If you saw my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I wrote about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I kept to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…
Another Road Trip – I have chosen one post for the sign-up list and posted my first Road Trip Review! There were a couple of posts that didn’t get much attention – the post that garnered no comments and perhaps no visitors, was Sesame, Steamers and Supply Chains… – granted it was quite short, but at least it made me, make a new batch of Gomasio… Chorizo – as an ingredient – Not Going the Whole Hog… was also one that didn’t get much love despite the splendid pun in the title if I do say so myself…But when I came to try and choose a favourite that I would like people to go to, I found it really hard, I felt that they all succeeded equally in the goals I set myself and they all received a similar level of interest – perhaps Rhubarb and the Return of Mercantilism… for building a story of economic theory around a delicious fruit and with some beautiful photos garnered from the web, or perhaps Olives, and Overeating… because I was able to use some of my own photos (What are we to do with the gigabytes of pictures we take?) – In the end I decided on Rhubarb, but if you missed any or want to revisit, here is a list of all the 26 posts – and as Julia Child famously said at the end of each show – “Bon appetit!”
P.S. I will be posting my own form of Road Trip – reviews of sites I will be visiting over the coming months – if you are reviewed, I will let you know in a comment on your site… The first of these is up now:- A2Z 2022 Challenge – Road Trip Reviews 1…
For my own version of the Road Trip that follows the A2Z Challenge each year, I like to visit other blogs and then post a review of several together – here goes…
Each Year I have participated, I have had some commenters from India which is always a thrill because it feels like I am truly part of a global village and not just a US/UK English speaking bubble! This year there were three new readers, and in her “W” post, Afshan Shaik revealed why that was.
We created a whatsapp group just for 2022 A to Z challenge, and the group is a backbone to me whenever I feel like quitting the challenge. We pushed each other and finally have reached the last leg of the challenge. The group helped me with ideas and boosted me when I felt the heat of challenge. I am voice typing most of my posts of the last leg of challenge due to my ailments and the group is the only reason – I am able to continue the challenge. Our group members are:
So three of this list regularly came to visit, comment and contribute ideas and recipes so I thought I would start my road trip by properly visiting these friends to a depth I did not manage during the challenge due to having to pants most of the posts…
Afshan Shaik whose blog is The Pensive, was a frequent visitor and it was from her post on “What’s happening on WhatsApp?”, that I learned of the above Whatsapp group and realised that I knew several of the names. Now some bloggers tell you about their lives and yet do not succeed in conveying who they are as a person – Afshan is not one of those – whether she is writing about “covidiots”, Indian politics, the problems with trying to feed her beloved daughter or the nature of blogging, you are being treated to Afshan’s personality and good humour, her passions and the things that make her angry. Afshan has a maid, which for people in the UK, is a luxury reserved for the very rich, but I guess in India, it is a way of trickling down earnings to people who need it and is quite normal for many people in India. Interesting then to read of Afshan’s having to take up her maid’s duties – one senses a greater appreciation of the maid, during the lockdown, and on the other hand, her amazement at just how stratified the servants were in Downton Abbey, which she reviews for “D”. I urge you to make the acquaintance of this lively minded young mother…
Jayashree of Jayashree Writes, offers us a guide to her favourite (or whatever fits the letter of the day) Indian food. A software writer, she’s lived in America and Singapore since venturing from her native India, which has no doubt cross-pollinated her cooking! Certainly, she has embraced Tofu since living in Singapore, but the dishes she offers in the A2Z are classic and not too stretching in either skills or ingredients, so most people could enjoy them – I know I am going to…
I had a comment from Anuradha of “Mom and Ideas” on my very first post of the A2Z Challenge and I naturally returned the visit where I found a post about the difficulties of raising a three-year-old – however, from the “B” post onwards, her challenge took a completely different direction – a tale, written on the fly, about a woman discovering she has a superpower… No this wasn’t the wish fulfilment fantasy of a power to quell unruly three-year-olds, but I won’t spoil it by telling you what it is – go check it out… Plus Anuradha manages to start each paragraph with the letter of the day – so much for the slur that women’s brains are addled by children – not in this blog!
