Tibetan Foods

One of the reasons I was excited to go to India was the food. If you haven't noticed from either reading my blog or hanging out with me....I like food. And one of my favorite things about traveling is eating! So, much to my surprise, I only ate a couple Indian meals in the three weeks I was there. The weather was too hot. And, um, like many of my fellow travelers, I experienced what we called "Delhi Belly", so all I wanted was mild food.

In my rudimentary understanding of Indian food, they use more spices because it's hotter down there, and spice acts as a preservative to prevent the food from going bad. The Himalayas have less plant diversity, and the food is more mild. I was surprised to learn that a lot of Tibetan food is similar to northern Japanese food. Yum!

Most mornings I ate a big meal, because the heat of the day made my appetite decease as the day went on. This was jasmine tea, masala omlette, and porridge.

Momos are a rather-famous Tibetan food. They are basically small dumplings, like Japanese gyoza or Chinese potstickers. ( I have a good recipie for gyoza here. ) These momos were filled with a mix of cabbage and cheese, in a mild soup broth with chopped vegetables, spinach, and peas.

This Tibetan curry over brown rice was awesome! Mild and sweet, like Japanese curry.

Tibetan thentuk soup. Tomatoes, daikon radish, spinach, peas, yum. Fresh carrot juice.

The guesthouse we stayed at was vegetarian, following Buddhist spiritual principals to "do no harm". Here's another thenthuk soup with thick egg noodles. On the side is lemon-honey-ginger tea with lots of fresh boiled ginger root. Good for the digestion! Because, according to Tibetan Medicine, if you're not digesting well, you will get sick. Even if you choose healthy food, if your body doesn't digest well you aren't able to absorb the nutrients. Makes sense, huh?

Beware generous hosts, pouring delicious beers at high altitude! On our last night in Dharamsala, we had a party with the Tibetan Medical Institute professors and physicians.

Excalibur: A Food Preservation Love Story

Excalibur is the legendary sword of King Arthur, sometimes attributed with magical powers or associated with the rightful sovereignty of Great Britain.

"Excalibur" is also the name of a fabulously sexy love song by the singer-songwriter-artist Danya River.

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Anyway...
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I was first introduced to food dehydrating in my hippie-house in Portland. A guy we lived with owned both a food dehydrator and a juicer, which I thought was very grown-up and resourceful. I had so much fun drying all kinds of things: cherry tomatoes from our garden (which I later soaked in olive oil and kept in the fridge), apples, bananas, carrots, grapes, etc. I juiced lots of stuff that I picked from the yards of friends and neighbors. Delicious and nutritious!

So I always planned that, once I grew up and stopped volunteering for a living, I would get a food dehydrator and juicer of my very own. And now I'm half-way to my goal!

At my Minnesota wedding shower, hosted by Jennifer, several of the women came together and gifted me with the ultimate fighting champion of food dehydrators: the Excalibur! (And what a great name! Seriously.) The gift was a total surprise:


What is it?


Oooooo! I went berry-picking here in Minnesota and gathered some lovely stuff:

Strawberries (The strawberries were perfectly ripe last weekend, and I had a wonderful time picking these jewels in the sunshine.)

Black Currants (I think they're kindof gross tasting, actually. First they taste really tart and exciting, but then this strange beefy-taste comes up and I have to spit it out. Nick says I'm a crazy vegetarian, and it doesn't taste like beef at all. Needless to say, I didn't get many of the black currants, but they are pretty.)

Red Currants (These are so delicious and easy to pick and very very pretty in salads! Nutritionally, red currants are a good source of Potassium and Manganese, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C and Vitamin K.

Gooseberries (These little globes look something like red grapes, and taste something like blueberries or tart grapes. Gooseberries are my favorite new berry discovery! They were really difficult to pick off the spiny branches, but totally worth the effort. Next time I'll bring gloves. I hear that they are an excellent source of antioxidants, and also nutritionally they are a good source of Vitamin A, Potassium and Manganese, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber and Vitamin C.)


Tonight I had the pleasure of getting some of those berries into the Excalibur. Hooray!

