A Yoga Retreat and Fun with Chives!

Enlightened figs basking in the glory of their existence

Reincarnated fire finding inner peace in the form of these magnificent leaves
with outstretched fingers embracing the light 

For Mother's Day weekend I got to go on a yoga retreat. (Retreat: a quiet or secluded place in which one can rest and relax.) Well, the wake up gong sounded at 6AM so.......  But no, all the many activities available to you from 6:30AM till 9PM were optional, so it was as intensive or relaxing as you chose.

For example, at one point the friend that I went on the retreat with decided to participate in a two hour meditation class (she didn't know it was going to last 2 hours) while I decided to do a 5 mile exploratory walk on my own. It was on this walk that I took the two photos above along with many others. I returned sweaty but relaxed and rejuvenated just in time to see her staggering out of one of the buildings. "Where are you headed? What are you doing?" I asked. "The class just finished! I am exhausted. I need to lie down," she moaned. I knew then that I had taken the easier path even if it was 5 miles longer.

But if you are serious about connecting with God or the cosmic vibrations of the universe sometimes you need to work for it. One of the residents of the spiritual village who we ate a couple of our meals with, had made a vow of Total Renunciation! "Wow, what is total renunciation?" I wanted to know. There were different levels of renunciation with "total", of course, being the most extreme. It was, she explained, renunciation of the ego itself. (That is in addition to no sex, no marriage, no alcohol, and Shiva knows what else.) She told us that she spends 24 hours each week sitting in silent meditation.

We did yoga postures, we chanted, we meditated. We picked and chose the nuggets of spirituality that resonated with us and left the rest to the more devout.

The food they offered was vegetarian and delicious. When I told the staff upon arrival that I ate a gluten-free diet they didn't bat an eye. They cook almost completely gluten-free and always present gluten-free options. It is their standard operating procedure. So that was easy.

The grounds were bursting with flowers and buzzing with bees and song birds. I do believe I left with a more energized spine and an open heart.

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Back at home the chives are doing their mad-chive thing. I had just been saying how you can only use so many chives...... But then, yesterday I made chive pesto and now I am not sure if I have enough chives! Why didn't I think of doing that sooner? All these years I've been under utilizing them although I sure do enjoy their blossoms in the garden.

Last summer I posted a recipe for arugula pesto which we enjoyed all through the winter as I froze quite a bit. The following chive pesto recipe follows a similar formula. Herb, nut, cheese, oil, basically. Once you know how to make pesto, you can make it with many things in many variations.

Chive Pesto

4 cups of roughly chopped chive greens

1/2 cup raw cashew nuts

1 clove of garlic

1 to 2 oz. of dry cheese cut in chunks (I used an aged manchego)

1/4 to 1/2 cup of olive oil (depending on the consistency you like)

salt to taste

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Place garlic, cashews, and cheese in a food processor and process until crumbly. Add the chives and the oil and process again until it looks like pesto. Open the lid and scrape down the sides with a flexible spatula and sprinkle in some salt. Blend again. Adjust salt and oil to your preference. Done! Try it on fish. We had it on oysters last night. So good.

I also filled a jar with chive blossoms and covered them with white wine vinegar to infuse in the sun. Oh what fun!

Enjoy!!! Namaste.

Sweet Pepper Hummus

Aren't those pretty?

Good day to you! There is Spring in the air here even as there is still snow lingering in the back yard from December storms. All kinds of birds not seen since last year have arrived in Quincy from hither and yon in the past week!

I couldn't resist the colors of a big bag of sweet peppers I saw at the grocery store, even though the food miles on them were many. Most I used in a Thai coconut curry fish dish but the rest were roasted and pureed with chickpeas to create a super tasty, sweet hummus dip. I used a can of organic cooked garbanzos so this was a snap. I love my food processor!

To make:
Toss 10 small sweet peppers in some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Place in pan and roast at 375° for 20 minutes or until tender. Let cool a bit. Pull off the tops and swipe the majority of the seeds out of the inside of the peppers with your finger. Leave skins on. Place a small clove of garlic into a food processor and whirl a few times to chop. Add roasted peppers. Whirl again. Add a can of garbanzos lightly drained, a glug of olive oil and a few shakes of red wine vinegar. Whirl again. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Voila!