Deepa, in her “Fiction Pies” blog, has generated a piece of flash fiction each day – starting with “Animal Farm” and going through to “Zeitun” by way of “Tintin” at the letter “T”! As well as the clever fiction – Animal Farm was a riff on Putin’s war in Ukraine – there is a little review of each book in case you are not familiar with it. I hadn’t heard of Zeitun but will be purchasing it for sure… Deepa was the one who thought up the WhatsApp group which supported this group of friends and how lovely must that have been!
Aparna, at Life of a Woman, a blog name which could easily be a movie title, writes film reviews of the films that she loves and which sustain her as she lives the life of a carer to her daughter, hence, like Afshan, Aparna tells us about herself through her emotional and personal reviews of films. This does not mean that her reviews are only from her point of view and that others might experience them differently, but rather that the reviews tell us about both the films and Aparna, and as I said above, for me, this is what makes a great blog, the opening up and reaching out to others from our own small corners of this tenuous space, the internet…
Renu Sethi of Inner workings of an (in)sane mind, like Aparna, lives in Mumbai but she loves to travel and to photograph her world (hrer other blog is World through my eyes ). Although, like a butterfly, she darted off without completing the Challenge, still like a butterfly, she returned to carry on though it may be an on-off thing, but why not, so many of us complete the madness of April only to collapse in exhaustion until the following April – if having some letters to cover helps Renu continue blogging – good for her. As to her writing, anyone who can begin a post with “Raising a husband can be an exhausting task”…
Ranjana whose blog Expressions (subtitled reflection-by-ranjana), boldly chose to write all her posts as rhyming couplets. This (to me) could be irritating, but giving a fair chance, I found myself enchanted by the content, the manner of it’s telling and the cleverness of the rhyming. Try T#Trickledown Theory… Ranjana is not one of those who dry up after the Challenge and I have enjoyed her subsequent posts too…
Between them, these seven bloggers have turned out a prodigious output during the course of 2022 and if this is the result of supporting each other in a WhatsApp group – then we should all be so lucky to have such a group of friends…
If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…
That is the paragraph I introduced each post with as I set out to share knowledge, ideas and recipes and to find a receptive readership – have I succeeded?
I had about ten days’ worth of posts pre-written but I soon ended up pantsing it – consequently, the first couple of posts Apples and especially Bread, were longer and the posts got shorter as time went on. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because if readers, and that means almost exclusively, other A2Zers, are trying to write their own posts, reply to comments and visit and comment on other people’s sites, then they will not all be up for War and Peace. Certainly I struggle to keep on top of all those things and I intend to revisit a number of sites as well as prospect the big list for new treasures on the Roadtrip! So I do put a lot of links in my posts, partly because there is no point simply repeating what someone else has said better, and in greater length and breadth elsewhere; and secondly, whilst I included some of my own recipes, where I needed to use someone else’s recipe, I would rather send people there directly rather than copy or paraphrase.
As always on the AtoZ, I have made some new friends and had visits from old ones, each day, some comments would come from a group of Indian ladies who had a Whatsapp group going to support and encourage each other on the challenge but which meant that they also visited some same sites – like mine and shared some great comments revealing the ways in which their world is both different and similar. Later in the day, the American commenters would appear whilst Europeans – more or less in the same time zone, could appear at any time. Having switched to WordPress last year, my stats tell me that I had 1,264 page views in April – up 660% on the previous month although this just reflects that A2Z is the highlight of my blogging, and once the Roadtrip is done for me, I am a right blogging slacker! The US came top of the league of visitors, followed by India, and then the UK – where I live. Looking at the comments on some other blogs, I would say that my numbers are quite modest – I guess those people blog all year round, but I have been happy with the people who came and came again and seemed to enjoy…
The most popular post was Jerusalem Artichokes, Juicing and Hide the Vegetables and it caused a huge spike in hits to the site for reasons I am not sure of, the number of comments though was average although to ever say that comments were ever average sounds all wrong – I have loved the comments and many of them have been appreciative and I shared some of my favourites in my V post – Vegetarians to Carnivores – the Whole Spectrum…
Reflecting more personally, I have realised that I have been encouraging something in others that I really want for myself! I am diabetic Type 2 and really need to lose some weight plus I am increasingly drawn to vegetarianism on ethical and economic grounds ( no good reason to eat other animals and meat is too great a cost on the planet compared to vegetables) but this poses a dilemma… I just received an invitation to talk with a dietician about going on a low-carb diet to try and bring my consistently, slightly too high blood sugar levels down. What they are suggesting is the Keto diet or if too faint-hearted for that, then what sounds like the stage four Atkins diet. I have been trying to move myself in this direction over the last few months anyway, but writing the A2Z Challenge has focused me on practising more of what I preach! But like many complex issues, nothing is black and white, if I do the low-carb thing, I am going to eat more meat than I usually do, because although I am already sourcing as many plant-based proteins as possible, it is easier to achieve using meat. It takes more energy to consume bacon and eggs than you get from it! Hopefully, if I lose the weight and the blood-sugar levels come down, then I can move into a more permanent vegetarian regime.