The Holy Trinity (of Grocery Stores)

Life is grand on Grand Avenue! St. Paul is so great with a homey atmosphere, neighborhood festivals and walkable, pretty streets. And four farmer's markets within a ten minute drive (just that I know of!)

I live two blocks from a lover-ly little local grocery store called Kowalski's, with beautiful local organic produce and a nice mix of organic and non-organic/cheapo foods. And they sell this organic local butter called "Hope". How great is that!?

I love six blocks from a small-sized Whole Foods, with an excellent vitamin/natural body department and delicious cheese.

I live 20 blocks from the BRAND-SPANKIN NEW Trader Joe's. Today we visited TJ's for the first time, and left giddy with our bounty.

I love our neighborhood! I love food!

Summer Plans

In addition to my grad class, and Nick's classes, and planning our wedding, and my full-time job.... I want to go berry-picking! The best thing about living in Oregon was the bounty of the summer harvest time. Now in my new home, I am intent to learn the spots in Minnesota for berries, apples, and other food for preserving!

I've heard of some great places for u-picking:
Natura Farms (highly recommended!)
Berry Hill
Collegeville Orchards (we visited there last fall!)

	Strawberries: Minnesota strawberry season generally begins in early to mid June in southern and central Minnesota. Northern Minnesota usually starts picking strawberries 2 weeks after southern Minnesota. The length of the season varies from year to year depending on the weather conditions but usually lasts at least 2 full weeks, sometimes closer to 4 weeks.
	Blueberries: Blueberry season begins toward the end of strawberry season. In southern Minnesota blueberries are usually ready around the July 4 holiday. As with strawberries, northern Minnesota is usually starting their blueberry season 2 weeks after southern Minnesota begins. Blueberry season usually lasts at least 3 full weeks depending on the variety and weather conditions.
	Raspberries: The start of Minnesota raspberry season usually falls between the start of strawberry season and blueberry season. In addition to summer raspberries, many farms offer fall raspberries.

And, just like Japan, it seems that the upper-midwest is blessed with lots of small town festivals. We loved the local traditions of Japanese festivals, like in Biei and our town of Furano. Here are some food festivals I'm looking forward to this coming year:

MayDay Parade, Heart of the Beast, Minneapolis, 5/3

Morel mushrooms, Muscoda, WI, 5/16-17

Beer, Minneapolis, 5/30

Strawberries, Waupaca, WI, 6/19-21

Rhubarb, Lanesboro, Minn. 6/6 (N's birthday!)

Wild Rice, Deer River, MN, 7/10-12

Raspberries, Hopkins, MN 7/10-19

Pie, Grand Rapids, MN 7/18

Blueberries, Lake George, MN 7/25-27 (T's birthday!)

Corn, Plainview, MN, 8/14-16

Peppers, North Hudson, WI 8/14-16

Craft beer, St. Paul, 9/12!!!!!

Preservation

Dear Creative Ones,

In the hopes of preserving resources, traditions, and food, I ask for your 'food preservation' offerings!

I Need:

• Canning jars
• Canning supplies
  
• Canning and food preservation recipes (with stories of when you made it and with whom)

My hope is to do a lot of food preservation this coming summer. Minnesota is has so many little towns with berry and fruit festivals, and wonderful Farmers' Markets in the city. I'm already getting excited! If you have any canning stuff you want to get rid of, please pass it my way!

(I'm particularly hoping to get some lessons from family!)

Food: Chocolate, Beer, Waffles, Cheese!

On the road again....

We traveled over the holidays again this year; last year to Thailand, this year to Europe. The impetus was to spend time with my best friend Amber and her husband Adam, and their daughter (my goddaughter) Mary Grace. They live on the Eastern side of the Netherlands, in a town called Hengelo. We also visited Germany and Belgium.

Besides quality time with our friends, the next-most-important thing was to sample the fare!



Ooooo the Belgian chocolate!

The seafood is rather famous in Belgium.

In Germany our friend ordered 'bacon bread' -- we were curious as to what it would be. It turned out to be many thin slices of bacon (Euro-style bacon, not like American - closer to thin 'Canadian bacon' as we would call it) piled on top of nice bread. With pickles.