Enjoy!

Yippee! Our egg farmer's chickens are feeling the spring weather too.
Now we have rich orange-yolked eggs again!

Soup is Good, Kalt ist Bitter, Chai ist Heiß

When I promised to share two of my favorite cold-weather soup recipes, it was cold out. Now it is bitter. Sounds like a German word, bitter. Let me look.... Yes, of Germanic origin and probably related to the word bite. Yes, well, that makes sense; a biting cold, frost bite even. P.S. Kalt means cold and Heiß means hot, although I don't profess to know what letter that is at the end of the word Heiß!

We spent the weekend at a rented condo at a low-key ski resort near Truckee, California called Tahoe-Donner. Temperatures in Truckee were 7 degrees below zero on Saturday morning and 18 below on Sunday. But as a side note, it warmed to a balmy 22° during the days and was fantastically sunny making for a pleasant time on the slopes as long as you were dressed properly.

Morning view from the balcony of our condo

A happy 6-year-old skier with missing teeth

We returned to our home in Quincy to find that some of our pipes had frozen. We are still working on thawing them today. It is just 9° here this morning.

So, yes, soup. Soup and tea. Hot liquids to keep our bodies' pipes from becoming sluggish or freezing up altogether. Although not a big tea drinker most of the year, I can't get enough right now. Chai tea is what I crave with its cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, clove and black pepper. I've been making it by the gallon. I'll share the recipe, given to me by a friend, below. Hold on, before I type it, let me get another cup!

Ahhhh..... there we go. My favorite tea mug full.

Chai Tea
Makes 1 gallon
Ingredients:
1 gallon water
10 to 12 slices of ginger root
1 t. peppercorns
1/2 t. cloves
1 T. cardamom powder
3-5 sticks of cinnamon


Directions: Place ingredients in a pot and bring to a simmer. Let simmer for 45 minutes. Turn off heat and let rest for 30 minutes. Strain into a gallon jug.

Notes: This mixture is a decaf chai base. From here you have options. You can heat and serve plain with or without honey. You can heat it and pour over your favorite black tea to steep. You can make a milky chai by heating it 1/2 and 1/2 with your favorite type of milk and pouring over honey and/or a black tea bag. Any way it warms one from the inside out.

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Okay, now for a soup. I'll just share one today because I got distracted with chai tea and snow pictures. This soup is from The Greens Cookbook of San Francisco's Greens Restaurant fame. The original recipe calls for fresh mint which we have in the yard in abundance in the warm months. Because I usually make the soup in winter I've taken to omitting it.  I have altered the recipe to always use fire roasted tomatoes which together with the homemade vegetable stock you use for the base and the chili powder creates a smoky depth of flavor reminiscent of a rich tortilla soup. I often take it a step further in this direction by topping it with corn tortilla strips crisped in oil in an iron skillet stove top, avocados, cilantro instead of parsley, a squeeze of lime. It also features that wonderful marriage of dark orange squash and tomatoes.

Winter Squash and Roasted Tomato Soup

Adapted from a recipe from The Greens Cookbook

Serves 6

Ingredients:

The Stock:

Seeds and inner fibers of 2.5 lbs of winter squash (butternut, pumpkin, other)

2 diced celery stalks

1 onion roughly chopped or sliced

1 bay leaf

5 branches parsley

1/2 teaspoon dried sage leaves

1 teaspoon salt

8 cups cold water

I know it is extra work but the flavor is worth it. Halve the squash. Scrape out the seeds and fibers into a pot with the rest of the ingredients. Bring to a boil, turn the heat down, and simmer 25 to 35 minutes; then strain.

The Soup

2.5 lbs. of winter squash

1 roasted red bell pepper chopped (Buy in jar or roast yourself. I know, more work!)

28 oz can of roasted diced tomatoes

1 to 2 T. New Mexican chili powder

1 T. butter (or use all oil)

1 T. olive oil

1 large yellow onion, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 t. nutritional yeast (optional)

1 t. salt

7 cups stock

1 T. parsley (or cilantro) chopped

1 T. mint, chopped (optional)

Directions:

Peel squash and cut into 1/2 square pieces. Peelings can be added to simmering stock.

