Rogan Gosht

Everyone who’s read my e-book, The Savvy Foodist’s Guide to Shopping keeps asking me about curry recipes.  So many who were raised in American households are intimidated by Indian food, but they needn’t be.  Indian food is really very simple once you learn about the spices and how to monitor the temperature.  Everything is done on the stove top, in one pot (I prefer a wok or a kadhai).  What could be more simple than one pot cooking?

This is an exotic recipe but one that is worth the time and the work.  I reproduced this for my partner who loves goat curry.  Everytime we go to an Indian restaurant he devours it.   The thing you have to know about goat is that because it’s a darker, gamier flavor it does well with the darker spices: clove, cinnamon, cardamom. He loves a good Saag paneer heavy on the garam masala: almost black.   That is where his palate tends to lead him.

Now me?  I prefer things to the coriander, butter fenugreek side of things. Or Curry leaves, mango powder and mustard seed.  But we have to remember that food is medicine and any one set of preferences is limited.  We should eat where the body leads us.  Start to ask yourself: what does my body need?

Anyway–here it is.  Rogan Gosht.

 

Rogan Gosht

Ingredients:

• Few tablespoons Oil (I prefer plain olive oil–NOT extra virgin. Ghee would be ok too.)
• Whole garam masala (5-6 whole cloves; 4 or 5 green cardamom pods; an inch or so of cinnamon stick)
• ½ teaspoon or more Jeera. (cumin seeds)
• 2-3 chopped garlic cloves
• Large Chopped Onion
• 1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste
• ¼ teaspoon turmeric
• 2 or 3 medium tomatoes–nice and ripe, chopped
• 1 tablespoon coriander powder
• 1 tablespoon cumin powder
• ½ teaspoon or more red chili powder
• 1 teaspoon kasoori methi (dried fenugreek leaves ground between your hands as you add it to the pan)
• 4 green chilies chopped (I prefer Serrano chilies)
• salt (to taste)
• Goat (WITH BONE) cut up into chunks (maybe 2-3 cups)
• Water (to cover meat)
• teaspoon or so garam masala powder

Directions:

Heat oil in pan over MEDIUM HEAT. Add whole gram masala. As it starts to puff and sizzle toss in Jeera. Cook for 30 seconds or so (you can smell the oil getting fragrant). Toss in the garlic and fry for only about 30 seconds to a minute—don’t let it get brown yet. Add onion and about a ½ teaspoon or so of salt to extract the moisture from the onions.) Fry this slowly, stirring, over medium heat until the onions get slightly golden then add the turmeric and the ginger garlic paste. Stir. Fry this SLOWLY until it gets golden brown. Add the tomato and cook slowly, stirring, over medium flame until the tomato is dissolved and mashed up. Again do this slowly—it takes a little time. Add cumin, coriander and chili powder. Stir in and cook a little then add the Kasoori Methi, crumbling it between your hands before you add it. Stir. Add the chopped green chilies. Stir and cook for a couple of seconds. Add the goat and stir it in with the wet masala (the onion/tomato mixture). Add enough water just to cover. Turn heat to low and cook slowly until meat is tender. Add salt if it needs it. The gravy will reduce and should be dark and thick. This takes between 20-40 minutes maybe. Finish by stirring in garam masala powder and cooking for another minute or two. Garnish with fresh coriander.

Serve with basmati rice and naan or roti. For beverages try an India Pale Ale beer—it brings out the flavor of the food. Or try masala tea.

How difficulties force us to become bigger than we’d ever be without them

About five years ago my partner lost his job. It was summer and I wasn’t teaching. We had no money in the bank and we had to survive on less than half of what we normally lived on. At that time we’d gotten accustomed to eating out. I didn’t want to stop eating my favorite foods and I didn’t know how to cook some of them. I was also afraid that they’d be super expensive, because after all, they were so expensive to eat out.

There were some things I had been afraid to try like Indian food and sushi and Chinese food. I thought there would be no way to master these cuisines. I thought they were high art. I was right; in a way they are. They’re the high art of everyday people like you and me. What I underestimated was my ability to be a high artist.

