Trying New Things

I pride myself on my ability to try new things. Mostly. But not always. I'm not always game to new fruits and veggies in particular. I mean, I'll try it. Like this:

Jackfruit

Or this:

Dragonfruit

But I won't go out of my way to buy/pick one up and start munching away while sitting under a tree in the forest or at the beach. Even on sale at Safeway, I won't necessarily buy a kiwi even though I've eaten it on several occasions and I really like it. I just never grew up eating them. So it's just not part of my nature.

But now that I'm living a plant strong life and my repertoire of delectables is slightly altered (not limited, not bad, but altered), I think it is in my best interest to stretch out of my comfort zone.

Thus, the kohlrabi. Ah yes. The Kohrabi. What the hell is that, you ask? Maybe not in those terms, but seriously that is what my mind said quietly as I bought a seedling from the seedling man at the open market. Being well read I did recognize the word as a veggie word though I had never ever in my knowledge eaten it. What the heck. I'm game. I'll give it a whirl. Chances of it living in my garden are not that great but I'll give it a shot. And then, wonders of wonders, up popped this:

Right out of my garden

A very bulbous lower stem

Kohlrabi, it turns out, is a member of the cabbage family and is very similar in taste to broccoli.  In fact, you can prepare it much like broccoli. The leaves can be added to salad (didn't opt in that far). The bulb can be cut up and eaten raw or roasted or fried or however you want to prepare it! EASY STUFF! I chose to just julienne the bulb (after peeling it as was suggested on a website because of its size, yay garden) and ate it raw on my salad today. It does taste like the cabbage family which I happen to love. Someone likened it to jicama in looks and texture and I had to agree. Jicama with a bite.

And I will definitely buy it if it goes on sale at Safeway. Do they even sell it at Safeway? Ha!

Top side of the bulb after I removed the leaves/stems

Side view shows where the roots were (dark spots)

I peeled it, sliced it, then julienned. Quite delicious.

What new fruits or veggies have you tried recently? Would you recommend it to others?

Grilled Veggies

It's summertime!!! And in my neck of the woods that definitely means grilling. It is seriously TOO DANG COLD to grill in the winter (and we really only have two seasons here in Hawai'i--winter and summer). We live at the 3,000 foot level and it even gets chilly in the summer. my normal attire as of late has been sweatpants and long sleeve t-shirts. Fuzzy house slippers in the house.
While our first grilled dinner of the summer did include a spicy pork for the guys, I made sure there were LOTS and LOTS of vegetables to grill.
I seasoned a couple of them just to see how it would be without the addition of olive oil. Yes, my past life included a healthy heavy dose of olive oil along with some herbs and balsamic vinegar on a few of my veggies. This time I changed it up a bit just to see how I the family would like it without the oil. For the portobellos, I put some balsamic, minced garlic, and freshly ground black pepper in a ziploc and then put the mushrooms (stemmed and "de-gilled") in and let it sit for a couple hours. I did the same with the eggplant (and didn't salt them first to remove some of the water). We also had zucchini, onion, corn, and small peppers (Costco! Much cheaper than bigger ones).
Two of us didn't like the portobellos as much as usual but one did. The eggplants weren't cooked quite enough. I'll go back to salting them and then giving them a quick rinse before seasoning. The zucchini and the rest, plain and simple, were delicious. The show stopper was the corn. Nothing like grilled corn. I did remove the husk though someone suggested leaving it on. But I like the grill marks on the kernel. I just think it makes it taste better that way although i realize that's mostly in my head.

Left portobello is obviously ready to go! No stem. No "gills". Don't know if that's the real term.

Mushrooms soaking in a ziploc. Not environmentally friendly but I can wash them and recycle. 

Raw corn is ALMOST as good as grilled corn. Aren't they beautiful!?

Eggplant is great grilled. Except these ended up needing a bit more time. And no marinade maybe.

I am drooling just looking at the corn

The men must have been hungry because these onions and even the zucchini could have stood a bit more grilling but they were both still quite tasty.