Heat the butter (if using) and oil in a soup pot, add the onion, garlic, and nutritional yeast. 

Cook over medium low heat until the onion is soft, about 10 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, chili powder, and salt, and stew for 5 minutes. Add the cubed squash, roasted red pepper, and the stock. Simmer until the squash has melted into a purée, about 30-40 minutes. Season with more salt to taste. Serve the soup with the chopped parsley and mint stirred in at the last minute or go the tortilla soup style route I suggested earlier. This soup is even better the next day after the flavors fully merge. Also goes great with corn bread for that beloved squash, tomato, corn trio!

Here I topped leftovers with strips of Canadian bacon

While I've been blogging and drinking chai tea, my heroic husband crawled (wriggled) under the house and thawed the kitchen sink pipe with a blow torch! Hurray for male chivalry!

Enjoy!

Production Mode: Wine, Hard Cider, Roasted Nuts, and Pickled Eggs

Welcome to 2013! We are home from a week away visiting family in Calistoga, Sebastopol, and San Jose over the holidays. Eat, drink, and be merry we did and were. 

We returned to a house and yard encased in a foot of icy, solid snow and low temps. My husband lit the fire and I placed the flowers in the vahhse that I bought to-day ay ay. Gotta love CSN&Y. So, yeah, there were no flowers. After he lit the fire what I really did was set to work making soup. Good soup and a warm fire are not optional this time of year. I have two favorite soup recipes to share in my next post. The soups both feature winter squash but other than that are very different from one another. I've been making them both for many years.

The tail end of 2012 found me in production mode in my kitchen and happy as could be. I had four fermentation projects finishing up and was able to get them all in bottles before our trip. There was apple mead, 2 apple ciders, and the 2012 Stephan Way Chardonnay. Below you can see the new 2012 label and the finished bottles.

"From an obscure boutique winery and vineyard in downtown Quincy, Ca"

If you followed my wine making adventures in 2011 you know that I made a couple of mistakes that resulted in the loss of two-thirds of the batch. I, of course, made sure not to make those same mistakes this year. I added potassium sorbate to the wine before doing a minimal back-sweetening. All looked and tasted good and I've had high hopes for this batch. Upon return from our trip I now see that there is a crystally sediment beginning to form in the bottles. My first thought was that a refermentation is underway and that all the bottles will be lost. This still may be the case but I was comforted by my computer which told me that:

Tartrate Crystals are also called "wine diamonds". They are a natural product of the wine, and form when the wine gets too cold. It is in essence cream of tartar, forming because of the temperature change. Think of sugar turning into rock candy and you'll have a good mental image. 

Tartaric acid is a normal grape acid. Potassium also exists in grapes, and when these two things bind together under chilly conditions, they form little potassium bitartrate crystals, which then settle to the bottom of the bottle. They're completely harmless, and quite natural. 

While in Europe these crystals are accepted as a sign that the wine is a natural one, and even appreciated, Americans are used to wine being clear, pure, filtered, processed and de-sedimented. Consumers often panic when they see little crystals in their Chardonnay, thinking they are impurities or even bits of broken glass. They often refuse to drink the wine and return it to the winemaker (who promptly serves it to his own family). 

The house was quite cold while were away so I am hoping they're "wine diamonds"! We will see......

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Also in December, I enjoyed making pickled eggs for my father-in-law for a Christmas gift. I don't know that I had ever had a pickled egg before but now that I have I like them! Even better than the eggs are the pickled beets and onions that accompany the eggs in their jars. They ended up looking very festive. I will share the method I used below. Speaking of pickled things, my sis-in-law served some home-pickled carrots the other night that I can't stop thinking about. I'll be sure to share here after she forwards me the recipe.

Pickled Eggs with Beets
To make 3 quart-sized jars of pickled eggs you will need:

2 15 oz. cans of beets
Juice from the cans
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 onion, sliced
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3 cloves of garlic cut into chunks
1 teaspoon sea salt
approximately 20 hard cooked eggs

Directions:

1.  Peel the eggs and place in quart-sized glass jars alternating with the cooked beets.
2.  In a medium saucepan combine the vinegar, beet juice, onion, sugar, garlic, and salt. Bring to a boil then simmer, uncovered, until the sugar has dissolved and the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool a few minutes.
3.  Pour the vinegar onion mixture over the eggs in the jars, covering the eggs completely. Tighten lids. Refrigerate up to a month.