Indian was my favorite and the one I would miss the most if I couldn’t eat out. I was intimidated by the spices, by the fact that I’d been raised in an Irish/Italian household. I told myself I hadn’t the experience, the training or the cultural background to make the food I loved most. If you pay attention here you’ll see that I’m not really talking about cooking at all. I’m talking about life. I was denying myself the right to do what I wanted, to create what I really wanted to create, to be who I wanted to be.

By this time I had mastered masala tea. It was a drink I loved so much that I had to learn to make it. At first I thought it was completely beyond me but I was so in love with the brew that I started poking around Indian markets and found a boxed masala mix and a loose tea that smelled like the one I drank in restaurants. My first experiments were pleasant enough, but they were missing something. I asked a few waiters at Indian restaurants how they made it. Two of them actually took me into the kitchen and showed me how they did it. In time I began to vary the recipes, to perfect them to my taste. I began to make my own spice mixes. Now I have different blends for different moods: what I thought would be impossible to master is now second nature to me. I wanted the knowledge, asked for it and got it.

But even though I had mastered tea I still underestimated myself. I thought the cuisine was so far beyond me. Still, we were living on limited funds so I had to figure out how to make it myself if I wanted to eat it. I started small. I bought papadum, these crispy lentil wafers that you fry in oil. Turns out restaurants just bought these and fried them the way I did. I suddenly had the makings for an Indian afternoon tea. Masala chai and papadum. While we were struggling I made this inexpensive tea spread for us often. It gave us reasons to celebrate during a very difficult period and gave me the confidence to try more. I bought a book on Indian cooking and I stocked up on some of the spices listed in the back of the book. Turned out they weren’t expensive at all which was perfect for what we were going through.

The book wasn’t much help though and my first experiments were less that satisfying. Some of the Indian cook books out there are just awful. But I stuck with it, because I knew that cooking, like most things in our lives, is just a process. I knew this: I’d been cooking since I was a little kid. The information had to be out there somewhere.

I found a great book that guided me through the Indian markets. Suddenly I felt empowered. I studied the book and went to my local Indian market and started to ask questions. Here’s something we all forget. People love to share what they know. They love to be in the role of expert. They love it when someone asks them to share their experiences. Everyone is walking around saying “Me, me, me.” And, “Look what I did…” They love it when someone asks about their experience. I approached the market owners with genuine enthusiasm and they opened up to me began to tell me things I wanted to know. I saw a video of some of the cooking techniques and I started to put the pieces together. In a years time I was making dishes that we could have gotten at our favorite restaurants. I realized that Indian cooking is very easy, energy efficient and inexpensive. My partner would sigh contentedly when he’d scoop up a fragrant spoonful of butter chicken or saag paneer. Around this time a friend of ours gave us some goat from her farm. I’d gained enough confidence and learned enough about the spices that I made a fierce rogan gosht.

Everything I was learning came together when one of the market owners said to me: I don’t use recipes: I just throw whatever is spicy in there. I gave myself the permission to start experimenting. I realized that I preferred spices like fenugreek and hing and coriander and so started spicing my dishes this way whenever I could. Once I was comfortable with all this I began to look at the medicinal properties of the food. As a student of Tibetan medicine I became very interested in how the spices would effect us. This brought another level to my cooking: using food as medicine rather than over the counter pills.

By this time I figured if I could do Indian food why not sushi? Why not Chinese? I began cooking these foods with great success too. I went back to my Italian roots and revisited old favorites with greater knowledge and skill. Something else began to happen. I began to notice that A) I no longer cared whether or not I could eat out because I could make everything at home B) These cuisines cost very little to make and so my food budget was cut in half. C) I was being creative and self reliant in ways I didn’t know were even possible. The cuisines don’t matter: fact is I like Indian food, Chinese food, sushi etc, but not everyone does. The point is: it was something that seemed impossible to tackle and I tackled it. How often do we turn away from challenges like that? How often does it take a crisis to make us push past that fear?

Over that year I grew in ways that I never would have if we hadn’t been put in that awful financial bind. I learned things about myself and my capabilities that I never would have. Had we never felt the bind I would have remained complacent and never moved out of my comfort zone. I would have told myself that these processes were too big for me to master and kept spending hundreds of dollars buying food in restaurants that I could make for pennies at home.