The same German restaurant served creamy ice cream and cherries (so flavorful, not canned crap) over a delicate waffle.

Dutch cheese is varied and absolutely delicious. And a little challenging to the uninitiated gastrointestinal tract. Our favorites were pesto cheese and walnut cheese, but clove/cumin or classic smoked gouda were good too.

The Dutch eat fries with mayo, and shockingly lots of it. If you'd rather not have mayo, they have an excellent curry-flavored ketchup. I even brought some curry ketchup home.


We also sampled a few beers along the way... Maybe you've heard of Belgian beers? ;) Less rules than the Germans in their brewing practices, resulting in phenomenal variety and flavor. Um, yeah. I literally went to bed at night saying grateful prayers for the artists at the breweries who made such incredible beers. Some of these recipies were created 900 years ago, seriously.


Probably my favorite beer in the land.

This beer is named after St. Bernard, the saint for which my grade school was named.

There are several suggestive poses of me with this particular beer. . . I must have really enjoyed.

They do raspberry and cherry beers like nothing you've ever dreamed of. Delicious.

And for every beer there is a special glass to compliment the flavors. This innovative glass had a bulbous bottom, so that when you got toward the end of the beer, the flavor of the less-aerated beer at the bottom changed entirely. Outstanding.

Cheers!

Recipe: Holiday Cookies

My old favorite holiday cookie, from Mom:

Melting Moments

2/3 c cornstarch
1 c flour
1 c butter
1/3 c powdered sugar

Sift flour and cornstarch together. (This step is important, so there are no lumps and the batter is light and airy.) Cream butter; add sugar and cream until fluffy. Add flour/cornstarch mixture. Roll into small balls and keep chilled.
Bake at 325 for 15-20 minutes.

Make a powdered sugar frosting. If desired, divide the frosting to make different batches of flavored frosting: Add food coloring and almond/lemon/peppermint/vanilla extracts to each colored frosting. Drizzle frosting over baked cookies.


My newest favorite cookie, from Jennifer:

Chewy Chocolate Cherry Cookies

1 c flour
1/2 c cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 c sugar
1/2 c butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 large egg
2/3 c dried cherries
3 tbsp chocolate chips (or more)

Combine dry ingredients. Cream sugar and butter. Add vanilla and egg. Gradually add dry ingredients. Stir in cherries and chips. Drop by tablespoon.
Bake at 350 for 12 minutes. Cool on pans 5 minutes.

Thanksgiving Pics!

We traveled to Madison, Wisconsin for Thanksgiving weekend to be with family: Ben, Kat, Mary, Rich and Pat. Lots of food, coctails, brisk walks, and more food. It was a lovely time.

What a bountiful spread on Thanksgiving day! Ben and Kat are wonderful hosts.


Oops! The wine froze!


One evening Nick entertained the family with his fiddle, playing Celtic and traditional tunes.


Isn't this a lovely picture of Pat!?

Brothers.

Schickers.



How unlikely!? At the Madison Botanical Gardens, they have a lovely Thai royal pavillion. The craftsmen who came to build the pavillion flew to Chicago, with all the materials, on the last plane allowed to land on 9/11/01 (just as the authorties were becoming aware of the attacks in DC and NYC). Two days later, in moving ceremonies praying for peace and cooperation, people from Thailand and Wisconsin built the pavillion together.


My mom loved this sculpture of tulip leaves.


I loved these grasses!


We celebrated Rich's 60th birthday at the end of this lovely weekend. He is an amazing father!

In Thanks-giving

by Rev. Max Coots

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people.

For children who are our second planting, and though they
grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may
they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where
their roots are.

Let us give thanks;

For generous friends…with hearts…and smiles as bright
as their blossoms;

For feisty friends, as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers,
keep reminding us that we’ve had them;

For crotchety friends, sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and
as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as
potatoes and so good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and
as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes;

And serious friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle
as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as
dill, as endless as zucchini and who, like parsnips, can be
counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time,
and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold
us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past
that have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that
we might have life thereafter.

For all these we give thanks.

Source: “Garden Meditations” by Rev. Max Coots, minister emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Canton, New York.