The pickled eggs will be ready to eat after a few days. The longer the eggs sit in the pickling juice, the more the pickling juice will penetrate the eggs.

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My mother ordered nuts from me to be shipped to friends and family across the U.S.  I also made them for my own gifts to friends, family, neighbors, teachers, etc. The smells of roasting spicy fennel almonds and candied pecans filled the house for days. To me, nutmeat is a treasure, so fatty and nutrient-dense. Raw is best for your health but this time of year roasting them is a treat that warms the house and our bellies.

Enjoy, Enjoy, Enjoy the year ahead!
xo

Creative Wood Stacking, a Video, and a $500 Recipe

Happy 12-12-12. A thousand years till that happens again!  Lots of random things to share.........

 

A friend who is aware of what a big role firewood plays in our lives here in the mountains sent these along today and I couldn't help but lead with them. We burn it up so fast this time of year that there isn't much use in getting artistic with the stacking but I love the inset crate idea so I'll be brainstorming a way to incorporate that!

More photos to share...... I already did a post on our local apple press event but I had forgotten that there are actually two community apple squeeze events in Quincy now.  At this first one, our 6 year old was in charge of the camera and I love the slightly different perspective his photographs provide.

All photos by L.G. Kusener

The next thing I'd like to share is a simple recipe I created for a recipe contest I entered. I learned about the contest in a magazine I subscribe to. The contest required that the recipe have only 5 ingredients, one of which is chicken. Salt and pepper and fat for cooking were bonus ingredients. I had to make dinner that night anyway so I submitted the following recipe and won $500. I was delighted!

Chicken and Green Olives with Apricot Shallot White Wine Sauce
Serves 4

An easy weeknight preparation that utilizes the much loved fruit/meat flavor combination.

Ingredients:
About 1 pound (6-8) chicken breast tenders
salt
freshly ground pepper
1 T. olive oil
1 t. butter
¾  cup thinly sliced shallots
¾  cup white wine such as chardonnay
½  cup apricot jam (note that cherry, peach, or plum jam, or even orange marmalade work equally well here)
¾ cup of pitted ripe green olives                                                                              


Directions:
1.  Season chicken breast tenders or thighs with salt and freshly ground pepper. Heat olive oil and butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Sauté chicken until cooked through, about 5 minutes per side. Set aside on a plate. When cool enough to handle, cut into bite-sized pieces.
2.  Add shallots to the hot skillet and sauté 4 minutes until soft and browned. Add wine and stir to deglaze skillet. Add jam and stir mixture until it smoothes out and begins to bubble. Add chicken pieces and olives, stir to coat and turn off heat. Serve with pan sauce.

I like to serve it over basmati rice. The last time I made it I used some homemade peach jam from last summer and vegetable broth in place of the wine and it was even better than the original. The recipe will be part of an on-line cookbook available soon and I will post the link to it here on the blog.

If you have a spare 4 minutes, this video that pokes fun at foodies and the high-end grocery store, Whole Foods, is highly entertaining:

It's gettin' real in the Whole Foods parking lot!
That is all for now.
Enjoy!!

Pumpkins and Fudge

Happy Halloween!! 
My son is in first grade. His teacher's husband grows pumpkins competitively. Of course his class had a special field trip to the otherworldly pumpkin patch. It really did take my breath away as we rounded the corner and the mountainous pumpkins came into view rising above a vast sea of equally impressive sprawling green vines. The children were beside themselves with wonder.

One of the pumpkins was grown to compete for sheer size/weight. At the height of the growing season it was putting on over 30 pounds a day! It ended up weighing in at an impressive 1115 pounds which earned it 12th-place in a northstate competition in Sacramento. The 1st-place pumpkin was around 1600 pounds. The bright orange one pictured above, although substantially smaller, got best of show for attractiveness and won a $650 prize.

I took lots of photos and made a poster for the class. I'm so thankful that I have the time to do whimsical projects such as this if the urge strikes.

