Mutant Kiwis

So I was at the farmer's market by me on Saturday buying delicious produce when low and behold I find someone selling organic kiwis, 3 for a dollar.  But these weren't any ordinary organic kiwis, the were MUTANT organic kiwis.  They were like siamese kiwis.  I'll post up picks later.  I hope they give me super powers haha.

UPDATE: So... its been over a year now.  Thankfully, the goat cheese ladies at the farmers market still sell mutant kiwis and here is what they look like!

And here's me trying to be artsy and whatnot.

Recipe: Roasted Butternut Squash

Ingredients:
1 Butternut Squash
Salt
Pepper
Brown Sugar
2 Tablespoons Tallow (or fat of your choice like butter. Please don't use margarine)

Equipment:
Baking Pan (with lips so that the minimal liquids don't flow off)
Brush (or paper towel)

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Cut the top off of the squash and halve it. (not quartered like in the picture. When it is halved, it allows the seasonings and carmelization to stay on the squash rather than fall off)
Melt the tallow or other fat and spread it on the squash.  This would ideally be done with a brush but i do not have one.  What I did is fold up a paper towel and use that as a brush.  When using this technique, be careful to not apply too much force.  If you do, the paper towel will rip and put residue in your squash.
Sprinkle salt pepper and brown sugar to taste (I didn't have any brown sugar so I had to use regular)
Place the halves face up in a baking pan and put in the oven for around 30 minutes.  To test if the squash is done, stick and knife or fork into it.  It should go in easily like room temperature butter.
Once done, take out and enjoy!

Notes: This dish turned out very well, better than I expected, despite not using brown sugar and quartering it.  I only wish that I had access to spices, then I could try cinnamon cardamon nutmeg or curry squash along with other variations.

Kool-Aid

     Alright, just walked into the kitchen where my friend was preparing Kool-Aid.  Classic American beverage.  Fake coloring and flavors, a cup of sugar, half a gallon of water.  Easy.  Strange thing is, when I walked in, it didn't smell like fruit (it was fruit punch flavor), it smelled like kid's shampoo or toothpaste.  I mentioned it and my friend didn't even notice once I told him.  What kind of crazy upside down world do we live in when it is ordinary for our beverages to smell like our shower product?  I'm probably never going to drink "fruit punch" again.

Veggie Grill

     I went to the Veggie Grill in Irvine, CA across the street from UCI yesterday and had an enjoyable moment followed by pain.  To get the logistics out of the way, I ordered a Crispy Sante Fe Chickin' (not CHICKEN mind you) for $8.95 and Sweetheart Fries for $4.25.  My guest ordered what I was originally going to get, Grillin' Chickin', for $8.95.  The total came out to be $14.38 with tax.  The sandwich was quite good and came with a small side of chili.
     If I had not consciously chosen Veggie Grill knowing that it was all vegetarian, I would have never known it was not real chicken.  The resemblance was remarkable AND delicious.  Additionally, the flavors on the sandwich were mended beautifully.  The whole wheat bun gave a very deep and sweet taste whereas the Southwestern vegan mayo was just spicy enough to add the perfect kick.  The vegetables on the sandwich, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and mashed avocado, were also fresh, adding to the overall appeal.  After quickly demolishing the sandwich, I moved on to the chili, which had good flavors but was not anything amazing.  The sweet potato fries, Sweetheart Fries, were also extremely good.  They were crisp on the outside and soft on the inside in the perfect ratio.  You could tell they were just fried.  The vegan chipotle sauce that it came with also wowed me.  Like my vegan mayo, it had just enough kick to make it exciting while the creaminess of the sauce balanced it.  My guest and I agree those are some of the best sweet potato fries we've ever had.  Anyways, my guest's sandwich had an amazing grilled taste that I did not believe you could get using vegetable proteins.  Her cole slaw was somewhat lacking though.  It was only minced cabbage with a sauce that offered no bold flavors.
     The service was extremely polite helpful.  The restaurant is set up in the style where you go to the cashier to take your order, and they take it to you.  Thankfully, the food also came very quickly.  The clean and simple atmosphere also made my experience more enjoyable.  Unfortunately my experience after was anything but.
   About 5 minutes after I had left the restaurant, I got a horrible stomach ache.  Now, I don't question the preparation of the food there, it was very clean, I only blame the content of it.  I usually get bad stomach aches after ingesting a lot of grains.  I think the fake meat was also a major factor in my pains.  I simply don't believe that proteins should be derived from vegetables to simulate meat.  It is not natural.
     Overall, my experience in the actual restaurant was excellent.  The price was exactly where it needed to be an everything was top notch.  If I go back again, I would upgrade my side to fries, put my fake meat on the kale bed, and order their fresh squeezed lemonade.  Seriously, the lemonade was calling my name the entire time I was there.  If this restaurant agreed with my diet more, I would definitely put it in my top 5.  I give the restaurant a 4.5/5.  5/5 for service. 4.5/5 for price(it can always be cheaper).  5/5 for atmosphere. 4/5 for food(the lackluster sides were disappointing).

