Letting Your Artist Out

I *feel* art very intensely and long just as intensely to be able to express my artistic creativity. All of my artistic endeavors fail dismally, though. I feel a drawing, a picture, a painting, and the moment I pick up an art medium like clay, charcoal, watercolors, paints, *anything* it feels clunky in my hands and the product is a farce of what is in my head and heart. I've never felt that I was graceful enough or brave enough to do dance (although in my "old age" here I'm starting to throw caution to the wind and considering taking dance with 4-year-old C). I can sing moderately and I'm not tone deaf, but I also recognize that I will never, no matter how much I practice, replicate the intense emotions and concepts in the music I love. I'm a moderate seamstress, meaning I can do some basic mending and can use my sewing machine to make curtains. Needlepoint is just not in my repertoire.

Okay, so I have all this bottled up artistic expression with no outlet, right? Wrong! It has taken me years to realize that my artistic expression is in my cooking. I love the texture, the flavor, the color, the aroma of food. Making it healthier and different adds another element of challenge. Combining all of the different cuisines we like allows us to travel in time and space with every bite. Childhood favorites, foods that formed your childhood, foods from special trips, foods from places you want to go but haven't yet, even food from different times in the past that help you to understand history in a whole new way!

Just think of what food can do for you in a way that has nothing to do with nourishment of your body. Food is for your soul, too. When the wind is howling and the snow is blowing, a steaming bowl of stew is amazing. The rich brown gravy of the stew coats the tender chunks of meat, the bright chunks of sweet carrot, the mild cubes of potato, the delicate bite of the onion, the mysterious earthiness of the mushrooms, the herbs. To go with that stew are steaming, tender, flaky biscuits just begging for butter, for the dark sweet flavor of apple butter that reminds you of fall's bright days. This meal makes you feel warm, loved, secure, comforted, things beyond mere vitamins, protein, and fiber.

Now think of the last time that you ate a favorite food from your childhood that you haven't had in many years. Of how much you look forward to certain foods that you only have at the holidays and that you have to have at the holidays or it just isn't the same. Those are your artistic expressions. The foods that evoke a feeling bigger than yourself, that share ideas and expereinces with another person in ways mere words cannot, that please all of your senses. Look at your food, really look at your food, and see the textures and the colors. Smell it, smell how the components are separate and then come together to make something entirely different. Taste it, let it move across your tongue, and let the experience show you what has been there all along. Let your artist out and explore your food palette!

Roasted Broccoli and Cherry Tomatoes

This is a recipe I've been wanting to try for ages but was waiting for my own homegrown cherry tomatoes to be in season. They are, we tried this, and we loved this! The broccoli is tender crisp with a taste and a texture that only comes from roasting. Interestingly, that special flavor is similar to the flavor that comes out in roasted cauliflower, proving again the relationship between these vegetables. The tomatoes are very soft and are like balls of molten lava with a nice roasted flavor - watch out when you put one in your mouth and consider breaking it open to avoid a burnt tongue! We increased the garlic to 5 cloves while decreasing the broccoli a bit since it was only two adults eating it and we love roasted vegetables with garlic. We also skipped the cheese since I have a dairy allergy. This is absolutely a recipe we will do again, probably soon!

2 bunches of broccoli cut into florets
1 medium shallot, roughly chopped
1 pint cherry tomatoes, whole
3 cloves roasted garlic, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
4 T olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Put broccoli, shallot, tomatoes, and garlic in a large bowl. Drizzle with the oil, and sprinkle with the red pepper and salt and pepper. Toss to coat.
Spread on a baking sheet or in some other suitable pan that allows for everything to be single layer.
Roast until the tips of the broccoli are darkened, about 18 minutes.
Sprinkle the cheese over everything while it's piping hot and let it melt.
Recipe from *Down Home with the Neelys*.

Swiss Chard Rolls

I didn't grow any cabbage this year, but I have a healthy planting of rainbow swiss chard. Cabbage rolls are great to have on hand in the freezer, so I decided to use the swiss chard leaves in place of the cabbage leaves. I made up the filling, cut the washed leaves from the chard stalks, then put a handful of filling on the leaf and rolled it up pretty much like I would have with a cabbage roll. Tear off a sheet of foil about a foot long, measure out 1/2 cup of tomato sauce then pour a couple tablespoons of it on the foil. Place two rolls on top of the sauce, then pour the remainder of the 1/2 cup of sauce over the rolls. Seal the edges of the foil to make a packet, label, and freeze. To make these later, they can be thawed in the fridge overnight and bake the packets on a cookie sheet or in a pan at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes or from frozen for an hour or until heated through. You can also add shredded cheese to the top for the last 10 minutes of baking. Some recipes call for sweetened tomato sauce on top, but we like the simple, bright fresh flavor of a good, unseasoned tomato sauce. This is an incredibly healthy dish with the brown rice, the swiss chard leaves, the onion, and the tomato sauce! Here are the ingredients to go with the directions I just gave. I make these into packets of 2 rolls each, but you can certainly just make a whole pan of these fresh or to stash in the freezer.