Applelicious

Two years ago, I lived in a cute little condo in Northwest Portland. Five apple trees reached from my neighbor's property into our yard. With the help of my lovely roommate Colleen, and my ever-willing canning companion Natasha, we made dozens of muffins, many jars of applesauce, and a lot of pie. In the same month I also picked, froze, and jarred sweet Oregon blackberries, which grow in every untamed yard in the region. I sold jam and preserves to coworkers and church friends, to rave reviews.


Last year autumn came quickly. I didn't manage to do any canning in my tiny Japanese kitchen, but we did enjoy many fresh vegetables. We lived in a farming region of the country (our area famous for onions, carrots, and spinach) and never lacked for beautiful food. I made many quarts of ginger-pumpkin-carrot soup, and decadent cream-of-mushroom soup flavored with imported oregano. With the help of a friend I ordered a box of crisp Aomori apples delivered to my doorstep, direct from the grower, at a reasonable price. In the grocery store Japanese apples cost around two dollars, were huge, and picture-perfect. But I didn't need perfection; just fresh and delicious food!



This year I am in Minnesota, enjoying another beautiful autumn. The Midwest harvest is a little later this year than usual, because of an excess of rain in the springtime. My family's farms will harvest corn and soybeans in a few weeks. Recently I had the joy of picking hundreds of apples and pears from the yard of a friend's home. (Thank you, Anne and Kate!) I spent last weekend peeling, coring, de-worming (ew!), chopping, boiling, baking and freezing. Many thanks to Jennifer and Nick for assistance in the process! I now have plenty of applesauce, apple muffins (100!) , apple pies (2), and buttery apple crisp. Food preserving is exhausting, rewarding, delicious work. I love it.

Food

The following is an excerpt of an interview of Winona LaDuke in YES! Magazine. LaDuke is one of my biggest sheroes and I am very excited to move back to Minnesota and be nearer to her wisdom/action. I like what she says here about work, food, and celebration.

"Sarah van Gelder: Can you tell me about how wild rice is harvested?

Winona LaDuke: We go up on the lake and we put our asemaa, our tobacco, on it. My son is my ricing partner, and we canoe through our rice beds. I used to push him, but he got too big, so now he pushes me out there, and I knock rice into the canoe with two sticks.

The rice grows on our lakes and rivers—some is fat and some skinny, some short, some tall. Some grows in muddy waters, some looks like a bottle brush, and some looks all punked out. That’s called biodiversity. It means not all the rice ripens at once. Some gets knocked off by wind. Some gets a blight, some doesn’t get a blight. The Irish potato famine should have taught us that agricultural monoculture is dangerous—but so is a social monoculture (or you could say, mall-culture).

The anthropologists used to come out and watch us manoominike—harvest the rice. After we rice in the morning, we bring our rice in and let it dry. We parch it over a fire, and we dance on it to get the hulls off, and then winnow it in a basket. We pretty much do the same thing today using wood fires as we’ve always done—we’re an intermediate technology people.

Ojibwe is a language of 8,000 verbs. The word for “work” is a strange construct for us. It doesn’t mean we aren’t a hard-working people, but in our language, the word is anokii, which means that whether you are fishing or weaving a basket, what you are doing is living—which is not the same thing as being paid a wage to do something.

After the harvest, we have a big feast, and we dance and tell stories. The anthropologists watched us, and they didn’t like that. They said we would never become civilized because we enjoyed our harvest too much. We did too much dancing, too much singing.

When you no longer enjoy your relationship to your food, to your plant relatives, to the harvest, to the dancing and singing—when you end up with a harvest that has no relationships or joy, I think that must be the mark of civilization and industrialized agriculture."

Food Shortages

All around Asia, people are experiencing shortages of rice. Here in Japan, we have no BUTTER. Even in dairy-rich Hokkaido, no butter! I found a great cookie recipe that makes it all seem okay:

Peanut Butter Banana Raisin Cookies

INGREDIENTS
1 banana, peeled and mashed
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 egg whites or 1 egg
2 tablespoons molasses
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped dark chocolate


DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).
In a medium bowl, stir together mashed banana, peanut butter, white sugar and brown sugar until smooth. Then mix in the egg. Add flour and baking soda, mix until just blended, then stir in the rolled oats and raisins.
Chill cookie dough, drop onto an unprepared cookie sheet. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven. When cookies are done, remove from the baking sheet and cool on wire racks.


