Backyard Free Eats...

Sand on my boots and a nice almost-tan, I got home last night from a super fun birthday weekend on BC's Sunshine Coast with my good friend Justin (or e-noodle as I have named him for his dancing abilities) and his motorcycle - 'Click Click Bang'. I am definitely relaxed and content at getting another year to explore.

Looking in the fridge I found half a golden beet, some olives and a shriveled pack of what was once parsley (I think?). This reminded me first that I need to get some groceries and second that I was pretty much completely skinned after our little trip. Hm... luckily I have plenty of beans in the cupboard and various grains too, so something will fill my belly. I also remembered I had some parsley in a little pot outside, which likely needed attention and could be a nice addition to my meal.

The sensation of cool grass on bare feet for the first time this year cracked me a grin almost as wide as did looking up at that riotous blue sky from the back of Click Click Bang. That's when I spotted something purple and green growing in the corner of our backyard.

A taste confirmed my suspicions: mustard greens. Obviously some previous tenant had sown some seeds which decided to return the favor. I gathered up enough for a meal or two and feeling inspired by that teetering on the edge of summer feeling, turned to head inside, but was stopped again by the sight of a second prize, rhubarb: the unmistakable umbrella leaves nearly hiding ruby red stalks. I twisted off a few for my morning meal and headed inside. (I learned recently that you shouldn't cut rhubarb, but rather twist if off at the base to keep the plant happy & producing).

My roommate Jess was definitely surprised to see me returning from an excursion into our dingy little, weed covered, back yard that screams "RENTAL HOUSE!" with an armful of edible produce. So was I. All I could think was - wow - this is all free!

I know what I'm having for breakfast and dinner...


Breakfast: Creamy Nutmeg-Date Amaranth with Stewed Rhubarb

Amaranth
1/2 cup amaranth grain, rinsed
1 cup water
6 dates, pitted and chopped
cinnamon and nutmeg

Place the amaranth, water and salt together in a pot. (Starting with cold water makes the amaranth more creamy and thick). Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 15 or 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. After about 10 minutes, add the chopped dates and stir to combine. Continue to cook.

Serve with a sprinkle of cinnamon and grated fresh nutmeg, a dollop of stewed rhubarb (below) and perhaps some milk, yogurt, hemp milk or soy yogurt.


Stewed Rhubarb
rhubarb - washed and cut into 1/2 or 1 inch chunks
splash of juice or water
a pot
maple syrup or other sweetener

Place rhubarb and juice in the pot and bring to a low simmer over medium heat. Cover and reduce heat. Simmer until the rhubarb softens and falls apart. Add sweetener to taste - I love maple syrup and a little bit of vanilla with rhubarb.

Eat it as is, with yogurt, on hot cereal, ice cream, toast, whatever you like.

Rhubarb is very high in oxalic acid and tannins (that's what makes your mouth pucker), which can bind calcium so that we can't absorb it as readily, so it's not something I'd want to eat with every meal. However, it does makes sense to eat it with dairy or amaranth - both very rich sources of calcium. Rhubarb has health benefits too - it is supportive to the liver and packed with vitamin A, C, and potassium. Hm... a little bit of this, a little bit of that sound familiar?


Dinner: Garlic Sauteed Mustard Greens
The first time I tried cooked mustard greens I was enormously surprised and pleased! Cooking mellows out the spicy bite that was always a little too much for even my adventuresome palate.

Olive oil
Garlic, peeled and minced
A bunch of Mustard Greens

Heat the olive oil in a cast iron fry pan or whatever you have over medium heat. Add the garlic (I used one super potent organic Red Russian garlic clove) and allow it to cook until softened. Add the greens, moving them around to distribute the garlic. Cook until they just wilt. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve as a side dish with some whole grains and some beans or a meat dish. I piled mine high beside a homemade spicy blackeyed pea and walnut burger from my freezer stash, slathered thick with horseradish mustard and ketchup (I'm a sucker for M&K), and some brown rice laced with sesame seeds.

