Paris Market Mesclun, a gorgeous and delicious mix of lettuces, other greens and herbs, from Renee's Garden Seeds
It’s been a while since I’ve written about my adventures with cooking and eating local food, not because I’ve stopped growing or eating local food. It’s the cooking part. After Richard died, my interest in preparing food deserted me. When I felt like eating, I ate well thanks to the deli at Ploughboy Local Market, but I rarely had the energy or creative drive to make my own meals.
Lately though, my enjoyment of playing with food (which is how I see preparing whatever is fresh and handy) is returning. I’m not back to where I was before, but I’m better. Maybe my renewed drive to create my own meals stems from summer’s approach and the revival of my organic kitchen garden, which despite this year’s serious drought, heat and wind, is now producing bountiful pickings of spring greens and herbs, strawberries, and asparagus.
Maybe it’s just that I’m getting used to cooking for one–one whose appetite varies widely depending on whether I’ve managed to find middle gear for the day, or whether I’ve run fast and hard and my energy has crashed. In the former case, playing with and eating food seems like fun; in the latter, neither the playing nor the eating are worth the effort.
Yogurt cheese, a soft, spreadable and tangy cheese that's much tastier--and healthier--than cream cheese
Whatever the reason, this week I made the first batch of yogurt since last November, and when I lifted the jar out of the water bath and scooped up a thick, creamy and tangy spoonful, I wondered how I could have forgotten how delicious it was. From there, it was an easy project to make a pint of my favorite yogurt cheese, and then I was off and running.
Friends had invited me over for dinner, so I used the yogurt cheese to invent a new dessert: Stuffed Plums Go Ginger and Chocolate. It’s pretty simple, if you have a source of sweet dried plums (you could use prunes or dried apricots, but if you can find sweet dried plums, you’ll be glad you did).
Dried plum topped with ginger yogurt cheese and a toasted pecan half
Stuffed Plums Go Ginger and Chocolate
26 dried plum halves or whole prunes split down one side and flattened
1/2 cup yogurt cheese
1-1/2 T Mayan cocoa (cocoa with ground red chiles and cinnamon)
2 tsp fresh-ground ginger
4 tsp sugar
26 pecan halves, toasted
Divide yogurt cheese between two bowls. Mix Mayan cocoa into cheese in one bowl, adding 2 tsp sugar to sweeten. Mix ginger into cheese in other bowl, adding remaining 2 tsp sugar. Turn plum halves pit side up (make sure none have pits!) and flatten. Using a small spoon, put a dollop of one kind of cheese on each plum half, making sure to cover the fruit. Fill half the plums with the cocoa cheese and half with the ginger cheese. Press a pecan into the cheese on each plum. Arrange plum halves on a platter, serve, and enjoy the contrast between the two flavors of dessert cheese! (Serves six for dessert)
Here’s another easy recipe using yogurt cheese.
Pesto Quesadillas
8 corn tortillas (fresh ones are best)
1/2 cup yogurt cheese
1/4 cup pesto
Spread yogurt cheese on each tortilla, and then add a dollop of pesto and swirl it into the yogurt cheese. Arrange tortillas, yogurt cheese side up, on baking sheets; broil for two to three minutes, or until cheese mix is bubbling and has begun to turn golden at the edges. Remove from the oven, cool, fold in half, and serve. Yum!
A yogurt cheese and pesto quesadilla with a tossed salad from the kitchen garden
I ate my quesadilla with a simple tossed salad of mesclun picked from the garden (thank you, Renee’s Garden, for the “Paris Market” mesclun mix!), dressed with lemon-infused olive oil and red wine vinegar, and topped with dried cherries, a chopped hard-boiled egg (uber-local, thanks to friends Maggie and Tony’s chickens) and toasted slivered almonds.
It looks like my yen to cook is coming back. Not every day, but often enough that it feels good. I take that as a sign that I’m finding my rhythm in this new and unplanned-for role of Woman Alone. I hope Richard is smiling about that.
