Monday, May 2, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Duck eggs from the Ithaca Farmers Market...
Saturday, 04.09.11. Last Saturday was the first market of the year at Steamboat Landing. I went with Hope, met Lyca & Alana there, and ran into Dylan who hung out with us while we ate our breakfast (Cambodian food and breakfast burritos- delicious!) on the dock. It was pretty chilly and not very many vendors were there, but that was because it was the first market and not much is growing besides salad greens in greenhouses (some of the farms had root veggies leftover from the fall that had been in their root cellars all winter). I bought some kefir cheese (YUM!) and duck eggs which were HUGE, beautiful, delicious, and worth every penny of the $6 I spent on the dozen. I also picked up some chard from Westhaven Farm and introduced myself to the man vending the produce. Westhaven Farm is located at Ecovillage, and is part of Groundswell's New Farmer Training Program (http://groundswellcenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=77&Itemid=132 ) which I am participating in. It starts next Wednesday 04.20.11, and I can't wait! It should be a very valuable learning experience, and worth every penny of the tuition (Compare this to Cornell's nearly $1000 per credit hour. In my time here at Cornell, not a single class that I have taken has been worth $1000 per credit hour. Not one. This farmer course is a 100-hour program from April-November for $600. Not bad if you ask me.)
This weekend is for studying (I have an exam on Monday morning), studying, studying. After Monday, I will be slightly less stressed, but will still have to work on papers, projects, and art installations for two different events. These last four weeks of school are going to be crazy, busy, and hectic... can't wait to be done (and for spring to come!).
This weekend is for studying (I have an exam on Monday morning), studying, studying. After Monday, I will be slightly less stressed, but will still have to work on papers, projects, and art installations for two different events. These last four weeks of school are going to be crazy, busy, and hectic... can't wait to be done (and for spring to come!).
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Oh yeah...
Part of my "What's in the basket" culinary explorations for my 8:00 am sculpture class: Make your own waffles!!!
daylight savings time!
Today was an extremely long day. For the first time in my life, daylight savings time took me by surprise (I usually am excitedly planning its arrival) and although I woke up at 5:30 and thought I had plenty of time to cook some pinto and black beans for my dinner with Bob, his kids, Laura, and Hope, I really ended up being half an hour late to my 7:00 am appointment at the Risley Print Shop. Great way to start the day.
I was so confused when I looked at the time on my computer and saw that it said 7:00 am and then looked outside to see that it was still fairly dark out.
Nevertheless, I had a very successful print shop experience. I tested some nice white ink on brown paper about the color, thickness, and texture of a brown paper bag (its contractor paper that I bought at the Home Depot for like $10 for a huge roll) and really like how the white looks against the brown. Thom had some interesting ideas about creative ways that I could create tear-able posters so that people can take the information with them by tearing off a piece of the larger poster, but I need to finalize the wording of the posters before I can really do much else.
I talk to the woman from the Women's Community Building tomorrow afternoon about using the space for Ithaca Community Potluck (I kind of like the name for some reason, but it is super bland and think that it might be good to come up with a new name), but a major issue I am having is the whole money thing. I want to do this project as cost-effectively as possible; therefore, I really need to find some way to pay for the rental of space without paying out of my pocket. An idea I had was to have a regularly occurring bake sale and use the profits to pay for the space. I suppose I could always just ask for donations at the potluck, but this kind of goes against my idea of open access to everyone (but they could be voluntary).
Another idea is to get local businesses to sponsor the potluck. I could get a different local business to sponsor the potluck each week... hmmm? I think this might actually work , as long as I can find some initial businesses willing to give the initial donations to get the potluck up and running. It seems to me that if I have an awesome potluck up & running, businesses would be more than willing to donate, say, $50, for us to use the space if they could use it as a form of advertising (Thought: I might have to register as a local non-profit to receive donations of money... hmm).
On another note, my seed bomb experiment seems to have gone well (I think). I bought some wildflower mix and some veggie seeds and formed about 120 seed bombs which are drying near my heater as I write. However, I am not 100% sure that they will fit in the gumball machine, and even if they do, I am not sure if they will actually work or not. Today, Hope had the amazing idea of using tea bags as seed bomb packets. I need to look into this more.
Tonight, Bob, Laura, Hope, and Henry & Theo (Bob's adorable kids) all came over for a make-your-own taco/burrito night. We had corn tortillas, flour tortillas, regular and dairy-free cheeses, homemade refried beans, 2 different homemade guacamoles (both Laura and I made some), homemade salsa (Hope did a great job, it was really tasty!), black beans with lime and cilantro, roasted root vegetables, tons of roasted peppers, brown rice, sour cream, tasty blue corn tortilla chips, a ground venison taco filling (brought by Laura, it was one of the deer that had been eating her veggies all summer!), and a vegan tofu filling option. For dessert, we had good, dark coffee, vanilla Haagen Dazs ice cream, and homemade gluten-free, vegan apple crisp (made by Laura!). Bob also brought me some fresh eggs from his chickens and another vegetable filling side dish.
we had a lot of food
& there are a lot of leftovers :)
Since I have been seriously reconsidering my beliefs about food and didn't see any reason why I shouldn't eat the venison filling that Laura brought (in fact, there were many good reasons for me to eat it such as the fact that the deer had been hunted on Laura's property and had been eating all of her veggies in her garden), I decided to have a venison taco/burrito. It was delicious. This was the first time I've eaten meat in about 7 1/2 years, and the first time I've ever tasted venison. I'm glad I did.
Hope & I talked to Bob, and WE ARE GETTING SOME MEAT CHICKENS THAT ARE GOING TO LIVE AT HIS FARM! I am SO EXCITED! Hope is getting her birds for Watermargin, and I am getting mine for my own eating and slaughtering (Bob and Laura are going to show us how to do it when the time comes). This is going to be a GREAT summer... I get to raise my own poultry (well, Bob will be doing most of the work, but still!) and continue my farming journeys (I need to turn in the scholarship application for the Groundswell Farmer Training Program & I also need to find a farm to work at this summer).
Oh yeah, spring is coming!!!
I was so confused when I looked at the time on my computer and saw that it said 7:00 am and then looked outside to see that it was still fairly dark out.
Nevertheless, I had a very successful print shop experience. I tested some nice white ink on brown paper about the color, thickness, and texture of a brown paper bag (its contractor paper that I bought at the Home Depot for like $10 for a huge roll) and really like how the white looks against the brown. Thom had some interesting ideas about creative ways that I could create tear-able posters so that people can take the information with them by tearing off a piece of the larger poster, but I need to finalize the wording of the posters before I can really do much else.
I talk to the woman from the Women's Community Building tomorrow afternoon about using the space for Ithaca Community Potluck (I kind of like the name for some reason, but it is super bland and think that it might be good to come up with a new name), but a major issue I am having is the whole money thing. I want to do this project as cost-effectively as possible; therefore, I really need to find some way to pay for the rental of space without paying out of my pocket. An idea I had was to have a regularly occurring bake sale and use the profits to pay for the space. I suppose I could always just ask for donations at the potluck, but this kind of goes against my idea of open access to everyone (but they could be voluntary).
Another idea is to get local businesses to sponsor the potluck. I could get a different local business to sponsor the potluck each week... hmmm? I think this might actually work , as long as I can find some initial businesses willing to give the initial donations to get the potluck up and running. It seems to me that if I have an awesome potluck up & running, businesses would be more than willing to donate, say, $50, for us to use the space if they could use it as a form of advertising (Thought: I might have to register as a local non-profit to receive donations of money... hmm).
On another note, my seed bomb experiment seems to have gone well (I think). I bought some wildflower mix and some veggie seeds and formed about 120 seed bombs which are drying near my heater as I write. However, I am not 100% sure that they will fit in the gumball machine, and even if they do, I am not sure if they will actually work or not. Today, Hope had the amazing idea of using tea bags as seed bomb packets. I need to look into this more.
Tonight, Bob, Laura, Hope, and Henry & Theo (Bob's adorable kids) all came over for a make-your-own taco/burrito night. We had corn tortillas, flour tortillas, regular and dairy-free cheeses, homemade refried beans, 2 different homemade guacamoles (both Laura and I made some), homemade salsa (Hope did a great job, it was really tasty!), black beans with lime and cilantro, roasted root vegetables, tons of roasted peppers, brown rice, sour cream, tasty blue corn tortilla chips, a ground venison taco filling (brought by Laura, it was one of the deer that had been eating her veggies all summer!), and a vegan tofu filling option. For dessert, we had good, dark coffee, vanilla Haagen Dazs ice cream, and homemade gluten-free, vegan apple crisp (made by Laura!). Bob also brought me some fresh eggs from his chickens and another vegetable filling side dish.
we had a lot of food
& there are a lot of leftovers :)
Since I have been seriously reconsidering my beliefs about food and didn't see any reason why I shouldn't eat the venison filling that Laura brought (in fact, there were many good reasons for me to eat it such as the fact that the deer had been hunted on Laura's property and had been eating all of her veggies in her garden), I decided to have a venison taco/burrito. It was delicious. This was the first time I've eaten meat in about 7 1/2 years, and the first time I've ever tasted venison. I'm glad I did.
Hope & I talked to Bob, and WE ARE GETTING SOME MEAT CHICKENS THAT ARE GOING TO LIVE AT HIS FARM! I am SO EXCITED! Hope is getting her birds for Watermargin, and I am getting mine for my own eating and slaughtering (Bob and Laura are going to show us how to do it when the time comes). This is going to be a GREAT summer... I get to raise my own poultry (well, Bob will be doing most of the work, but still!) and continue my farming journeys (I need to turn in the scholarship application for the Groundswell Farmer Training Program & I also need to find a farm to work at this summer).
Oh yeah, spring is coming!!!
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
I spent most of the weekend studying for an exam in my Early Agriculture class (and taking a field trip to Michaels Arts & Crafts), so things are a little less crazy now that I don't have to worry about it (who gives an exam first thing on a Monday morning, anyway!?). I am very thankful to be done (at least until the second exam), but really enjoyed studying because it made me think about human relationships to food thousands of years ago.
A couple of main concerns for people back in the time of the Neolithic Revolution (although it wasn't really a revolution in terms of fast change, but it was a drastic, widely adopted, gradual transition from foraging to farming over a period spanning a few thousand years) were poor nutrition (when people switched from foraging to farming, they lost a great deal of variety in their diets because they only cultivated certain crops) and soil exhaustion (many early farmers would simply cultivate plots of land and abandon them after the soil was nutrient-poor, usually after one or two growing seasons). It is really interesting to learn about the creative techniques people used to manage their fields, such as constructing chinampas (mainly in Mesoamerica people would dig up fertile soil from the bottoms of lakes and create a raised bed above the water which would be naturally irrigated by water seeping into the dirt from the surrounding lake) or utilizing the naturally occurring flooding of an area to fertilize fields (for example, the Lozi people of Zambia moved from the valleys to the higher areas when great floods came in, creating huge lakes in the valley and fertilizing the soil).
Nowadays, it seems that instead of finding creative agricultural solutions which work with natural cycles of the world (and maintaining a symbiotic relationship between humans and the surrounding environment), the goal of most industrialized agriculture is to tame the land (in this case, the humans are in control) without paying much attention to environmental concerns (i.e., spraying harmful pesticides without thinking about their environmental implications).
One of the things that I think is very interesting is that the act of domesticating plants and animals causes genetic changes, so technically, every domesticated food produced today has been genetically modified over a period of thousands of years to suit the needs of humans. Seems pretty similar to what we are doing today with GMO crops, however, instead of waiting thousands of years for a desirable trait to be bred into our out of a food crop (i.e., getting rid of unpalatable toxins in a plant), we can now go in and modify the DNA of a crop and cause more immediate change to the organism. We humans are pretty good at coming up with creative ways to "solve" our problems (or, at least put them on hold for a little while), the question is where is the line between ethical and unethical environmental manipulation? Something to explore...