Oooooh.....Scary

And then there is pumpkin fudge. In our quaint little downtown there is a drug store. It has been there since the 1800s. It does not have a soda fountain but it does have a "fudgery" (corner where fudge is made). This time of year they offer some seasonal flavors, one of which is pumpkin fudge. My parents first tried it 7 years ago while housesitting for us and they LOVE it. I make sure they get a slice of it each year which they say they can devour in just one evening. 

I don't know how they do it. I definitely have a sweet tooth but to me fudge has always just been too much, almost sickeningly sweet. And now with a diet free from gluten and virtually dairy-free, traditional fudge would be out of the question anyway. 

How about some healthy vegan fudge - a Halloween treat for the gluten and dairy sensitive? Don't worry it is still rich and creamy and chocolatey and sweet, just not tooth-achingly so. This recipe uses coconut cream concentrate and coconut oil in place of butter and cream. (I've been using a lot of coconut oil recently. Subject of another post.) If you look at this blog's October posts, you would think me a chocolate fanatic. Chocolate hasn't really played all that big a part in my life - until recently. I'm pretty into chocolate right now. Dark chocolate. Christmas is coming. Bring it on.

 Vegan Fudge
Ingredient list:
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup warm water
3 T. coconut cream concentrate
1 T. coconut oil
1 cup chopped walnuts*

Mix all ingredients together except the chopped walnuts and stir for a couple minutes until smooth. Add walnuts and stir to combine. Pour into a small dish or pan. Mine was a 4" x 8" ramekin. Chill until set. Cut into squares and store on waxed paper in the refrigerator.
*walnuts can be raw or lightly toasted

Note/Update: I have made this fudge a few more times now and have taken to adding 1/8 t. cayenne pepper, 1/8 t. ancho chili powder, and 1/4 t. cinnamon, and a pinch of sea salt for a delectable spicy Mexican chocolate twist! Oh my, you should try it.

Enjoy!

Channelling My Inner Baking Goddess

I started baking as a girl. It was like magic to me. I could mix a few cupboard ingredients together and transform them into a warm-from-the-oven delicacy with minimal effort. If I am honest, I know that my love of baking has been rooted in my love of eating really good bakery. When I first discovered that I had developed a problem with digesting gluten (hmmm.......which maybe isn't so surprising considering my love-affair with flour), I went on a baking spree. For a month I baked like crazy, experimenting with different flours and trying to recreate all of my bakery favorites without the gluten. Some things came out great, even better than their gluten-ous counterparts. Other things, not so much... I think I just needed to reassure myself that I would still be able to bake and to enjoy bakery even without gluten in my life. 

At one point I went to a gluten-free workshop here in town. An uber-healthy woman in attendance made the comment that, "You know, you don't HAVE to try to replace all of that bakery stuff just because it's what you grew up with." Oh. Yeah. I think she is right. You don't have to. A move away from gluten can be a move towards a healthier diet if you don't. I've noticed that many of the gluten-free cookbooks out there focus on recreating those flour-based treats of our childhood. Many of them have cupcakes on the cover.  

I seem to have retained a love of baking that extends beyond wanting to indulge in bakery. When my dear friend requested that I bake her a cake for her birthday recently, I immediately replied, "Yes! And can it have gluten in it?" Gluten-containing wheat flour really is wonderful to work with. Gluten is great stuff as long as you can digest it uneventfully. She asked for chocolate.

High quality, fair trade, dark, rich, real, chocolate is good. I try to eat a little bit every day for my health. ;-) But other than that, I don't consider myself a chocolate person. For instance, I would always choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream and oatmeal raisin cookies over chocolate chip ones. I'm usually not a chocolate cake fan but once or twice in my life I've had a chocolate cake that was so moist and rich and delicious that I loved it. So when asked to bake a chocolate cake, I began a search for a death-by-chocolate kind of a cake that might possibly rival those I've enjoyed in the past.

Guess what? The most promising recipe I found in my collection of cookbooks did not contain any flour!! Yippee! I would be able to bake my cake and eat it too!! 

I had a wonderful time baking it and decorating it and tasting it and presenting it to the birthday "girl". This is really a yummy chocolate cake. Even if you don't like chocolate cake, you might like this cake. There aren't many ingredients but I'm not saying it is super simple to make. Excellent paired with port.