What else have I revealed about myself in the last month, well I had my own restaurant briefly, followed by a frozen yoghurt shop. I like writing ( I finished the book I was writing in last year’s A2Z), I like photography and used some of my own pictures in the odd post. If I could have dinner with any one person alive or from the past, I think you can guess that it would be Elizabeth David – as long as I could appear at the same age as her and look my best – swoon… I have managed to get a few more literary references in (because Elizabeth David is cooking literature, not merely cookbooks!) there is a verse from Andrew Marvell and a quote from Don Marquis’ wonderful cockroach who is the reincarnation of a free-verse poet.
As to the A2Z team, they have been great as ever and I loved the graphics – Yayyy Angela.
! I would like to do a guest post on my daily posting process because most people know what they are doing, but two years ago when I was a newbie, I learned a lot from certain people – it’s easy to forget and assume they know their way around. It would cover getting and sizing pictures and the importance of pictures, promoting your post each day and the various means of doing that, and general words of encouragement to share whatever it is you’re into – just saying…
Have I missed anything out? Well, I am sure I will remember some other favourite recipes so I will do the odd food post, and if you would like to be notified about those in particular, then let me know in the comments. I did mean to say in the post that included microwaves, that the Welsh language, an ancient and venerable language as it is, contained no word for the new-fangled microwave contraption – so they christened it the Popdy-Ping!
Will I be back next year – you betcha! I am thinking that since I enjoyed posing about one of my passions, I should perhaps write about music, or the origin of certain phrases, or art or…
f you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…
Although Ratatouille was in my beloved copy of Elizabeth David’s “Mediterranean Food“, I really learned to make this dish in my first restaurant job. I blagged my way into working at “The Good Food Shop” in London to assist the chef by cooking at weekends and taking some of the load off her, and ratatouille was one of the dishes I had to prepare in commercial size saucepans… Elizabeth David stresses that this Provençale ragout of onions, aubergine (eggplant), Zucchini, peppers (pimento) and tomatoes, should be stewed very slowly in oil. She doesn’t say how much oil (much like some of my own recipes here, I think you have to figure out quantities by experience) but the author of the recipe pictured above is more explicit and uses a total of six tablespoons of olive oil. If you want stage by stage with pictures check his out. Elizabeth Davids recipe does not include Zucchini, but she says of her list of ingredients “usually” and most recipes seem to include them routinely, however, it shows that cooking is never set in stone and once you have a principal under your belt, then adapt, make a fusion with your own favourite ingredients – go forth boldly! Here though is Elizabeth David’s recipe with the addition of Zucchini, garlic, and herbs – my additions [like so]..
Ratatouille
2 large onions, 2 aubergines, 3 zucchini, 3 or 4 tomatoes, 2 red or green pimentos, garlic, fresh basil and thyme, oil, salt and pepper.
Peeel the tomatoes and cut the unpeeled aubergines [and Zucchini) into squares
Slice the onions and pimentos
Put the onions [and sliced garlic] garlic into a frying pan with plenty of oil, not too hot.
When they are getting soft, add first the pimentos, aubergines and lastly zucchini, and ten minutes later, the tomatoes.The vegetables should not be fried, but stewed in the oil, so simmer in a closed pan for the first 30 minutes, uncovered for the last 10. By this time they should have absorbed most of the oil.
The flowers of Zucchini can be stuffed with a mixture of Ricotta Cheese and Parmigiano Regianno and deep fried see here – an Italian recipe. You can also make a stuffing out of Zucchini which I remember from a 1970’s magasine article where it was put under the skin of a chicken to roast. You grate the Zucchini and sprinkle with plenty of salt and leave till the water is drawn out, squeeze them dry, mix with ricotta cheese, an egg, and herbs and seasoning – you could just bake this in ramekins as a vegetarian dish…
Lastly, you can use a spiraliser or such like, to make zucchini sphagetti for a gluten-free, carb-free alternative to normal sphagetti.