On another note, I sent Coco a care package yesterday with brownies (that looked like blondies because they were so light in color, but they had chocolate, so they were technically brownies!), meyer lemon shortbread cookies, lots of chocolate, and a birthday card. Hopefully he will get the package before the food becomes stale (I would love to know how people manage to mail baked goods across the country!).
I have been eating really good food lately, and have been trying my hardest to stay away from refined sugars and dairy, both of which have been causing some major issues with my stomach/digestive system. The other day, I made a coconut milk rice dish with veggies and shrimp, and last night, Lyca & I made mashed parsnips with black beans, onions, red pepper, & spinach on top (then we put some fresh salad greens and I added crumbled blue corn tortilla chips)... it was soooo tasty!
Some food brainstorming/ things I want to make:
Pistachio cookies... can I make pistachios into a nut flour and use the flour as a base for a gluten-free cookie?
Pistachio white chocolate chip cookies
Almond milk cornbread
Sweet potato pie!
My own chai tea
Applesauce (I need to get a bushel of apples first!)
The "perfect" (as to my preferences) gluten-free scone
The "perfect" (as to my preferences) gluten-free cinnamon buns
...and many other things!
Side note: SPRING IS COMING! SPRING IS COMING! SPRING WILL BE HERE SOON!
I can't wait for the asparagus to come up, the salad greens to grow outside instead of in hoop houses, baby chicks to replenish Bob's destroyed chicken population (the majority of his chickens were recently killed by a mink), rhubarb pie, Dragon Day (I still have to figure out some kind of costume to make), spring break (Lyca & I are going back East to the Hudson Valley for crazy shenanigans!), dandelions (homemade dandelion wine?), MUD, daffodil fields next to Bebee lake, wild cherry trees, birds in the mornings (today was the first day this spring that I woke up to birds outside my window! they are singing so happily right now!), and so many other wonderful things...
Hopefully this will be the last major storm of the winter season:
A couple of main concerns for people back in the time of the Neolithic Revolution (although it wasn't really a revolution in terms of fast change, but it was a drastic, widely adopted, gradual transition from foraging to farming over a period spanning a few thousand years) were poor nutrition (when people switched from foraging to farming, they lost a great deal of variety in their diets because they only cultivated certain crops) and soil exhaustion (many early farmers would simply cultivate plots of land and abandon them after the soil was nutrient-poor, usually after one or two growing seasons). It is really interesting to learn about the creative techniques people used to manage their fields, such as constructing chinampas (mainly in Mesoamerica people would dig up fertile soil from the bottoms of lakes and create a raised bed above the water which would be naturally irrigated by water seeping into the dirt from the surrounding lake) or utilizing the naturally occurring flooding of an area to fertilize fields (for example, the Lozi people of Zambia moved from the valleys to the higher areas when great floods came in, creating huge lakes in the valley and fertilizing the soil).
Nowadays, it seems that instead of finding creative agricultural solutions which work with natural cycles of the world (and maintaining a symbiotic relationship between humans and the surrounding environment), the goal of most industrialized agriculture is to tame the land (in this case, the humans are in control) without paying much attention to environmental concerns (i.e., spraying harmful pesticides without thinking about their environmental implications).
One of the things that I think is very interesting is that the act of domesticating plants and animals causes genetic changes, so technically, every domesticated food produced today has been genetically modified over a period of thousands of years to suit the needs of humans. Seems pretty similar to what we are doing today with GMO crops, however, instead of waiting thousands of years for a desirable trait to be bred into our out of a food crop (i.e., getting rid of unpalatable toxins in a plant), we can now go in and modify the DNA of a crop and cause more immediate change to the organism. We humans are pretty good at coming up with creative ways to "solve" our problems (or, at least put them on hold for a little while), the question is where is the line between ethical and unethical environmental manipulation? Something to explore...
On another note, I sent Coco a care package yesterday with brownies (that looked like blondies because they were so light in color, but they had chocolate, so they were technically brownies!), meyer lemon shortbread cookies, lots of chocolate, and a birthday card. Hopefully he will get the package before the food becomes stale (I would love to know how people manage to mail baked goods across the country!).
I have been eating really good food lately, and have been trying my hardest to stay away from refined sugars and dairy, both of which have been causing some major issues with my stomach/digestive system. The other day, I made a coconut milk rice dish with veggies and shrimp, and last night, Lyca & I made mashed parsnips with black beans, onions, red pepper, & spinach on top (then we put some fresh salad greens and I added crumbled blue corn tortilla chips)... it was soooo tasty!
Some food brainstorming/ things I want to make:
Pistachio cookies... can I make pistachios into a nut flour and use the flour as a base for a gluten-free cookie?
Pistachio white chocolate chip cookies
Almond milk cornbread
Sweet potato pie!
My own chai tea
Applesauce (I need to get a bushel of apples first!)
The "perfect" (as to my preferences) gluten-free scone
The "perfect" (as to my preferences) gluten-free cinnamon buns
...and many other things!
Side note: SPRING IS COMING! SPRING IS COMING! SPRING WILL BE HERE SOON!
I can't wait for the asparagus to come up, the salad greens to grow outside instead of in hoop houses, baby chicks to replenish Bob's destroyed chicken population (the majority of his chickens were recently killed by a mink), rhubarb pie, Dragon Day (I still have to figure out some kind of costume to make), spring break (Lyca & I are going back East to the Hudson Valley for crazy shenanigans!), dandelions (homemade dandelion wine?), MUD, daffodil fields next to Bebee lake, wild cherry trees, birds in the mornings (today was the first day this spring that I woke up to birds outside my window! they are singing so happily right now!), and so many other wonderful things...
Hopefully this will be the last major storm of the winter season:
Monday, February 21, 2011
I spent my weekend enjoying the presence of wonderful people, eating good food, going to the State Theater for my first time to see Galumpha, a high-energy acrobat group (), and not getting much done in terms of school work. Friday was so unseasonably warm here that I didn't need to wear a coat, and the warm sun beckoned me to skip my classes and stay outside all day (although I did go to all of my classes on Friday). In my hands-on horticulture class, we learned about bulb forcing, and planted loads of bulbs (hyacinth, amaryllis, tulips, daffodils, paperwhites). We got to take home the paperwhites and amaryllis, and they are already starting to grow! I took some pictures while in the greenhouses, and really like how they look in black and white instead of color. Most pictures of flowers are in color so the viewer can appreciate the beauty of the flower, but I really like the pictures in black and white because they seem more like landscapes instead of just portraits of flowers, and you can really appreciate the structure and form of the flowers without being distracted by nice colors.
Friday night, Bob held a potluck at his house, which was really nice because I hadn't been to the farm since November, and I really have been missing it (even though now everything is covered in snow and the only things growing are salad greens in the hoop house). Hope and Lyca came with me, and brought coconut milk rice pudding and fire toys to perform with. I brought a soup/stew/chili without the chili powder kind of dish, which turned out to be really delicious.
1 yellow onion
a bunch of cloves of garlic
1 large red pepper
Saute the onion, garlic, and red pepper on the stove until onions are translucent and pepper is soft. Remove from heat.
28 oz. can organic diced tomatoes
16 oz. package organic creamy butternut squash soup
1/2 sweet potato
a handful of crimini mushrooms
3 carrots
about a cup and a half each of red kidney beans and black beans (you can either use rinsed canned beans, or rehydrate the beans ahead of time)
thyme
oregano
basil
a couple of bay leaves
salt
pepper
Chop the vegetables up and throw everything (season with your own preference for spices, I used thyme, oregano, basil, a couple of bay leaves, salt, and pepper, but wanted to throw some sage in there too) into a crock pot and cook on low forever. I put everything in my crock pot around 8:00 am and removed everything around 4:45 p.m. after I got home from classes. When I got home, I cooked some red quinoa really quickly and steamed some kale and spinach to throw in also. I added a huge bunch of kale and spinach and probably a cup and a half of cooked quinoa to the stew.
The potluck was a success! We had good food (Bob and Laura made homemade pizza;
there was also another soup made with Bob's frozen veggies from earlier on in the farming season, apple crisp, Hope's coconut milk rice pudding, ice cream, and a fresh salad from Bob's hoop house), fire-spinning, and I was very entertained by watching all of the children (I think there were 6 of them) running around the house with never-ending energy (although they were way too loud and the adults had to temporarily break up their fun throughout the night to settle things down). Bob showed us a ripped-apart carcass of a deer that had been seemingly attacked by coyotes, and the dead mink which had gone on a mass killing rampage in his chicken house (Bob hung the mink in a tree so he can get the bones once all of the fur and meat decomposes).
On Saturday, Lyca and I braved the horrible, 50 mph wind gusts to stop by the winter Farmers' Market and wander around the Ithaca Commons before Galumpha. The market was nice, but we were a little disappointed because we had been planning on eating breakfast there, but there were no ready-made food stands so we had to go to Waffle Frolic to eat (which was delicious but very expensive).
The State Theater was gorgeous and impressive, and the show was very lighthearted and entertaining. There were many, many children there with their families, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the dancing and acrobatics of the performers.
It is now Monday, which means the start of a new week of school, work, and homework. I need to start studying for my prelims because my first exam is a week away. I have two potlucks this week to attend (Thursday for class and Friday with the gluten-free meetup group on campus), which means I will definitely be making some good food in the near future!
Friday night, Bob held a potluck at his house, which was really nice because I hadn't been to the farm since November, and I really have been missing it (even though now everything is covered in snow and the only things growing are salad greens in the hoop house). Hope and Lyca came with me, and brought coconut milk rice pudding and fire toys to perform with. I brought a soup/stew/chili without the chili powder kind of dish, which turned out to be really delicious.
1 yellow onion
a bunch of cloves of garlic
1 large red pepper
Saute the onion, garlic, and red pepper on the stove until onions are translucent and pepper is soft. Remove from heat.
28 oz. can organic diced tomatoes
16 oz. package organic creamy butternut squash soup
1/2 sweet potato
a handful of crimini mushrooms
3 carrots
about a cup and a half each of red kidney beans and black beans (you can either use rinsed canned beans, or rehydrate the beans ahead of time)
thyme
oregano
basil
a couple of bay leaves
salt
pepper
Chop the vegetables up and throw everything (season with your own preference for spices, I used thyme, oregano, basil, a couple of bay leaves, salt, and pepper, but wanted to throw some sage in there too) into a crock pot and cook on low forever. I put everything in my crock pot around 8:00 am and removed everything around 4:45 p.m. after I got home from classes. When I got home, I cooked some red quinoa really quickly and steamed some kale and spinach to throw in also. I added a huge bunch of kale and spinach and probably a cup and a half of cooked quinoa to the stew.
The potluck was a success! We had good food (Bob and Laura made homemade pizza;
there was also another soup made with Bob's frozen veggies from earlier on in the farming season, apple crisp, Hope's coconut milk rice pudding, ice cream, and a fresh salad from Bob's hoop house), fire-spinning, and I was very entertained by watching all of the children (I think there were 6 of them) running around the house with never-ending energy (although they were way too loud and the adults had to temporarily break up their fun throughout the night to settle things down). Bob showed us a ripped-apart carcass of a deer that had been seemingly attacked by coyotes, and the dead mink which had gone on a mass killing rampage in his chicken house (Bob hung the mink in a tree so he can get the bones once all of the fur and meat decomposes).
On Saturday, Lyca and I braved the horrible, 50 mph wind gusts to stop by the winter Farmers' Market and wander around the Ithaca Commons before Galumpha. The market was nice, but we were a little disappointed because we had been planning on eating breakfast there, but there were no ready-made food stands so we had to go to Waffle Frolic to eat (which was delicious but very expensive).
The State Theater was gorgeous and impressive, and the show was very lighthearted and entertaining. There were many, many children there with their families, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the dancing and acrobatics of the performers.