Let’s all think about this as we face the challenges we’re facing every day. How are the difficulties in your life forcing you to expand? To move out of your complacency? To become bigger than you ever could without them.

This little shift in perspective could change your life forever. I know. It did mine. Cheers!

Why Colleges Aren’t Qualified to Teach…Anything Much Less Sustainability

 Generally, I think things run more smoothly for all of us when we focus on celebrating life. Appreciation is a more potent tonic for the human condition than pointing fingers. But we all have a right to point out hypocrisy. And that’s what I’m about to do.

 

Many of you have heard me say a thousand times, “Enjoy your food. Don’t pay too much for it. Don’t waste it.” It’s not only The Savvy Foodist philosophy, it’s common sense.  The reason I began my work as The Savvy Foodists is because that philosophy is so potent and so powerful, there’s no doubt that when we begin to apply it to the way we nourish ourselves, it naturally spills over into all areas of our lives.   My entire philosophy can be summed up in “Enjoy your life and don’t waste it.”

 

Don’t waste your resources. Don’t waste opportunities. Don’t waste energy. Don’t waste your lovers or friends or any of your relationships. Don’t waste your intelligence. Don’t waste your talent. Don’t waste! Don’t waste! Don’t waste!

 

I learned this lesson from being an adjunct college professor for eight years. Unfortunately I learned it by negative example. Colleges and Universities are the most wasteful, parasitic organizations on the planet. They claim that they hold the keys to living a life of wealth and success. I know the colleges I went to did that. Then, just yesterday, I got a letter from my graduate alma matter begging me for money. It reminded me why I left college teaching to begin with: their poor management of resources.

 

The colleges model is outdated. For those of us who want to be vital and succeed in life their lessons are useless to us. Their educational leaders do not work in industry. They are not active. They don’t stay current.  Don’t know what’s happening outside their cozy little offices or catered faculty parties.  Their experience comes from watching TV. Colleges and Universities do nothing to empower students to live their dreams and they fail to pay the majority of their faculty a living wage.

 

Colleges are erected to allow their tenured faculty to remain protected within an Ivory Tower. They’re set up as Feudal systems. The tenure track profs. are the lords.  The adjunct faculty and students, the peasants, present only to to serve the lords.

 

What happens to the Feudal Lords when the peasants realize they outnumber their masters 10 to 1?

 

It’s what colleges are terrified of. They’re afraid we’ll all realize they have nothing to teach us and that we don’t need them any more. They’re afraid we’ll discover that cutting-edge industry training is far superior to, and more practical than sociology courses or literary criticism classes. They’re afraid we’ll realize the truth. That starting a career in an economy like this with a $100,000.00 student loan on our backs is more of a liability than an asset.

 

Now I hear that Universities and Colleges have decided to prey upon students by offering degrees in Sustainability. I can’t believe the audacity. The organizations crying the loudest that they have no money and no resources are claiming they’re gonna to teach us sustainability. Unbelievable!

 

Let me share with you some of my experiences teaching at Columbia College, DePaul, and Loyola: considered three of the best learning institutions in Chicago.

 

I was expected to attend faculty meetings for which I was not paid. Walmart got reamed for doing this to its employees a few years ago.  I’ve noticed no one has ever criticized colleges for doing this all the time to their adjunct faculty. At least the Walmart employees made minimum wage. Once my partner and I added up the amount of time I spent teaching and grading work compared to what I was paid. It added up to around 50 cents an hour.

I was expected to keep weekly office hours to meet with students: also unpaid. I was forced to pay to park on campus: even though I taught there! I was constantly expected to spend my time and my resources without reimbursement or compensation. In the end I realized it cost me more to be a teacher than to be unemployed.  There was an attitude among the administration and tenure profs. that I should consider it a privilege that I was asked to teach to begin with. But the truth is, neither my family nor I could feed ourselves on this elitist attitude.

 

 Their justification? “We have no money.” I’m sure those of you who are still struggling under the weight of your enormous student loans are aware of just how much money you were pumping into your schools every semester. Tell, me, was our expense ever justified?