With Z, we have come to the last of this year’s A2Z Challenge – whther a reader or another participant, I hope you have enjoyed the ride or maybe it should be – the feast. As well as the food, I hope I have helped along the road to eating less less meat – a choice we may all be faced with in the coming year. I will be doing a Reflections post and participating in the Roadtrip in which I will visit and review some of the sites I haven’t had time to this month – hope to see you then…
If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…
I think we forget, in our world of refrigerators (if you live in the “First” World), that yoghurt, along with cheese, was originally a way of preserving milk – milk does not last long if not refrigerated, so once you have allowed “good” bacteria to work their magic, then the resultant yoghurt can’t be attacked by “bad” bacteria and even moulds will take a lot longer to attack. I covered Kefir in Kimchi, Kefir, Kombucha and Killing it in the Kitchen… and that is a form of drinkable yoghurt which is much easier to make than regular yoghurt. For other forms of yoghurt, you must
1.Bring milk almost to the boil and then cool it to around blood temperature – you will know what this is by dipping a very clean finger in… 2. Mix some live yoghurt which you have bought or saved from a previous batch (or dried yoghurt culture) – how much depends on how much milk you are using – too much is less of a problem than too little. 3. Keep at blood temperature 24 hours, in a cloth-covered bowl – a warm airing cupboard will do, but if you don’t have that luxury, then you can buy yoghurt makers with little pots sitting in a gently heated base. My new pressure cooker has a setting for making yoghurt but I haven’t tried it yet…
Yoghurt completely fits my A2Z criteria of food you can eat in it’s own right, plain or flavoured, but it also has a multitude of uses as an ingredient in other dishes. Dahi Curry or Dahi Khadi is an Indian dish where yoghurt is the main ingredient but you can also oven cook other items like Pakoras in a yoghurt curry sauce. As I have had a lot of visitors from India, this year, perhaps they might comment…
Another favourite is Overnight Oats which some people make with say, Almond Milk, Rolled Oats and fresh fruit such as Banana and Raspberry, mixed together and left to soak overnight – I like to use a runny yoghurt. It comes out rather like a porridge which has been cooked, and in a sense, it is – it has benefits over and above porridge though, including being better for avoiding diabetic peaks that you can get after porridge. This article explains in-depth and their recipe is here.
My partner is not good at eating fruit and I finally found this recipe which uses yoghurt as the base for the dressing –
Frewin’s Morrocan Waldorf Salad 1. Chop up Celery, Apple, Grapes, black or green, and add Walnuts. I add chopped Dates and or dried Apricots- hence the Morrocan soubriquet 2. The dressing is ideally made with Greek Yoghurt – this is thicker because it has been strained. Mix in well, some mayonnaise in the rough proportion 6:1 Yoghurt to Mayonnaise. This stops the yoghurt from absorbing water from the salad and breaking down. 3. Mix the dressing in well, it is a good keeper if kept covered in the fridge.
Self-Preservation
This is a bit of a pun on the fact that as well as the pleasure of eating food, you must, as you get older, consider your food in relation to your health – eating healthy… But self-preservation also means preserving food yourself and since as we have seen, Yoghurt is a form of preserved milk, it is a good thing to add to the range of preserves you can make yourself. I have covered Jam, Dehydrators, touched on Freezing and Bottling, and if you combine this with Growing your Own, you can have more control over your food, reduced sugar jam, for example, organic produce and save money by cashing in on the seasonal gluts from shops or your allotment…
Do you have an allotment, do you preserve your food yourself and what is your favourite way of eating yoghurt?
If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…
Well I bet there has been a lot of head-scratching all over the A”Z Challenge as to what words to come up with for the last three days, and for X in particular – fortunately, there are always foreign names for familiar things even if I did have to resort once again to “foods beginning with X” to find them!