It is now Monday, which means the start of a new week of school, work, and homework. I need to start studying for my prelims because my first exam is a week away. I have two potlucks this week to attend (Thursday for class and Friday with the gluten-free meetup group on campus), which means I will definitely be making some good food in the near future!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
02.14.2011 1:41 p.m.
My twenty-first birthday. I finally settled my fairy self down for a moment’s rest after being up and actively doing things since 5:00 in the morning.
02.15.2011 7:00 a.m.
I had the most amazing, magical, sparkling, flowing, tiring, sugary, warm, cold, loving, happy, thankful, magnificent twenty-first birthday anyone could ever hope for…
I woke up at 5:00 in the morning to catch the rising of my sun over the east hill while perched precariously on a frozen (but quickly thawing) waterfall in lower Robert Treman State Park with Lyca and Damaris, and was welcomed at 8:12 a.m. into the twenty-first year of my life by these two amazing people (one who I have known for quite some time; the other I have recently become acquainted with).
We celebrated the earth, the day, the sun, and the warmth with an amazing collaborative photo shoot involving frozen water, pouring water, shoes and socks, fire, sun, dry ice, and cold fingers and frozen toes. The air around us was soft and pleasant, and caressed our bodies as we carefully positioned ourselves on the ice, trying our best not to step through (although we did, and it was cold). We watched the sky change from dark gray to blue, slowly progressing through lighter and lighter hues with each passing moment. The progression of the colors of the sky and earth as a result of the sun’s greatly anticipated arrival was truly magical. When the sun finally broke free and rose over the horizon, we greeted it with upturned faces, smiles, and thanks.
We warmed our toes on the ride home, and decided that cheesecakes (yes, cheesecakes, plural) would be an appropriate breakfast. Since Lyca doesn’t have a coffee grinder, we took the cheesecakes in my picnic basket to Gimme Coffee on Cayuga Street, and sat there eating delicious chocolate currant and vanilla bean cardamom ginger cheesecake and drinking amazing, fresh coffee. One of the women in the coffee shop was staring at our cheesecakes, and we offered her some and found out that it was also her birthday! She kindly declined the offer, which made me a little sad, because I think she would have really liked them!
After the cheesecake picnic at Gimme, I drove Lyca home and went to visit Varya at her apartment, toting my picnic basket upstairs with me. I gave her a slice of each cheesecake (which she was very excited about!) and she shared some of her Limoncello (very delicious citrus liqueur) with me. I offered to drive her to class, which gave us more time to spend together, so we decided to go downtown briefly because I wanted to buy some flowers for friends. We stopped by a beautiful bed & breakfast at the bottom of Buffalo Street because Varya wanted to inquire about reserving rooms for graduation weekend. The inside of the B&B was beautiful, and the woman we talked to was adorable and gave me a piece of cake and chocolates for my birthday (Varya told her it was my birthday; Varya ended up taking the cake and chocolates to studio with her because I couldn’t eat the cake and I had already had my fair dose of sugar for the morning). After visiting the B&B, we went to Bool’s Flower Shop (the flower shop that Ginger Babel lived in for the month of December) where we were the only women in a store filled with men (not counting the ladies arranging the flowers behind the counter). It was hilarious, and we had a great time fluttering from bucket to bucket, choosing the perfect flowers. I bought Hope and Varya each a rose (red for Hope, light pink for Varya), a beautiful purple iris for Karli, and a giant bunch of bright assorted flowers for Laura.
After I drove Varya to studio, I stopped by to visit Laura at work (she works in Rhodes hall on campus), and she was very surprised and happy to receive cheesecake and flowers. I shared my cheesecakes with her officemates, who were also very appreciative.
Once I had played the part of Laura’s personal cheesecake fairy, I took a trip to the Cornell Plantations where I wandered around taking pictures and rang the gong three times in celebration of the day. I sat for a while on the long, curved bench at the top of the hill, looking out at the plantations below. The sky was dark gray and threatening rain, but it was pleasantly warm and calm. After a y feet were soaked again (I changed my boots after the photo shoot because mine were soaked through with ice water), so I stopped home to grab some food, dry socks, and another pair of boots. I then went to 140, distributed more cheesecake, and picked up Karli so we could pay Hope a visit. Hope was all dolled up in her Valentine’s Day best, and looked absolutely adorable. We visited with her for a little while, and afterwards, Karli and I went to a wine store where we encountered an adorable little girl named Saffron, and then wandered aimlessly around the commons until we needed to go take a nap.
Birthday dinner consisted of vegetarian sushi making (we used cucumber, carrots, avocado, and apples) with Karli and Lyca (even though Karli and I were very out of practice at rolling sushi) and was very tasty! It was the perfect dinner to balance the many pieces of cheesecake I had eaten earlier in the day ☺
The cheesecakes I made very tasty, and I personally preferred the vanilla bean/cardamom/ginger/fig jam cheesecake to the chocolate currant cheesecake, but some people liked the chocolate currant one better… different people like different things I guess!
Cardamom vanilla bean fig cheesecake with walnut crust
Crust:
2 cups walnuts
3 teaspoons butter, melted
1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
¼ tsp cardamom powder
¼ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp cinnamon
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons molasses
1 jar of fig jam
Cheesecake:
32 oz cream cheese, room temp
4 large eggs, room temp
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cardamom powder
1 vanilla pod, cut in half and scraped to get the beans
1 teaspoon ginger
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line the bottom of a springform pan with aluminum foil, assemble the pan, and wrap the foil around the outside. Cover the outside of the pan with more foil so that water doesn’t get into the cheesecake when it is cooking in the water bath.
Process the walnuts in a food processor or blender so they turn into a coarse meal. Mix in brown sugar, cardamom powder, ginger, and cinnamon. Add maple syrup, molasses, and butter. Mix until all of the walnut meal is coated with the sticky liquid ingredients (butter, molasses, and maple syrup). Press into the bottom of the springform pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 5-7 minutes. Take out of the oven and carefully spread a layer of fig jam on top of crust.
In a large bowl, combine cream cheese and sugar, and blend until smooth. Add cardamom powder, vanilla beans, and ginger, and then eggs, one at a time, beating with hand-held mixer until smooth. When batter is a uniform consistency, pour into crust.
Bake cheesecake in a water bath (I used a larger skillet filled with water with the springform pan inside of it) for about 1 hour (it took mine a little more than an hour) until it has set. The center will still be a bit wobbly, but will set in the fridge. Remove from oven and let sit in the water bath for a couple of minutes, then remove the cake from the water bath and let sit on counter until cool. Place in a refrigerator over night (or for about 6 hours) to let it set. Once cheesecake has set, remove from fridge and spread jam on top and sides, then eat!
My twenty-first birthday. I finally settled my fairy self down for a moment’s rest after being up and actively doing things since 5:00 in the morning.
02.15.2011 7:00 a.m.
I had the most amazing, magical, sparkling, flowing, tiring, sugary, warm, cold, loving, happy, thankful, magnificent twenty-first birthday anyone could ever hope for…
I woke up at 5:00 in the morning to catch the rising of my sun over the east hill while perched precariously on a frozen (but quickly thawing) waterfall in lower Robert Treman State Park with Lyca and Damaris, and was welcomed at 8:12 a.m. into the twenty-first year of my life by these two amazing people (one who I have known for quite some time; the other I have recently become acquainted with).
We celebrated the earth, the day, the sun, and the warmth with an amazing collaborative photo shoot involving frozen water, pouring water, shoes and socks, fire, sun, dry ice, and cold fingers and frozen toes. The air around us was soft and pleasant, and caressed our bodies as we carefully positioned ourselves on the ice, trying our best not to step through (although we did, and it was cold). We watched the sky change from dark gray to blue, slowly progressing through lighter and lighter hues with each passing moment. The progression of the colors of the sky and earth as a result of the sun’s greatly anticipated arrival was truly magical. When the sun finally broke free and rose over the horizon, we greeted it with upturned faces, smiles, and thanks.
We warmed our toes on the ride home, and decided that cheesecakes (yes, cheesecakes, plural) would be an appropriate breakfast. Since Lyca doesn’t have a coffee grinder, we took the cheesecakes in my picnic basket to Gimme Coffee on Cayuga Street, and sat there eating delicious chocolate currant and vanilla bean cardamom ginger cheesecake and drinking amazing, fresh coffee. One of the women in the coffee shop was staring at our cheesecakes, and we offered her some and found out that it was also her birthday! She kindly declined the offer, which made me a little sad, because I think she would have really liked them!
After the cheesecake picnic at Gimme, I drove Lyca home and went to visit Varya at her apartment, toting my picnic basket upstairs with me. I gave her a slice of each cheesecake (which she was very excited about!) and she shared some of her Limoncello (very delicious citrus liqueur) with me. I offered to drive her to class, which gave us more time to spend together, so we decided to go downtown briefly because I wanted to buy some flowers for friends. We stopped by a beautiful bed & breakfast at the bottom of Buffalo Street because Varya wanted to inquire about reserving rooms for graduation weekend. The inside of the B&B was beautiful, and the woman we talked to was adorable and gave me a piece of cake and chocolates for my birthday (Varya told her it was my birthday; Varya ended up taking the cake and chocolates to studio with her because I couldn’t eat the cake and I had already had my fair dose of sugar for the morning). After visiting the B&B, we went to Bool’s Flower Shop (the flower shop that Ginger Babel lived in for the month of December) where we were the only women in a store filled with men (not counting the ladies arranging the flowers behind the counter). It was hilarious, and we had a great time fluttering from bucket to bucket, choosing the perfect flowers. I bought Hope and Varya each a rose (red for Hope, light pink for Varya), a beautiful purple iris for Karli, and a giant bunch of bright assorted flowers for Laura.
After I drove Varya to studio, I stopped by to visit Laura at work (she works in Rhodes hall on campus), and she was very surprised and happy to receive cheesecake and flowers. I shared my cheesecakes with her officemates, who were also very appreciative.
Once I had played the part of Laura’s personal cheesecake fairy, I took a trip to the Cornell Plantations where I wandered around taking pictures and rang the gong three times in celebration of the day. I sat for a while on the long, curved bench at the top of the hill, looking out at the plantations below. The sky was dark gray and threatening rain, but it was pleasantly warm and calm. After a y feet were soaked again (I changed my boots after the photo shoot because mine were soaked through with ice water), so I stopped home to grab some food, dry socks, and another pair of boots. I then went to 140, distributed more cheesecake, and picked up Karli so we could pay Hope a visit. Hope was all dolled up in her Valentine’s Day best, and looked absolutely adorable. We visited with her for a little while, and afterwards, Karli and I went to a wine store where we encountered an adorable little girl named Saffron, and then wandered aimlessly around the commons until we needed to go take a nap.
Birthday dinner consisted of vegetarian sushi making (we used cucumber, carrots, avocado, and apples) with Karli and Lyca (even though Karli and I were very out of practice at rolling sushi) and was very tasty! It was the perfect dinner to balance the many pieces of cheesecake I had eaten earlier in the day ☺
The cheesecakes I made very tasty, and I personally preferred the vanilla bean/cardamom/ginger/fig jam cheesecake to the chocolate currant cheesecake, but some people liked the chocolate currant one better… different people like different things I guess!
Cardamom vanilla bean fig cheesecake with walnut crust
Crust:
2 cups walnuts
3 teaspoons butter, melted
1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
¼ tsp cardamom powder
¼ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp cinnamon
2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons molasses
1 jar of fig jam
Cheesecake:
32 oz cream cheese, room temp
4 large eggs, room temp
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cardamom powder
1 vanilla pod, cut in half and scraped to get the beans
1 teaspoon ginger
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line the bottom of a springform pan with aluminum foil, assemble the pan, and wrap the foil around the outside. Cover the outside of the pan with more foil so that water doesn’t get into the cheesecake when it is cooking in the water bath.
