crack the plates

I’m thrilled to report that the first week of meals have been delivered to fridges in East Atlanta, Decatur, and Midtown! Thanks so much to the three intrepid families who took a chance with the first delivery. I’m livin’ my dream – and totally couldn’t be doing it without you!

By now, you might have read, heard, or seen details about the delivery. It’s one thing to read about it – it’s another entirely to see the pictures. Here are the pictures!

All meals start with beautiful local produce. This stuff came from Sunday’s Grant Park Farmer’s Market!

Today’s Harvest: jewel of New Paris, food fiend’s paradise. Dear friend Matt piqued my interest on Thursday when he mentioned their edamame & tomatillos, but it was his sweet lady Becky’s tweet–”Just had an amazing peach from @TodaysHarvest. It was so juicy I had to eat it over the sink! MMMMMM!”—that pushed me over the edge. Succulent, local peaches? Fresh edamame? The promise of other rarities? I wanted it all…and so the love affair began.

Today’s Harvest has been in the family for over fifty years, and while not organic (a high priority for me), their food is minimally treated. Perhaps the best part of visiting is interacting with the enthusiastic, knowledgeable staff. They make you feel like they just want you to be happy & healthy, and they’re positive that eating their produce is the way to get there. Who could resist buying food from folks like that? Moreover, who would want to?!

Friday afternoon I picked up edamame:

Poblano peppers:

Tomatillos:

Okra:

And lots of other things. Like PEACHES. (Which are only going to be around for another week, so if you’re already in the area, get ye thence!)

Another reason Today’s Harvest rocks is because the folks know when to harvest okra. I’ve lectured on this topic before: okra should not be allowed to grow past the length of a lady’s finger! Ignore my wrinkly, dry hands and observe:

Much of the world knows it by the name “lady’s finger” not just because it is slender & sports a pointed tip, but because it tastes best when it is diminutive. Long, thick pieces are often dry and woody and full of tough seeds. To be fair, some folks like to use the longer pieces in gumbos & stews, when the vegetable simmers for a long time. I suppose tough okra might hold its shape better for those kinds of dishes. I’m not convinced.

I’d found some veggie chorizo on manager’s special at Kroger a couple weeks ago (don’t worry, it was still very much within date) but wasn’t inspired to make anything til the poblanos came home. I decided to do stuffed poblanos baked in red sauce and accompanied by basmati rice with tomatillo salsa. For the red sauce/salsa,

• I combined two or three ruby tomatoes with a smallish sweet onion, fresh cilantro, cumin, dried oregano, salt, a bunch of minced garlic and one 6oz can of (unsalted) organic tomato paste in my food processor and pulsed til it was thoroughly combined and salsa-like.

I poured this mess into a 13″-9″ casserole and then got to work stuffing the small poblanos. I (gently!) cut each in half and (delicately!) removed the pith and seeds. I stuffed each half with some of the cooked chorizo and pressed it into the red sauce. Like this!

I baked them at 375 for 35 minutes; the first 15 they were covered with foil so as to steam-cook the peppers. (You could also help tenderize the peppers by boiling them for 5 minutes after prepping & before stuffing.) They looked like this when finished:

Ugh, writing this post is making me hungry again.

One of the sweet ladies at Today’s Harvest encouraged me to broil the tomatillos in my big cast-iron skillet and then whip them up with a bunch of other things to make a salsa. How I did it:

• Remove the papery skins from the tomatillos and toss into the skillet.
• Remove the papery skin from a head of garlic and toss into the skillet.
• Cut two jalepenos lengthwise, seed, and toss into the skillet.
• Cook under the broiler for five minutes.
• Remove from broiler, set garlic aside (the internet tells me it can get bitter if roasted too long), stir, and return to oven.
• Cook under broiler for another five minutes. Keep an eye on it, just in case you have a super-powered oven and it blackens everything much quickly. It should look about like this:

Put the contents of the skillet along with the garlic in a food processor with a cup of cilantro, another small sweet onion, and a teaspoon or so each of cumin and salt. Pulse til the consistency looks right, or, you know, about like this:

The finished plate:

Here’s what I came home with today:

Tonight’s dinner was stir-fried kale, several cups of steamed edamame, and six or so peaches. Oh summertime, I’mma miss you when you’re gone.

Today’s Harvest is located at US 40 and Rt. 320, New Paris, OH, 45347, open 10-6 Monday-Saturday. You can call ahead at (937) 877-6030 to find out what they’re especially proud of that day.

Since the most recent move I’ve completely lost track of my camera implements–USB cord, battery charger–so I’ve been taking food pictures with Nate’s g1. It’s pretty good, but it doesn’t have a flash and you have to be super-still to get a good shot. Seeing as how I’m usually about as stable as a bag of marbles, most of ‘em don’t come out very well. But a couple did!