UPDATE:
     I went back and had the fake Carne Asada but over a bed of steamed kale rather than on a bun.  The side was... I don't even remember.  Oh wait it was the spring salad.  I also got the fresh squeezed lemonade like I said I would.  My friend got the Sante Fe Chickin' like I did last time with a Sweet Potato Fries upgrade.  Carne Asada was definitely no match for the chickin so I recommend that if you come here you should get a chikin dish if anything.  Putting on a bed of steamed kale was definitely better on my stomach, and the kale was quite tasty as well.  Sweet potato fries were nowhere near as good as the first time I had them.  They were less crisp and fresh.  Best part of the meal: the fresh squeezed lemonade.  It was so good.  I must have had 5 cups of it.

Recipe: Tallow, Lard, Shmaltz

Ingredients:
Beef Fat for Tallow
or
Pork Fat for Lard
or
Chicken/Duck fat for Shmaltz

Equipment:
Oven-Compatible Pot or Pan (deep enough to hold all of your fat)
Shallow Pyrex or Glass Container
Strainer
Butter Knife

Process:
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.  Roughly chop your fat and put it in your pot or pan of choice.  Place the vessel in the oven and let it render until the solids are mostly cooked up.  Check back every hour or so.  Once it is done, let it cool.  After, strain the fat as you pour it into your container.  (The strained bits are quite delicious and go well on salads or even as a snack) Let the fat cool further in the refrigerator until your fat has completely solidified.  While still in the container, use a butter knife to cut the fat into manageable chunks.  When cutting the fat keep in mind that if you just stab it, it should crack in a general line co-linear with the blade of the knife.  Because we are using pyrex or glass, the fat should come out quite easily.  Store in a container till needed.  This will keep for at least a year.

Tallow

     Alright, so the beef fat I'd gotten from Whole Foods was starting to go bad a few days ago so I decided to use it all in one shot to make tallow, rendered beef fat, for the first time.  It went pretty well, the only problem is that I don't know what to make with it...  Polenta? Corn bread? Those were my first ideas.

Mustard Greens

     I tried using mustard greens in my green smoothie today.  Mistake.  My smoothie tasted so strongly of mustard no matter how many bananas that I could barely finish it.  It was identical to eating regular mustard.  So note too all: Mustard greens are very strong and can add a kick to any dish, just don't use it as a main component.

UPDATE: What I did with the remainder of the greens was delicious and easy.  First I caramelized chopped onions in a pan with probably one tablespoon of tallow.  After that I threw in the chopped up mustard greens, added salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste, and sauteed till done.  It was excellent.  I'm never using vegetable oil again.

Recipe: Kombucha Mother

Rather than buy a mother online, you can make one in your home.  A forewarning: be very careful when handling this culture.  Metals and soap will kill it.

