honey chai peanut butter

I'm not sure if there are enough words to sing the praises and popularity of peanut butter. People swoon a little when they talk about eating peanut butter, making faces akin to the strangely happy women on flavored yogurt commercials. A friend of mine is nicknamed "peanut butter." People eat it for comfort, for dessert, for lunch, for a snack, the list goes on.

And yet it's also one of those foods that have a ton of additives. Check out the ingredients list on most brand names, and you'll see extra salt, extra preservatives, extra sugar, and extra hydrogenated oil. You can always search out the peanuts-only brands, but they're usually a little more expensive, can be harder to find, and may or may not taste so great. So why not make your own?

And while you're making your own, why not make it fall-flavored with a chai spice blend and some honey? The spices give warmth to the creamy, sticky peanut butter, and the honey adds some sweetness. My chai spice blend is an amalgamation of several chai ingredients lists that google graciously provided. If you're feeling brave, you could always throw in some coriander or white pepper, which are both commonly found in chai tea mixes. For the peanuts, you can either roast your own, or buy peanuts already roasted - you'll find them in the bulk section of your supermarket.

Honey Chai Peanut Butter

ingredients:

2 cups of roasted, unsalted peanuts

2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ginger
optional - 1/8 tsp cardamom (cardamom can be an overpowering spice - smell and make sure you like it before you add it!)
salt to taste

2 tbsp honey

directions:

1. Measure the spices, and mix thoroughly, then set aside.
2. In a food processor, whirl the peanuts until they turn into a coarse flour texture.
3. Add the spices and then continue running the food processor. The peanuts will eventually turn into a giant peanut ball - keep mixing! The peanut ball will smooth out into peanut butter. Mix for a few minutes past the smoothness, and the peanuts will keep releasing their oil, softening into peanut butter.
4. Unplug your food processor, then by hand, mix in the honey. If you mix it in with the blade, the consistency of the peanut butter gets a little funny.

Alton Brown says that peanut butter can last in the fridge up to two months. I can promise you'll never find out - it will be scarfed up way before expiration!

Sweet and Savory: Olive Oil Bread

My baking music is a mix of Adele, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Bareilles, Amy Winehouse, and other smoky voiced soul singers that have me bopping around the kitchen, stirring and blending on the beat. Last night, in part to protest the hundred degree heat (it's September! doesn't that mean sweaters?!) and in part because I have an early meeting and feel that my team might need sustenance, I decided to make a sweet-savory olive oil bread, perfumed with orange and lemon zests, and stuffed with almonds - a dense bread, almost a cake, with strong flavors that tells me fall is on the way. It's rich, delicious, and autumnal, and the recipe itself was inspired (with several twists in my kitchen) by smitten kitchen's Olive Oil Muffins.

Sweet-Savory Olive Oil Bread

Ingredients:
1 cup white flour
3/4 cup almond flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup sliced and toasted almonds

4 eggs
1 (heaping) cup of sugar
zest of a lemon
zest of an orange
2 tablespoons aged balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons whole milk
3/4 cup olive oil

optional: a dash of nutmeg, dried fruit, diced apples

1. Set the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix the dry ingredients, including the spices and nuts, together and set aside.
3. Blend together the eggs, sugar, and fruit zests, blending until the three are uniform.
4. Add the vinegar and milk, stirring thoroughly.
5. Pour the olive oil in to the mixture slowly, letting the ingredients become acquainted gently.
6. Grab the dry ingredients, and gradually fold them in until everything is mixed together.
7. Pour into a cake pan and bake for 50 to 65 minutes, until a toothpick poked in the center comes out clean.

cooking as civil disobedience

I came across this opinion piece on a blog in the New York Times a few days ago, and I love the idea of a young boy cooking as "civil disobedience." It's still an act of disobedience in these days - there's so much easily available pre-made food in a grocery store that doing anything from scratch involves more time and effort than picking up a cake mix or buying a frozen pizza.  The daily, sometimes repetitive work in your own kitchen is deeply undervalued as a way to spend free time, especially as a busy woman, when there are so many shortcuts - though I would argue that the nutritional quality of those "timesavers" eliminates their ultimate value. And there's something so satisfying in creating the meal out of its real components, being a wizard whipping disparate elements into the combined whole, that I doubt I'll step out of the kitchen any time soon.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/04/cooking-is-freedom/?_r=0

stand out against the crowd!

neighborhood bounty: how to find fruit

"Want one?"

