beauty & bounty

Green bean, potato, tomato pesto salad - yum!

Raw desserts.... Apricot chew bars with pepitas & coconut

Raw thumbprint cookies made with sunflower seed butter, almonds, oats, dates and wild mustang grape jam

Goat cheese and tomato jam toasts

Almond cake with whipped cream and strawberries = A very happy birthday boy.

Brooklyn farmer's market!

farm lust!

This weekend, much to my delight, I discovered that my best girlfriends were also consumed with farm lust! We salivate at the idea of growing vegetables, making our own compost, milking goats and sitting down to a table of VERY local and beautiful food. The ability to truly understand and value where that meal came from. We are giddy at the idea of animals and soil, of planting seeds and picking fruit, of rolling pastures and lush overgrown gardens. Canning tomatoes, homemade jam, and fresh churned butter? I think it might be time for a cold shower...

Eat your heart out, Monsanto frankenseeds. My green zebras taste like sunshine.

Maybe its too much time in suburban waste land, of mindless consumerism and a feeling of - how much more out of touch could we really be? Maybe we are sick of our televisions telling us what to think, beauty magazines telling us that nothing in life is more important than size 2 mini skirts, or the realization that money really does make the world go round? But hey, I think we want off the merry-go-round. It's making us sick, and its melting the polar ice caps, and lets face it, our priorities are totally out of wack. Unique to our age group, we are also growing up part of the generation that asks the previous "What the f*** were you thinking?" And HOW DID WE GET HERE? And how will we ever get back to a simpler life, more connected to each other, the earth and the life we were granted? I can't say that everyone in my age group falls in line with this thinking, but I feel a movement stirring... in my bones... and I like it.

Fabulous trends like roof top gardens, seed exchanges, farmers markets, and a belief in the healing power of local organic produce is reason enough to keep us farm lusts optimistic. We want to escape the realities of modern life, the nuclear waste, the impending environmental catastrophe, the smoke stacks, the burried by products of oil refinement, and the stupid SUV's that take up two parking spots at the grocery store. We reject the obnoxious entitlement issues that manifest-destiny-esque mentality has given Americans, and our international bad rap its given us. We are getting fat, lazy and mindless, and if we don't do something now, we are going to materialize into a pixar movie where robots are left to clean up an uninhabitable planet, "wall-eeeeee!"

Farming is hard, you have to wake up really early, you get dirty and sometimes, even though you did everything you were supposed to -- your crop sucks and your tomatoes get blight! You have to milk twice a day, and you have to shovel shit. But, no other lifestyle can truly offer you first hand experiences in the circle of life. Where your animals mow your lawn with their teeth while fertilizing your soil, where the compost of your biodegradables nourishes your garden patch and makes your zucchini taste like gold. On a farm, everything moves in a circular motion as it should. In a modern consumer driven society, the only direction is forward at 100 mph and there are no rear view mirrors.

Local food production will save the world.

spice girl

So, in a deviation from my usual work out routine of getting up and making coffee, I recently began lifting weights. Not entering a female body building competition just yet, I decided after a winter of hibernation and the over consumption of cheese and wine, I need a little bit more spring in my step. So in an attempt to eat more protein and less crap, I started drinking something called Vega. Ah! It's ALIIIIIIIVE!

Its a challenge to find veggie proteins that don't taste like saw dust. I dig Vega for its protein and nutrition, certainly not its taste. This dish on the other hand is healthy, veggie, and has protein rich seeds + legumes to boot. Amidst the chaos of life, I found refuge in the kitchen this week. So here's how you can add some spice to your life:

Potato Chickpea Salad (Serve hot, or cold over greens)

Potato Mixture:
1 medium onion, chopped (1 cup) + 1 tbs olive oil for saute
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced peeled ginger
2 tablespoon curry powder
1 tsp ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 c sun dried tomato paste
1 1/2 tbs mango chutney
2 large sweet potatoes diced + boiled (until softened but still firm, this isn't a recipe for mashed potatoes!)
2 large red potatoes diced + boiled
1 large green apple, diced small

Make chickpeas separately:
1 tablespoon olive or canola oil
1 (19-ounce) can chickpeas, rinsed
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
dash of salt

Serve with a tablespoon of raw sunflower seeds on top, and some chopped cilantro if you have it.
(I didn't have any cilantro so its only garnished with raw pumpkin seeds in the photo below.)

Saute onions till soft, 5 minutes over medium heat, then add ginger + garlic. Saute 2 minutes, then add spices, toss onions to coat in spice, saute one minute then add the sun dried tomato paste + chutney, scrape bottom of pan, use the the paste + chutney to pick up all the flavor. Saute one minute. If it gets too dry you can add broth or water to make it saucier. Or, if you do want it to be a cold dish (salad) you can wait until this mixture has cooled, and add 1 1/2 c of plain yogurt and some fresh green onion (I didn't want any dairy in mine). -- After the mix has cooked, before it dries out, remove from heat and add the potatoes (drained) + apple.

To cook chickpeas saute them in the oil, add spices and cook for about 5 minutes. Mix with potato mixture OR add it atop when serving. Delicious over a bed of spinach that has been tossed in lemon and oil. I served it up with some sauted rainbow swiss chard. ENJOY!