I found some eggplants in the fridge and decided to make baigan bharta, since I hadn’t in ages. It was great! The only downside was running out of time prior to our 7:20 showing of Scott Pilgrim vs the World, rushing out with only rhubarb soda to sustain us. Thank goodness bharta improves with a good long sit. We ate at nearly 10, greedily shoving forkfuls of mashed mad apple into our mouths as we ruminated over lost relationships. Probably would have been a lot more depressing without the baigan. Definitely.

Yesterday I made my old standby, bhindi masala. I’m almost out of amchoor powder, and since I sadly won’t be making it to the Dekalb Farmer’s Market anytime soon, I ordered from Chicago’s spice house. Only they lost my order, and now I’ll probably be out before it gets to me! I can’t win at anything.

This bhindi was possibly the best ever because of the addition of heirloom Green Zebra tomatoes from earlham’s Farm and Jan & Dan’s Arden Hearth garden. I am now addicted to green zebras and bought almost five pounds at the market today to use in everything.

We’re still getting settled into this gorgeous new house. The best part is watching the cats explore the place. They’re both mighty curious. One late night, while unpacking about 10,000lbs of textiles, Perl decided to climb into the closet. Adorableness ensued:

Oh, herro.

Whaa, you is working? I are in your way?

I are good cat, for once. Goodbye!

I had my friend Donnie over for dinner last night. A great cook in his own right, he keeps a blog at http://blackveganism.blogspot.com/ and promises to start updating again soon. (In the meantime, get caught up on his back issues!) It was the first time we’d managed to get together this summer, so I wanted to do something nice. Tofu or tempeh, he said. My planned tofu dish (the Grit’s mock chicken salad) took much too much time, so I settled on an as-yet-untried Veganomicon recipe for cornmeal-crusted tofu. Paired with organic mashed potatoes and creamy spicy-sweet corn pudding, it was perfect:

Donnie was happy, and in the end, that’s what matters:

Oh! I guess I should also mention that I made the sauce topping the encrusted tofu. That’s actually a home-made vegan chipotle mayo. The chipotles in adobo came from a can, but the mayo was home-made for a tempeh chick’n salad from last week. Recipe courtesy Bryanna Clark Grogan, it incorporated dry mustard, apple cider vinegar, and AGAR-AGAR! Check it out here. I just thoroughly mashed about a half a cup with two largeish chipotles for a tangy cream accompaniment.

Tonight I just made plain ol’ bhindi masala, which you’ve already seen on this blog a million times. The highlight of my day (which was by anyone’s count a pretty damn good one) occurred around 9pm, when I walked out the front door to see my friend Jabani zooming past on his bike. Jabani! I called to him; My Secretary! he joyfully replied. (Long story short, I’m our church office manager.) He’s been out of town recently, and in that time, our mutual friend Matt informed me that OKRA is one of most beloved foods. So I rushed up to him and in, what must have sounded like very garbled English, declared that I had made something special for dinner and wanted to share leftovers with him.

You should have seen his face when I emerged with a huge container of bhindi masala. Taking note of the okra, the tomatoes, the onion, the color, and the general stewed texture, he pronounced it “a real Nigerian recipe” and gave me the best hug I’d had in a while. (He is Nigerian, and while my recipe is Indian-ish, it is rather similar to this one.) It needs some salt, I cautioned. He vowed to spice it up.

Now I can’t wait to cook for him again, and with fresh, in-season, local okra!

Bhindi (okra) is one of my most-loved vegetables, but it is a seasonal favorite whose availability further varies by location. In the southern US, I’ve mentioned before, you can find it fresh in grocery stores mostly year-round, but dismal demand in the midwest renders its delivery spotty even in summertime–and impossible during winter. I was floored to find it fresh in the waning summer Saturdays at our local farmer’s market, buying up at least a couple pounds each morning it was available. (And subsequently offered my tips toward choosing fresh okra here.) I mostly used it in bhindi masala, trying variations on Tara Shetty’s outstanding recipe. Here’s what it looks like with fresh okra and fresh tomatoes:

In despicably inhospitable climes I’ve been forced to consort with bagged frozen okra. Desperate measure, but I’m managing. Our local Kroger sells the whole frozen okra essential to this dish–pre-sliced just doesn’t, ahem, cut it. The former’s slime factor helps the spicy sauce cling to the vegetable better, evenly distributing the flavors. All I do is steam the okra and, once it has cooled, chop it lengthwise and continue with the recipe. Instead of using two chopped tomatoes (& paying a fortune for pinkish hot-house grown monsters), I simply use one 14.5oz can of organic chopped tomatoes (unsalted if possible). The results? Not too bad! Two separate occasions:

January bhindi

February bhindi

PS. I recently (VERY MISTAKENLY) adjusted some unfamiliar setting on my camera and am mostly taking gloomy-looking pictures as a result. Hopefully getting that figured out soon.