Process the walnuts in a food processor or blender so they turn into a coarse meal. Mix in brown sugar, cardamom powder, ginger, and cinnamon. Add maple syrup, molasses, and butter. Mix until all of the walnut meal is coated with the sticky liquid ingredients (butter, molasses, and maple syrup). Press into the bottom of the springform pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 5-7 minutes. Take out of the oven and carefully spread a layer of fig jam on top of crust.
In a large bowl, combine cream cheese and sugar, and blend until smooth. Add cardamom powder, vanilla beans, and ginger, and then eggs, one at a time, beating with hand-held mixer until smooth. When batter is a uniform consistency, pour into crust.
Bake cheesecake in a water bath (I used a larger skillet filled with water with the springform pan inside of it) for about 1 hour (it took mine a little more than an hour) until it has set. The center will still be a bit wobbly, but will set in the fridge. Remove from oven and let sit in the water bath for a couple of minutes, then remove the cake from the water bath and let sit on counter until cool. Place in a refrigerator over night (or for about 6 hours) to let it set. Once cheesecake has set, remove from fridge and spread jam on top and sides, then eat!
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Blueberry Cheesecake (delicious recipe from the summer)
In preparation for a weekend of baking cheesecakes (I am planning on creating a dark chocolate currant cheesecake with a walnut crust and a vanilla bean cardamom cheesecake with fig jam) for my 21st birthday (IT'S ON MONDAY!!!) and Valentines' Day, I decided that it would be nice to share an older cheesecake recipe I came up with over the summer.
Around the middle part of this past summer, when the blueberries were literally falling off the bushes because they were so ripe, I went blueberry picking in Spencer, NY, with Coco. We tried to resist eating too many of the blueberries as we picked, and ended up taking home about 5 pounds of blueberries each (and an added bonus was they were very cheap because we picked them ourselves). It had been River's birthday earlier in the summer, and since I hadn't seen him for his birthday, I told him I would make him a birthday cake when he came to Ithaca. I decided that, since it was summer, a blueberry cheesecake would be quite appropriate.
To start off, I made a homemade blueberry syrup/sauce to add to the cheesecake batter and drizzle on top of it when it was done cooking, cooling, and setting.
Blueberry Sauce
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar
2 cups fresh blueberries (make sure there are no stems!)
Mix together the orange juice, water, cornstarch, and sugar in a saucepan over medium/low heat. Add blueberries and bring to a boil, making sure to stir frequently. Once the mixture has boiled, turn the heat down low again and let it simmer until the blueberries have exploded and the sauce has thickened up. Don't worry if it looks a little too runny when it is on the stove- once you take it off and it cools, it will thicken up. Also, the blueberry sauce will have little bits of blueberry skin in it. If you don't want these in your cheesecake, you can always strain the sauce through something like cheesecloth, but I personally like the blueberry skin bits in my cheesecake. :)
This blueberry sauce is really delicious on top of oatmeal, ice cream, plain yogurt, cheesecake, and many other delicious things :)
Now, this blueberry cheesecake is extra wonderful because it has a gluten free crust, meaning that those who are avoiding gluten can also enjoy it. Personally, I think that nut crusts are a much more delicious base for a cheesecake than ground-up, store-bought graham crackers. It seems to me that many people overlook the crust when they make cheesecakes and try to focus their attention on the actual creamy cheesecake center. In my mind, all aspects of a cheesecake are equally important to consider when creating a recipe. There must be a delicious base, creamy, but not too sweet center, and either no topping at all, or one that compliments all of the other flavors found in the cake.
Blueberry Cheesecake
Pecan crust:
1 1/2 cup pecans
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 teaspoons butter, melted
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Line the bottom a springform pan (I think I used 8 or 9 inch) with aluminum foil (makes for easy cheesecake removal after it's done cooking).
If you have a blender or food processor, put the nuts in and pulse until you have a medium-coarse meal. You don't want the nuts to be as fine as flour, but you also don't want huge chunks. I personally like to leave some small/medium-sized chunks in there to add a little extra crunch to the crust. If you don't have a blender or food processor, you can put the nuts in a bag and roll them with a rolling pin, or smash them with something heavy.
Pour the nuts into the springform pan and add the brown sugar and cinnamon. Mix until uniform consistency. Add the molasses and melted butter. Press mixture to the bottom of the pan and bake for about 5-7 minutes until the crust firms up a little bit. Take out and let cool while you mix together the cheesecake batter.
Blueberry Cheesecake
3 8oz packages of cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup homemade blueberry sauce
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/8 cup white sugar
3 eggs, room temperature
Meanwhile, add cream cheese (or mascarpone, which I prefer to cream cheese, but it is more expensive so I use it sparingly) sugars, and blueberry sauce, and beat with an electric hand mixer until nice and creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.
Before you pour the cheesecake batter into the prepared crust, prepare your springform pan for cooking in a water bath (to prevent cracking of the cheesecake). Cover the entire outside of the pan in aluminum foil, making sure that there are no holes or gaps where water can enter the pan (it isn't water-tight).
After you have secured your pan, place it in a water bath (I use my skillet. Because it is so small, it is easier to put the pan in the water bath and then pour in the cheesecake batter, but if you have a larger water bath, you could also just pour the batter onto the crust and then place the whole thing in the water bath). Carefully pour in the cheesecake batter on top of the crust. Smooth out the top of the cheesecake so it is is nice and even.
Bake in a water bath for about 1 hour. Middle of cheesecake will still be wobbly, but the edges should be nice and firm. Make sure that you have enough water so it doesn't all evaporate before the cheesecake is done cooking, and if it does, add a little more to the bath.
When the cheesecake is done baking, turn off the oven, open the door, and let it sit in there for a few minutes. Then you can take the cheesecake out of the water bath and let it cool on the counter for a bit. Once it is cool to the touch, put it in your refrigerator to set (overnight or about 5-6 hours).
Now comes the best part of the recipe... eat it!
Around the middle part of this past summer, when the blueberries were literally falling off the bushes because they were so ripe, I went blueberry picking in Spencer, NY, with Coco. We tried to resist eating too many of the blueberries as we picked, and ended up taking home about 5 pounds of blueberries each (and an added bonus was they were very cheap because we picked them ourselves). It had been River's birthday earlier in the summer, and since I hadn't seen him for his birthday, I told him I would make him a birthday cake when he came to Ithaca. I decided that, since it was summer, a blueberry cheesecake would be quite appropriate.
To start off, I made a homemade blueberry syrup/sauce to add to the cheesecake batter and drizzle on top of it when it was done cooking, cooling, and setting.
Blueberry Sauce
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar
2 cups fresh blueberries (make sure there are no stems!)
Mix together the orange juice, water, cornstarch, and sugar in a saucepan over medium/low heat. Add blueberries and bring to a boil, making sure to stir frequently. Once the mixture has boiled, turn the heat down low again and let it simmer until the blueberries have exploded and the sauce has thickened up. Don't worry if it looks a little too runny when it is on the stove- once you take it off and it cools, it will thicken up. Also, the blueberry sauce will have little bits of blueberry skin in it. If you don't want these in your cheesecake, you can always strain the sauce through something like cheesecloth, but I personally like the blueberry skin bits in my cheesecake. :)
This blueberry sauce is really delicious on top of oatmeal, ice cream, plain yogurt, cheesecake, and many other delicious things :)
Now, this blueberry cheesecake is extra wonderful because it has a gluten free crust, meaning that those who are avoiding gluten can also enjoy it. Personally, I think that nut crusts are a much more delicious base for a cheesecake than ground-up, store-bought graham crackers. It seems to me that many people overlook the crust when they make cheesecakes and try to focus their attention on the actual creamy cheesecake center. In my mind, all aspects of a cheesecake are equally important to consider when creating a recipe. There must be a delicious base, creamy, but not too sweet center, and either no topping at all, or one that compliments all of the other flavors found in the cake.
Blueberry Cheesecake
Pecan crust:
1 1/2 cup pecans
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tsp molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3 teaspoons butter, melted
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Line the bottom a springform pan (I think I used 8 or 9 inch) with aluminum foil (makes for easy cheesecake removal after it's done cooking).
If you have a blender or food processor, put the nuts in and pulse until you have a medium-coarse meal. You don't want the nuts to be as fine as flour, but you also don't want huge chunks. I personally like to leave some small/medium-sized chunks in there to add a little extra crunch to the crust. If you don't have a blender or food processor, you can put the nuts in a bag and roll them with a rolling pin, or smash them with something heavy.
Pour the nuts into the springform pan and add the brown sugar and cinnamon. Mix until uniform consistency. Add the molasses and melted butter. Press mixture to the bottom of the pan and bake for about 5-7 minutes until the crust firms up a little bit. Take out and let cool while you mix together the cheesecake batter.
Blueberry Cheesecake
3 8oz packages of cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup homemade blueberry sauce
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/8 cup white sugar
3 eggs, room temperature
Meanwhile, add cream cheese (or mascarpone, which I prefer to cream cheese, but it is more expensive so I use it sparingly) sugars, and blueberry sauce, and beat with an electric hand mixer until nice and creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.
Before you pour the cheesecake batter into the prepared crust, prepare your springform pan for cooking in a water bath (to prevent cracking of the cheesecake). Cover the entire outside of the pan in aluminum foil, making sure that there are no holes or gaps where water can enter the pan (it isn't water-tight).
After you have secured your pan, place it in a water bath (I use my skillet. Because it is so small, it is easier to put the pan in the water bath and then pour in the cheesecake batter, but if you have a larger water bath, you could also just pour the batter onto the crust and then place the whole thing in the water bath). Carefully pour in the cheesecake batter on top of the crust. Smooth out the top of the cheesecake so it is is nice and even.
Bake in a water bath for about 1 hour. Middle of cheesecake will still be wobbly, but the edges should be nice and firm. Make sure that you have enough water so it doesn't all evaporate before the cheesecake is done cooking, and if it does, add a little more to the bath.
When the cheesecake is done baking, turn off the oven, open the door, and let it sit in there for a few minutes. Then you can take the cheesecake out of the water bath and let it cool on the counter for a bit. Once it is cool to the touch, put it in your refrigerator to set (overnight or about 5-6 hours).
Now comes the best part of the recipe... eat it!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Random thoughts on food & sustainability for class that I thought I'd share...
Someone in my class posted this question on a class discussion board: "Most of the population is far removed from agriculture, and it is true...the typical attitude towards agriculture is complacency. In order to truly be sustainable, or even move closer towards sustainability in our food system, everybody needs to be on board. With that being said, what is the most efficient and logical way to encourage people to work towards the same goal? If the average person's attitude towards this dilemma is complacency, why are they willing to change now? It is refreshing to see some people taking small steps (recycling, buying local, composting etc) and perhaps that is a good start, but sometimes I can't help but think "sustainability" to the average person is just the latest fad to get on board with. Are consumers buying local, organic, "all natural" with themselves and their health in mind? Or are they doing it for the environment?"
Here was my response:
I don’t really agree that “the typical attitude towards agriculture is complacency”. I think a better word to describe the attitude towards agriculture is oblivion. People are no more aware of how oreo cookies are made than how brussels sprouts are grown. If we tell people “These brussels sprouts were grown on a farm in Upstate New York”, we are not providing them any information about the thought, preparation, and physical labor that went into growing them. In my opinion, people’s attitudes towards agriculture are greatly affected by consumerism. The strongest tie that most people have to the land that fruits and vegetables are grown in is the occasional bit of dirt they wash off when they buy pre-packaged lettuce in the fresh foods section of Wegmans. Yes, Wegmans will proudly advertise produce that is ‘grown locally’ (funny because they consider farms in the middle of Pennsylvania “local”), but the problem here is that people don’t understand what local is. There is a HUGE difference between picking up your CSA share each week at a local farm and buying “locally grown” peaches from somewhere in PA.
