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Going Green.

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As much as I love Christmas, I really love it when it is over.

I am not a Grinch, I swear.  In fact, we had a great Christmas.  It was fun to see our families, give great gifts, celebrate with friends and one of my favorite things this season was our tree.

We had a beautiful tree this year.  

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Adam and I had such a great time decorating it together earlier this month.  It was fun digging through our boxes of ornaments, smiling as we placed different memories on the branches and admiring the beauty all the very different pieces make when put together.

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I loved relaxing next to it every evening.

I loved it’s scent.  

And, I absolutely loved taking it down yesterday.

That and all the other Christmas decor.

My sister-in-law and I were talking yesterday and we agreed: It’s fun and exciting to put everything up for Christmas, but it is great to put it all away.

Relegating everything and anything red, green and glittery to the basement makes my home much more bare and beige, but it’s welcome.  

Looking at my living room, where the tree stood just yesterday, I feel clean and refreshed.

Which is exactly how I like every element in my life to feel this time of year.

I don’t think it’s ironic that the start of a new year comes just a week after Christmas.  Christmastime is the height of over indulgence, opulence, excitement while New Years is a fresh “reboot” back to simplicity, calm, routine… and veggies.

Thanks to all the resolutionists, this time of year you tend to hear a lot about juicing and “green” drinks.  I am by no means a green drink aficionado, but I do like them when I just feel like I need to bring my body a little balance or “reboot” after traveling or, say, sugar and cream filled holidays…?

Green Drinks get their name from their predominate dark, leafy green ingredients, like kale.

However, they also get their bad reputation from their predominate dark leafing green ingredients, like kale.

And, if you don’t know any better it is easy to understand why… Liquefied kale? Liquefied, uber healthy, RAW, kale?

Despite their reputation, these drinks can be delicious. I promise.

When flavors like pineapple, ginger, apples, and lemon are added they are actually pretty good. But, I also know another little trick to make liquefied kale more tolerable: Freeze it.

This whole summer and far into the fall our garden’s kale did so well. It was so easy to grow and produced tons of leaves. We were even enjoying the kale in the garden after the first few frosts and a small November snow squall. Weather like this would completely damage many other garden greens but it made the kale even better.

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The natural sugars in kale’s cell structure acts like an anti-freeze preventing any damage and making the sweetness in it’s taste much more predominate.

The same thing can happen in your own freezer making green drinks more delicious and colder (a really good thing…). It also is a great way for storing kale from the farmer’s market or garden for use throughout the winter. Kale is good for about twelve months in a freezer.

Freezing kale is a cinch.

Wash the kale leaves thoroughly, being sure to remove any dirt or bugs.

Remove the very tough center stem of the kale. Easy ways to do this is to either fold the leaf down the center or lay it flat and run the blade of a knife along the stem.

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Chop the leaves to smaller pieces and dry them completely. I use a salad spinner and paper towels.

Then, in a single layer, place kale pieces on a cookie sheet and freeze for twenty four hours. Once completely frozen I put the kale into dated freezer bags for easier storage.

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Frozen kale is great to have to winter pastas, soups, and, of course, refreshing Green Drinks.

I like this Green Drink Recipe, but I like just about anything Giada… Except not her recent news about her divorce from Todd!

… Thank goodness we still have Ina and Jeffrey.

Happy New Year!

 

Super Kale

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Since graduating in 2009, I have made a career in the food and beverage industry. And, in those five short years, the industry has seen a lot of trends come and go.

Cupcakes.

Food Trucks.

Craft Beer.

Bacon… anything.

Food trends are a fact of life. There will always be something that’s “hot.” So, restaurant’s are always working hard to stay ahead of the trend and discover the best way to style up classics like PB&J or to create the craziest hybrid treat. Cronuts, anyone?

But restaurants are very different from my side of the industry. Restaurant’s offer single experiences. I have always worked with cafeterias and personal chefs, the realm of the industry that focuses on everyday consumption.

Here, we encounter food trends, but they tend to be more nutrition based. In this part of the industry, we are providing our clients with their daily nutrients which is a little more personal than a one-time special occasion. Because of this, our clients are vocal about their wants.

Which is awesome. I love feedback from customers. But the strongest “trend” I have experienced in this side of the food and beverage industry is the Elimination Diet.