Ingredients:
Black tea bags
Sugar
Water
Raw Kombucha (not the stuff with the juice and flavors)

Equipment:
Stainless Steel pot
Wooden stirring utensil
Glass Jar
Muslin or Cheese Cloth
Rubber Band
Strainer ( if using loose tea)

     First, and most important: clean all of your equipment thoroughly with hot water.  Second, prepare the tea by boiling the water, the adding sugar.  The ratio between the water and sugar should be 16 to 1 by volume so if you have 1 gallon of water, you should add 1 cup of sugar.  If you have 1 quart of water, 4 tablespoons of sugar.  Basically its 1 tablespoon of sugar per a cup of water.  Once the sugar is dissolved, add the tea, however much you prefer, and brew for 5 minutes.  Strain out the tea leaves or take out the bags and let cool to room temperature for a few hours.  Once it is cooled, pour the tea into the mason jar so that it takes up about 75% of the space, then pour in the kombucha until there is a little room at the top.  Cover with your cloth of choice and secure with a rubber band.  Let it sit for 2 to 3 weeks and hope it works.  Once you have a mother you have infinite kombucha.  Because it is a living organism, it will grow as you keep it so most people peel away layers and use them as fertilizer or give them to other kombucha lovers.  They can also be frozen for 3 to 4 months, so you are able to keep a back up if you wish.

Kombucha Mother

     On 9/26/09 I started trying to grow my own kombucha mother.  The actual work is nothing. Make some tea and add some sugar.  Let cool and add kombucha. So simple.  Here's the recipe.  Anyways its been nearly a week and it doesn't look like much yet.  First off its kind of covered in a cloth, and second its in the back of a cupboard in a poorly lit kitchen therefore its hard to see.  I don't want to disturb it until a lengthy fermentation period so I'm going to leave it alone for three weeks when I can see definite results.

UPDATE: Ok well its been nearly 8 weeks and nothing.  Its a bit disappointing.  I guess I'll have to get one online.

In Defense Of Food by Michael Pollan

     I am currently reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.  I'm only one section in but its very interesting so far.  It has talked about how the food industry and shaky food science has caused America to have a backwards diet.  I think I like it mostly because it confirms that what I am doing is correct.  Anybody interested should definitely check it out.  It is only 10 dollars on Amazon.

UPDATE: Full review:

     There is not much to say about this book.  Pollan gives a clear and respectable argument.  It definitely has some shocking facts to the average person and I feel everyone should read this book to at least see Pollan's perspective.  The writing is very easy to read and enjoyable at some points.  You could probably finish it in a week.

The grade I'd give it is 4.9/5 good read

Dinner the 28th

So today I had a yellow bell pepper, a heart of romaine, and about a third pound of Trader Joe's grass fed beef.  I don't recommend the Trader Joe's brand of beef.  It was extra mushy on edges and just generally off.  I think it caused me heart burn, forcing me to walk to Albertson's while eating my dinner to buy rolaids.  Additionally, I forgot to take a picture.  As a last comment I have decided that I will not be posting what I am eating unless there are out of the ordinary circumstances such as heart burn or delicious food.  I will continue to post updates on my ever changing diet.

Frozen Yogurt

     Between today and yesterday, I have eaten a quart of delicious frozen yogurt.  Now I have smelly gas proving that frozen yogurt, at least the Trader Joe's brand that I bought, is no good for you, though I still love it despite the stomach aches.  This brings to question, is this gas due to lactose intolerance? Or is it the fact that I haven't had any dairy recently and my system was shocked?
     I have read many cases of people immediately getting sick when consuming dairy products after year long hiatuses, but these dairy products were usually tall glasses of pasteurized milk void of the natural cultures that would handle the lactose in your body.  Also, I have heard the cultures in yogurt work against lactose intolerance.  Interestingly enough, store-bought frozen yogurt has been pasteurized to enhance the flavor, which lead me to question the cultures in Pinkberry and the like.  I actually just learned this as I was typing this entry.  The fact that fact that store-bought frozen yogurt is pasteurized surprised me so much, I decided to email Yoplait, asking about their yogurt's pasteurization.  I'll update to this post when I get an answer.
     To solve the mystery of my upset stomach, I think it is caused by my lactose intolerance.  I think I will start trying out raw milk to test the difference.  All in all, ice cream is delicious.  I just went out and bought a quart of Cherry Garcia.  This time I think I'll pace myself.

