Internets to the rescue! Inspired by this recipe from the NYTimes and this one from A Sweet Life, I tossed some eggplant cubes and zucchini spears in olive oil, salt, and lemon juice and roasted them at 350 until just tender. Toss again with more olive oil, chopped mint, and capers, and stick ‘em back in the fridge overnight to chill. This morning I added some ground cherries because I am obsessed.

The even bigger winner, though, was a cold zucchini yogurt soup inspired by this recipe from Tobias Cooks! Having no onion, I fried a bit of garlic (ok, a lot of garlic) in olive oil, then added zucchini chunks. Having no potato, I used a parsnip instead for the starchy thickener. Add water to the whole thing (and some white wine, to make up for the fact that I also had no veggie stock) and boil until the veggies are blendable.

I toasted a handful of almonds and ground them in the food processor. Then I added the boiled veggies and pureed, using a little almond milk because it looked too thick. Finally, some salt and a couple of big spoonfuls of Greek yogurt, and back to the fridge for chilling. YUM. It’s definitely parsnippy, so I’d like to try it with the more retiring potato flavor next time. I bet it would also be good with mint, but as I have enough mint in my yard to put a cup of it in everything I cook until winter, I decided some self-control was in order.

Soup, salad, gluten-free Cracklebred crackers, leftover blueberry hazelnut bars made with gluten-free flour, my hilariously excellent picnic backpack (thanks, Redbeard’s mom!), a truly excellent production of Othello and some smooches… a perfect picnic.

One of my Summer Projects is to get a handle on vegan and/or gluten-free baking. (Yes, I realize that summer in Boston is perhaps not the ideal time to turn on the oven ever, let alone on a weekly basis, but this is when I have free time. Insert inappropriate joke about naked cooking here.)

Anyway, this afternoon I made a half-batch of the Almond Pie Crust from Jennifer Katzinger’s Flying Apron’s Gluten-Free & Vegan Baking Book. The fat she calls for is palm oil. I raised my eyebrows at this, because I know palm oil — I didn’t eat a damn thing cooked without the stuff for the entire month I spent in Ghana. It’s tasty, but the flavor is distinctive and overpowering, and it turns everything bright orange.

But fortunately I brought a bottle home with me from Ghana (how many people can say they’re cooking with local palm oil in New England?), and I was determined to resist my usual recipe-flouting instincts, because how else will I learn?

The resulting “dough,” made with mostly brown rice flour and some almond meal, was super-soft, more like batter. I added some sorghum flour (I’d run out of rice flour) until it was workable. I pressed it into two mini-tart tins and then decided to freeze them for 15 minutes while the oven preheated even though the recipe didn’t call for it. I was worried they’d melt before cooking if I put them in the oven as soft as they were, but palm oil firms up very quickly in the cold.

I pre-baked the empty shells on the lowest rack at 375 until the tops were fairly dark, then added strawberry pieces, which I’d mixed with sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, and cornstarch. Back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so.

The verdict: The texture is pleasantly light and crumbly, though sturdy enough to hold its shape coming out of the tart mold. It wouldn’t roll, so it wouldn’t do for a double-crust pie or galette. The tartness of the strawberries sort of works with the earthy sweetness of the palm oil. But the whole thing sure is bright orange and palm-y! Next time I’ll try it with Earth Balance fake butter. Maybe the dough would even be rollable if I used a hardened fat rather than a liquid oil.

3/4 c vanilla soy milk
4 egg whites (You can get a carton of just the whites! It’s brilliant!)
juice from 1/2 lemon
1 qt. home-canned peach slices in light syrup
2 c white flour
1 1/2 baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Glaze: juice of other 1/2 lemon
2 heaping T sugar

Preheat oven to 350.

Whisk together the first 3 ingredients. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Dump the wet ingredients into the dry, then add the can of peaches, juice and all. Stir quickly, just until it’s all combined.

Pour into a 9×5 loaf pan greased with a little Earth Balance fake butter. Bake for an hour, or until it’s done (toothpick in the middle comes out clean, you know the drill).

Whisk glaze ingredients together. When bread comes out of the oven, poke the top all over so the glaze will soak in, then pour it over the bread. (This would be better if I’d had more than one lemon in the house; oh well.)