These mustard greens are nutrient dense and full of potent anti-cancer compounds. They are excellent sources of anti-oxidants (carotenes, vitamin C, vitamin E), folic acid, manganese, copper, vitamin B6 and calcium. They are also a good source of phosphorus, vitamin B2 (riboflavin), potassium, magnesium and protein, vitamin B1 (thiamin) and iron. Whew! They'll do nicely to balance my rhubarb breakfast.

A litle bit of this, a little bit of that

My classmate McKenzie wrote a wonderful essay about dinner with a 2 year old. She taught him with ease and gentle nudges to eat a balanced diet and let go of good and bad food labels by having a little bit of everything on his plate, even some ice cream. I think we could all use that nudge at times. I'll add a new saying to my favourite (Small Acts Add Up):

A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

A good example of how this makes sound nutritional sense is the concept of raw foods vs. cooked. There are many different diets claiming the benefits of raw foods or cooked foods over the other.

I say, some cooked some raw.

Some nutrients are made more available (bio-available) by cooking, while others are destroyed by cooking. Some are only available when there is a fat source included with them. Others leach out into the cooking water making soup a perfect way to access them, but boiling (and tossing the water) not so helpful. This to me makes another case for balance. Some cooked, some raw.

Tomatoes for example, are full of lycopene, a potent antioxidant and well-studied anti-cancer compound. It is most usable by our bodies when the tomato is cooked in some kind of fat, say a fruity, extra virgin, monounsaturated fat packed olive oil (hint hint). Tomatoes are also little vitamin C bombs. Cooking a tomato pretty much decimates all of that powerful Vitamin C power. So what to do? Do both.

Really that's pretty easy to do, because if you are like me, sometimes I want to eat something raw, crunchy and fresh and sometimes I crave warm, caramelized softness. So again, try both - eat it all, in every way.



Most Succulent Red Peppers -
Another great way to get your lycopene...

Olive oil
Red Peppers, about 1/2 inch slices
Sea salt
a cast iron frying pan
a lid
a bit of time and patience

Heat a good blub of olive oil in the frying pan over medium heat. Add the red peppers in a single layer, they should sizzle a little. Toss to coat them in the oil. Sprinkle liberally with sea salt. The salt pulls out moisture from the peppers, along with dissolved sugars that caramelize and brown, which is the key to this dish. Cover with a lid and leave them be. The goal is to slowly cook and caramelize them in their own juices, until they are oozingly soft, about 20 minutes or more. When they are done they will be soft enough to almost spread them.

If by some amazing feat you manage not to eat them all in one go, you can pack them into a jar, drizzle olive oil over top and refrigerate them for future use. Try them on pizza, a sandwich, layer them on a spinach salad with some salty olives or savoury cheese, in rice with some fresh herbs, or on a piece of toast with a bit of pesto or nothing more than a grind of fresh black pepper.

delightful.

Detox Retox - I heart (my) liver.

It's spring, which for many people can mean climbing out of the cozy, insular, nest - shedding some layers and doing a little spring cleaning.

I cleaned and organized my room yesterday. It likely had more to do with avoiding homework than spring cleaning but it also felt really good to rest my eye on clean, clear surfaces instead of piles of laundry (one for clean, one for dirty), papers, cups, mugs, cups and... more cups - like I mentioned, I drink a lot of tea.

Spring is also when thoughts of cleansing and detox start to bubble up. On an impulse, I found myself picking up a book from the library this morning. In fact two books: very indicative of my quest for balance. The first was "Juicing, Fasting and Detoxing for Life" and the second "The Herbal Kitchen: Cooking with Fragrance and Flavor" from Jerry Traunfeld, former chef of the Herb Farm restaurant in Woodinville, WA which features pretty fabulous wine and food from the Pacific Northwest. I had this cookbook out for weeks and weeks, renewed it until I reached the limit, and returned it, only to take it out again now, a month later. It is packed with sensuously delicious recipes that incorporate fresh herbs plus tips on growing and using your own. I made the Cinnamon Basil Chicken, a jammy, thick tomato based curry spiked with star anise and handfuls of a variety of fresh basil laced with warm cinnamon overtones... sigh -- but before I get too off track here... back to the other book... right... balance...