My coworker careened around the office offering fresh figs to anyone in his path. The figs were from a fruit tree on his property, and he didn't know what to do with the excess except share the bounty. He noted my expression while eyeing the fresh figs, and either out of generosity or self-preservation, said that any not eaten would be mine to take home.

Generosity and fresh picked fruit at the end of a day crunching nothing but numbers? Small kindnesses like that can change the shape of an afternoon. 

It made me wonder, though, how many more people are out there with fruit on their hands, fruit that they can't possibly eat or use? Fruit that could do so much good to the health of a community where the expense is prohibitive. 

And, as it turns out, there's a website for that - www.neighborhoodfruit.com. It shows both where public trees are bearing fruit and where kind individuals with fruit to spare will give you the bounty of their harvest - for free! It's a little step, but one that has me smiling inside to out, seeing the community-food connection thrive on the openhandedness of its members.

And my dessert tonight? Care of my kindly coworker, I ate honey-fried figs with greek yogurt and almonds. Don't try to tell me your mouth isn't watering. In the spirit of community, though, if you come to my house, you can have some.

Honey-Fried Figs

Fresh figs, cut in four pieces

Butter

Honey

Heat butter in a pan. Add figs, and swirl in honey. Keep stirring for about 3-4 minutes until figs are tender. Serve with something creamy (greek yogurt, ice cream, sour cream, fresh whipped cream) and something crunchy (almonds, walnuts, toasted sesame seeds). Get fancy and add herbs if you feel like it, or stay homey and eat as is.

the recipe generator

Mountains of fresh, farmer's market produce overwhelming you? Check out this recipe generator from Mark Bittman at the NYTimes - it's inventive, seasonal, and gave me some neat dinner-inspirations for the week.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/08/02/magazine/bittman-farmers-market-recipe-generator.html#/?

zucchini: 20 ways to chow down on squash

Zucchini and summer squash, like June, are busting out all over, and farmers markets are abundantly displaying their green, yellow, and dappled best. Like a good farm-to-table disciple, I am eating zucchini in droves, and therefore am in need of solutions to the piles of squash that now sit dreamily on my kitchen table. The ideas and recipes below traverse the sweet-savory spectrum, and feel free to chime in with any summer zucchini favorites!

Savory

1. Fritters: Grate zucchini, mix it with egg, flour, salt, lemon, and garlic. Form palm sized patties, and fry them up or bake them.

2. Frittata: Saute zucchini and onions in an oven-safe saute pan (cast iron works beautifully). Pour a mixture of eggs with a dab of cream and a smidge of salt over the vegetables and let it cook for a few minutes. Throw in some goat cheese or mozzarella. Transfer to the oven. (Want more detailed instructions?)

3. Tartare: Slice the zucchini paper thin, and drizzle with olive oil and sea salt. Mmmm...

4. Pizza: Saute the zucchini, and layer on pizza dough with goat cheese, pears, and caramelized onions.

5. Salad: Roast chunks of zucchini, and toss with onions (raw or roasted), tomatoes, and corn.

6. Stuffed: Hollowed out, roasted a bit, then stuffed with either more vegetables or a mix of ground turkey and vegetables (early recipe - and photographs! - here)

7. Sauteed: With olive oil, basil on top. 'Nough said.

8. Gratined: Layer zucchini and cheese in a casserole dish. Bake. Eat.

9. Sauced: Cooked down with tomatoes and onions, and served over pasta.

10. Fried: Slice thinly, coat with an egg and flour batter, fry, drain, and serve hot.

11. Lasagne: Zucchini strips in place of lasagna noodles in your favorite recipe.

12. Towering: Layer roast zucchini with mozzarella, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and top with basil.

13. Roll-ups: Slice zucchini thinly and lengthwise, and wrap it around the filling of your choice (prosciutto and arugula, perhaps?)