Since I didn’t attempt anything awesome in the kitchen today, I’m cheating and doing Whoa Wren’s VeganMoFo2009 survey.

1. Favorite non-dairy milk?

N & I drink Kroger’s Naturally Preferred Organic Red Box Plain soymilk pretty much exclusively. It’s organic, tastes great, and costs $5.00 a gallon (regular price $2.50/half gallon). With Silk climbing as high as $3.89/half gallon in this area, it’s the most economical.

NOTE: We love soymilk so much that, upon being asked at a job interview what he’d do with two million dollars, N said he’d secure a lifetime supply of the stuff for us. (To be fair, that was the “selfish answer”; he also answered magnanimously.)

2. What are the top 3 dishes/recipes you are planning to cook?

Kale creations, bhindi masala, baked winter squash (or spaghetti squash concoctions).

3. Topping of choice for popcorn?

The master recipe is thus: stove-top-popped corn with about a tablespoon of melted earth balance drizzled over it, then tossed, then drenched in Bragg’s aminos from the spray bottle, then tossed, then tossed with white pepper, then tossed with about a third a cup of nutritional yeast. It is so good, sometimes we eat this as a meal…because just thinking about it makes us crave it unbearably…okay, I’m pretty sure that I’ll soon be typing with nutritional yeast breath.

4. Most disastrous recipe/meal failure?

Devastatingly, I recently F-ed up two desserts in one night. Sigh.

5. Favorite pickled item?

Okra! And, you know, boring old cucumbers.

6. How do you organize your recipes?

The cookbooks are on shelves under the microwave. The printed-out collection resides messily in a structurally-unsound plastic folder-type thing. I also love to tape recipes to cabinets so that I can read them easily while working.

7. Compost, trash, or garbage disposal?

Compost. Thanks to our landlords, we have a super composter.

8. If you were stranded on an island and could only bring 3 foods…what would they be (don’t worry about how you’ll cook them)?

1) Stevia, because I’m addicted to it, but since it probably doesn’t count as a food per se I’ll name three more 2) Onions 3) Mushrooms 4) Watermelon

9. Fondest food memory from your childhood?

My mom’s cabbage; my dad’s everything-in-the-cupboards vegan vegetable soups; any of the insane birthday cakes mom designed and ordered for me. She did not mess around with the cake.

10. Favorite vegan ice cream?

(guest written by N): Purely Decadent COOKIE AVALANCHE by SO DELICIOUS/Turtle Mountain

One cannot understand the Avalanche of Cookies without appreciating the taxonomy and characteristics of the manner of things one can find in such an Avalanche.

Surely, one does best when one encounters a veritable King Cookie (gendered bias intentional) in the course of Avalanche consumption. To qualify as Kingly, this nugget of wonder must be of sufficient size; say, approaching roughly half the size of a double stuffed oreo. Such a joyous event happens only about once per carton (so buy several cartons at once).

Princely cookies, thus, are chunks of delicious that are only about a quarter the size of a double stuffed oreo. These are still noble finds and a lucky consumer should enjoy three or four of them per carton.

We suggest giving your Avalanche lots of attention; excavate it carefully by digging in your spoon and flipping over big hunks to seek Kings and Princes jutting out. Then gently carve out the findings and enjoy.

Truly, you will discover that the thrill of cookie archaeology makes the Avalanche the most compelling and fabulous of all vegan ice cream delights.

–N

11. Most loved kitchen appliance?

this one bowl that is perfect for containing things made with the hand mixer. Okay, not actually an appliance, but it facilitates an appliance!

12. Spice/herb you would die without?

I use a lot of salt, thyme, tumeric, coriander and cumin.

13. Cookbook you have owned for the longest time?

I grew up with my mom’s Southern Living Annuals. Of my own, probably Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini by Elizabeth Schneider. I wish everyone could have a copy of this insanely expensive but gorgeous book.

14. Favorite flavor of jam/jelly?

Black raspberry from the Amish

15. Favorite vegan recipe to serve to an omni friend?

The GRIT’s vegan chicken salad (featuring GRIT yeast gravy & GRIT viniagrette)…it went over tremendously at a fourth of july get-together. Or anything smothered in GRIT gravy.

16. Seitan, tofu, or tempeh?

I love seitan (especially Isa’s recipes!!) when I can get it, but I mostly cook with TVP from dixie diner and tofu.