Xouba
Xouba, or Sardines, are eaten in many countries and are delicious eaten simply grilled or pan-fried so they meet my criteria of foods that can be eaten on their own, but although I have never made it, I will one day try the magically named, Stargazey Pie. Since I haven’t made it, I am going to direct you to this BBC Food recipe by Tristan Welch for a version of this famous Cornish recipe. Stargazey pie is famous because it is made with the fish heads poking through the pastry topping as if gazing up at the starry sky… A romantic notion and although many might find the fish heads disturbing, but I think that we are so often divorced from the reality of the animals we eat, by dint of pre-packaged, filleted pieces from the supermarket, that there is an honesty about Stargazey Pie.
After ruling out Watermelon in yesterday’s post in favour of Water as an ingredient, it pops up again as the Chinese name for it, the name translates as “Western Fruit” meaning it is not native to China but like so many foods, has been spread around by globalisation. Watermelon, especially chilled is a most refreshing fruit in Summer and can be eaten on its own or served in salads or as an accompaniment to savoury dishes since it is not so sweet as other melons like Cantaloupe or Honeydew. Not that sweetness is a barrier to mixing foods which are sweet and savoury – far from it! However the recipe I am going to link to (since again, it is not one I have made), is for Xi Gua Lao and although it is mentioned on several sites and the yummy looking photo also appears in several places on the www, the same rather thin description appears, suggesting that everyone is referencing the same source. At least this site gives some quantities and basic directions. The idea is to extract the juice of the watermelon, and thicken it with agar (A vegan substitute for gelatine made from seaweed) and sugar to form a jelly in which cherries suggest the watermelon pips (that have been removed) and the jelly is set to resemble slices of watermelon. The result is shown in this much-travelled image below and very pretty it is!
If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…
When I made my first tentative list of posts for this year’s A2Z, I put down watermelon, wine and watercress and whilst I could have covered watercress (so-called because it is grown in gin-clear streams of water) since it makes an excellent soup, I wasn’t really inspired- something niggled at my brain – and then it came to me – Water – how could we cook without it? Aside from the fact that it is a constituent of many foods and of course drinks, it is also used as a solvent to dissolve other ingredients, to extract flavours, and it’s physical properties are vital to the cooking process. Water has three states – solid, liquid and gas, and all of these can be used in cooking, after slowly raising the temperature of greens in water to near boiling, the sudden cooling with ice cubes (blanching), preserves and enhances the greenness (and nutritional qualities) of the vegetables. Boiling foods in water is one of the commonest forms of cooking and, given that ability to dissolve and extract taste, steaming vegetables is even better if you want them really tasty. Water, or rather it’s removal, is involved in preserving many foods, from pulses to the powdered, dehydrated ingredients of packet soups – and to reconstitute? Just add back the water!
The name of Whisky is derived from the Celtic word isca, meaning “water” and some people call it “the water of life” and to make Scottish whisky, you must have a source of richly stained peaty water which contributes both to the taste and colour of the whisky. In fact, most liquids we know in the kitchen will have some water in them – even whisky, since we don’t drink 100% proof, nor is vinegar 100% acetic acid. One of the common instructions in recipes is to reduce a stock (made from simmering meat or vegetables in water) in order to lose some of the water and concentrate the flavour.
Water is vital to growing food, meat or vegetable, and with climate change producing either too much or too little water, flood or drought, often, but not exclusively, in the poorer parts of the world, then water is a major geopolitical issue. The photograph at the top is from a site which can keep you informed about such issues…
The water we drink and use to cook with, varies in taste and purity, depending on it’s source and in simple terms, this is likely to be tap water (with various additives to keep it clean), and bottled water – still or sparkling – also with a variety of different minerals, depending on it’s source. This is particularly the case with sparkling water where the dissolved carbon dioxide that makes it bubbly, may come from a naturally carbonated source or may have been added at the bottling plant. Vichy and San Pellegrino are well-known examples and as well as the bubbles, they have distinct flavours due to their mineral ingredients.
Adding sparkling water to batters such as Tempura batter produces a lighter, fluffier batter…
Tempura Batter 85g of plain flour 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp sugar 200ml of sparkling water, chilled 1. Add the dry ingredients to a mixing bowl 2. Gently whisk/fold in the sparkling water – over whisking will cause gluten to form and the bubbles to be lost making the batter heavy 3. don’t leave the batter standing. Coat the things you are going to fry with flour before dipping them. 4. Quickly fry in hot oil till golden brown!