I think it is absolutely impossible to “encourage people to work towards the same goal” because we are trying to get people to work towards some giant, very broad goal that seems so far removed from peoples’ lives that it is insignificant. How can we tell people to act sustainably when they don’t even know how to grow their own vegetables? If people don’t even know what goes into producing the food that they eat, how on earth can they grasp the concept of “being sustainable”? Because people are so removed from agriculture, “being sustainable” doesn’t have any direct impacts on their lives (This gives people the mentality of “Who cares if I recycle when I can just throw my garbage away?” People don’t see where their cans go regardless of whether they recycle them or throw them away, so who cares where they go?). The whole idea of sustainability is so huge that people cannot put their hearts into “being sustainable”. People don’t look at the greater, long-term benefit for society as a whole, but instead are more focused on the instant gratification of throwing their food waste into landfills where it contributes to methane production than spending a summer turning their compost pile so they have rich, lush food for their fall garden.
When you ask people to define sustainability, they might say “Saving energy, recycling, reducing the carbon footprint”, but sustainability is not simply tackling these issues. The heart of “being sustainable” is a fundamental understanding of how our society works and how fundamental the agricultural base is to each of our lives, even if we only eat canned corn and hotdogs (like my housemate). How can we preach sustainability to people who eat neon foods (Cheetos, anyone?) that ARE NOT EVEN FOOD! In my opinion, there is a HUGE difference between food, food chemistry, and food culture. In my mind, food is what connects us as humans. We ALL need food to survive. Food in the simplest sense is the raw ingredients. People all over the world share a connection to food, but the foods they have access to differ with physical location (taking into account climate, growing season, etc.), so there is undoubtedly culture tied into raw materials too. When we start combining ingredients and processing food, it is no longer food in its pure sense; it is now chemistry, an intricate dance of molecular gastronomy that may or may not still be considered food. Before people can even start thinking about “being sustainable”, it is essential to understand what sustainability means to their lives and environment around them. Maybe if garbage dumps and compost piles were located in the centers of villages, people would start to get the picture.
Here are some other thoughts on food:
I believe that food is fundamental to human life, and what we eat serves as a life map of who we are. In order to be happy and carefree individuals, we must eat good, healthy food that is as close to the source as possible, and we must be conscious of how it is produced and where it comes from. I believe that everyone deserves the chance to eat local, organic, and sustainably produced food that has been grown with love and care, and everyone deserves the opportunity to learn more about making healthy choices in their lives. We should not need to rely on processed foods packaged in cans and boxes to sustain life, and we are all entitled the opportunity to know what we are eating, where it comes from, who produced it, and how it was grown. By exploring the world of agriculture and reaching out to individuals who are not familiar with it, we ourselves can learn and teach others about fruits and vegetables that we never knew existed, and can experiment with combining the freshest ingredients to produce the most beautiful, delicious, fresh, healthy and colorful meals.
Here was my response:
I don’t really agree that “the typical attitude towards agriculture is complacency”. I think a better word to describe the attitude towards agriculture is oblivion. People are no more aware of how oreo cookies are made than how brussels sprouts are grown. If we tell people “These brussels sprouts were grown on a farm in Upstate New York”, we are not providing them any information about the thought, preparation, and physical labor that went into growing them. In my opinion, people’s attitudes towards agriculture are greatly affected by consumerism. The strongest tie that most people have to the land that fruits and vegetables are grown in is the occasional bit of dirt they wash off when they buy pre-packaged lettuce in the fresh foods section of Wegmans. Yes, Wegmans will proudly advertise produce that is ‘grown locally’ (funny because they consider farms in the middle of Pennsylvania “local”), but the problem here is that people don’t understand what local is. There is a HUGE difference between picking up your CSA share each week at a local farm and buying “locally grown” peaches from somewhere in PA.
I think it is absolutely impossible to “encourage people to work towards the same goal” because we are trying to get people to work towards some giant, very broad goal that seems so far removed from peoples’ lives that it is insignificant. How can we tell people to act sustainably when they don’t even know how to grow their own vegetables? If people don’t even know what goes into producing the food that they eat, how on earth can they grasp the concept of “being sustainable”? Because people are so removed from agriculture, “being sustainable” doesn’t have any direct impacts on their lives (This gives people the mentality of “Who cares if I recycle when I can just throw my garbage away?” People don’t see where their cans go regardless of whether they recycle them or throw them away, so who cares where they go?). The whole idea of sustainability is so huge that people cannot put their hearts into “being sustainable”. People don’t look at the greater, long-term benefit for society as a whole, but instead are more focused on the instant gratification of throwing their food waste into landfills where it contributes to methane production than spending a summer turning their compost pile so they have rich, lush food for their fall garden.
When you ask people to define sustainability, they might say “Saving energy, recycling, reducing the carbon footprint”, but sustainability is not simply tackling these issues. The heart of “being sustainable” is a fundamental understanding of how our society works and how fundamental the agricultural base is to each of our lives, even if we only eat canned corn and hotdogs (like my housemate). How can we preach sustainability to people who eat neon foods (Cheetos, anyone?) that ARE NOT EVEN FOOD! In my opinion, there is a HUGE difference between food, food chemistry, and food culture. In my mind, food is what connects us as humans. We ALL need food to survive. Food in the simplest sense is the raw ingredients. People all over the world share a connection to food, but the foods they have access to differ with physical location (taking into account climate, growing season, etc.), so there is undoubtedly culture tied into raw materials too. When we start combining ingredients and processing food, it is no longer food in its pure sense; it is now chemistry, an intricate dance of molecular gastronomy that may or may not still be considered food. Before people can even start thinking about “being sustainable”, it is essential to understand what sustainability means to their lives and environment around them. Maybe if garbage dumps and compost piles were located in the centers of villages, people would start to get the picture.
Here are some other thoughts on food:
I believe that food is fundamental to human life, and what we eat serves as a life map of who we are. In order to be happy and carefree individuals, we must eat good, healthy food that is as close to the source as possible, and we must be conscious of how it is produced and where it comes from. I believe that everyone deserves the chance to eat local, organic, and sustainably produced food that has been grown with love and care, and everyone deserves the opportunity to learn more about making healthy choices in their lives. We should not need to rely on processed foods packaged in cans and boxes to sustain life, and we are all entitled the opportunity to know what we are eating, where it comes from, who produced it, and how it was grown. By exploring the world of agriculture and reaching out to individuals who are not familiar with it, we ourselves can learn and teach others about fruits and vegetables that we never knew existed, and can experiment with combining the freshest ingredients to produce the most beautiful, delicious, fresh, healthy and colorful meals.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Chocolate chip scones #1 (gluten-free, of course)
Even though I really would rather wait until I get an amazing kitchen scale to start really experimenting with more recipes, I didn’t feel like doing my reading for class tonight (shhhhh) so I decided to work on a scone recipe. At the celiac monthly dinner at Flora Rose house the other night, I got requests for gluten-free chocolate chip scones and cinnamon buns. Well ladies, here is my first attempt at the scones.
After trying to find a good online recipe for a gluten-free scone to inspire my own scone recipe and failing miserably, I decided to use one of the new books I recently purchased, Professional Baking, by Wayne Gisslen (fifth edition). I have just started looking at this book, and it is really amazing. There are step-by-step full color photos of different baking techniques, and the recipes are simple and are written in ratios. According to Professional Baking (p.226), the ingredient proportions for scones are as follows:
Bread flour 50%
Pastry flour 50%
Sugar 12.5%
Salt 1%
Baking powder 6%
Shortening and/or butter 40%
Eggs 15%
milk 45%
total 219%
The recipe told me to follow the method for making simple biscuits on page 219, and here is what it said:
Procedure-Biscuit Method
1. Scale all ingredients accurately.
2. Sift the dry ingredients together into a mixing bowl.
3. Cut in the shortening, using the paddle attachment or the pastry knife attachment; if you prefer, cut in the fat by hand, using a pastry blender or your fingers. Continue until the mixture resembles a coarse cornmeal.
4. Combine the liquid ingredients
5. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients. Mix just until the ingredients are combined and a soft dough is formed. Do not overmix.
6. Bring the dough to the bench and knead it lightly by pressing it out and folding it in half. Rotate the dough 90 degrees between folds.
7. Repeat this procedure 6 to 10 times, or for about 30 seconds. The dough should be soft and slightly elastic but not sticky. Overkneading toughens the biscuits.
The dough is now ready for makeup (p.219).
I decided to attempt to make some nice, roll-out scones, but actually ended up putting too much coconut milk into the batter and having to add 1/2 cup additional flour (I added the gluten-free flour blend #2 that I made earlier) and some extra baking soda to the recipe to even things out. The dough ended up being very sticky, so I decided to make drop scones instead of roll-out and cut-out scones. Essentially, I started with a recipe for rol-out scones but ended up with drop scones even though I didn't follow the proportions for the drop scones (recipe is also on page 219 of my book, right below the recipe for 'regular' scones). BUT THEY ARE REALLY, REALLY GOOD! Also, since proportions for gluten-free goods are different than 'regular' baked goods, it shouldn't be that bad that I really played with the ratios of ingredients.
Chocolate chip drop scones #1 (gluten-free)
½ cup gluten-free flour blend #2
¼ cup oat flour
¼ cup buckwheat flour
¼ cup potato starch flour
¼ cup tapioca flour
¼ tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
¼ cup sugar
1 stick butter, chilled and grated with a cheese grater
1 egg
½ cup coconut milk
Chocolate chips to your preference
Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Sift flours (gluten-free flour blend #2 or your favorite gluten-free all-purpose flour blend, oat, buckwheat, potato starch, and tapioca) into a bowl. Add salt, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar, and then sift all dry ingredients until uniform consistency. Grate the butter with a cheese grater into the bowl of dry ingredients and then crumble everything together with your hands so the mixture resembles a coarse meal. In a separate bowl, stir together coconut milk and egg, and then pour into dry mixture. Stir everything together.
Batter will be very sticky. Drop by rounded dollops onto a cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes. Yield is about 9 palm-sized scones (well, unless you burn 3 of them like I did!).
After trying to find a good online recipe for a gluten-free scone to inspire my own scone recipe and failing miserably, I decided to use one of the new books I recently purchased, Professional Baking, by Wayne Gisslen (fifth edition). I have just started looking at this book, and it is really amazing. There are step-by-step full color photos of different baking techniques, and the recipes are simple and are written in ratios. According to Professional Baking (p.226), the ingredient proportions for scones are as follows:
Bread flour 50%
Pastry flour 50%
Sugar 12.5%
Salt 1%
Baking powder 6%
Shortening and/or butter 40%
Eggs 15%
milk 45%
total 219%
The recipe told me to follow the method for making simple biscuits on page 219, and here is what it said:
Procedure-Biscuit Method
1. Scale all ingredients accurately.
2. Sift the dry ingredients together into a mixing bowl.
3. Cut in the shortening, using the paddle attachment or the pastry knife attachment; if you prefer, cut in the fat by hand, using a pastry blender or your fingers. Continue until the mixture resembles a coarse cornmeal.
4. Combine the liquid ingredients
5. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients. Mix just until the ingredients are combined and a soft dough is formed. Do not overmix.
6. Bring the dough to the bench and knead it lightly by pressing it out and folding it in half. Rotate the dough 90 degrees between folds.
7. Repeat this procedure 6 to 10 times, or for about 30 seconds. The dough should be soft and slightly elastic but not sticky. Overkneading toughens the biscuits.
The dough is now ready for makeup (p.219).
I decided to attempt to make some nice, roll-out scones, but actually ended up putting too much coconut milk into the batter and having to add 1/2 cup additional flour (I added the gluten-free flour blend #2 that I made earlier) and some extra baking soda to the recipe to even things out. The dough ended up being very sticky, so I decided to make drop scones instead of roll-out and cut-out scones. Essentially, I started with a recipe for rol-out scones but ended up with drop scones even though I didn't follow the proportions for the drop scones (recipe is also on page 219 of my book, right below the recipe for 'regular' scones). BUT THEY ARE REALLY, REALLY GOOD! Also, since proportions for gluten-free goods are different than 'regular' baked goods, it shouldn't be that bad that I really played with the ratios of ingredients.