I’m kind of where you are, Susan; although I don’t have a “kitchen garden” (what all my grandparents called the food part) I have been buying fresh ingredients, organic if at all possible, and been cooking and creating delicious salads. (it’s all because of the low-tyramine diet for migrainses — no more frozen meals to pop into the microwave if I don’t feel like cooking; no lunch meat — horrible stuff anyway — but no bacon, ham, sausuage, corned beef or pastrami, either, and I miss those occasionally) It’s hard to cook for one, but if it’s something that will freeze, I make a larger amount and freeze it in single serving sizes. I also try to convince my sister to eat with me instead of swinging through the MacDonald’s drive-thru on the way home, but she’s a hard woman to change. If I can cook for us once a weekend, I’m doing well! I am trying to teach her how delicious vegetables are (although we both hate Brussels sprouts — it’s really truly a genetic thing; either you love them or the taste make you ill!) And she won’t eat eggplant or zucchini, no matter how I cook it! But there is a joy in mixing ingredients to make food that is both delicious and healthy. With the side benefits of fewer migraines, and weight loss! (My cooking is lower in calories than Lean Cuisine or Healthy Choice! I do admit that on those flat laid out days — which tomorrow will probably be, because I did too much today and the weather is changing — I eat cereal — but only whole grain cereal, with no sugar added, and with skim milk and fresh berries! I’ve ordered some blueberry bushes, because I couldn’t find them locally, but they apparently wiill come in the fall — that seems strange, but I guess the big nurseries know when to plant? I hope! A Woman Alone is only as alone as she keeps herself; you’ve lost half of what you were, but you can rebuild that half with what you do. This, I firmly believe! Blessings!
Lori, Good for you for finding your way to food that helps deal with some of your chronic health challenges. It’s so empowering to be able to help ourselves be healthier by taking control of our own daily habits. Food is a biggie for me because I struggle with eating as a way to “control” what’s happening in my life. I find that preparing my own meals from scratch means I get not only better-looking and tasting food, but like you, I have fewer health problems. And I’m more likely to entice myself to eat, but that’s another issue. Isn’t it fun to search out fresh, delicious and good-for-you ingredients and prepare lovely and yummy food? It’s another way to exercise our creativity and feel good about our life-choices. I love the idea that you are chipping away at your sister’s habit of stopping at Micky D’s on the way home instead of eating real food. I bet your cooking will change her habits eventually too! On the blueberries, fall is the best time to plant them here in the southwest because the soil stays warm enough that they can grow roots and get established before spring and heat return. Where you are, I’m not so sure. Where’s the nursery you ordered them from located? (BTW, when I can’t find something at a local nursery, I’ll often ask them if they can order it. Sometimes they can, and that way I get their help with planting advice and such.) Happy cooking and eating healthy food (and suffering fewer migraines and other symptoms)!
Susan, if you mean NOT eating in an effort to control your life, loss, situations or surroundings (because there is SO much we can’t control), then sit down, take a deep breath, and think about it. For a very long time I hated cooking for one. But freezer-to-microwave food is not the answer I thought it was. I am actually grateful for the migraines (!) because if not for them, I wouldn’t have found the low-tyramine diet, which is probably the healthiest diet I can have. I can’t have cheese, however, and it’s wishy-washy about yogurt. (I love yogurt. Really love it. I like to mix it with Grape Nuts in the morning — they have two ingredients: cracked wheat, barley — and add some fruit to the mix, and YUM. I also love it as that mid-afternoon snack I’m supposed to eat to keep my blood sugar up but not too far up) I ordered the bushes from a nursery in Michigan, since I couldn’t find them here. I suspect they’ll do fine there, and they should know the best time to plant them, I guess, since it’s probably colder there than here, at least if they’re on a Great Lake shore! If I’d found any locally that had been started locally, I’d have gotten those. I’m finding a lot of tomato,different pepper, cucumber, and even seed potatoes locally, but it’s too late for all of them now, unless I plant the first three in pots, and I don’t have a place for them yet. Next year, my garden is expanding, and including those things, and in a pot, mint (since it tends to take over). And early early lettuce! I’d like to have my own variety of “greens” from organice seeds or starts! But I’m glad that you’ve started creating meals — your yogurt cheese sounds yummy — and that you’re eating both from the local deli and from your bursting garden. Cooking is creative, and feeing someone else with your cooking (like my sister!) is also very satisfying. Even eating my own cooking is so much better than eating a frozen entree or cereal for supper! Keep after it. Fewer migraines, more energy, weight loss (saw the doc on Wed. and my blood pressure was almost too low, so no more blood pressure medicine! And my blood sugar that was high in January is now back in the low-normal range, where it always used to be!) — all good things, and I’ve found a “diet” (as in, a way to eat; not specificly FOR weightloss) that suits me better every day. A good way to cook and eat. You’re a mentor in more ways than you know, Susan. Morning writing is going well, too. Blessings, and healing thoughts. Grief has its own time schedule, and pops back up at the most unexpected time, but I know that you will journey through it and with it.