2 lb ground beef
2 cups cooked brown rice
2 medium onions, diced
3 tsp black pepper
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp kosher salt
12 medium to large swiss chard leaves
6 cups plain tomato sauce

Stocking the Freezer the Easy Way

Don't think that stocking your freezer with ready to eat meals is difficult or time consuming. I put quite a few sandwich fillings in my freezer yesterday just by freezing leftovers. Hamburger barbeque and pulled pork barbeque were lounging in the refrigerator, so they were pulled out and 1/2 cup portions were put into zippered snack bags that were labeled with the item and the date. Flattened and frozen, they filled up most of a gallon freezer bag and now give us a dozen sandwiches' worth of meat filling. Seedless grapes bought on sale won't go bad in the crisper drawer since they've been bagged in snack bags and put into a gallon freezer bag and frozen to make a refreshing and healthy treat that lasts much, much longer than grapes in the fridge.

Pulled Pork BBQ
2 1/2 lb boneless pork loin/butt/roast
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 3/4 cup barbeque sauce
3/4 cup salsa
3 T. chili powder
Remove excess fat from the roast and place the roast into a slow cooker (3 1/2 qt - 6 qt). Arrange onion on top.
Mix together the remaining three ingredients and pour over top of the pork and onions.
Cover and cook on low 8 - 10 hours.
Remove the meat from the slow cooker and place it on a cutting board. Shred the meat by pulling at it with two forks. Put the shredded pork back into the slow cooker with the sauce and stir to combine.

Trying to Afford Being a Carnivore!

The cost of meat is continuing to go up and up and up. The problem is that we like meat! We don't gorge ourselves on it to the exclusion of the other food groups, but it is definitely on our favorites list of protein sources. So how to afford being a carnivore is a major grocery shopping dilemma.

Solution one: only buy meat on sale, never at regular price. Buying meat on sale and stashing it in the freezer allows us to continue to eat meats at prices we like.

Solution two: use creative recipes to utilize lesser quality cuts of meat. Marinate or slow cook tougher cuts of meat to tenderize. Never underestimate the power of a slow cooker when trying to use tough meats.

Solution three: use less meat when we can. Stir fries are fantastic for combining solutions one, two, and three. Buy thin steaks, small pork chops, or chicken thighs on sale, then thinly slice them into strips (partially frozen meat slices better for this) and quickly fry them with julienned carrots (microwave for a couple minutes to partially cook), wedged onion, sliced or julienned water chestnuts, brocolli florets, bamboo shoots, baby corn, peas, julienned ginger, sliced garlic, whatever else comes to hand for a stir fry. To make a sauce, add in stock/broth of choice just to cover everything, then thicken with a thick liquid made from cornstarch and cold water. The stir fry can be 1/5 meat and 4/5 vegetable and still have a wonderful meat quality.

Solution four: buy meat in bulk. This can be done in two ways. Check with a local butcher about buying a whole animal, 1/2 animal, or even 1/4 animal. Half a steer will often average out to $2.50 a pound, which is a little on the high end for the ground beef but really low for the roasts and steaks. The other way is to go to a place like Sam's Club. We just bought a whole, boneless pork loin for $1.38/lb. We have gotten 14 1" thick cut center cut pork chops and a 2 pound pork loin roast that I am making into pulled pork bbq for $12.60. Imagine inch thick pork chops the size of your palm for about $0.70 each and that's what we got. We also got beautiful beef round eye roasts for $2.66/lb, which are cut into inch thick steaks bigger than my palm, making steak possible for weeknight dinner at $1.40 per steak. Some will be wrapped and frozen. Others will be put in marinade and frozen; as it thaws in the fridge later it will marinate and be an incredible steak. It literally takes 30 minutes to cut the steaks, make marinade, and prepare them for freezing, and the pork chops take only a few minutes to cut, wrap, and freeze.

Hello, I am a meat eater, and I use tricks to maintain my eating habits. I hope you try them too!

Restocking the Freezer

S is 6, and he tries, so I forgive him for little things that earn my husband a scowl, things like not quite shutting the upright freezer door because something got caught at the bottom. It looked shut to S, but it was really open 1/2", not thawing anything but allowing moisture in and resulting in a heck of a frost build up. Ugh. Today is perfect for defrosting the freezer - 80 degrees and low humidity, so when emptied, turned off, and left open, all of the frost melted quickly, and washing it out with vinegar water and drying it was a snap.