Water is the thing that makes our planet so unique and hospitable to life, it makes up a large proportion of our bodies and the more we investigate it, the stranger it becomes -as always, the Wikipedia elves have lots of info…
If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…
It turns out, that to meet my criteria of foods that can be eaten on their own or used as an ingredient, “U” is the most difficult yet! I had to resort to searches for food beginning with “U” and Urid Dal and Umeboshi were the only two. Now Umeboshi is a Japanese salty pickled plum which, though eaten on its own as well as a central ingredient in Japanese cuisine, and which I have tasted, I cannot claim any knowledge of recipes, so your google search is as good as mine! What I can say, is that of the five basic tastes, Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, and Umami, it hits Sour and Salty spot on! Although Umeboshi is often described as a salted Plum, it is more nearly related to an Apricot. If you are a super-taster and enjoy new flavours, I urge you to try it – it grew on me and I really ought to try finding and trying some recipes.
Urid Dal is one of the many varieties of lentils so popular in Indian cooking, it is a white lentil and I decided to give it a try in my new pressure cooker. I found a recipe (pictured above) by the lovely Candice aka The Edgy Veg! It was an InstantPot recipe and since my Ambiano pressure cooker is not, and cannot achieve the same pressure, I had to adapt the recipe by adding 1/3 extra minutes according to instructions from this site – intriguingly called The Aisle of Shame – those of you who frequent Aldi or Lidl supermarkets will know what this alludes to…. It is in fact a site which promotes Aldi goods despite the name!
So using sixteen minutes and substituting a can of tomatoes for fresh, I can report that the lentils were absolutely, perfectly cooked! Not so my next attempt with the pressure cooker – to cook butter beans – always a good test because they are a large bean and prone to losing their skins aka turning to mush… There is a slow cooking setting on the Ambiano pressure cooker which runs for two hours, I soaked the beans first with a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda – it helps to soften pulses – and after rinsing them well, covered them liberally with water, chose the high pressure option and crossed my fingers. The Butter Beans were al dente and I foolishly decided to try another short period of cooking at full pressure – mushed! Ah well, a pressure cooker of any description has a bit of a learning curve…
You! Pronounced “U”
I know – it’s a stretch but, as Archy, the cockroach, reincarnated from a free-verse poet used to say “wot the hell – wot the hell” (Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis)
Tomorrow I am going to summarise all the diets from full-on Carnivore to payed-up Vegan and I would please like to know YOUR story and where you are both in reality and aspirational on the spectrum if you care to share in the comments and I will feature tomorrow… Why do you eat what you eat, are there health reasons or other necessitations or do you roam freely through foodstuffs purely on taste…
If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…
I have touched on Tofu before in the M post Mangos, Miso and Mirowaves… where I described how to use Miso to add flavour to Tofu – because here’s the thing – many people consider Tofu to be a tasteless waste of time. Tofu is what we in Britain, call a Marmite substance – (Marmite or yeast extract is something that divides people completely – you either love or hate it – I am a Marmite lover…) but since Tofu is a source of protein and vegetarians and vegans need as many sources of protein as possible, then Tofu cannot be ignored. Both Tofu and Miso are Japanese inventions along with Tempeh, a block of the leftover pulp from making Soya Milk (the source of Tofu) which has been welded together by a cultured fungus and in case you think that sounds icky, it does have a slight resemblance to chicken, so another good vegetarian source of protein – and let’s not forget that mushrooms are fungi too!
I’m sorry if I have not made Tofu sound attractive so far so let’s start again, Tofu is cheese made from Soya Milk, it has a delicate taste but which can be enhanced in a number of ways, infusing with miso, serving in strongly flavoured dishes where it’s blandness is a nice contrast and the following freezing technique. Like dairy cheese when it is first turned into curd, tofu is full of whey to a greater or lesser extent depending on how much it has been pressed. If you freeze Tofu, the whey will turn into ice crystals that compress the curd surrounding them so that when you defrost the tofu, even more whey will drain out to it and the Tofu will be like a sponge and tougher – less prone to disintegrate when stirred into a sauce, plus the sponge soaks up the sauce so that each mouthful is tastier.