 

Private universities like Depaul justified the insane tuition by telling their students their institution was superior to others, like state schools. And yet the they employed me, a graduate of a state school (at slave wages) as one of their teachers. Every Depaul student I ever taught got my state school education, second hand from me, at ten times the cost I paid for it. I once told that to a freshman student of mine who was already in debt for $100,000.00 in student loans. She turned a sickly green.

 

The highest amount of money I ever made as a full time college teacher with a TERMINAL degree was $15,000. The highest amount of money I ever made at a part time job while I was an undergraduate without a degree was $16,000. I often wondered when I was a teacher why I’d ever gotten my degrees.

 

In the late 90′s, early 00′s I was teaching fiction writing in the English department at Loyola University. There was only one other person in the department teaching this class. He was a tenured professor who made ten times my salary. We were both doing the same job. (Actually I was doing more. I was also teaching comp. and research that semester. He was only teaching the one Fiction class two days a week.) He made made 10x my salary. He had health benefits. He had security. He could park for free on campus. I spent every paycheck wondering how I’d pay my rent and take care of my family. Loyola’s answer for the discrepancy in our salaries? “We don’t have the money to pay you.”

 

I had fifteen students in my Fiction class. My students told me often how they were paying $70,000.00 a year to attend Loyola. If they had used just one of my student’s tuition dollars from my fiction class to pay me a years salary of $70, 000.00 they would have had $980,000.00 left from the other students in my class. Think about that for a second. $980,000.00! Just for 14 students!

 

Their answer to me when I asked them why I was being paid so poorly? “We have no money to pay you.”

 

 You want to know why they didn’t pay me a living wage?

 

Colleges and Universities don’t really value education. If they valued education they would pay their teachers FIRST. Then they’d figure out sustainable ways to make their campuses run. Why don’t they do this? Because they don’t value teachers, their primary resource and they know nothing about sustainability.

 

Here’s some more of the things I saw repeatedly when I was in college and when I taught:

 

 

• Students left college as seniors more confused about their career paths then when they’d entered as freshman.

• Empty buildings were heated, cooled and lit for hours and hours every day. (sometimes for whole days) The energy waste was staggering.

• Money that could be used to pay teachers was often spent on catered affairs for tenure professors.

• Departments set policies to force teachers to make grading the result of a series of steps. In other words, if students followed the steps they’d get the grades. Success was less about competence than it was about the ability to ape.

• The bar for success was very low. Large classrooms of “honor” students had no idea how to put words together or what a noun, verb or adjective even were.

• Professors taught the same classes they had taught 20 years before with no concern for changes in industry, theory or practicality.

• College professors got together with their friends to create their own in-house print sources so that they could tell incoming students that they were well-published and highly regarded in the publishing industry. Students were also required to purchase textbooks written by their professors that were otherwise not selling. This way professors made more money off their students and they didn’t have to grow to be able compete in the marketplace.

• Students’ opinions about what was valuable to their education was disregarded by the administration. Students evaluations mean nothing.

• Subjects like pop culture became serious focus of education. Departments and degrees sprung up around these subjects. Students spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to be taught to spend their time doing in depth analysis on The Simpsons.

• In addition to tuition dollars the colleges were being given donations constantly. What corporation could do that without being shut down by the Feds? Did they use this money to pay their teachers? No. They claimed they had no money.

• Tenure had no practical understanding of industry and yet they claimed to be preparing students for jobs in industry.

• Creative problem solving was discouraged by many professors.

• True diversity was not embraced no matter what they claimed. Only certain types of cultural experiences were acceptable: those being the ones that were in vogue that year; the ones that would result in grant money which, by the way, never went to paying teachers.

• Students were encouraged by faculty and counselors to go to graduate school: they were in fact warned that their bachelor degrees would be worthless. Still they were charged hundreds of thousands of dollars for these bachelor degrees.

• People come out of college only to discover they weren’t qualified to “do” anything, only now they were thousands of dollars in debt.

• Practical skills were dismissed and looked down upon while impractical theories were extolled.

 

 

 

So, now the most wasteful, inept and parasitic organizations in our culture have decided they’re going to educate us all in sustainability. In fact they’re going to give out degrees in it. Wow—the rubber stamp of success from organizations who mismanage their resources so badly that they consistently need to contact their old clients to beg them for more money.

 

Really. Give me a break.

