Home of the Wanderer

Easier than pie – or pretty much anything else, for that matter. Chop onions (1 part), sauté, add split peas (1 part), water (3 parts), and salt, bring to a boil, add carrot chunks (1 part), simmer. Stir occasionally. Get other things done nearby while waiting for food to finish cooking. Save trimmings from onions and carrots for the next soup stock. Served to my friends this evening with a French Batard from New Seasons… and some Earth Balance.

Simple to make:

• root vegetables, slightly sautéed with salt and pepper, then roasted until falling apart, this time including turnip, rutabaga, carrots, parsnips, two kinds each of onions, beets, and potatoes, and the extra special something: a bulb of fennel.
• kale braised with cranberries, apples, and browned garlic. sautéed with browned garlic until bursting, with apples until falling apart, then – with a shot of apple juice – used to braise a bunch of kale.

Just add volunteers, call lists, and a script, et voila – c’est une phone-bank!

Why yes, I am feeling much better. Thank you.

A friend asked me this morning, via google-chat, whether I had died yet. No, I responded, at least I don’t think so.

I spent all day in bed yesterday, though, despite having a normal temperature. A normal temperature! For a full day! That, friends, is my test to determine whether I’m ready to resume normal life. So here I am, attempting to resume normalcy. And my internal clock is all mixed up. Oh well, at least I’m not shivering at 100ºF. The worst of my symptoms have passed, and I expect that – so long as I stay hydrated – I will continue to recover well.

Regardless of which set of infections I turn out to have had, I should no longer be contagious through social contact, nor through food-prep, and so I’ll be putting something yummy together for my friends tonight. Also, I have a lot of phone calls to make if I’m going to catch up with my planned timeline.

Today (Monday the 17th, actually, but it took me a while to write this up), as I was walking to the produce market, I thought to myself, “I’d like some solid food this week.”

So I picked up a bunch of carrots, some red potatoes, several yams, two heads of broccoli, a stalk of celery, and a loaf of olive bread. I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d do with all of these things, but I figured something tasty – and solid – would come of it. (more…)

Carrots, braised with a little sugar; Brussels sprouts, boiled and then sautéed in a little butter (still Earth Balance, really), finished with lemon; red cabbage sautéed with red onion; baked russet potatoes; and bay scallops sautéed in butter and glazed with a lemon-tarragon sauce.

It’s all about the blend of colors.

It will be a treat! There are many tales about Granny Sage’s fish stew, and of its effects. If you want to know more, or to find out why I don’t have anyone on whom to test the storied properties of the stew, get in touch. I’ll be glad to tell you in person.  (And no, I don’t mean I’ve lost my committee – they’ll be here.)

Our purpose and our mission is to have fun learning, practicing, and teaching others about alternatives to violence by embodying creative responses to conflict in the public sphere with an invitation that uses street theater to expand and transform ideas of what’s possible in relationships among people, and makes accessible tools, ideas, and infrastructure to implement these possibilities. All are encouraged to join with us in pursuit of our purpose in adherence to our principles. (more…)

It’s Monday again, and I’m planning another dinner. It’s not like I don’t eat in between, but my other meals seem like less of a production to me. Maybe it’s because my other meals aren’t prepped for four or more people, weekly. Maybe it’s because I use the leftovers and ideas from this Monday meal to inform my other meals. In any case, here’s my working draft for a menu:

• Kale, maybe with an apple-cider-vinaigrette and chopped toasted nuts.
• Yams, roasted with a coating of (non-hydrogenated) shortening.
• Baked apples.

And of course, (more…)

Another week, another new menu:

• Roasted root vegetables (first sauteéd a little, then salted, peppered, and put in the oven).
• Collards, and maybe some chard, with cranberries, apples, and possibly raisins, braised in apple juice.
• Bread and Earth Balance.

I haven’t gotten the ghee yet, and in any case have been unable to find a local source – the best I’ve found so far is Colorado, and I imagine it’s still a lot more pricey even than Earth Balance, while being less versatile. I will try it, but as you can probably tell… I’m hesitant. The dairy allergy isn’t helping with that. (more…)

Each week, I’ve been making dinner for a group of friends who are helping to plan a major fundraiser for the Democratic Party. Sometimes I re-use recipes, but I have more fun coming up with new ones. For example, tonight’s menu:

• A salad of apples, and pears, and mixed greens, with toasted hazelnuts and walnuts, and a sprinkled crumbling of blue cheese.
• Acorn squash roasted with maple syrup and butter (actually, Earth Balance, my favorite non-hydrogenated margarine).
• Steamed fresh brussel sprouts, with a lemon-butter sauce (still using Earth Balance).

All local but the syrup, the cheese, and the Earth Balance, which come from somewhere in Canada, northern California, and all over the world, respectively.

Come to think of it, maybe I need a new replacement for butter. Something local. Probably something low-tech. Maybe butter itself? Or should I continue to avoid the allergen, and rely on my carbon offsets to handle the impact of this globalized food item?

[Edit: Sometimes, the store doesn't have what's in my head.  No mixed greens, but brussel sprouts instead. -Gavin, at 17:40]