bit of what sapotes meant to him. They were more than fruit… they had all sorts of context. Childhood, happy memories of his family, and a country he no longer lives in. When I told him I was trying them because I couldn’t find any cherimoya, he got even more excited and told me about the cherimoya tree he was raising in his yard. Where he got the seeds, what the tree looks like, etc.

It’s funny – if I saw him again I doubt either of us would recognize the other. We’d both look at each other with the dull, indifferent look that’s so often tossed around, “I’m just looking at you – not looking to interact with you” … but at least for today we had a nice moment. Two people for whom sapotes mean something (albeit radically different things: comfort/home versus exotic/foreign)…

I guess the point isn’t what specific meanings ours food hold. I think the point is that we take the time to give our food meaning.

June Adopt-A-Meal

I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully) to think of a witty, self-denigrating way to restart this blog after such long neglect. Failing to find the right words myself, I decided (in the name of expedition) to borrow someone else’s:

“The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up."
~Author Unknown

Well, as luck would have it, I’ve stumbled my way towards a few excuses to begin updating more regularly. We’ll see if it pans out. All too often, I find my excitement at the prospect of blogging surging… only to dash itself in futility against the cold, unyielding face of my laziness.

My first excuse to blog is hardly a new development, though I suppose I hadn’t really considered it as blog-fodder until recently. For the last year-and-a-half or so, I’ve been going to a local homeless shelter to prepare monthly meals. More recently (perhaps under a year ago), the girl who was organizing our team opted out of leadership to focus on medschool. In her absence I’ve since taken over organizing our efforts and planning our meals.

So, I thought I’d start keeping track of our meal plans. Maybe I’ll post the costs to track the cost-per-person. Maybe I’ll just review the recipes. I’m not sure yet --- we’ll just see where it goes.

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June Adopt-A-Meal
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This month I decided to go with an Asian twist on traditional American eats. On one hand, having seen the meal plans posted in the shelter I know the residents must be dying for a little variety in their diets. On the hand, my natural inclination is to gravitate to exotic and unusual meals… sometimes to the detriment of those with ‘narrower’ (read as: normal) palates. I definitely don’t want to frighten or put off the residents with foods that are too exotic and unfamiliar, but this pairing struck me as a decent compromise.

I ended choosing to do a play off of fried chicken and pasta salad by adapting two Japanese staples: Chicken Katsu and a cold Soba Noodle Salad (the dessert, a mango cheesecake, was, as usual, store bought).

Main Course: Oven-Baked Chicken Katsu
Adapted from: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Oven-Fried-Chicken-III/Detail.aspx
(scaled up for 35)

Chicken Katsu is one (of many) of my true culinary loves. Unlike many of my current favorite eats, however, my love affair with the breaded bird began long ago in grade school. To this day I hold a number of fond memories linked to what I then knew only as “chicken thingies.”

You see, while most of my childhood friends would nosh on modest sack lunches (half sandwich, chips, piece of fruit, boxed juice), one of my childhood best friends had been blessed with that greatest of inventions, the bento box. I don’t know what kept him from revealed the magic word “katsu” to us. When pressed to name the delicious, sauce-drenched fried victuals, he would modestly reply that they were simply “chicken thingies.”
Needless to say, lunch each day would consist of use trying to coerce, cajole, or trade our way into possession of some of the magical chicken thingies.

It wasn’t until years later that I rediscovered, and subsequently devoured, katsu again --- I was finally reunited with my long lost childhood love. And this time, I finally learned her name. Oh, Katsu, how I missed you!

To prepare the katsu I followed the link posted to the letter but substituted panko breadcrumbs in place of the usual and kicked the heat up to 375 degrees. All in all, it was a great success I think! The chicken was juicy on the inside, crisp on the outside, and just different enough from the typical fried chicken to be engaging.

I’ll probably make this again at home with two substitutions: use yogurt in place of mayonnaise (I bought the yogurt but forgot to bring it in to the shelter) & bake it on a wire cooling rack to keep the bottoms from getting oily/soft.

Oh, and what really makes katsu… well, katsu… is the sauce! The creatively named “katsu sauce” is sort of like Japan’s answer to steak or Worcestershire sauce. Its complex flavor isn’t easily likened to any other taste I can think of. It’s basically a delicious, sweet take on BBQ sauce with less ‘tang.’ At any rate, in order to make the sauce go further I diluted it with apple juice (Katsu sauce’s main ingredient is apple sauce, so it’s not nearly as odd of an idea as it might sound) --- which really worked quite well!

Vegetable/Side Dish: Soba Salad
Adapted from: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/SOBA-SALAD-106167

One of the challenges of cooking at the shelter is providing healthy vegetable options that the residents will actually eat. We’ve had good luck with simple roasted veggies, but most other options (including salads) nearly always fall flat. Many of the residents range from overweight to obese, so I feel like it’s especially important to offer healthy and healthful options. This month I took a shot at disguising our veggies in a pasta salad.

In making the salad I actually browsed several recipes and picked and chose from elements that I liked. The end product more or less followed the recipe above but was composed of:

• 36 oz soba (Japanese buckwheat noodles)
• 6 tablespoons Asian sesame oil
• 6 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
• 1 large jicama, peeled and diced
• 3 small bags of frozen corn
• Several (maybe 9) sliced green onions
• 1 large package of frozen soybeans

It seemed like the end product went over pretty well. I think cold soba noodles are one of the best summer foods around, and the recipe worked out well as a platform to sneak some veggies in.

All-in-all… I think the day was a success!
Perhaps I’ll write more or think of a way to rate or assess this day’s cooking…
…but that’s a task for another day.

Oh, and I only had to go to five grocery stores to round up the ingredients. Seriously, what kind of grocery store goes around with no soba noodles or panko breadcrumbs? Madness!!