How this Economy Has Empowerd Us in the Kitchen

For years now I’ve watched everyone I love working 60, 70, 80 hour weeks. Whenever I’ve asked people if they’d like to come over for a celebration, it’s always been the same response: “Can’t. Gotta work. Maybe when my schedule slows down.”

But it never slows down because the bills keep coming and the work keeps increasing. Always more responsibility and more work. Never time for celebration. ‘Maybe when I’m dead,’ we say. Seems like a horrible waste though. I can’t stand waste.

This attitude’s become a standard, a mantra. Like the walls in DH Lawrence’s “The Rocking Horse Winner”, we whisper while we wander through cubicle mazes in a daze, “There must be more money! There must be more money!”

Once we’re offered a salary, it seems we’re owned by our careers, our cubes and our bosses. We give up our lives to pay for homes we can’t live in, families we can’t connect with, cars we use only to drive to work, kitchens we can’t celebrate in. In at 8. Out at 8. An hour for lunch. Just enough time to grab a sandwich prepared by someone who either hates the fact that he has to make it for us, or who’s also overworked and underpaid. We have, over the last decade become a people who have committed ourselves to indentured servitude.

Recently some people I know lost their jobs. They went on unemployment and yet they seem happier than they have in years. Now they have time to spend with their families, their friends. They have time to breathe. To make love. To drink a beer. To play with their spouses. Play with their children. Play with their dogs and cats. They have time to consider who they originally wanted to be and who they ended up being. They have time to ask, “What’s my greatest wish? What will make me happy?”

 And since many of them haven’t the resources to eat out anymore they’ve discovered a joy they cherished once upon a time: feeding themselves and those they love in their own kitchens. This economy has given us so many great gifts. One of the greatest gifts it has given us is the the permission to be creative in our kitchens again, to cook from scratch. To connect with our families around the dinner table and celebrate what is truly important in our lives. For years now our 60-70-80 hour work weeks forced us to relegate our kitchen authority to designated cooks: celebrity chefs, entertainments experts, restaurateurs. We were so tired from working that all we could do was watch people on TV cooking while we slumped on our couches eating take out. We let them be creative for us: our appointed kitchen artists. It’s good that they were there to remind us how important these things were, to inspire us to become more skillful. But now we must take that inspiration back to our own kitchens. It’s time to stop letting someone else have all the fun. Now is the the time for the sustainable chef, the self-reliant entertainer, the domestic gourmet. It’s right and good that these things have come back to us because food and celebration are not something to be enjoyed by the elite: they are our birthright!

All of us now are learning how to make a lot less go a lot further. It’s demanding all of our creativity and problem solving skills. It’s making us more self reliant, making us more savvy in the way we handle our resources. It’s making us learn and grow and become more than we could ever be if we were just sitting in a cube for 80 hours a week.

I’d like to challenge all of you to release the Savvy Foodist within you. That means taking an active approach to food and life and love and celebration. We’re never gonna feed the world, as many are suggesting, by forcing everyone to eat tofu. We are however going to become more aware of ourselves and our environments by celebrating the creativity and diversity already present in our own communities and by bringing that attitude of celebration into our own kitchens.

Enjoy your food and don’t waste it. That’s the beginning of true sustainability which is what everyone is saying is the answer to surviving this economy. But it doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t have to be painful. It shouldn’t be in fact. It should be quite the opposite. It should be a celebration. Life should be a celebration! Feast smart. Feast often.

A Feast For Your Pets!

As I begin this my border collie, Pookie, is nudging my hand off the mouse with her nose.  Guess she’d rather write this but for that pesky having no thumbs thing.

A few years ago, while spending yet another 30 bucks on a bag of dried dog food I began to wonder: 1. Why dog food is so damned expensive, and 2. Why the first ingredient in dog food is flour.  How many canines in the wild do you know start their morning with a big bowl of Cap n’Crunch?

The idea seemed absurd to me, so, I began to look into alternative feeding options. 