Lori, You are really amazing. That you found the energy to take the positive step of cooking for yourself and that your low tyramine diet has helped to the extent that you’re off the blood-pressure medicine is huge. I think it’s hardest to make lifestyle changes when we’re in fatigue-land, or grief-land or any of those phases where just making it through the day is slogging through mud. But making positive changes is most important in those times when we have the least energy for it, because doing something we can have control over, deciding to put ourselves first, can make a huge difference, as you’ve found. I’m doing that in my own way, and finding delight in the kitchen garden and cooking my own simple means is part of that. Oh, and I’m glad the morning pages are going well for you too. Yay!
I’m intrigued & encouraged by your post, Susan. My desire for food, much less preparing it, has disappeared almost completely since Harold’s death. I need to force myself to eat most days. For a short while, I tried fast food but my body just flat out rebelled. I’ve eaten out some with friends but nothing much appeals. I finally went to Whole Foods & Trader Joe’s and bought some healthier prepared meals, small portions, that I put in the freezer and can pop into the microwave or toaster oven. Tried to pick out things I really like in hopes that I would be more tempted. Moderately successful. Truthfully I eat a lot of yogurt, one thing that seems to go down well. I’m still not unpacked & completely settled so my days are busy but nothing seems to stimulate my appetite. I know in my heart that I will find a new normal one of these days. Meanwhile, it’s still difficult to have any kind of routine. Your writing about your journey continues to inspire & encourage me. Thank you for sharing.
Sid, I think of you every day and my heart goes out to you. I think the not having much appetite is completely normal for now, and it’s also a way to listen to your body and honor what you hear. So if yogurt works for now, let yourself eat lots of it. After the huge stresses you’ve had in the last months with Harold’s journey, your “gastrointestinal consortium” as the docs call it, the 50,000 species of microbes that keep your gut healthy, is probably depleted and needs the microbes in the yogurt to help rebuild a healthy community. I recall reading once that 80 percent of the receptors that rely messages to our immune system are in our gut, and because of that, those legions of microbes who are our partners in digesting our food and keeping us healthy are critical to keeping our immune systems healthy too. So honor your body’s voice about food and what feels good, and you’ll be helping yourself heal. I’m sending love and Light your way….
My heart is with you too. You will find your new normal, and what you find yourself eating now may be just what you need. Susan is an inspiration!
Thank you, Lori. I’m humbled….
‘Tis indeed a sad paradox that we feel less incline to eat (never mind cooking) when we’re depleted/wiped-out/whatever, which is when we really need nutritious and sustaining food. At such times, it seems such a chore.
Then the garden explodes, mandating that we put its bounty to use. We throw together the simple thing, and rediscover how much it rivals even the locavore deli across the street. Hopefully, this becomes an upward spiral, building upon itself, leading to a return of nourishing cooking/eating.
To everything/turn, turn, turn/there is a season…
A return to the season of harvesting, cooking-play, yummy-ing, perchance?
PS. By the way, was it ever decided what to call the positive version of a “viscous cycle”? (Like the “upward spiral” I mentioned?)
Eduardo, I think “upward spiral” is a good phrase for the opposite of vicious cycle (not “viscous cycle”!). It’s interesting that we don’t have a popular phrase for the good kind of self-reinforcing change, only one for the bad kind. What does that say about our culture? (Rhetorical question!) There is definitely a season to everything, but it’s not as simple as that either. I think any journey with grief, tragedy, illness or other serious difficulty involves moments of enlightenment along the way, times when we learn something that illuminates the darkness so that we see our troubles in new ways. We learn, we walk on, and often we need to re-learn. But that’s okay. Each time we see the world anew and eventually the darkness eases, the season turns, we find joy in life again….
Wise man, Eduardo. I like the upward spiral too! I think, after a long dark journey, that I’m in mine too. Life is lighter.
Congrats on that transition to the upward spiral, Lori. That’s huge!