An Elimination Diet is when someone cuts something out of their diet. They are recommended by doctors to help determine allergies or food sensitivities, but some claim (… commonly celebrities) that they are a fast and easy way to loose weight.

You have heard of them. No sugar. No carbs. No dairy. No gluten. No corn. No solid food. No meat. No nuts.

This bothers me.

Here’s the deal, and no, I am not an RD, but so long as you don’t have a medical reason not to eat something I don’t think it’s a great idea to totally eliminate it from your diet.

Besides the facts that your friends (and next waitress) might be really annoyed with you hopping from one “non this” to the next “non that” diet and that you are more likely to slip up if you go totally cold turkey, it actually might not be good for you.

Carb free dieters are prone to constipation.

Getting rid of dairy in your diet can leave you at risk for osteoporosis or lower bone density later in life.

Going gluten free when not diagnosed with Celiac can actually wreck even more havoc on your digestive track and have you running to the bathroom often.

Elimination diets also often lead to “Yo-Yo-ing” (because they don’t last), causing emotional and physical stress and messing up a body’s fat to muscle ratio. Some also say the fluxing in body weight can make it easier to gain weight moving forward.

So, if you can eat anything you want count your lucky stars because there are many people that can’t for a host of medical reasons. (And, because carbs and cheese are delish.) Just practice moderation.

I often think that it would be awesome for the next food trend to be “What you SHOULD eat” not what you shouldn’t. Which is why I am a fan of the growing term, “Super Food.”

It helps people know more about nutrient dense foods that are really good for them. Because the term is so hot, it has brought these foods forefront and made them easily accessible.

And, if I had to name the hottest of the Super Foods I would have to go with kale. Kale is big. And it’s Super Food title is well earned. It’s full of vitamins, nutrients and anti-cancer causing properties.

What is undeserved is kale’s a pretty lousy reputation taste wise.

People complain of kale being bitter, which it can be raw if you don’t massage the leaves before eating them. I love to sauté the garden’s kale and this recipe is so easy but packed with a lot of my favorite flavors.

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Sauteed Kale
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Ingredients
  1. 1 tablespoon, plus one teaspoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil, divided
  2. 1 pound kale, ribs removed, chopped
  3. 1/2 cup water
  4. 2 cloves of garlic
  5. 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
  6. 3 teaspoon red wine vinegar
  7. salt
Instructions
  1. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a skillet or dutch oven over medium heat.
  2. Add kale and cook, tossing until bright green, about one minute.
  3. Add water and reduce heat to medium low. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally until kale is tender. About 13 minutes.
  4. Push kale to one side of the pan, add remaining teaspoon of oil to the empty side and cook garlic and crushed read pepper about 30 seconds.
  5. Stir to combine and remove from heat.
  6. Stir in vinegar and salt.
  7. Serve right away.
Bloom. https://www.theblogbloom.com/
Kale does so well in gardens throughout the fall. It will actually taste sweeter after frost. If you want kale in your fall garden, this week is a great time to get it started.

Kale in the garden.

Kale in the garden.

Cooking Like the Beekman Boys.

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After the first of the year, I was talking with a co-worker about cheese.

Embarrassingly, too common of a conversation for me.

She told me about this great wheel of cheese that her family had over the holidays. She said it was a combo of goat milk and cow milk. She also said the cheese looked totally crazy because it had a black rind made from ashes.

Incredibly interested, I asked, “So, what’s it called?”

“Beekman 1802 Blaak,” she said.

“Beekman, what?” I asked.

“Beekman 1802. It’s made by the Beekman Boys,” she said.

Reading the confused look on my face, she went on, “Oh my gosh, Claire. You don’t know the Beekman Boys? They are right up your alley with your big garden and food blog. You would love them!”

She told me that the Beekman Boys were partners from New York City who purchased a huge old home in upstate New York. They fell in love with living the country so they began raising goats and planted a large garden.

Now they have an online mercantile where you can purchase all sorts of kitchenware, garden tools, soaps made with goats milk and foods like the Blaak cheese.

I was intrigued. It did sound like I would love them.

She told me that they also had a book, The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir (P.S.),that tells the story of how they found their way from the city to the country. It also goes into detail about the first year of trying to get their goat milk soap business off the ground.