Now for the fun part: filling it back up! I have a 15 cubic foot upright freezer with a basket in the slanted bottom and three other shelves plus four shelves on the door. I have three 16"x13"x10" baskets - the plastic kind with lots of holes so that it's easy to wipe down but has some air flow. Two baskets go on the bottom shelf and each are devoted to a meat group: one for pork, one for beef/venison. The slanted bottom is for poultry. Another basket is used for small odds and ends: bags of gravy, sauteed mushrooms, sauteed onions, lemon wedges, that sort of thing. Cardboard boxes I have found over time are used for holding bags of vegetables and one whole box is devoted to breakfast foods. I've also discovered that 8x8 casseroles and flattened gallon freezer bags of soups and pie filling stand up perfectly on the top self, lining up like edible records, ready to replay gastronomic delights from my past.

Everything is cleaned and ready to go, and now I'm restocking. Favorites include taco meat (cooked, seasoned, portioned into 2 cup measures in quart freezer bags, flattened to freeze, then stacked); steaks, pork chops, and chicken pieces in different marinades; fajita kits (marinated meat, tortillas, shredded cheese, sliced peppers, wedged onions, all in their own medium bags and then put in a large freezer bag); pizza kits; cabbage roll casserole (shredded cabbage in the bottom of the pan, top with the cabbage roll filling); scalloped onions; scalloped potatoes; chili; Mexican turkey soup; Mexican meatball soup; hamburgers cooked; hamburgers raw; mashed potatoes with add-ins like roasted garlic and chives or black pepper and basil; mashed sweet potatoes (bake sweet potatoes, scoop out the insides, mash with a little melted butter, honey, cinnamon, and black pepper); individual meat pies (see another post I did on venison meat pies); meatballs (already cooked, just heat and add to all sorts of recipes); meatloaf (raw, need to thaw and bake); fully cooked bacon; boneless buffalo wings. I've been perusing *Fix, Feast, Freeze* which looks awesome and also *Don't Panic - Dinner's in the Freezer* which has some tempting recipes like chicken in raspberry sauce, honey pecan chicken, english toffee, baked blueberry french toast, and orange beef lettuce wraps.

So as I refill my freezer with the items that were in it, I will inventory the freezer and decide what I need. We'll do a shopping trip to Sam's Club and pick up some bulk foods then have a couple of cooking days next week that will result in a freezer fully packed with not only our favorite items but also a bunch of new items. Watch for the next week as I try recipes and go through canning days and freezer cooking days!

Herbed Rice

A and I have always loved herbed rice, especially herbed white and wild rice, but as we ate fewer and fewer convenience/processed foods and less salt, the store bought mixes were just too salty and too pricey. Then one day while searching for gift in a jar ideas, I found herbed rice mix in a jar directions. That was 8 years ago, and I haven't bought a commercial mix since.

Luckily, S loves herbed white and wild rice and will eat two adult servings for his dinner, and he calls it mixed up rice because he helps to mix it all up when we make a new jar of it. Another nice bonus is that I can grow most of the ingredients other than the rice and dry them to use in this recipe, and I can make my own homemade stock to use in the recipe. This is flexible enough that you can make it vegan or not, make it less expensive by increasing the amount of white rice in the ratio, make it more gourmet by using all wild rice. This is an awesome recipe and goes as a great side dish with many foods. Tonight we're having it with barbeque chicken, grilled pineapple slices, and steamed green beans. I use the mix in my chicken rice soup. There's a sausage rice dish in the crockpot that uses it too. What an awesome pantry item!

Herbed Rice Mix
*note: for the 3 lb of rice, mix and match rice types, just making sure that the cooking time matches. Use all brown rice with a cooking time of 45 minutes, all white rice for 25 minutes, brown rice and regular wild rice for 45 minutes, or white rice and fast cooking wild rice for 25 minutes. The wild rice is pricey, so when money is tight, I use 2 lb white rice and 1 lb fast cooking wild rice. When money is flowing in our house, it's more of a 50/50 ratio.

3 lb long grain rice
2 c. dried celery leaves/flakes
2/3 c. dried minced onion
1/2 c. dried parsley
2 T dried chives
2 T dried tarragon
Mix all the ingredients together and place  in an airtight container. Makes 40 servings.
To serve:
Each serving is 2/3 c. water, stock or broth and 1/4 c. rice mix. Bring the liquid to a boil in a saucepan that has a lid, add the rice, reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and let it cook for 25 minutes for white and fast cooking wild rice, 45 minutes for brown rice and regular wild rice. Serve.

This is so easy and delicious, and you can change the herbs and rices to suit your taste and your needs!