17. Favorite meal to cook (or time of day to cook)?

time: when I’m not hungry.

18. What is sitting on top of your refrigerator?

10 boxes of Kashi cereal (Richmond Kroger is closing ‘em out at $2 a BOX!!); two bicycle helmets; a pair of bicycle gloves; two rolls of unbleached recycled paper towels; dust bunnies

19. Name 3 items in your freezer without looking.

Uhm, not to brag, but I can name basically every item in my freezer without looking. There’s a pound of quinoa, two pounds of Bob’s Red Mill vital wheat gluten, wheat flour, six quart freezer bags of whole raspberries from Michigan, several pounds of butter beans, a bag of Recipe Beginnings peppers, lots of dried Frontier herbs, a 6-lb block of SoyBoy tofu, two loaves of banana nut bread, blueberries from Monica’s great-grandparents’ house in PA, two boxes of Boca burgers, some homemade veggie burgers, bread flour, sesame seeds, frozen peas…the list goes on. Hm, now that I think about it, it’s actually kind of embarrassing to have all that food stored up. Good thing I’ve planned November’s blogging project to be eat-from-the-cupboards!

20. What’s on your grocery list?

I went shopping yesterday and today; yield: Mori-Nu tofu, granola bars, organic olive oil, organic water-packed extra-firm tofu, cereal, soymilk, onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, pickles, veggie burgers, and mustards.

21. Favorite grocery store?

Not too many alternative choices in Richmond. I love our Co-op, but it’s currently in transition and closed. Nature’s Nook is good for hard-to-find ingredients, but not really food. Meijer has a great fresh organic section but it also uses old-fashioned open freezer cases and for that reason I routinely boycott them. Embarrasingly, Kroger is really my BFF. Cheap soymilk, tofu, a decent natural foods section and tons of good manager’s specials.

In Atlanta: Your Dekalb Farmer’s Market & the Buford Highway Farmer’s Market!

22. Name a recipe you’d love to veganize, but haven’t yet.

ANGEL FOOD CAKE. I purchased Bryanna Clark Grogan’s recipe but I haven’t taken the time to make it yet. Maybe this month…?!?!

23. Food blog you read the most (besides Isa’s because I know you check it everyday). Or maybe the top 3?

Probably Kittee’s because she encouraged me in this whole VeganMoFo thing. And Bryanna’s Vegan Feast Kitchen. To be honest, I’m still finding my way in the vegan blogging community.

24. Favorite vegan candy/chocolate?

Catbar by Endangered Species chocolates; coconut marshmallows by Sweet & Sara. Ritter Sport marzipan.

25. Most extravagant food item purchased lately?

The aforementioned 6 freezer bags of Michigan raspberries I brought back from the visit with Jiji.

26. Ingredients you are scared to work with?

xantham gum, especially after Kittee’s post about it.

THE END

One of my favorite quick meals that tastes like it took ages to make is bhindi masala. “Bhindi” is the Hindi word for ladyfinger AKA okra, and masala, as you probably already know, simply means warm spices. I use a superior pre-ground organic blend that I ordered through our local co-op from Frontier.

As a quick aside, I’ve found that it is much easier to find reliable indian recipes on google if one searches using Hindi rather than the english equivalents. (Check out this glossary for some ideas.) That’s how I found my favorite bhindi masala recipe, located here at Tara Shetty’s long-abandoned blogspot. Here’s a picture of tonight’s dinner:

Since I’ve already linked to the recipe, let me use my space here to counsel you all on selecting okra. Yes, I know it is almost out-of-season, so just keep this in mind for next year…unless of course you live in the glorious southern USA states, where it is available fresh in supermarkets year-round.

I grew up in the south–northwest Georgia, for those who don’t know–and I watched my parents grow okra, helped ‘em harvest it, and now plant my own. And so I learned early on, from my maternal grandmother, I think, how to pick okra. In the US and abroad, okra is also called “lady’s finger” or ladyfinger for short.

F-ed up gender & body notions aside, consider that some of the folks who first started calling it “ladyfinger” were likely the people who harvested it in the field. Most of us are so divorced from the growing processes of our food these days that we forget that it comes from farmers who have their own notions about the world and their own intimate connection with their plants. These farmers may have tagged the okra “lady’s finger” because okra tastes best when it is picked at about two inches in length, i.e, about the length of an average woman’s pinky finger. Allowed to grow much longer, the seeds get tremendous and the texture woody–only good for a heavily stewed gumbo, if that.

For best flavor, okra should be picked when it is young and tender. Both genders can judge a good piece of okra at the market by holding it up against the little finger. If it’s much longer, throw it back–it’ll be dry, woody, and the seeds, pearls. If it’s smaller, bag it and find its friends!