Veggie Wrap

When I'm hungry and I want something fast and tasty I inevitably go for a veggie wrap. Open up the fridge, pull out all the veggies I am in love with, figure out some sort of spread (whether it's salsa or no oil hummus or my delicious curry ketchup), and I pack in the veggies and beans. Most of the time I can't even wrap it, it's so chubby! I usually heat up the beans, just to add warmth to the wrap. Oh, and I put the tortilla (100% whole grain, of course, from Costco) in the microwave for about 20 seconds.

Can you see all the ingredients?

Under it all there is no oil hummus

romaine, tomatoes, black beans, bell peppers, brown rice, salsa

Fresh Veggie & Fruit Juices

About a month ago, my daughter let me know that a neighbor of hers was going to make fresh veggie/fruit juices in the morning and we could purchase a mason jar (16 oz.) for $5.00. A great deal. Freshly made. Cute jar. Almost a drive thru pick up. We did this for about 2 weeks until I started thinking, hey, I could do this myself. We have a Champion Juicer, after all. Commercial model. We bought it YEARS ago and we were actually selling them to people who wanted to make their own poi. We called them poi machines.

So off to the market I went to buy a variety of veggies. We started a couple of weeks ago. There is no recipe. In the beginning we were putting in a lot of green apples (bought a big bag at Cost-U-Less) and carrots because I knew this would make the "green" juice sweet and I was, to say the least, not a big fan of any green colored juice, thinking in my mind about shots of wheatgrass I had seen at Jamba Juice. Gross looking. I also added beets in the beginning so that my "green" juice would be a beautiful red and I knew beets were sweet, too.  I've since evolved. Today's juice is DEFINITELY green and I only used one green apple.

This is all the veggies/fruits we added

 Wanna name those goodies before I actually tell you?

We had beet greens (but no beets, kale, cucumber (2), one green apple, and several carrots (small ones, unpeeled).

We washed them in the new strainer I bought in SF (Yup. Thank you, Crate and Barrel. I packed that big beauty in my suitcase and it has been my favorite kitchen accessory as of late) and then commenced with the juicing.

In goes greens

 The Champion Juicer doesn't take all that well to the greens part. It loves harder things like carrots and beets and apples. But I go ahead and add some greens and then alternate with a carrot or some apple slices to push the greens through.

pulp

 I am surprised by how dry the pulp is. That juicer really takes ALL the liquid out of the veggies.

Action shot

I save all the pulp for the compost pile. I know the worms are going to love it because it's already chewed up for them!

Just short of 4 cups

 Okay, there is a lot of scum that floats on the top when you make your juice. I'm not sure why. I think I read somewhere that those are impurities. I don't know, but I still skim it off with a strainer I have and dump it down the sink. This is what I'm left with--pure nutritional goodness.

No longer filled with iced coffee. I am all about healthy living.

Add straw and enjoy

When my husband took his first sip, I asked him what he thought. He said, in this order, "Potent. Green. VERY GOOD."

I think my main point would be to 1) buy a good juicer if you don't already have one. I think it's a good investment. I particularly like the Champion Juicer (and my friend got on on Craigslist for half the price just recently) because it doubles as my poi/kulolo maker. If I were Puerto Rican I know I'd be using it for pasteles (not that only Puerto Ricans make pasteles but you get my point, right?). And an added bonus is the WONDRFUL "ice cream" it makes just using bananas. Or pineapples. I can't wait for mango season. And 2) Don't be afraid to experiment. Tomorrow's juice will have parsley, mint and lemon. Some pepper sounds like it would go well, don't you think?

Enjoy.