Now, we have three pooches, the border collie who we got first and who used to go days without eating the dry stuff. (She’s looking at me with that wounded look in her eyes because I won’t let her type. ) Evidently she found the dry stuff unacceptable fare.  Who could blame her?  How festive would you feel if you were given a bowl of grapenuts every meal?  We also have a staffie, Jack, who’s our little athlete and who loves to eat his vegetables.  The third is the staffie’s best buddy, a basset named Thunder.  What Jack expends in energy Thunder makes up for in sleep.  Thunder, loves to eat anything and does, sometimes twice–dogs are so gross. 

Someone at a holistic animal fair suggested I try feeding them all raw chicken.   She said, after switching her dogs to raw their coats got shiner, their eyes got brighter and their energy increased.  I did an experiment with them by switching a few meals each week to the chicken.  To say that we saw benefits was an understatement.   Their coats got much shinier, their energy increased, and their breath was fantastic. 

As we moved towards an almost 90% non-dry doggy-diet (By now they no longer cared for the dry stuff.) we heard the news that people were losing their beloved companion animals to contaminated packaged pet food.  That was it–we dropped that stuff entirely.

As we continued the experiment we began cooking the chicken for them to see how they liked that.  We added rice to the dish and green vegetables occasionally, because someone had suggested that if a dog eats a rabbit, he gets the benefit of green that the rabbit was eating too.  It sounded sensible, but  whether or not it was true didn’t matter because I watched my dogs for cues on how to feed them.  I observed that if I didn’t put green into their food then they’d start nibbling on my hibiscus plants, so, I started using lettuce or green beans to give them the nutrients of the green veggies.  I also put turmeric in their food in the summer months: it aids in digestion and is anti-parasitic: ie, it helps to prevent worms.  

Sometimes I’ll give them raw eggs.  Whenever we’re de-boning chicken we toss them the raw bones  to clean their teeth.   They love raw potato skins and the potassium is great for them so I sometimes mix that into their food.  On the rare occasions when they are having breath issues, we’ll add parsley or cilantro to the mix–fixes them up immediately.

The results of this shift in diet has been wonderful.  All three are trim (even the lazy basset!), energetic and bright-eyed. Everyone is constantly complimenting their coats, and their breath is wonderful compared to what it was like on that dry stuff.  The border never turns down a meal now, which tells me she approves: which to her, is really all that maters… 

These animals are part of our family, and we take every opportunity to make sure that they are honored, nurtured and cherished the way we honor nurture and cherish each other.   Try giving your dog a feast like this and see how they respond. 

And as for creating a sustainable household: It now costs us 50 cents to feed them every day.  It used to cost us a dollar a day to feed them.  So, we cut our dog food bill in half by making the switch! 

 

Cooked Recipe:

For each batch, we’ll take 2-3 chicken leg quarters (occasionally I’ll use ground beef too) and slow cook them in a cast iron pot until the chicken falls off the bones.  This also produces all that nice cartilage and gelatin that’s good for their hips and joints.  To this we’ll add 6-8 cups of cooked rice. I’ll cut up a couple of leafs of lettuce, about a half teaspoon to a teaspoon of turmeric and mix this all together.  Then let it cool.  I place about two cups per dog into their bowls, then stand back for the rush of little doggie feet! 

We feed them once in the morning and once in the evening.  I store it in the fridge.  Each batch lasts for three meals.

High Tea!

From last week:

How many of you still have high Tea?  Having Tea is such an inexpensive, wonderful way to create a feast in an otherwise ordinary day.  Send out invitations by e-vite or post.  Brew a couple of pots of your favorite tea. Serve it in your favorite China, in mugs or even paper cups–everything is right for a celebration! 

China town or Asian markets are excellent places to get high quality, low cost teas of all varieties and flavors.  Save your tuna fish cans: you can use them as crumpet rings. This morning I made over 2 dozen, crispy, fresh, homemade crumpets with less than 60 cents worth of ingredients.  Check local discount stores like TJ Max, Marshalls and Aldi for inexpensive jams and jellies to serve with your crumpets.  We found a very respectable Apricot spread for about 1.49 at a local discount grocery.

There’s no reason why we shouldn’t celebrate the way our great grandfathers and grandmothers did!  Life is a Banquest, my Savvy Foodists.  Remember: Feast Smart and Feast Often!

Afternoon Delight!

