Weekend cooking

I sure haven't been knitting too much. It just has been hot here! I have been working still a few rows here and there on a baby blanket and also the sizzle sweater....... I have been focusing a lot on trying to improve my diet. I signed up for this fantastic service called boxedgreens.com. Every Friday, I get a box of very fresh organic vegetables and fruits delivered to my doorstep. I am just loving this because lately that is about all that I am eating!! I am trying to lose weight, but also I am just trying to focus on healthy living. If you live in Arizona or anywhere else for that matter, and decide to try this, let me know because I get a free box if I refer someone and they have the service for three weeks.

Having been a foodie my whole life and a professional chef in a previous, I can tell you that this is some of the most amazing produce I have ever seen. First, I love the idea of supporting local and small organic farms. Anyone seen all the scary news reports on all the food coming from China lately? FRESH food!!! Why do I need garlic from China when I live next to California where anything can be grown! We live in the USA ! Why do we need to get food from so far away, it is nuts! Pretty much anything we need should be able to be grown here....! There is a great book I picked up called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. If you want to understand some of the reasons why it is so important to eat locally grown food, this is a good place to start. Besides HEALTH, another great selling point is TASTE!! This veggies and fruit I get in my weekly boxes are amazing!! OK, here are a few things from my "gourmand" box. Last week, I got the essentials box, this week, the gourmand. It alternates.......

First, fresh organic kale. A lot of people are clueless about greens unless they grew up in the south. But they are one of the best veggies for people, loaded with vitamins and minerals. I made a great recipe out of this from the Moosewood Low Fat Cookbook-garlicky greens and black eyed peas. You can't get more healthy than this.....and it was really good...... I don't understand those people who don't like vegetables and/or won't experiment with food!

YUM,
Organic fresh and juicy watermelon, strawberries and my new favorite "red simka plums." I had never heard of these little simka plums before and they are just amazing..... They are only about 2 inches around each and are amazing. Look for them at a Whole Foods market or farmers market, depending on where you live. I am going to start frequenting the farmers market more....


A few more interesting and unusual produce items in this photo. Italian Red turbinado onions are the long thin onions. They are incredibly mild and sweet and I have made an omlette with them and also a cold salad. They taste a bit like a scallion or sweet vidalia onion only different. Really yummy. Second, the round off white item is a "lemon cucumber." I had never heard of this or seen one and it is fantastic. I think I could just eat these every day by themselves, that is how good they are. They were so fresh..... with a light lemony tang..... Then the brighter yellow "heirloom" tomato is a special variety with a lot of flavor........ I made a salad with cooked black eyed peas, brown rice, tomatoes, cucumber, the onion, fresh dill, white balsamic vinegar, virgin olive oil, sea salt and black ground pepper and I have been eating a little bit of each day.....


I also got some fresh shitake mushrooms and dill in my box, fresh green beans and broccoli. I made an egg scramble with some of these items for breakfast yesterday along with a bit of fresh feta and it was really good......
So I am enjoying my weekly veggies and definitely getting in the recommended daily amount of five servings per day plus.

Three years ago I went to Canyon Ranch in the Berkshire mountains. It is a spa that many people go to for health reasons. It happened to be a wonderful gift to me from a friend. There were many lectures on health and chronic disease. One thing they really focused on was eating more produce. They said that if every American ate 8-10 servings of FRESH produce every day, it would pretty much eliminate most of our diseases over time..... Of course they make everything organic....... As I do some stuff on the computer today, I am listening to CNN and a new report just came out linking pesticides to Autism. Did you know that Autism rates have grown drastically in this country? I think 1 out of every five children born now has autism. I can't help but think this as well as our increased cancer and other disease rates come from how many pesticides we use on our food, but also we just are eating more and more processed junk and not real food.........

I don't think I could do what Barbaa Kingsolver did, which was to actually live on a small farm and grow all my own veggies and chickens and pigs, etc....... But I can try to eat locally and eat fresh food and help our planet in our own small way.... I know it makes me feel good. I feel healthier eating this way and it is fun to do some cooking again...... I have a lot of friends with kids whose kids simply won't touch veggies. I am lucky I grew up in a house where very night we had salad and at least two vegetables. So I might not have liked everything when I was little but we had healthy food always and we weren't allowed to eat a lot of junk which is good......