Chocolate chip drop scones #1 (gluten-free)
½ cup gluten-free flour blend #2
¼ cup oat flour
¼ cup buckwheat flour
¼ cup potato starch flour
¼ cup tapioca flour
¼ tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
¼ cup sugar
1 stick butter, chilled and grated with a cheese grater
1 egg
½ cup coconut milk
Chocolate chips to your preference
Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Sift flours (gluten-free flour blend #2 or your favorite gluten-free all-purpose flour blend, oat, buckwheat, potato starch, and tapioca) into a bowl. Add salt, baking powder, baking soda, and sugar, and then sift all dry ingredients until uniform consistency. Grate the butter with a cheese grater into the bowl of dry ingredients and then crumble everything together with your hands so the mixture resembles a coarse meal. In a separate bowl, stir together coconut milk and egg, and then pour into dry mixture. Stir everything together.
Batter will be very sticky. Drop by rounded dollops onto a cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes. Yield is about 9 palm-sized scones (well, unless you burn 3 of them like I did!).
Thursday, February 3, 2011
I recently purchased a bunch of amazing books related to food politics, baking, and cooking, and am waiting eagerly for them to all come in the mail! I received a few of my books already, and one of them Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, by Michael Ruhlman, has changed my outlook on gluten-free cooking and baking, and I have decided that I absolutely need to purchase a kitchen scale before I go any further with my baking endeavors. The author introduces the concept of ratios, explaining "A culinary ratio is a fixed proportion of one ingredient or ingredients relative to another. These proportions form the backbone of the craft of cooking." (p xi)
Ratios are extremely important in baking because they determine whether a recipe will yield pancakes or crepes (varying the amount of flour in the recipe), drop cookies or cut-out cookies, or a light and fluffy or dense and rich cake. A HUGE problem underlying all gluten-free cooking is figuring out correct ratios. In gluten-free baking, all sorts of different types of flours can be used as substitutes for wheat flour; in my pantry right now, I have white and brown rice flour, mesquite pod flour, soy flour, almond flour, millet flour, chesnut flour, 'sweet' white sorghum flour, garbanzo bean flour, chickpea flour, cornmeal, oat, and buckwheat flour. Each one of these 'flours' is simply the ground form of some kind of seed, pod, or nut. 'Flour' may be produced from things such as ground tree pods (i.e.,mesquite), seeds from a cereal grain (i.e., oats), or seed from a non-cereal grain (i.e., buckwheat, which, contrary to its name, does not contain gluten). The wide variety of gluten-free flours is very exciting because each flour has its own distinct flavor and unique qualities which might make it compatible in some recipes, yielding a delicious cookie, muffin, or cake, or detrimental to others (i.e., contributing to flat cookies, quick breads that don't rise, etc.).
I am still fairly new to the gluten-free baking world, but at the beginning of my baking endeavors, I couldn't really understand why it was nearly impossible to only use one type of 'flour' in a gluten-free recipe (I admit, I did attempt to bake with only brown rice flour a couple of times, and I have only found one cake recipe that actually works using only one type of flour, and this is because the flour is not doing any of the grunt work in the recipe, the eggs are really the backbone of the cake). I now know that a combination of flours is required to "replace" the wheat flour in most recipes (however, I don't regard it as "replacing", I like to think of it as creating a whole new, exciting, different recipe that compliments the flavors and textures of gluten-free products).
Here is the **one** recipe that has ever worked with only one type of gluten-free flour (slightly modified from About.com)
Gluten-free German Chocolate Cake
Ingredients:
4 ounces sweet German chocolate
6 eggs, separated
2 cups sugar, divided
1 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups brown rice flour
2 tbsp corn starch
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Separate your eggs into yolks and whites; put the whites in a large bowl, and the yolks in a smaller bowl (make sure your eggs are at room temperature for maximum fluffiness when you beat them; if they aren't at room temperature, you can place them in a bowl of warm water first to bring them to room temperature).
Create a double boiler on your stove (a pot with boiling water with a bowl on top) and melt the chocolate.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl, cream the butter and 1 1/2 cups of the sugar together. Add the vanilla and egg yolks. When this mixture is nice and creamy, add the chocolate, and stir until everything is a uniform consistency.
In a separate bowl, combine the following dry ingredients and sift until uniform consistency: brown rice flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cornstarch.
Add the dry mixture and the buttermilk to the butter/chocolate mixture alternately, beating until smooth. Set aside.
In another bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Add the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and beat until stiff but not dry.
Carefully FOLD the egg whites/sugar mixture into the rest of the ingredients. This helps make the cake nice and fluffy and delicious! If you beat the ingredients at this point, you are beating the air out of the egg whites, and defeating the purpose of beating them in the first place, so DON'T DO IT!
Pour batter into three 8-inch springform pans lined with parchment paper, and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes or until cakes are done.
Let cakes cool completely before frosting!
Anyway, back to talking about ratios, which are even more important to pay attention to in gluten-free baking because it is simply impossible to substitute "other" types of flour for wheat flour in a 1:1 volume ratio. Gluten-free flours have different textures and weights; one cup by volume of wheat flour does not necessarily weigh as much by volume as one cup of a gluten-free flour. Therefore, when you are baking, the proportions of dry ingredients to wet ingredients will not be correct. According to my ratio book, "a cup of flour can weigh anywhere between 4 and 6 ounces", but the author is only talking about wheat flour (p. xvii). When you get into the gluten-free realm, there is a much greater range of weight for a certain volume of flour (I will explore and write about these different weights as soon as I get a kitchen scale).
Ruhlman explains, "One of the facts underlying the universality of ratios is that they are based on weight rather than on volume measurements." (p.xvii) The weight of a certain volume of a given ingredient may be affected by many things such as the amount of moisture in the air (and thus the amount of the air's moisture that has been absorbed by the given ingredient), or how firmly you pack ingredients (a cup of lightly packed dark brown sugar will weigh less than a cup of dark brown sugar packed very firmly). Thus, in gluten-free baking, we must really pay attention to the weights of the ingredients that we are using. I believe that this is one of the keys to unlocking the mysteries of baking with alternate ingredients.
So, what does this mean in the context of this developing blog? This means that my homework is to go do my research on kitchen scales and find one that suits my needs, buy it, and start weighing and experimenting!
I have always loved science experiments (from testing the pH of my fish tank as a child, to the volcano with baking soda and vinegar in fourth grade, to my AP Chemistry experiments my senior year of high school), so I turn this into one big experiment. I plan to study and learn as much as I can about all of the different types of gluten-free flours out there, where they come from (what types of plants, where are they grown, etc.), how much they weigh per unit volume, how they taste, how they smell, and how they interact with other ingredients.
The challenge is to tackle all of this while still keeping up with my job (working in the bakery at Cornell- no, it isn't gluten-free), school work (I am taking seven courses plus gymnastics and three credits of independent study), running as much as I can, spinning poi, designing two outfits for the Cornell Design League fashion show this spring, practicing yoga, helping Coco with his leatherworking and learning as much as I can about leatherworking, and working on Bob's farm as soon as the weather warms up.... YIKES!
this is going to be a wonderful, wonderful journey!!!
Ratios are extremely important in baking because they determine whether a recipe will yield pancakes or crepes (varying the amount of flour in the recipe), drop cookies or cut-out cookies, or a light and fluffy or dense and rich cake. A HUGE problem underlying all gluten-free cooking is figuring out correct ratios. In gluten-free baking, all sorts of different types of flours can be used as substitutes for wheat flour; in my pantry right now, I have white and brown rice flour, mesquite pod flour, soy flour, almond flour, millet flour, chesnut flour, 'sweet' white sorghum flour, garbanzo bean flour, chickpea flour, cornmeal, oat, and buckwheat flour. Each one of these 'flours' is simply the ground form of some kind of seed, pod, or nut. 'Flour' may be produced from things such as ground tree pods (i.e.,mesquite), seeds from a cereal grain (i.e., oats), or seed from a non-cereal grain (i.e., buckwheat, which, contrary to its name, does not contain gluten). The wide variety of gluten-free flours is very exciting because each flour has its own distinct flavor and unique qualities which might make it compatible in some recipes, yielding a delicious cookie, muffin, or cake, or detrimental to others (i.e., contributing to flat cookies, quick breads that don't rise, etc.).
I am still fairly new to the gluten-free baking world, but at the beginning of my baking endeavors, I couldn't really understand why it was nearly impossible to only use one type of 'flour' in a gluten-free recipe (I admit, I did attempt to bake with only brown rice flour a couple of times, and I have only found one cake recipe that actually works using only one type of flour, and this is because the flour is not doing any of the grunt work in the recipe, the eggs are really the backbone of the cake). I now know that a combination of flours is required to "replace" the wheat flour in most recipes (however, I don't regard it as "replacing", I like to think of it as creating a whole new, exciting, different recipe that compliments the flavors and textures of gluten-free products).
Here is the **one** recipe that has ever worked with only one type of gluten-free flour (slightly modified from About.com)
Gluten-free German Chocolate Cake
Ingredients:
4 ounces sweet German chocolate
6 eggs, separated
2 cups sugar, divided
1 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups brown rice flour
2 tbsp corn starch
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Separate your eggs into yolks and whites; put the whites in a large bowl, and the yolks in a smaller bowl (make sure your eggs are at room temperature for maximum fluffiness when you beat them; if they aren't at room temperature, you can place them in a bowl of warm water first to bring them to room temperature).
Create a double boiler on your stove (a pot with boiling water with a bowl on top) and melt the chocolate.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl, cream the butter and 1 1/2 cups of the sugar together. Add the vanilla and egg yolks. When this mixture is nice and creamy, add the chocolate, and stir until everything is a uniform consistency.
In a separate bowl, combine the following dry ingredients and sift until uniform consistency: brown rice flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cornstarch.
Add the dry mixture and the buttermilk to the butter/chocolate mixture alternately, beating until smooth. Set aside.
In another bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Add the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and beat until stiff but not dry.
Carefully FOLD the egg whites/sugar mixture into the rest of the ingredients. This helps make the cake nice and fluffy and delicious! If you beat the ingredients at this point, you are beating the air out of the egg whites, and defeating the purpose of beating them in the first place, so DON'T DO IT!
Pour batter into three 8-inch springform pans lined with parchment paper, and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes or until cakes are done.
Let cakes cool completely before frosting!
Anyway, back to talking about ratios, which are even more important to pay attention to in gluten-free baking because it is simply impossible to substitute "other" types of flour for wheat flour in a 1:1 volume ratio. Gluten-free flours have different textures and weights; one cup by volume of wheat flour does not necessarily weigh as much by volume as one cup of a gluten-free flour. Therefore, when you are baking, the proportions of dry ingredients to wet ingredients will not be correct. According to my ratio book, "a cup of flour can weigh anywhere between 4 and 6 ounces", but the author is only talking about wheat flour (p. xvii). When you get into the gluten-free realm, there is a much greater range of weight for a certain volume of flour (I will explore and write about these different weights as soon as I get a kitchen scale).
Ruhlman explains, "One of the facts underlying the universality of ratios is that they are based on weight rather than on volume measurements." (p.xvii) The weight of a certain volume of a given ingredient may be affected by many things such as the amount of moisture in the air (and thus the amount of the air's moisture that has been absorbed by the given ingredient), or how firmly you pack ingredients (a cup of lightly packed dark brown sugar will weigh less than a cup of dark brown sugar packed very firmly). Thus, in gluten-free baking, we must really pay attention to the weights of the ingredients that we are using. I believe that this is one of the keys to unlocking the mysteries of baking with alternate ingredients.
So, what does this mean in the context of this developing blog? This means that my homework is to go do my research on kitchen scales and find one that suits my needs, buy it, and start weighing and experimenting!