I have not made Tofu myself, though I once worked for a man who did make it commercially and who gave me that last tip – my job was to come up with dishes made from tofu since he was only making a burger and a peanut burger. I added custard tarts, quiches and pasties (all vegan) to his range – the pasties used the freezing technique. However, I wondered how easy it is to make Tofu at home and found this article which seems to be pretty simple to follow. Since Tempeh is a much more complicated thing to do – Roxy and Ben freeze their leftover soya pulp, which is known as Okara, and use it as a supplement to flour in baking. The photo at the top is from their site. They point out that you can press the Tofu to different degrees according to your taste or intended use and when you buy it from a shop, you can either buy Silken or soft Tofu in little cartons, or Hard Tofu – swimming in it’s own whey. Silken tofu is good for making say, a custard tart whilst hard tofu goes into stirfry and other savoury dishes. In Japan, there are several other types of Tofu – for example one that can be deep-fried and then slit open to form a pocket which can be stuffed with other things – pretty neat!
Tomatoes, like potatoes, which are part of the same family of plants, were brought back to Europe by the Spanish where they had been refined from their wild cousins (and who doesn’t like a wild cousin) by the Aztecs. Both plants suffered some resistance towards eating, partly because they belong to a family of poisonous plants that include Deadly Nightshade and Mandrake, and certainly, in the case of the potato, they were regarded as the food of the conquered – the Spanish didn’t even bother to bring potaoes back for twenty years having failed to notice that the whole Aztec economy was based on controlling the staple crop of dried potato pucks. The people grated the potatoes, squeezed out as much juice as possible, placed them outside to freeze at night (they lived in the mountains so frost every night), squeezes out more liquid the next day and after repeating the process several times, they had freeze-dried potato!
As you can see above, there are many varieties of tomato (as with potatoes) and although they are in fact fruit (Love Apples is one popular name) they are regarded as vegetables because their sugar level is quite low and they have more umami than sweetness. The Wikpedia article on tomatoes is scathing about the way modern tomatoes have lost much of their sweetness by breeding for uniform ripening and longer shelflife – no surprises there then…
Where would we be without tomatoes in our culinary lives – they are the basis of so many sauces from classic Italian pasta dishes to Heinz baked beans – although the latter have only traces of tomatoes which are amplified with sugar, salt and acidity. There are so many that I will give you just two examples.
Oven-Dried Cherry Tomatoes 1. In a roasting tin, roll cherry tomatoes in a dessert spoon of olive oil and distribute them evenly. Sprinkle with slat and pepper 2. Bake in the bottom of a very low oven – less than 100°C for four or five hours or until shrunken and wrinkled 3. Eat hot or cold
Cauliflower Romagna 1. Break cauliflower florets into tiny pieces and fry in oil with as much garlic as you like until they are browning – don’t worry about burning – cauliflower is very strong and the taste benefits from caramelisation 2. Add tinned tomatoes and a little stock to cover the cauliflower, also herbs, fresh or dry, of your choice – thyme, basil, marjoram etc. 3. Cook until the cauliflower is soft, although a little al dente is good, and the sauce will have reduced somewhat – serve! This is a dish which, if you are on a gradual journey towards more vegetarian eating, you can add small amounts of chopped up chorizo or prawns to…
Type 2 Diabetes and Vegetarianism
Type 2 diabetes runs in families and if you have the genes for it, you have it all your life – even if it only manifests later in life, so don’t feel guilty as people used to be made to feel, because the onset, whilst caused by too much sugar in the diet, is inevitable if you have those genes even though those without won’t develop it from eating too much sugar – they may also get overweight but not get diabetes.
The good news is that Type 2 is reversible – eating a less sugary diet and eating foods that release their carbohydrates slowly, can prevent or even reverse the onset of Type 2 Diabetes. Eating a vegetarian diet of low-glycemic foods that keep blood sugar levels steady, such as whole grains, legumes, and nuts is the way to go. So, on top of ethical, environmental and financial reasons to eat a more vegetarian diet – you can add health grounds. If you go completely vegetarian, and even more so – vegan, then there is the risk of deficiency of vitamin B12 and Omega fatty acids but there are foods (such as Marmite) which can help as well as supplements but it is for this reason that some people prefer to be Flexitarian or Pescatarian rather than go the “whole hog” if you will pardon the expression…
Special Shout Out!