14. Crostini: Cut zucchini as you would slice a baguette, and top with dollops of cheese, or caramelized onions, or corn salad, or chopped tomatoes and basil...

15. Soup: Like squash soup, use zucchini for a milder, sweeter soup.

Sweet

1. Bread: 2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon each of baking powder and baking soda, 2/3 cup light brown sugar, 1/4 cup white sugar, pinch of salt. Stir that all together, then grate the zucchini, mix it in, and add 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and vanilla. Pour 1/2 cup olive oil into two eggs, beat them together, then add 2 teaspoons milk or half and half. Mix the wet into the dry, stirring constantly. Butter a bread tin (or a pie plate if you're like me and don't own a bread tin), and bake at 350 for 60-70 minutes. This recipe is a riff on a recipe from the gorgeous Home Made Summer.

2. Muffins or Cupcakes: the above recipe, but feel free to switch out the dried fruit for dark chocolate chips. Add a sugar topped coating or vanilla icing for cupcakes.

3. Whoopie Pies: I have to give a shout out to Not Without Salt for this recipe. I've toyed around with flavors using this as a base recipe, and her instructions for whoopie pie filling are just about perfect.

4. Pie: A savory/sweet combo, use a tart shell, fill with cheese and thinly sliced zucchini.

5. Cookies: Add in grated zucchini, chocolate chips, and walnuts, and you get a tender cookie.

Bon zucchini appetit!

and now, celebrating National Vegetable Day!

"Eat your vegetables." How many kids shudder hearing that phrase? It's a threat, one of those phrases that definitely has a second, unspoken clause... "Or else!" Sometimes, the threat isn't even the silent kind - "Eat your vegetables or you don't get to go play!" or "You don't get to leave the table until you eat your vegetables!" Even if your parents never spoke those words, the scenario is often viewed in movies or commercials or tv (ie our contemporary culture) as a vegetable-eating martyrdom, a bizarre ritual of childhood that must be completed in order to go on with the rest of the day. The impending green doom of the dinner hour.

When I was younger, I never particularly liked vegetables either. The much-maligned greens were always last on my plate, and second helpings of mushy vegetables unheard of. Frozen vegetables made me wince and gag, with their icy water pooling in the bottom of the bowl. Salad was mostly tasteless, unless smothered in blue cheese dressing. Tomatoes were almost acceptable, but then again, tomatoes are fruit.

In part, I'm sure it's in our tastebuds. The terrifying and fascinating mapping of taste presented in Salt, Sugar, Fat outlined how children develop a taste and longing for the eponymous three things, and how salt and sugar levels, when lowered in products, don't give the same taste satisfaction to kids. If they aren't imminently delectable, kids don't beg for them, meaning sales plummet. Vegetables don't come with that kind of taste built in - by turns mellow, bitter, crunchy, faintly sweet,"tasteless," and with little to no fat to make a smooth taste, we are not genetically primed to crave these vitamin-, mineral-, and all-around-good-stuff-packed powerhouses over a Twix bar.

And yet. Even though it's not necessarily a longed-for taste at first, when you start cooking more vegetables, and eating more fresh things, it feels good. Not just in that I'm-healthy-and-oh-so-much-more-superior snobby style, but a craving develops for the various tastes in and of themselves - they "grow" on you (please pardon my pun). I can hardly believe the anti-veggite child in me can write this, but I think the vegetable deserves poetic odes. Complex flavors and unlimited variety now have me skipping from vegetable booth to vegetable booth at my farmer's market, or careening around the vibrant stacks at Whole Foods, scooping up this and that, trying out tastes that just aren't found anywhere else. It makes me more adventurous, too, challenging me to mine the internet for unusual greens and what to do with them. Garlic scapes? Not a problem, I can make scape-almond pesto! Kohlrabi? Under control. 3 varieties of kale? To the internet to see what spices and sauces play off each variety! My anti-veggite childhood self may just have grown into earth-and-vegetable-adoring maturity.

And so, in honor of National Vegetable Day, I recommend amending the time honored admonishment: "Eat your vegetables because you like them, and ENJOY!"