UPDATE:  So apparently, the yogurt at Yoplait is first pasteurized as milk, then cultures are added so that the yogurt is formed. here is the actual email they sent me.

Thank you for contacting us concerning Yoplait yogurt.  We appreciate the opportunity to address this matter. 

The process of making yogurt is very similar to the way milk is turned into cottage cheese, sour cream or even cheddar cheese. Milk is pasteurized, then yogurt cultures, and/or fruit and flavorings are added. Then the product is heated to allow the cultures to grow. After a period of time, the product is cooled.  

 

The difference between yogurt and other cultured milk products is the variety of bacterial cultures added to the milk. For yogurt, those cultures are Lactobacillus Bulgaricus and Streptococcus Thermophilus. Yoplait adds another culture, Lactobacillus Acidophilus. The names may be complicated but they are the key to the distinctive flavor and texture of yogurt.

 

If you have any further questions or concerns, please let us know.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jeremy Gold

Consumer Services

My story so far...

     So here's how it began.  My dad is... a capricious extremist.  He'll always 100% gung ho about anything he does, until he suddenly changes his mind.  I swear we ate at this one chinese restaurant, Pan Tao(now under new ownership :(), three or four times a week for a whole month.  Then just stopped going because my dad decided the food wasn't "clean." Anyways, he was this way about diet too. 
     It started with vegetarianism.  This lasted on and off for a few months.  I wasn't convinced.  He would try to go all veg but get extremely sick after a week or so, even when taking the B12 supplements and such.  After multiple tries at that, he switched off to vegetarian raw foodism.  Why eating vegetables raw instead of cooked would be a game changer was a mystery to me, but I was intrigued.  Long explanation short, cooking destroys enzymes and nutrients that help you body process the food you are eating.  Of course, your body is capable of producing those enzymes, but that requires resources and energy.  By eating raw, you are eating efficiently.  Back to the story, we would often have raw adventures.  Kombucha, fermented tea, was a crowd favorite.  I even got a friend hooked on it.  Green Smoothies were definitely ill received at first, but were soon adopted by the whole family.  Unfortunately, staying full raw for over a week or so would have exhausting side effects on my dad, but using the raw mentality in our diets was improving my family's health overall.
     Next, I left to college.  I had learned a lot from my dad up to that point, more than I would care to divulge to most people, and now had to start learning through my own experiences.  For the first two quarters of my freshman year, I would eat like any student would, till I was stuffed.  I drank... a lot.  More than I should have, as my mom would constantly remind me.  I still went to the gym quite a bit, (I lead an active lifestyle.  Its fun.) but I was continuing to gain weight.  One day I looked down at the scale and BOOM.  195.  That's huge for me.  My regular weight is 180.  I had to do something about it, so I just thought about what to do.  I didn't look on the internet or consult help.  I just thought, what is my best course of action?  I have allergies (or hayfever) and in my youth my family told me (and I experienced) that wheat, sugar, and dairy aggravate allergies.  In relation to this, I thought to myself, "If these things make you weaker in the spring, why would it be any different in the other 3 seasons?".  From there, I decided to remove wheat from my diet because it was the most significant part of my diet at that time.  In place, I would try to follow more to the raw foodist's diet with lots of raw fruits and veggies. 
     My actual plan was to eat only one serving of a wheat based product per week.  This meant almost no flour tortillas, bread, pasta, cereal, or pastries. I would even limit rice in my diet.  When I told my friend at the time of my plan, they said, "Are you ****** crazy? Wheat is good for you.  Why else would it be the large part of the pyramid? You don't even have any solid evidence to do this."  I guess he was right about this being more or less a baseless claim, so while I was sticking to my plan, I researched.  I found some interesting results.  Gluten allergies in 1 of 4 people.  Acidity caused by grains.  This acidity theory interested me, so I looked further into it.  Turns out our bodies are slightly basic and foods that we eat are either basic or acidic in our body.  If we eat overly acidic food, like wheat, our body has to work to bring our body acidity back into balance.  Inefficient, no?  So, in addition to not eating wheat, I decided to also try to eat more basic foods, as acidic foods are prevalent in our society.  It was frickin' magic.  In the first week, I had lost around 8 pounds.  I lost somewhere around 5 in the second.  In a matter of two weeks, with a new, not necessarily intense, exercise regimen, I was almost back at my natural weight, and feeling much stronger and healthier.  Of course it was hard to stick to the diet for more than a few months, but it has forever changed my take on diet. 
     Coincidentally, my dad came to the same conclusion upon different paths at around the same time.  He found the paleo diet.  And it actually works for him and the rest of my family.  Me as well.  Paleo diet is basically eating as a caveman would.  Whole foods(Foods which are whole, not the store).  Fat based diet.  The way I looked at it was this: In order to have a sustainable( in the sense that I could sustain it for a long time.  Not "green") diet, I would need a primary source of calories.  For calorie heavy nutrients, that left fat and carbs.  I believe fat, not carbs, is the right choice to make.  Not most fats that we use today though. Olive oil is cool, but the kind of fats I started consuming were generally animal fats(including butter).  The paleo diet was definitley a worthy venture.  (A side note: a two or three years before that, I saw something about the paleo diet in school and told my dad, thinking it was a good idea.  He said it was stupid... capricious)
     So, to sum it all up.  I am a rawpaleoist, with a mind for acidity, trying to optimize my diet even further.  I enjoy cooking and eating, and like to think that I'm darn good at it too(both cooking and eating).  I hope people read this and that I can keep it up.  Thanks.