Of course, the peanut butter and oatmeal used in this recipe are ingredients I imported from home last month. Thanks to my wonderful mother for making yummy batches of peanut-butter cookies during her visit to Hokkaido! Yay!

(Some Good) Japanese Food

Onion rings on top of salad. How brilliant is that?!
I'm drinking an ume-sour. Ume (plum) wine is amazing.


The softcream flavors are blueberry (delicious, but tasted like strawberry) and black sesame. I have a current obsession with sesame anything.
The baked dish behind the ice creams is called a 'pizza' but is more of a potato gratin with tomato sauce. The ingredients included potatoes, corn, tomato sauce, cheese, and sliced ham.


I am surprised what American foods I crave. Whole-grain bread is currently at the top of the list, closely followed by organic valencia peanut butter. But my enjoyment of this brilliant popcorn-dorito-cheetos mix was indiscriminate of the amount of preservatives I ingested.


Sushi! Duh.
When we moved to Japan we were barely able to put down 4 plates, each. Most Japanese people can do 20-30 plates. There is a famous TV personality who can eat HUNDREDS of plates of sushi in one sitting, and SHE is less than 100 pounds. Now we're filling up on 10 plates and going for the gold.

Recipe: Gyoza

Another recipe, perfect for a party or a long winter night. This was a fun project with a delicious end. Enjoy!

Vegetarian Gyoza

1/2 head of diced cabbage
2-3 stalks of diced green onions
1 raw egg
4-6 oz mushroom, sauteed
3 tsp red pepper or chili powder
3 tsp minced fresh garlic or garlic powder
3 tsp salt/pepper
1 block hard tofu, drained and pressed
50-100 gyoza wrappers
oil

1. Put cabbage, green onion, egg and tofu in a bowl. Mix thoroughly.
2. Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix well.
3. Wrap gyoza: place a teaspoon of mixture in the centre, folding up the two opposite sides and then press the edges together firmly so the mixture cannot spill out.
4. For best taste, cook on a lightly-oiled teflon pan until browned. Then add about a cup of boiling water, cover and steam for another 2-3 minutes or until the water is gone.

Thai Food is Sooooooooooo Good!

I am sad, and not a little deflated, to admit my disappointment with Japanese food. Although the grocery produce is far superior to the US in terms of freshness, most food is over-processed, over-priced, and very meaty. The only redeeming foods are sushi, okonomiyaki, and black sesame ice cream. Sad.

Thailand is a very popular tourist desitnation, and there are many good reasons for it. One way that Thailand demonstrates its WELCOME to tourists is in the menus: most places have vegetarian options. And in Thailand, if you don`t wish for something in your food (because of an allergy or food preference), the cook is totally willing to change or substitute. In Japan if you ask for something different, the restaurant often reacts like you have just broken the rules and insulted the Japanese emperor, you nasty smelly barbarian. Or blatantly ignores your request and makes it like they wish. In Japan, different is wrong (it's actually the same word). Thai people just seem to be so much more easy-going, friendly, and Cool about everything. They really are.

All that being said, Thailand is lucky because so much grows there. In that tropical climate they can grow fruits and vegetables nearly year-round. Seriously, how can a menu go wrong if it uses mango, pineapple, guava, basil, cilantro, lemongrass, chili, cashews, coconut, curries, fresh fish, jasmine rice, wonderful teas. . .



Kudos to Cat for this amazing photo of fresh-roasted nuts at the market.



This pad see ew was one of the best dishes I ate in Thailand. The chefs at "The Wok" in Chiang Mai are amazing.


Also from "The Wok", Nick`s famous Chiang Mai curry noodles were crunchy on the top, soft in the bowl, and delicous.



This amazing fish was part of our New Year`s eve dinner.


Cat and Nick ate these things, fer reals. Just a few, and just for the adventure. Yum!