Food – Page 47 – Into the Woods

Cooking for the cat

I guess it was inevitable that I’d eventually try making some homemade cat food to see if my cat, Lily, likes it. With some minor adjustments, I used this recipe from veterinarian Michael W. Fox. It’s a thick stew that sets up when it cools. It’s all meat (don’t ask) except for some mashed chickpeas and mashed yellow squash.

I put the cat food into Pyrex dishes that come with tight-fitting covers. I’ll freeze it. Dr. Fox recommends feeding it to the cat three times a week in addition to the cat’s regular rations.

If Lily doesn’t like it, I guess I’ll take it somewhere far from the house and dump it so that the varmints can have a feast.

Homegrown tomatoes on the honor system

While exploring a bit this morning on the other side of Madison, I came across this unattended self-service tomato stand — weigh them yourself and leave the money in the box. I came away with three pounds of tomatoes and some photos. I wish there were places like this closer to me.

Fresh Apple Misdemeanor

I have been reading Robin Hobb‘s fantasy novel “Assassin’s Apprentice.” In the book, some characters were eating hot apple pastries and remarking on how good they were. I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind, and I just happened to have a few apples.

The problem is: How might I whomp up something that will satisfy the craving for apple pastry while keeping the carb load and the glycemic insult down to the misdemeanor as opposed to the felony level? Crêpes of some sort?

Keeping in mind the vegan’s rule for maximizing the kick from plant proteins (seeds + nuts + legumes), I made the crêpe batter from about one-quarter ground walnuts, one-quarter ground sunflower seeds, one-quarter tofu whizzed in the blender with water, and one-quarter whole wheat flour. The apples were not vegan because I cooked them in butter, with lots of cinnamon and some unrefined sugar.

Cooking and eating interests me for all sorts of reasons, most of them obvious. But it’s interesting to experiment with roughly estimating the glycemic load of a meal. If you ate a big meal, and if you’re hungry again in three hours, then it’s guaranteed that your meal was a glycemic bomb. I’m timing how long Fresh Apple Misdemeanor stays with me.

Walnuts and sunflower seeds ready for the grinder

The chickens’ portion is on the left.

Egg report

I got a second egg this morning, so I fried them both for lunch today.

The shells were much thicker and harder than any grocery store egg I’ve ever had. The yolks stood up so nicely that it makes one realize that commercial eggs are never truly fresh. The yolks were that dark gold color that I’ve only ever seen in homemade eggs. I was afraid the yolks would not be properly dark, because the dry summer weather hasn’t left me much fresh grass and clover to feed the chickens. As far as I know, it’s primarily chlorophyll that makes the yolks so rich. But my chickens do get a varied diet that includes a lot of fruit and vegetable scraps, so maybe chlorophyll is not as essential as I thought.

I’ve rounded up some sunflower seeds, flax seeds, and wheat berries to mix with their laying mash. They seem to crave protein and go for protein foods first when I take them treats.

The quality of the eggs, and my hens’ happy dispositions, makes me feel even more sorry for the hens that produce commercial eggs. Obviously commercial hens aren’t fed well.

First egg!

One of my hens laid the first egg today. The hens are five months old. It’s a smallish egg, not the extra-large I expect from these hens, so I guess the hens aren’t as mature as I thought.

I had promised the hens that when they laid the first egg, I’d clean their house and put fresh straw in their nesting boxes. And so I did. Clearly they understood what the nesting boxes are for, because that’s where I found the first egg — in the middle box of the three nesting boxes.

Scrambled tofu

Vegetarians and vegans have known for a long time that one quick cure for a protein craving is scrambled tofu.

When I started buying tofu back in the 1970s, you could get it only at health food stores. Now even my country supermarket at Walnut Cove has it, organic. I always buy the firmest tofu I can get. Soft tofu has a slimy texture, and frankly I’m not sure what it’s good for. The tofu in the photo is scrambed with coconut oil, turmeric, Vegit seasoning, and a some fresh cayenne (the only thing in my garden that the deer haven’t destroyed). If you read up on turmeric, you’ll find that there seems to be something about it that keeps the aging brain young. Vegit is a general-purpose herb-and-yeast seasoning that is easy to find in Health Food Stores, or at Whole Foods.