Recipe: Mango Ginger Smoothie

Ingredients:

1 bag of frozen mangoes (12 oz)
2 medium sized bananas
1 tablespoon Coconut Oil
2 teaspoons honey
1 piece of ginger about half the size of your pinky
1.5 cups of water

To make green: add as much of your choice of green to the smoothie.

Directions: Combine all of the ingredients save the ginger in a blender, then grate the ginger into the blender.  Blend until smooth and enjoy!

Comments:  I am currently working on this recipe to enter in a recipe competition. Any feedback would be great!

Recipe Template: Green Smoothies

I just mentioned green smoothies in my last post and would like to go into more details with it.  Firstly the contents.  The main ingredient of a green smoothie is, as implied, greens.  I prefer to add dark greens like kale, collard greens, spinach, but any greens will do.  I also add frozen fruit, banana, spirulina (an algae), coconut oil, water, and sometimes some flavors like ginger and honey.  I highly recommend mango ginger green smoothies.  Greens are a very important part of my diet and supply me with most of my vitamins and minerals.  I also add fruit for that same reason.  The banana is neccessary to take the bite out of the greens and the spirulina is also for important nutrients that are hard to find like chlorophyll.  Coconut oil is a recent addition.  I add it because fats are a stable way to stay full.  It will fight against the sugars in the fruit to keep my blood sugar balanced.  Also, the ratios of the ingredients in these smoothies are completely dynamic to fit each individual's need.  What tends to happen in the beginning is that there is a lot of fruit and very little green, but as time goes on and you become more accustomed to the flavor, I think you'll find yourself having a smoothie made almost entirely out of greens.  A green smoothie will typically keep me full only 3 to 4 hours but it makes me feel more aware than a normal breakfast cereal or the like.

Breakfast

So, in my mind last night I was going to take a picture of my meal today but I forgot.  In any case, today for breakfast I ate a whole cantaloupe with a half carton (about a pint) of frozen yogurt.  It was extremely delicious because the tartness of the yogurt balanced out with the sweetness of the cantaloupe very well.  In fact, the sweetness of the cantaloupe was near overwhelming.  I had bought it yesterday at the farmers market, 3 for 5.  Such a good deal that I'll probably do it every Saturday.  I also bought some organic carrots, bell peppers, and pears.  I'm going to try to remember taking a picture of lunch.