Yesterday was Earth Day, but because I am now pantsing my A2Z posts, I didn’t read until this morning, the S post from one of my favourite bloggers ever since I started with the Challenge in 2020. This year on Part-Time Working Hockey Mom Tara,who used to work for Starbucks, has been guiding us through the finer points of coffee in which Starbucks train all their management. Yesterday, for S, Tara told us about Sun V’s Shade Grown Coffee – something I and I think, most people, have no idea about. I will let you read Tara’s words to learn why this was an especially pertinent subject for Earth Day. Tara is a prolific blogger all year round, unlike me who grinds into gear for April and collapses in exhaustion in May – please check her blog out! Despite the title of her blog containing the word “Mom”, and her having worked for Starbucks, Tara is Swiss, though she is an Americanophile!
If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…
Okay, so eating sesame on its own is a bit of a stretch but I had to shoehorn it into this A2Z because I love sesame and keep it in my kitchen in several forms. I honestly can’t remember whether the first time I encountered sesame was in the form of Sesame Snaps (bought ones but a recipe here) or Gomasio which is a delicious condiment made simply of salt and toasted sesame – it is so long ago and these things seem always to have been in my life…
Gomasio 1. take 2 cups of raw sesame seeds and toast them in a wok or frying pan carefully stirring till just turning brown 2. Add the toasted seeds and one tablespoon of sea salt to either a mortar and pestle or a grinder/blender and grind until it forms a coarse meal 3. Store in an airtight container and use in place of ordinary salt – it adds a nutty savour to your food. Some people like to add seaweed to Gomasio, kelp, dillisk (dulse), nori – all these can also be lightly toasted before combining with the salt and sesame and grinding for extra taste and minerals such as iodine.
Sesame seeds have little taste when raw but blossom with flavour once toasted so they are ideal to sprinkle on top of bread or cakes (see above) where they automatically get the toasting treatment. The other way of adding the nutty taste of sesame is to use Sesame Oil – this is something I gleaned early on from Chinese cookery – I will use a mixture of sunflower and sesame oil when making an omelette quick style (mess the eggs up with a fork and chuck it into hot oil in a frying pan as opposed to the separating the egg whites and beating to a froth kind). When you have a Chinese dish such as egg fried rice, this how they make the egg part and add it to the fried rice at the end.
Steamers
Nothing to do with supply chains – ships are diesel-powered, not steam these days lol, but more of supply chains later. No this is about cooking vegetables and other things – they are not exclusively a vegetarian implement – in fact I always use them for that logistic nightmare which is Christmas Dinner – carrots in the water at the bottom, sprouts in the next layer and frozen peas at the top. Cooking all these things together uses only one ring on your hob and uses less fuel so good for the planet. Vegetables are not the only things you can use a steamer for – you may have had a Chinese or Japanese meal including steamed or even steamed and fried dumplings, meat or vegetarian, and thought that they involved some arcane Asiatic magic cookery techniques, but they are really easy to make. The first ones I tried used sausage meat as the basis with various additions, but since the object of these posts is to move towards vegetarianism (with the cost of meat going up) here is a recipe for steamed dumplings filled with stir-fried vegetables which is first steamed and then fried to give them a crispy bottom – it even tells you how to freeze them…
Supply Chain Issues…
Supply Chains mean the linking of one or more sequential factors in the supply of food. Initially sparked by Covid19 but exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, these problems look to get worse as 2022 progresses. They might include the following, failure at the farm side, failure in the picking, failure to deliver, and failure at the food processors. At the farm or faraway plantation, covid reduced the workforce available and likewise to harvest produce. Of course, in Britain, we are especially cursed by our insane decision to leave the EU and close the door to migrant workers who used to plant and pick vegetables. Likewise, abattoirs are short of skilled butchers. Brexit also compounded the shipping of produce with lorryloads of strawberries and fish rotting as they failed to get through to the ports in time, mired in red tape which the Tory government promised would not be a problem… Supermarkets and food processors all have staff shortages and if you have problems at all these possible stages, you got you a Supply Chain Issue. Some of these issues are relatively local, but the increase in oil prices means the shipping of say, apples from New Zealand to the UK, might be prohibitively expensive – it is a challenge to globalization. Is there a silver lining? Well everybody from nations to individuals, could grow their own. British apples, because of their seasonality, have decreased in popularity as they have been supplanted by apples from every part of the apple-growing world until it’s too much trouble for supermarkets to host UK produce during it’s season. Well not anymore! Learn to embrace your local seasonal produce, grow your own in your garden or allotment – if life hands you lemons…