Scrambled tofu goes good with chapati bread and Louisiana hot sauce. For dessert, I like a handful of raw walnuts, a spoonful of strawberry preserves, and a swig of soy milk. Combing amino acids from seeds (chapati bread), legumes (tofu and soy milk) and nuts makes for very high quality vegetable protein.

Rolling back the clock on sweets

These will be ready to eat tomorrow.

There are a couple of scenes in the BBC series Cranford, which is set in Cheshire around 1840, in which some children get very excited about the fact that their cherry tree has come into season. The children get a big thrill out of helping the new doctor in town knock cherries out of the tree. The BBC series, by the way, is based on the novel Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, a less well known but witty and competent 19th-century writer.

Children love sweets. In those days, cherries were high in the hierarchy of sweets, something for children to get excited about. These days, what child would pay the slightest attention to a cherry tree, or plain fresh cherries? Even though sugar was common in the 19th century, you could be sure that children in those days got a great deal less of it, especially provincial children. Sugar has, of course, gotten cheaper and cheaper, and the newest innovation in cheap sugar is high fructose corn syrup. Government corn subsidies help make it cheap, no matter how much evidence links high fructose corn syrup to Americans’ health problems.

But we don’t have to eat it. I can testify that if we stop eating processed sweets, we become more like the children in Cranford. A raw peach once again becomes a sweet treat. Watermelon is thrilling (the watermelons here have been inexpensive and very good this summer).

One of my grandmothers was a genius at making pies. I don’t think I can remember there ever not being at least one kind of pie in her pie safe. Usually it was a fruit pie, though she sometimes made custard pies. Still, nobody was fat, because it was home-cooked, and the dinner (which is what they called lunch) and supper tables were loaded with a variety of home-cooked foods including lots of vegetables. Once again, drawing on the insights of Michael Pollan, our grandmothers proved that a little homemade pie won’t hurt you.

You can get the Cranford series on DVD. I understand that the BBC has another season in the works to be shown in Britain this year around Christmastime. I’d expect it to be available in the U.S. next year.

The ladies of Cranford eating sweets

Judi Dench as Miss Matty, Elizabeth Gaskell

Chicken treats

A plate of chicken treats

If one eats well of the summer produce, then one’s backyard chickens can eat well too. Their favorites are corn and watermelon. They like squash well enough after they’ve eaten all the corn and watermelon. They go crazy over nice, ripe tomatoes. They can put away a ton of peach peels. To try to keep the fruit flies down, I keep raw fruit and vegetable scraps in a bowl in the refrigerator until I take them to the chickens.

My favorite produce stand at Germanton has been saving produce for me that’s too rough to sell but good enough for chickens.

Honoring the tomato sandwich

Few things make better eatin’ than a tomato sandwich. And you only get them a couple of months a year, when tomatoes are in high season. Last summer, after 17 years in California, I was so starved for a tomato sandwich that I went out and bought some Bunny bread, which, in my opinion, is the best of the country-style white breads available around here.

This year, though, I’ve focused on lower carb alternatives to white-bread tomato sandwiches. Chapati bread, which I wrote about last week, serves very well. Just smear mayonnaise on a piece of the chapati bread and have some tomato, with a fork.

One of the things I’ve taken for granted since childhood is that, in July and August, there should be a row of tomatoes in the window above the kitchen sink, ripening in the sun. Does everyone do this? Or is it just something that ran in my family?

Carolina peaches

These peaches came from eastern North Carolina. I bought them at a produce stand at Germanton.

California agriculture is so incredible that I don’t lightly make the claim that there are some things that grow better on the East Coast. But I do make that claim about two things: tomatoes and peaches. Southern tomatoes have to be homegrown to be really good, but I’ve never had a California tomato as good as a proper homegrown Southern tomato. As for peaches, they grow best in the sandy soils of eastern North and South Carolina and parts of Georgia.

I made a vegan version of peaches and cream by mixing peach preserves (homemade by neighbors earlier this week) with soy milk. The acid in the peaches caused the soy milk to thicken, making it as rich as cream.

Before the sauce went on