back at home, at least temporarily

I’ve been away on a work trip to Zimbabwe, my apologies for the silence. It’s not going to get better very soon, as it’s going to be busy a while longer. But for now, a list of the things I have seen Zimbabwean women carrying on their heads. No hands. It is amazing and awesome and I am envious of this skill.

large sack of grain
small grocery sack tied into parcel
crate of tomatoes
plastic coke crate filled with stuff
large sack of laundry or soft stuff
large rollaboard
regular suitcase
duffel bag
large plastic tote bag
tall yellow plastic bucket slightly smaller than gatorade cooler
green plastic bucket
cardboard box the size of case of paper towels

food deserts

I was browsing around 5 Dollar Dinner (a worthwhile spot, btw, alternately inspiring and depressing) and found a link to this article about Walgreen’s efforts to bring fresh produce and other identifiable foods to neighborhoods in Chicago considered to be “food deserts.”

There’s a lot of debate about the causes and most effective cures for the obesity and poor nutrition that runs rampant in America at present. I think these are all worthy discussions to have, for certain, but I believe that setting all the other factors aside — single income folks with no time to cook, our taste for sugar, freedom of choice, all the hot button ideas — the first step for us is to at least make the choice available for consumers.

You want someone to buy a raw vegetable and take the risk and investment of time to cook it themselves? Then you damn well better put that raw vegetable within a mile of their home.

It is too easy to forget that food deserts are real, and many of the people living in them have no experience with anything else. For me, I grew up in the sticks, and though I didn’t know what hummus was until I went away to college, we grew our own vegetables in the summertime and the supermarkets near us had the basic meats and vegetables of mainstream America — and a few from the Polish and Puerto Rican immigrant communities. I went to college in an affluent part of Boston, and there we could buy just about anything. It wasn’t until I moved to Chicago that I encountered any real absence of basic food.

The first neighborhood where I camped out in an empty apartment owned by friends of friends had one brand-new Dominic’s supermarket, and I was terrified to discover that in its gleaming white expanses there was NO chicken of any kind and no vegetables that looked like anything you might even consider eating. The only thing that seemed edible in there was the Mexican foods, so I bought eggs and chorizo and tortillas and lived on chilaquiles for a month until I moved to a better neighborhood.

Then when I was considering buying a condo, everything in my price range was either in Humboldt Park or Garfield Park. Had I made the purchase, I am sure I would have chosen Humboldt Park, because there were restaurants and bodegas there on most blocks with actual food in them, while Garfield Park was a blank wasteland of boarded up storefronts, check cashers, liquor stores and fast food. Sure, I like J&J fried fish too, but you can’t really live on it. No supermarkets for several miles, and the public transit coverage was spotty to start with. There may have been some small groceries, but I didn’t run across them on my visits. Garfield Park has beautiful apartment stock and the park itself is fantastic, but to get food I would have needed a car and a whole lot of time.

For people who have neither, and who furthermore have very little time or cash to sink into meal prep, the first step we have to take is making it a little bit less monumental an undertaking in the first place. Kudos to Walgreen’s for at least trying, and I’d very much like to see some stats on how it’s working.

easy, healthy, cheap

I made something last night to use up the last bit of cornmeal mix that I bought in NC, and it reminded me of the yummier 1970s random-ingredient casseroles of my youth. It’s easy, and cheap, and full of veggies, so y’all might like it.

Dice up a red bell pepper and half an onion, saute. When it starts to sweat, add a pound of ground beef and brown it with a bunch of mexican spice mix or chili powder or what have you. Be generous, this tends to be bland once it’s finished — I wished I had jacked up the flavor more in mine.

When the meat is almost done, add a drained can of corn and a drained can of pinto beans. Add some hot sauce if you feel like it. Add a can of diced or whole tomatoes cut up and their juice. Add salt to taste and more spice mix if you think it needs it.

Pour all this into a glass baking dish. Top with some grated cheese — I only had a tiny bit left, so perhaps more cheese would have made it more savory. Top that with prepared cornbread batter, and bake according to the cornbread directions.

cold weather cookery: Korean

I am on a massive Korean food jag. Has something to do with the deep freeze temps outside, and something more to do with the cold I am fighting off. And perhaps a little bit to do with the side trip I made to the H-Mart on the way home from a certification test I had to take for work, heh heh. But the craving was there before the H-Mart trip; that was just enabling.