Warm Beet Salad

I have memories of beets and they aren't very fond. My mom used to "prepare" beets for us, straight out of a can, cut into nice circles, plopped onto a plate. Then my dad would proceed to put some on his plate and then plop a glob of mayonnaise onto his beets. I. Hate. Mayonnaise. I've gotten much better about it, but when I was a kid I detested everything about mayonnaise. Couldn't even stand to make my dad his sandwiches because sometimes, when there was hardly any mayonnaise in the jar I would have to really reach in there with the butter knife and my fingers would brush against the inside and mayo would get on my hands and GROSS!!! Ugh. The mayonnaise, combined with the rich dark color of the beets, would turn pink. Pink mayonnaise. What could be worse. Why not have a bowl of mayo-chili to go with it?
But I love fresh beets. And I know this because on my last food visit to Hilo Bay Cafe (I have other visits there besides food as my daughters, husband and close drinking buddies can attest) I ordered a beet salad and loved it. Despite the fact that my close friend Lisa insisted that beets smell and taste like dirt, I thought they were unbelievably tasty. I loved the texture, the color, and the taste. A light dressing. A beautiful plate. Yum. I'll find the picture I took and post it soon.
So I bought beets at the Waimea Homestead Farmers Market last week. And today I finally got around to figuring out how to prepare them. Yay. My first beet adventure.
I went straight to my new favorite go-to blog to search for a beet recipe, Food Gawker. That led me to The Hungry Mouse, my very first visit. You'll see, once you check out this site, what I meant in my first blog when I talk about great photography. That I have not.
Her (okay, I know I'm making assumptions but I'm guessing The Hungry Mouse is female) directions were great. I just made a few modifications. I wanted beet salad. Fast. The fam was already making rice and frying up sausage and onions and I didn't want to be enticed to join them. New healthy eating venture and all. So instead of baking the beets (which I prepped by cutting off leaves/stems and long root thing on other end, washing off dirt, and NOT peeling) I put an inch of water in my pressure cooker (thanks mom!), threw the beets in and cooked them for about 15-20 minutes. Once they were done, I put them all out on waxed paper (thinking I didn't want to stain my cutting board) to cool slightly so I could peel them. The Hungry Mouse, true to form, said it would peel quite easily and it did! I used my fingers to peel the cooked beets (did I tell you I tested for doneness by poking the biggest beet with a fork? Goes through=done. Doesn't go through=oops. cook longer). I peeled, cut off the ends, and quartered the beets, depending on their sizes. Some beets were big like a small tangerine. A few were small like a large grape. I wasn't about to get picky about equal sizes when I bought them. That's just too complicated at this stage in my life.
Then I threw the beets into a metal bowl (staining plastic? nosirree). Of course then I had to wipe the counter because my great wax paper idea didn't pan out the way I thought it would and my counter was now pink. But it came off easily. Don't know if I would have achieved great success on a nice ceramic tile/grout countertop. Here is a picture of the beets all cut up. Sorry. Didn't think to take pictures of the before cooking beets and after. But they look just like The Hungry Mouse uncooked beets except all one color.


Then I proceeded to make the dressing. Now The Hungry Mouse calls for 1/4 clove of garlic, chopped fine, 2 tablespoons of orange juice and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. I didn't measure a thing. I cut an orange in half and squeezed that into the measuring cup (which I grabbed because it was sitting on the counter), threw in two cloves of chopped garlic (we love garlic...it's a weakness and I'm sure I overdo it for most people but in my house of onion and garlic lovers, you can never put too much), and squirt in some olive oil (I bought a new squirt bottle...one of those older looking ketchup squirt kind of bottles and I LOVE IT).

Then I poured it over the beets, sprinkled over some chopped green onions, and voila. All set and ready.

Once it was on my plate all I needed to do was sprinkle on some feta.

Verdict: It was oh so good. Yum. And I have just a tad more for a late afternoon snack. Kaipo said it was good. I said, "if you had to give it a grade what would you give it?" She said, "Why do I need to give it a grade?" Come on, girl, humor me sometime. She ended up giving it an A. Yay! I did need to check on her grading system so I asked her to grade her white rice and sausage/onion lunch. She said, "It was good but I wouldn't grade it." Yay. And I think I heard Glen in the kitchen say something to the effect of, "Mmm, that's good."
Next course of action: figure out how to arrange the pictures to match the words.