From last week:
There’s always time to celebrate a feast with those you love!  This afternoon, my partner and I traveled to the East via our dining room table, and shared a Romantic Luncheon of Sizzling Rice Soup for two.  You can pick up these sizzling rice squares at your local Asian market.  They are astonishingly inexpensive and their giggly crackle add drama and delight to any Chinese soup.  Total cost for this exciting meal: under a dollar.  It fed both of us for lunch and provided leftovers for Hors d’Oeuvres hour.

For the five o’clock Hors d’Oeuvres hour I whipped up some home-made, Chicago-Chinatown style eggrolls.  Total ingredient cost for 6 hefty egg rolls: around 75 cents.

My thanks to the kitchen gods for helping me to get thes eggrolls right–it was my first time making them and I invented the recipe on the spot.  Delectable! (Never hesitate for a minute to call on the Kitchen Gods for help and inspiration, and don’t forget to thank them by giving them a little offering from your plate)

These days, when I hear people complaining about how expensive life is and how everything has gone to hell, I insulate myself and those I love by whipping up an impromptu feast. Why should Occasions happen only occasionaly?

This is sustainability in its truest sense: nourishing the body, the heart and the soul without wasting your resources. 

Until next time, my Savvy Foodist Colony; remember to feast smart, feast often, and never bring guilt to the table!

What do food and a successful relationship have in Common?

This last Valentine’s Day my partner Don and I celebrated 10 years together.  People are always asking  us what’s the secret to being together so long? 

The answer?

First, we’re not afraid to fight.  But when we do fight we don’t get personal.  We don’t insult each other.  Face it, it’s too easy to crush someone when you’re both exposed and vulnerable.  And when we do fight, we never fight to win and argument.  We fight to understand each other.

Second, and more importantly: we take every opportunity to celebrate and laugh.  Every day he and I celebrate some delightful feast together. Whether it’s him making me some shortbread or me making him his favoritre soup (he is in-SANE for my soups!) Or if it’s just sitting us down and having coffee together on our wonderful garden patio (We built  it together with bricks reclaimed from a construction site he was doing environmental work on some years ago.) we always treat each of these moments as a precious celebration! 

I remember the first month we were dating he decided he was going to cook me  dinner.  We went to the store together and he bought Crab legs and shrimp and my favorite Italian cookies.  We went to the check out and had a couple of bags worth of goodies.  The woman told us the total and he realized he didn’t have his wallet (And I didn’t have mine.)  I laughed and laughed.  I laughed all the way back to his house where we got the wallet and all the way back to the store where we had to ring up all over again.  That night we had a wonderful feast together featuring some of my favorite foods.  He told me over dinner that so many men would have been angry with him or judged him for having forgotten his wallet.  But I just laughed again.

He told me later that this incident was one of the reasons why he fell in love with me.  And we have been remembering our wallets and celebrating thousands of meals ever since!

So, my Savvy Foodists:  Live to love and celebrate life!  And never bring guilt to the table…
 

Any excuse to celebrate!

When my partner, Don, suggested last night that we curl up during the snowstorm and watch old episodes of South Park online I recognized the opportunity for making a memory.  I remembered I had some leftover pizza sauce in the fridge, had just bought some mushrooms at the Asian market and had some mozzarella cheese in the fridge that wasn’t spoken for.  I immediately started the calzone dough! 

I let the dough rise once while we watched the fist episode.  Punched it down, kneaded it and let it rise though a second episode.  Rolled it out, filled the calzones, slid them in the oven and then let them bake thru a third episode.

By the time Kenny, Cartman, Stan and Kyle were illegally buying Ninja weapons at a state fair we had Crispy, hot, tasty Calzones to cut into.  The total cost of this wonderful comfort food was around a dollar.  I also have leftover dough and will probably make mini calzones for h’ors d’oevres/cocktail hour this evening.–a chance for another memory!

As everyone keeps worrying about the economy it’s essential that we stay in a celebratory mood.  Do you want to look back on this time of your life and say: “Boy, that really sucked. Everything was so hard and depressing.”

Or would you rather say: “When everything around us changed I was resilient. I was creative.  I made every moment a celebration and enjoyed every bit of it…” ?

I want you all to remember this, my savvy foodists: Every meal has the potential of becoming one of your fondest memories if you bring an attitude of celebration and laughter to the table.