Adam and I were headed to Jamaica a few weeks later and I was in need of a good beach read. So, I hopped onto to Amazon and purchased The Bucolic Plague. It was a perfect, laugh out loud, easy read for the beach.

And, like my co-worker thought I would, I did fall in love with The Beekman Boys, Brent and Josh.

Since reading their memoir, I added their page to my likes on Facebook. I love staying up to date with new products that are constantly added to the online mercantile and any specials that they might be running. They also post beautiful, personal pictures of the house, their garden, and the goats.

It was on their Facebook page that I learned Williams-Sonoma was promoting their newest cookbook, The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Vegetable Cookbook: 100 Delicious Heritage Recipes from the Farm and Garden, with a cooking class in mid June. Williams-Sonoma often has cooking classes where they showcase a new cookbook or teach basic kitchen skills, such as knife skills.

I have always wanted to take one of the classes at Williams-Sonoma so I thought what would be better then this class featuring my new gardening idols.

Plus, their cookbook looked amazing and it came with the class.

Turns out I was the only person in Indianapolis who signed up for the class so I got a call from, Dottie, the instructor the day before the class. She said she would do a more hands on class versus a demo class, like it was originally supposed to be.

Obviously, I didn’t mind. In fact, I was even more excited.

I showed up the next evening ready to cook and wound up having a great time. Dottie was a wonderful lady and was full of so much knowledge about food and cooking. I loved hearing her stories of traveling in Europe and we made the connection that we were both Purdue sorority girls.

That night we made Kale Bruschetta, a Beet and Ricotta Salad, Eggplant “Meat” Balls, and a cucumber ice cream in a carrot cookie cup. All were recipes from The Beekman Boy’s new cookbook.

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The cookbook has fabulous photos of the Beekman home and garden throughout the seasons that are in line with the seasonal layout of the book. Majority of the recipes are vegetarian as they are designed to utilize produce that is available throughout the year in a garden like the one at their upstate home.

We didn’t plant eggplant and our cucumbers, carrots and beets are not ready yet. But, our kale looks great.

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I like have kale in the garden because it is incredibly healthy and tasty.  It is a great addition to salads and smoothies. I also like to make kale chips.

Growing kale is very simple.  I started a few heads of kale in the basement and transplanted the seedlings to the ground this spring. I also started a few seeds right in the ground to have more kale ready to eat at a different time than the seeds I started indoors. We plan to have more kale this fall as it is a hardy vegetable that can tolerate cooler temperatures. In fact, their leaves are even sweeter when exposed to colder temps.

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With our backyard garden kale looking awesome, I decided to share a bit of my fun night at Williams-Sonoma with Adam and recreated the Kale Bruchetta at home.

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I loved everything we made during the cooking class, but this bruchetta was definitely my favorite. I knew that Adam would love the salty, creamy kale topping too.

I cannot wait to try other recipes from the Heirloom Vegetable Cookbook. I have a feeling it will be a great resource for me for many, many years! Be sure to check it out!

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Kale Bruschetta
Yields 8
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Ingredients
  1. 2 Tbs. Olive Oil
  2. 1 garlic clove
  3. 2 anchovy fillets, finely chopped
  4. 6 ounces kale, stems and ribs removed
  5. pinch of salt
  6. 1/2 cup of water
  7. 2 Tbs. mayo
  8. 2 Tbs. grated Parmesan cheese
  9. 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Instructions
  1. Heat Olive Oil in a medium skillet over medium heat.
  2. Add garlic and anchovies. Cook stirring frequently until anchovies have melted, about two minutes
  3. Add kale, salt, and water. Cook until kale is tender and water has evaporated, stirring frequently.
  4. Remove kale from skillet and place on cutting board. When cool, finely chop.
  5. In a medium bowl combine the mayo, Parmesan, and lemon juice. Add the kale and stir to combine.
  6. Top eight pieces of toasted baguette or Bread crisps.
Notes
  1. Making bruschetta isn't hard. All you need is some oil and a baguette.
  2. However, there are lots of short cuts out there. Whole foods makes little bruschetta crisps and packages them. You can find them in their baked goods section. I used some bread crisps made by Stacy's.
  3. No one around here judges for making your life easier!
Adapted from The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Vegetable Cookbook
Adapted from The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Vegetable Cookbook
Bloom. https://www.theblogbloom.com/