I have always loved science experiments (from testing the pH of my fish tank as a child, to the volcano with baking soda and vinegar in fourth grade, to my AP Chemistry experiments my senior year of high school), so I turn this into one big experiment. I plan to study and learn as much as I can about all of the different types of gluten-free flours out there, where they come from (what types of plants, where are they grown, etc.), how much they weigh per unit volume, how they taste, how they smell, and how they interact with other ingredients.
The challenge is to tackle all of this while still keeping up with my job (working in the bakery at Cornell- no, it isn't gluten-free), school work (I am taking seven courses plus gymnastics and three credits of independent study), running as much as I can, spinning poi, designing two outfits for the Cornell Design League fashion show this spring, practicing yoga, helping Coco with his leatherworking and learning as much as I can about leatherworking, and working on Bob's farm as soon as the weather warms up.... YIKES!
this is going to be a wonderful, wonderful journey!!!
Saturday, January 29, 2011
It is finally the weekend. I have successfully made it through the first week of my second semester of my third year as an undergrad at Cornell. My week was a little rough; I star1ted the semester off not having any idea what classes to take (although I was aiming to take classes that would teach me valuable life skills), and just when I thought my schedule was good, I realized that my plant physiology class (lecture + lab, a total of 5 credits) was not at all what I had hoped for, and so I was faced with the difficult task of finding new classes that fit around my current ones and my work schedule. It was very difficult and frustrating, but I am very grateful to Karli because she encouraged me to drop the plant physiology class in favor of taking classes that I would actually enjoy (the textbook for the class was a draft written by the professor, and I was going crazy trying to read it because there were so many grammatical errors and it was just written poorly in general).
This semester, I am taking Sculpture IV with Michael Ashkin (I had him last semester for sculpture and really loved the class), Early Agriculture (how we evolved from nomadic peoples to an agriculturally-based society), Seminar in Agricultural Science (current issues in agriculture), Hands-On Horticulture (basic horticultural techniques), The Nature of Plants (plant interactions), Wines & Vines Laboratory (how to make your own wine, graft your own grape vines, etc.), and Food, Farming, & Personal Beliefs (tying the three together and their relationship to sustainable agriculture). Oh yeah, and a few credits of independent research with the Communication Department under Jeff Hancock (we still have a study to run that Steph and I designed over the summer).
I found out on Thursday that muslin pictures of my designs for CDL (Cornell Design League, the fashion design club I am in ) are due this coming week, and although I tried to work on them over break, I just didn’t get much done because I was doing so many other awesome things. So, this weekend, I plan on just working on homework and my designs. Last night, I went to the two, just two, fabric stores in Ithaca that carry apparel fabrics, and couldn’t find what I was looking for in either store. I need to find some very light, semi-transparent cotton, I am not sure of the exact name for it, but looking online, it might be called ‘cotton lawn’. I get to design two outfits this year because I was a first-year designer last year, and every successive year, you get more designs and models. I want my designs to be very flowy and moveable. I want the wearer to want to dance and move when she wears the outfit, and I want the designs’ movements to mirror those of the wearer and communicate her body’s expressions to others.
That being said, I also have a potluck/party to go to tonight, and thought it would be really awesome to try to experiment with some gluten-free chocolate cupcakes to bring. I attempted to whip up some cupcakes last night by modifying the recipe on About.com for gluten-free german chocolate cake (http://vegetarian.about.com/od/glutenfreedesserts/r/germanchocolate.htm, I made this recipe once before and it turned out well). The changes I made caused the batter to behave very bizarrely; the cupcakes didn’t really rise, and instead sunk in the centers. However, they were delicious and had a semi-crunchy top kind of like a muffin. Since they were good, I won’t condemn the entire recipe, but I definitely will make sure I don’t make the same mistakes next time! I am thinking about tearing apart the cupcakes, mixing them with frosting, rolling them into balls and coating them in chocolate to make chocolate truffles..... I'll let you know how that goes!
...more recipes to come soon, I have just been busy with school!
This semester, I am taking Sculpture IV with Michael Ashkin (I had him last semester for sculpture and really loved the class), Early Agriculture (how we evolved from nomadic peoples to an agriculturally-based society), Seminar in Agricultural Science (current issues in agriculture), Hands-On Horticulture (basic horticultural techniques), The Nature of Plants (plant interactions), Wines & Vines Laboratory (how to make your own wine, graft your own grape vines, etc.), and Food, Farming, & Personal Beliefs (tying the three together and their relationship to sustainable agriculture). Oh yeah, and a few credits of independent research with the Communication Department under Jeff Hancock (we still have a study to run that Steph and I designed over the summer).
I found out on Thursday that muslin pictures of my designs for CDL (Cornell Design League, the fashion design club I am in ) are due this coming week, and although I tried to work on them over break, I just didn’t get much done because I was doing so many other awesome things. So, this weekend, I plan on just working on homework and my designs. Last night, I went to the two, just two, fabric stores in Ithaca that carry apparel fabrics, and couldn’t find what I was looking for in either store. I need to find some very light, semi-transparent cotton, I am not sure of the exact name for it, but looking online, it might be called ‘cotton lawn’. I get to design two outfits this year because I was a first-year designer last year, and every successive year, you get more designs and models. I want my designs to be very flowy and moveable. I want the wearer to want to dance and move when she wears the outfit, and I want the designs’ movements to mirror those of the wearer and communicate her body’s expressions to others.
That being said, I also have a potluck/party to go to tonight, and thought it would be really awesome to try to experiment with some gluten-free chocolate cupcakes to bring. I attempted to whip up some cupcakes last night by modifying the recipe on About.com for gluten-free german chocolate cake (http://vegetarian.about.com/od/glutenfreedesserts/r/germanchocolate.htm, I made this recipe once before and it turned out well). The changes I made caused the batter to behave very bizarrely; the cupcakes didn’t really rise, and instead sunk in the centers. However, they were delicious and had a semi-crunchy top kind of like a muffin. Since they were good, I won’t condemn the entire recipe, but I definitely will make sure I don’t make the same mistakes next time! I am thinking about tearing apart the cupcakes, mixing them with frosting, rolling them into balls and coating them in chocolate to make chocolate truffles..... I'll let you know how that goes!
...more recipes to come soon, I have just been busy with school!
Monday, January 24, 2011
Gluten-free brownies
The end to winter break is here, and it is bittersweet. Outside, the sun is shining, and the naked trees are casting long slender shadows on the sparkling powder. Who cares if weather.com says it is only 5 degrees Fahrenheit outside? I don’t; it is still beautiful.
Saturday, I went on a long, beautiful, early afternoon run and only passed by one group of other people out (because it was pretty cold). I suited up in all of my cold gear, and with new road running shoes, I set off by foot around the outskirts of the plantations, following Forest Home road until it meets up with 366, up the hill, down Game Farm Road (such a beautiful road to run on), past East Hill Plaza, and through Cornell Campus on my way back into civilization. By the time I was done, my legs were so sore from running in new shoes and my feet were killing me, so I spun poi and danced for a bit in the Helen Newman dance studio (such a beautiful space).
I spent Saturday afternoon being lazy and just hanging out with a bunch of my girl friends in Collegetown. Karli and I finger painted, and although my friend Alex, and I gave up after painting for a little while, Karli worked on her masterpiece for a quite a while, but ended up not liking it as much when it dried. Sid, Varya, and Christine took turns playing some iPhone game that involved slicing flying fruit in half. Karli and I made some really delicious dinner, which was a vegetable curry over white rice.
I decided that it was the perfect occasion to break out my wok, and cooked some onions, garlic, sweet peppers, mushrooms, and tofu cubes together with coconut milk, turmeric, cumin, and curry powder. We used long grain white rice so it would cook more quickly because we were both starving. Dinner was delicious, and the most time-consuming part was chopping and cooking the vegetables prior to adding the coconut milk and spices. The end result was definitely work it though!
Reflecting back on my winter break, I am so happy that I had the time to do so many things which I have been meaning to do, and take some time off to myself to just relax (yoga, poi, running, etc., have all been great). I feel like I got a lot done, but there are still so many other things that I would have liked to have done too. Life is a balancing act; you have to choose what interests you the most and pursue it while still working on a handful of other things.
I made some modifications to the basic brownie recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and brought heart-shaped brownies (I used a cookie cutter to cut out the hearts after I made the brownies) to Varya’s house the other night for Blini (Russian pancake) night. I created a new gluten-free flour blend, and am going to experiment to see what it is good for (it was definitely good for the brownies!).
Gluten-free flour blend #2:
2 cups oat flour (I used whole oats and processed them into flour)
2 cups millet flour
1 cup sweet white sorghum four
½ cup garbanzo bean flour
½ cup white rice flour
½ cup tapioca flour
1 cup potato starch flour
5 ½ teaspoons xanthan gum
Mix all of the flours & xanthan gum together until uniform in texture.
Basic gluten-free brownies (adapted from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook)
6 ounces mexican chocolate
¾ cup butter (1 ½ sticks)
4 eggs
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
¼ cup white sugar
1 ½ cups gluten-free flour blend #2
Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Melt chocolate and butter over low heat on the stove, stirring to make sure the mixture doesn’t burn. When it has melted, remove from heat and let cool for a couple of minutes.
In a large bowl, beat eggs, and sugar, and beat until thick and creamy (5-6 minutes) with an electric mixer. Stir in chocolate & butter mixture, and then finally add the flour. Stir everything together and bake in a large (I used a 9 x 14 x 2-inch glass baking dish) pan/dish for about 25 minutes.
Brownies are done when they are slightly browned on top and are starting to crack. Let cool, and cut into squares or use your favorite cookie cutters to make cute shapes!
Saturday, I went on a long, beautiful, early afternoon run and only passed by one group of other people out (because it was pretty cold). I suited up in all of my cold gear, and with new road running shoes, I set off by foot around the outskirts of the plantations, following Forest Home road until it meets up with 366, up the hill, down Game Farm Road (such a beautiful road to run on), past East Hill Plaza, and through Cornell Campus on my way back into civilization. By the time I was done, my legs were so sore from running in new shoes and my feet were killing me, so I spun poi and danced for a bit in the Helen Newman dance studio (such a beautiful space).
I spent Saturday afternoon being lazy and just hanging out with a bunch of my girl friends in Collegetown. Karli and I finger painted, and although my friend Alex, and I gave up after painting for a little while, Karli worked on her masterpiece for a quite a while, but ended up not liking it as much when it dried. Sid, Varya, and Christine took turns playing some iPhone game that involved slicing flying fruit in half. Karli and I made some really delicious dinner, which was a vegetable curry over white rice.
I decided that it was the perfect occasion to break out my wok, and cooked some onions, garlic, sweet peppers, mushrooms, and tofu cubes together with coconut milk, turmeric, cumin, and curry powder. We used long grain white rice so it would cook more quickly because we were both starving. Dinner was delicious, and the most time-consuming part was chopping and cooking the vegetables prior to adding the coconut milk and spices. The end result was definitely work it though!
Reflecting back on my winter break, I am so happy that I had the time to do so many things which I have been meaning to do, and take some time off to myself to just relax (yoga, poi, running, etc., have all been great). I feel like I got a lot done, but there are still so many other things that I would have liked to have done too. Life is a balancing act; you have to choose what interests you the most and pursue it while still working on a handful of other things.
I made some modifications to the basic brownie recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and brought heart-shaped brownies (I used a cookie cutter to cut out the hearts after I made the brownies) to Varya’s house the other night for Blini (Russian pancake) night. I created a new gluten-free flour blend, and am going to experiment to see what it is good for (it was definitely good for the brownies!).
Gluten-free flour blend #2:
2 cups oat flour (I used whole oats and processed them into flour)
2 cups millet flour
1 cup sweet white sorghum four
½ cup garbanzo bean flour
½ cup white rice flour
½ cup tapioca flour
1 cup potato starch flour
5 ½ teaspoons xanthan gum
Mix all of the flours & xanthan gum together until uniform in texture.