Chocolate Cake (Gluten-free!)
from Vineyard Seasons by Susan Branch

Ingredients:
16 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips (I like Guittard and Ghirardelli)
1 cup unsalted butter (you can try a vegan alternative here such as Earth Balance)
9 eggs separated
1 cup of sugar
cocoa powder for dusting

Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 350º. 
Butter a 9" springform pan; line the bottom with buttered wax or parchment paper; dust pan with cocoa powder. Slowly melt chocolate and butter together in a heavy saucepan over low heat; cool. Meanwhile separated eggs into two large bowls. Beat the yolks for about a minute; slowly add sugar and continue beating till thick and lemon-colored. Beat egg whites until they just begin to peak. Add cooled chocolate mixture to egg yolks and blend thoroughly. Pour the chocolate and yolk mixture into egg whites and fold gently until completely blended. Remove 1/3 of the batter to refrigerator and cover. Pour rest of batter into prepared pan and bake 40-45 minutes. Cool 1/2 hour before turning out onto serving plate. Remove paper and frost with remaining batter. Decorate as you see fit.

Enjoy!

Two Yummy Salads

I have two different salad recipes to share today. The first is a sweet and greasy German potato salad recipe passed down from my grandma. My dad used to make it when I was a kid. Something made me think of it recently and I called him for the recipe. He said he would get back to me. He had to dig and riffle for it. When he called back he expressed delight at what he encountered in the process of the hunt. Handwritten recipes on cards through the generations. Recipes written by me as a small child. Recipes my father carefully recorded after a particular success in the kitchen but maybe never replicated again. Difficult to read recipes scrawled in wavery cursive by aging grandmothers. Ahhhh, good stuff indeed. Among them all, it was there: German Potato Salad from Lydia's Kitchen.

We have harvested the small new potatoes from our potato container twice so far. There is nothing like the treasure hunt of digging for potatoes. Ours were red gems in the brown dirt. I used a mix of the new red potatoes with a few yukon golds I found in the fridge. The recipe called for sliced hard-boiled eggs on top. Because our eggs had just been delivered and were too fresh to successfully hard-boil, I fried a few over-easy in a bit of the left-over bacon grease and topped the salad with those. I modified the dressing slightly to accommodate the gluten-free me and voila. It was like I remembered it and a hit with our guests.

Look at that yummy greasy mess! Mmmmmm.....

Sweet and Greasy German Potato Salad
Ingredient List:
1 large red onion finely chopped
1/2 pound of good bacon
3 or so lbs of small to medium potatoes
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1 T. cornstarch
3 eggs
Instructions:
Boil, peel, and slice the potatoes. Fry bacon until it is crisp. Save the grease. Boil gently 1 cup of water, the vinegar, and the sugar. Mix the cornstarch in 1 T. water and add to simmering dressing. Stir for a minute until you see it begin to thicken. Add 3 or 4 T. of the bacon grease to the dressing. Let thicken for a couple more minutes while stirring.
Pour the dressing over the potato slices in a serving dish. Top with chopped onions and crumbled or chopped bacon pieces. Fry eggs over-easy. Place on top of salad and break yolks. Serve warm. Serves 6-8 as a side dish.

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The second salad I encountered at a Mexican-themed birthday party I attended a couple weeks ago. It is a simple slaw with colors that say, "Eat me and thrive!". The whole dinner was like that actually. If I'd had my camera, you can bet I would have taken pictures. The hostess worked at a cafe in Chico, Ca in her college days and they served a salad similar to this. She's been making it ever since. It goes something like this:

Colorful Mexican Style Slaw
Salad:
1 small purple cabbage
4 carrots
1/4 cup chopped parseley
Shred the cabbage and carrots in a food processor. Place in a large bowl and stir in chopped parsley.
Dressing:
Combine:
1/4 cup canola oil
1 T. olive oil
1 T. apple cider vinegar
1 T. rice vinegar
(Note: fresh squeezed lime juice would be a good substitution here for either or both of the vinegars)
3/4 t. ground cumin
3/4 t. ancho chili powder
1/2 t. salt
Optional: 1 small clove pressed garlic
Pour over salad and stir to combine.

Eat your colors and enjoy!