It sure can't prevent every illness but it can help and its fun too........

Sorry no knitting photos but I have been in a non yarn mood for awhile!! I guess it just goes in cycles................

Happy Monday.........

PS I am still listening to CNN and now yet ANOTHER special report came on about tainted food coming from China.. It is pretty scary what is going on with food safety in our country. But it isn't just tainted food from China, it is also labeling laws and other issues that are affecting the safety of our food......and what is also scary are the big food companies jumping on the health bandwagon and calling things natural or organic when they aren't at all!!

Saturday morning

I have to admit I feel like doing nothing yarn related or one planet related this entire weekend! I wish, I wish, I wish. I have assigned myself one chore for the weekend and it is not too bad!

I have to go through all these Jo Sharp pattern books and find some patterns that we want to feature on One Planet. The books are so incredible, each one is inspired by nature and the season and the photography is beautiful and so are the patterns! But the problem with having an online store and pattern books is that when people view the link for the pattern book, they don't really know what yarns to buy . So we somehow have to figure out how to show some individual projects within each book. I hope I am making sense! It involves going through each book and then doing some web page tweaking basically.... So my only goal this weekend is to really go through the books and make a list of patterns that we will have the yarn for, which is not too bad of a chore.

Yes, Jodi, I can cook!!

My sister swears I can't cook even though she knows I graduated from culinary school and worked as a chef a decade ago. Time flies..... I think when I moved here, she expected that I would be cooking for her and her family all the time and it didn't happen! :) I am on a new organic kick and eating lots and lots of veggies so I decided to actually cook / make a few things this morning for the week with my ingredients.... I realized though why don't cook anymore. I have a back problem and I couldn't stand to chop ingredients or to stir the pot. This really bummed me out. The pain was so extreme (deep burning down my spine and into my neck) that finally I brought a chair into the kitchen, but even then I was barely able to finish. I have to figure this out... I guess I could pop a bunch of pain pills 1/2 hour before cooking but that doesn't sound great. Mix them with some wine? No... Hire a gorgeous male chef to simply follow my direction? That sounds good, but hmmm..... no money!

Well here is what I made anyhow. First I made this yummy organic beef stew. It smells great and it is still on the stove. The recipe has a Moroccan bent to it. Every ingredient was fresh and organic----- stew beef, herbs, fresh chopped tomatoes , crimini mushrooms, and other veggies! The Moroccan bent is the addition of yams and Moroccan spices. It should be good. I think I am going to add in a bit or red wine from Oregon soon and then it will be done....



The second "dish" was a guacamole kit put together by Melissa's Vegetable company-you chop up fresh garlic, shallots and a serrano pepper. Add a ripe chopped plum tomato and chopped Hass avacados and then squeeze lime juice over the whole thing. It looks great. I also added some sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. I am not sure what / how I am going to eat this since I am on a no grain/low carb diet. I could eat it with a spoon but that is way too many calories! So I might eat small amounts over the next week with some broiled tilapia fish or some scrambled eggs.


I do have some knitting this weekend. I am trying to work hard on the baby blanket for Kaylon, an adorable little boy who will be moving here from Guatemala in the next few months to live with Andrea and her hubbie! I only have two more squares of the blanket, but I admit touching wool is hard in the 105 plus heat!! So in between, I just started working on Wendy Bernard's Sizzle Pattern using the new Lanas Puras Clarissa yarn. I love love this yarn, it is 50% cotton/50% wool. The pattern is going to look quite different I think but still adorable. We have some cute patterns hopefully soon in the yarn as every designer who has gotten a hank so far loves it......

Happy Weekend, I am off to a coffee shop with the Jo Sharp pattern books......Maybe I'll try to get in a swim as exercise has to help my poor aching back, right? It is very hard to cope with, this is my blog so I can say that here.....