The refrigerator case at H-Mart had a little tub of pre-seasoned various greens and mushrooms that one can mix in with rice to make bibimbap. I added a grated carrot that cooked in the heat of the rice, and a bit of hamburger scrambled with minced garlic and soy sauce, plus of course the fried egg on top. And ssamjang made by mixing commercial ssamjang with some “sauce for soup” that is a bit spicier, plus a touch of agave syrup and a couple tablespoons of sherry vinegar (thank you, David Chang, you studmuffin you).

I pillaged the pan chan selection in that refrigerator case, too, making away with a seasoned nori, a cucumber pickle with sesame, a sliced omelet, and a pickled whole garlic in spicy sauce that I have been macking down with abandon in hopes of killing the bug I’m fighting. It’s quite strong but I gotta say, that sauce is nom.

I also got a tub of the young radish kimchi with greens, which is really excellent — I’ve had it before and it is a delightful mix of fresh and fermenty. Radishes and their greens are supposed to be chockablock with vitamins too and very good for you.

And then I hauled off and made a kimchi stew. Fried a bit of sidemeat (pork fat with pepper, basically) with an onion, then dumped in kimchi, a bottle of clam juice, 2 bottles of water, and a spoonful of that spicy sauce for soup, a 1/2 tsp of sugar b/c the sauce had a bit of sugar in it too, and a tablespoon of coarse Korean red pepper powder. Simmered half an hour then dropped in a half package of tofu, sliced, and some Trader Joe’s frozen shrimp. Drizzled a little sesame oil over to serve. Based on Maangchi’s recipe on her site. There are not words for how good this is on a cold winter night, with some hot rice and pickley bits on the side.

I also did a congee with some of the leftover vegetables and some Japanese sweet potato that came out pretty awesome. I love hot congee with lots of stuff in it when I am feeling poorly.

I took a break for a Chinese-style chicken and oyster mushroom stir fry because they had adorable packets of oyster mushrooms on sale for $2.99. And we’ll probably eat the leftovers of that next week as a pan-fried noodle because they also had packets of pre-cooked yellow noodle that were irresistible to a foodwhore magpie.

Sushi tonight, most likely, as part of Nerd Date Night. (Wooo, Tron Legacy!) But then back to more kimchi stew, I think.

winter salad

Scraping the bottom of the barrel for a green or green-like vegetable after a long stretch of not grocery shopping, I did the following:

Mix shredded green cabbage (bagged from Trader Joe’s works fine) with a grated carrot, some diced kosher dill pickle, ground black pepper and a drizzle of the pickle brine.

Let it sit 15 mins or more and it makes a pretty decent tangy side for whatever you happen to be eating, in my case broiled chicken thigh and rice.

weirdly bracing

Craving something a little extra after lunch today, I put two spoonfuls of cocoa into a mug; added generous dashes of cinnamon, clove and chipotle; and maybe two tablespoons of agave syrup. Then I stirred it up — the resulting paste was better than most truffles, but I resisted the urge to just eat it that way — and filled the mug with hot water.

The resulting drink was more spicy than anything, with the sweetness diluted down by the water, but it was warming and energizing and sharp. I feel great, without any of the creamy sluggishness that sometimes comes with a cocoa treat made with milk. Yum!

cook’s treat

I have been making pots of chicken soup for tallasiandude, who is feeling poorly this week. And since I have been buying whole chickens for that, I have had access to small amounts of chicken liver.

Normally what I do is just fry it up and glaze it with a little balsamic vinegar, which is lovely. But this time, since I’d just done that YESTERDAY (tallasiandude eats a LOT of soup when he’s sick), I decided I’d make some chopped liver, Jewish-deli-style.

So I fried some finely diced onion in a tablespoon of butter, put in 3 pieces of chicken liver once it was starting to brown, sprinkled in salt, and fried it till the onion was just about to burn, at which point I tipped in a little bit of sherry and let it cook till the liver was done and the liquid was syrupy. Then I put it into a bowl, ground on a little black pepper, and smushed it into a paste.

I just put some of that on a cracker just now, and it is HEAVEN.