Basic gluten-free brownies (adapted from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook)
6 ounces mexican chocolate
¾ cup butter (1 ½ sticks)
4 eggs
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
¼ cup white sugar
1 ½ cups gluten-free flour blend #2
Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Melt chocolate and butter over low heat on the stove, stirring to make sure the mixture doesn’t burn. When it has melted, remove from heat and let cool for a couple of minutes.
In a large bowl, beat eggs, and sugar, and beat until thick and creamy (5-6 minutes) with an electric mixer. Stir in chocolate & butter mixture, and then finally add the flour. Stir everything together and bake in a large (I used a 9 x 14 x 2-inch glass baking dish) pan/dish for about 25 minutes.
Brownies are done when they are slightly browned on top and are starting to crack. Let cool, and cut into squares or use your favorite cookie cutters to make cute shapes!
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Cardamom Purple Sticky Rice Pudding & Gluten-free chocolate cardamom coffee molasses cookies
The inevitable consequence of always trying to come up with recipes and experimenting in the kitchen is that you have to be your own taste-tester, and generally, you are your own harshest critic. That being said, I am positive that I have eaten more cookies now that I know I have gluten intolerance than beforehand. Why? Gluten-free baking is so much more fun and exciting than regular baking. The chances that your recipe will fail are so much higher with gluten-free baking than regular baking and the suspense when you wait for your freshly baked goods to come out of the oven perfectly plump and delicious is amazing.
I have been meaning to try making a sweet coconut sticky rice/rice pudding for a really long time (ever since I tasted it at Taste of Thai Express in Downtown Ithaca), and have really been dying to come up with a recipe that does not include many cups of sugar. A recipe where you can actually taste and appreciate the flavor of the rice. I like to try to sweeten things with maple syrup or honey as much as I can, so I decided to try a purple sticky rice pudding with Thai Kitchen’s Organic Lite Coconut Milk and Grade B (dark) Maple Syrup (from Greenstar’s bulk department).
My good friend, Hope Rainbow introduced me to cardamom last semester when made a delicious sweet coconut cardamom wild rice dish for breakfast in sculpture class (we had leftover supplies from our Ginger Babel project). I really love cardamom, and have been trying to use it frequently.
Coconut Cardamom Purple Sticky Rice Pudding Pudding:
1 cup purple sticky rice
1 cup water
1 cup Thai Kitchen’s Organic Lite Coconut Milk
2 tbsp maple syrup
8 cardamom pods, whole
To drizzle on top:
½ cup coconut milk
4 tbsp maple syrup
In a medium sauce pan, combine 1 cup purple sticky rice with 1 cup of water, 1 cup of the coconut milk (before you open the can, shake it to make sure the coconut milk is not chunky), and 2 tbsp maple syrup. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and stir once in a while until rice is cooked and water & milk have been absorbed.
When rice is done, in a separate sauce pan, heat up the rest of the can of coconut milk (should be about ½ a cup) with 4 tablespoons of maple syrup and stir until combined and boiling.
You can serve either hot or cold (I prefer it hot). Scoop some rice into a dish, and pour the maple coconut milk on top, or you can layer the rice and the maple coconut milk. Yum :)
I am so happy that my friends are finally all getting back from break!! It was very peaceful and relaxing to have Ithaca all to myself for an entire month, but after a month of limited social interaction, I am ready to start hanging out again (at least until my school work wrenches me away from my friends). Yesterday, I went to Salvo with Varya & bought a large canning pot, and can't wait until the things start growing again.
Last summer at the farm, the tomatoes were so perfect and ripe that they fell off the vines and into my hand when I touched them. Bob had a hoop house full of tomatoes (to protect them from diseases) and a bunch of trellises outside, but the hoop house felt like a magical land. The trellises inside lined both sides of the hoop house, and as the tomatoes grew, we trained them to grow up, up, and up. Eventually, the vines growing on the trellises met at the top of the hoop house, forming a beautiful, bright tomato tunnel from the entrance to the far end.
Even with the trellises, the tomato vines were hanging so low that even I had to crouch down at times to get through. At the entrance of tomato heaven, there were gorgeous, gigantic heirlooms of all sorts of colors, shapes, and sizes. Some of the heirlooms were so large that I was surprised the vine could withstand the weight without breaking, even with the help of the trellis. Farther back there were sungolds and other smaller, pop-in-your-mouth varieties. The grape tomatoes were really interesting because they grew in bunches similar to grapes and were also shaped like small but long and slender grapes. Personally, my favorites were the sungolds. Hope and I spent way too much time picking those little orange beauties straight off the vine in the hot sun and popping them into our mouths, but they were so delicious and addictive that we had a really hard time not eating them.
Here is a (terrible) picture of some of the beautiful tomatoes from the farm (although the picture really doesn't do the tomatoes any justice):
After Salvo, we went to Wegmans & then down to the commons with Lyca. It was nice to walk around, but really, really, really cold. The wind was biting my face and I was happy to seek shelter in the stores. I ended up buying a new pair of running sneakers from the Finger Lakes Running & Triathlon Company, which are going to be really helpful because I have been running on roads in trail sneakers, and now I finally have a pair of road shoes.
The same night that I made the purple coconut rice pudding, I also decided to make some gluten-free chocolate cardamom coffee molasses cookies (very, very long name, I know). The first batch came out completely flat, but tasted AMAZING, so I added some more flour, baking powder, xanthan gum, another egg, and some chocolate chips to the recipe, and it came out really good.
Here is a rough version of the old recipe which didn't work out:
Gluten-free chocolate cardamom coffee molasses cookies
2 tbsp coffee beans
seeds from 6 cardamom pods
2 chocolate hunks (goya chocolate)
¾ tsp xanthan gum
1 ½ tsp bk sda
½ tsp bk pdr
pinch salt
*Wow, I forgot to write down how much flour and I used.... I think I originally used about 1/2 cup buckwheat flour, 1/2 cup oat flour, 1/2 cup butter, and about 3/4 or 1 cup of a mixture of light & brown sugar
**To this I added (after attempting to bake batch #1 and it came out terrible)
½ cup buckwheat flour
1 teaspoon bk pdr
½ tsp x gum
1 egg
a bunch of chocolate chips
Well, obviously, this recipe is a mess and I need to figure out the correct proportions. The main thing is the cookies were really good, and the combination of the coffee, cardamom, chocolate, and molasses was very interesting in a cookie. The cookies were nice and soft, and I think the addition of the chocolate chips was essential. I also really liked using the Goya chocolate instead of 'regular' baking chocolate. **Need to work on recipe!**
The sunset yesterday was absolutely gorgeous. I was driving home and had to park my car and get out to take a picture of this building on the engineering quad because it was glowing:
I have been meaning to try making a sweet coconut sticky rice/rice pudding for a really long time (ever since I tasted it at Taste of Thai Express in Downtown Ithaca), and have really been dying to come up with a recipe that does not include many cups of sugar. A recipe where you can actually taste and appreciate the flavor of the rice. I like to try to sweeten things with maple syrup or honey as much as I can, so I decided to try a purple sticky rice pudding with Thai Kitchen’s Organic Lite Coconut Milk and Grade B (dark) Maple Syrup (from Greenstar’s bulk department).
My good friend, Hope Rainbow introduced me to cardamom last semester when made a delicious sweet coconut cardamom wild rice dish for breakfast in sculpture class (we had leftover supplies from our Ginger Babel project). I really love cardamom, and have been trying to use it frequently.
Coconut Cardamom Purple Sticky Rice Pudding Pudding:
1 cup purple sticky rice
1 cup water
1 cup Thai Kitchen’s Organic Lite Coconut Milk
2 tbsp maple syrup
8 cardamom pods, whole
To drizzle on top:
½ cup coconut milk
4 tbsp maple syrup
In a medium sauce pan, combine 1 cup purple sticky rice with 1 cup of water, 1 cup of the coconut milk (before you open the can, shake it to make sure the coconut milk is not chunky), and 2 tbsp maple syrup. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and stir once in a while until rice is cooked and water & milk have been absorbed.
When rice is done, in a separate sauce pan, heat up the rest of the can of coconut milk (should be about ½ a cup) with 4 tablespoons of maple syrup and stir until combined and boiling.
You can serve either hot or cold (I prefer it hot). Scoop some rice into a dish, and pour the maple coconut milk on top, or you can layer the rice and the maple coconut milk. Yum :)
I am so happy that my friends are finally all getting back from break!! It was very peaceful and relaxing to have Ithaca all to myself for an entire month, but after a month of limited social interaction, I am ready to start hanging out again (at least until my school work wrenches me away from my friends). Yesterday, I went to Salvo with Varya & bought a large canning pot, and can't wait until the things start growing again.
Last summer at the farm, the tomatoes were so perfect and ripe that they fell off the vines and into my hand when I touched them. Bob had a hoop house full of tomatoes (to protect them from diseases) and a bunch of trellises outside, but the hoop house felt like a magical land. The trellises inside lined both sides of the hoop house, and as the tomatoes grew, we trained them to grow up, up, and up. Eventually, the vines growing on the trellises met at the top of the hoop house, forming a beautiful, bright tomato tunnel from the entrance to the far end.
Even with the trellises, the tomato vines were hanging so low that even I had to crouch down at times to get through. At the entrance of tomato heaven, there were gorgeous, gigantic heirlooms of all sorts of colors, shapes, and sizes. Some of the heirlooms were so large that I was surprised the vine could withstand the weight without breaking, even with the help of the trellis. Farther back there were sungolds and other smaller, pop-in-your-mouth varieties. The grape tomatoes were really interesting because they grew in bunches similar to grapes and were also shaped like small but long and slender grapes. Personally, my favorites were the sungolds. Hope and I spent way too much time picking those little orange beauties straight off the vine in the hot sun and popping them into our mouths, but they were so delicious and addictive that we had a really hard time not eating them.
Here is a (terrible) picture of some of the beautiful tomatoes from the farm (although the picture really doesn't do the tomatoes any justice):
After Salvo, we went to Wegmans & then down to the commons with Lyca. It was nice to walk around, but really, really, really cold. The wind was biting my face and I was happy to seek shelter in the stores. I ended up buying a new pair of running sneakers from the Finger Lakes Running & Triathlon Company, which are going to be really helpful because I have been running on roads in trail sneakers, and now I finally have a pair of road shoes.
The same night that I made the purple coconut rice pudding, I also decided to make some gluten-free chocolate cardamom coffee molasses cookies (very, very long name, I know). The first batch came out completely flat, but tasted AMAZING, so I added some more flour, baking powder, xanthan gum, another egg, and some chocolate chips to the recipe, and it came out really good.
Here is a rough version of the old recipe which didn't work out:
Gluten-free chocolate cardamom coffee molasses cookies
2 tbsp coffee beans
seeds from 6 cardamom pods
2 chocolate hunks (goya chocolate)
¾ tsp xanthan gum
1 ½ tsp bk sda
½ tsp bk pdr
pinch salt
*Wow, I forgot to write down how much flour and I used.... I think I originally used about 1/2 cup buckwheat flour, 1/2 cup oat flour, 1/2 cup butter, and about 3/4 or 1 cup of a mixture of light & brown sugar
**To this I added (after attempting to bake batch #1 and it came out terrible)
½ cup buckwheat flour
1 teaspoon bk pdr
½ tsp x gum
1 egg
a bunch of chocolate chips
Well, obviously, this recipe is a mess and I need to figure out the correct proportions. The main thing is the cookies were really good, and the combination of the coffee, cardamom, chocolate, and molasses was very interesting in a cookie. The cookies were nice and soft, and I think the addition of the chocolate chips was essential. I also really liked using the Goya chocolate instead of 'regular' baking chocolate. **Need to work on recipe!**
The sunset yesterday was absolutely gorgeous. I was driving home and had to park my car and get out to take a picture of this building on the engineering quad because it was glowing:
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