I was likely drawn to the Detox book because I believe there are definite benefits to cleansing diets: giving the digestive system a break and providing the vitamins, minerals and compounds needed by the liver throughout the phases of detoxification. My brother often asks me about detoxing. I'm sure many people wonder about it. Like many words it encompasses a pretty enormous topic and gets tossed around without much care or concern to meaning. I wanted to be better informed on how detox diets work and what the benefits are, as well as when to use them. Every therapeutic diet is highly specific to the individual and the individual's needs at that specific time.

Detox. Your body is doing this just about all the time. The liver sorts out the compounds the body doesn't need from the ones it does, making them water soluble if they aren't already so they can be sent out of the body via the urine and other routes. I have enormous respect for the liver now that I've learned some of its amazing abilities and tasks. Take care of your liver. It's pretty much running the show.

Do we need to detox? We do live in a time when our bodies need to process a greater number of toxins than we likely did in the past. Environmental pollutants, chemicals off-gassing from household cleaners and building materials, and of course pesticides and additives in our food supply etc. It can be a little overwhelming. I think worrying about it does more harm than good. I do not want to live from a place of fear. My approach is to eliminate the things I can and then try to nourish myself as much as possible in every aspect of my life (physically, mentally, emotionally, socially) so I can be an adaptable and resilient creature. Seems like as for pretty much everything in life - health too is about balance.

For most people, the shift to a detox diet or juice cleanse could be pretty intense. They might want to first consider the amazing and gentle detoxifying effects of just drinking more water and slowly incorporating more whole foods, like intact, whole grains that aren't refined (brown rice, wheat berries (bulgar), quinoa, buckwheat (kasha) or millet), beans, nuts, seeds and of course plenty of fruits and vegetables to their diet. Small Acts Add Up.

The fiber alone will be enough to help carry toxins out of the colon so they have less chance of being absorbed or causing harm. Plant foods are jam packed with compounds like glutathione, choline, and vitamins C and E that are used in chemical reactions by the liver to bind and excrete toxins from the blood to the urine.

The body is detoxing all the time, so may as well try to support it regularly so those toxins can be processed and excreted and don't build up. It's like hanging up your clothes every day instead of spending an hour once a week to tackle a gigantic pile... note to self.

I also believe that there is something amazing about crafting delicious whole foods that nourish by pleasure, and also provide these amazing nutrients and compounds on a regular basis. Hence the Herb Farm cookbook... it is full of recipes that please both your mouth and your liver.

To me this is a very sustainable approach.

Compost Competition

Eat every part.

They were selling cauliflower greens at the market last week. Yes, the leaves normally trimmed and tossed from around the cauliflower head were piled high into baskets and sold for the slightly posh price of a fancy spring mix. My first reaction was to think this was some kind of money grab or that they were desperate for something to sell in the shoulder season between stodgy winter roots and lush spring greens. But then it occurred to me how perfect this was. Really why wouldn't you eat every part? I tasted one. It was surprisingly sweet and mild. I decided to try a handful, but more importantly I decided to stop composting so many edible vegetable parts!

Just like our singular fixation on the chicken breast despite the many, many other delicious bits and pieces (each with their own variety of nutrients too), we tend to forget that if we can eat part of a plant, it's pretty safe to assume the rest of it is edible too. So instead of paying extra for cauliflower leaves as if they were some kind of extravagant delicacy, buy a whole leafy head and save the trimmings for your salad or stir fry.

Other examples are beet greens. I almost always buy a bunch instead of bulk beets when they are available. It's like getting a free bunch of Swiss chard or kale and they are delicious. Fennel bulb has frondy tops that can be used as an herb - it has a licorice-y sweet flavor that is so nice with lemon or orange. Even the green tops from radishes and turnips are tasty. Each has its own unique flavor. I was looking at a pretty limited veggie drawer one day and my chickpea curry wasn't calling for turnips. I snipped off one of the turnip leaves and tasted it. It was mildly peppery and sweet. I chopped it up and threw it. Why not?

Experiment, use your senses and get creative. Don't let your preconceived notions about what WE eat limit you. It's another great way to stretch your dollar, expand your palate and your plate.