It did rise (…ish), but it came out with a custardy, heavy texture; no crumb at all — maybe ’cause there’s almost no fat? I brought it to a last-day-of-school party for my 7th grade advisees, and it was generally deemed “weird” but with a good peachy flavor.

The winners:

We are huge fans of Pamela’s gluten-free mixes. Her pancakes are a breakfast staple, and I actually prefer them to regular pancakes at this point. Mix up some pancake batter with egg whites only, cook it thin on a griddle with oil instead of butter, and voila: crepes! We filled them with a stir-fry of spice-rubbed tofu, green beans, red peppers, and a lot of garlic.

Yesterday morning we used the same pancake mix to make muffins: again with the egg whites (which might be better for some gluten-free baking, actually, as heaviness can be a problem with non-wheat flours and losing the yolk lightens things up), and some stewed rhubarb for the liquid. Good stuff! We rounded out breakfast with a tofu scramble, including asparagus and roasted red peppers (and S’s suggestion of turmeric to make it look more like eggs, which I didn’t think mattered to me but turned out to be oddly comforting).

Last night’s dinner was corn pasta with pesto, and Stuff From My Freezer Gazpacho. Tonight’s was white rice with pesto, asparagus, roasted peppers, and chard. Are we sensing a theme?

The losers:

Today was not a good day for baking.

This morning’s “biscuits” (made from a non-Pamela’s GF bread roll mix, with baking powder instead of yeast as the rising agent) were weird little grey spongy patties that tasted like baked matzoh balls.

And tonight’s lemon “cake” (an assortment of flours, plus silken tofu) had yummy batter, but baked into a dense, slightly gritty bar with the flavor of a lemon Girl Scout cookie. It was improved by the addition of a ton of rum-based simple syrup and some strawberries from my garden, but then, what wouldn’t be? (A, J, and Roommate S were kind enough to profess enjoyment.)

I’m trying to see the whole grand Dietary Restriction Experiment as like writing a villanelle — the restriction of the form leads to greater creativity. Or if I’m in a less optimistic mood, soy pesto pesto soy, repeat ad nauseum. Is the glass half-full or -empty? Either way, it likely contains tofu.

After peak oil, when the large-scale food distribution system breaks down, we can dig a bunch of plastic water bottles out of the nearest landfill and hang them in our windows to grow food! Or I might try it now, because it’s awfully damn cool.

(Thanks, Weekend Edition!)

Nine months after effectively banning most fund-raising food sales in city schools, a city panel will vote Wednesday on an amended regulation that will allow student groups to sell items like Pop-Tarts and Doritos during the school day, but not brownies, zucchini bread or anything else homemade.

Ostensibly this is about “health”: they have a whole list of proposed regulations about percentage of calories from fat and allowable ingredients. It could also be about allergies. (My theory, based on the sort of things I’ve heard people say at my school, is that it’s at least partly about sanitation: who knows what could be going on at those other parents’ houses? At least if it’s pre-packaged I know it’s safe!)

Shall we count the things that piss me off here? “Childhood obesity” is a bogus bogeyman. Let’s teach our kids to make healthy choices about their diets rather than micromanaging everything. A list of ingredients and a portion size doesn’t make something healthy — in fact, I would argue that, whatever the fat content, brownies made from scratch are healthier than Pop-Tarts because they’re made out of actual food ingredients pronounceable by human beings. Baking together at home is an educational family bonding activity; stopping by Costco is not so much. And for crying out loud, can schools stop [insert gross metaphor here that I won't use because this is a family site] huge corporations already?

That’s five things, and I didn’t even include my made-up sanitation theory!

2. From Wired: How to Raise Racist Kids.

Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”

Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.

Or at least, so says the authors of a recent book researching how kids think about race.

3. And back to food… The Anti-Fridge

While the wall-mounted “anti-fridges” are pretty cool, I’m not sure they’re so practical for large quantities. My current eating lifestyle involves very little refrigeration in production or transportation, but lots in my home. Turns out you have to chill a lot of produce if you a) live in New England, b) don’t buy produce except from the farmer’s market, and c) want to eat something other than root veggies all winter. But it does concern me to be so dependent on refrigeration… clearly I’ve found my next Crazy Hippie Food Project!

The best thing about this link, though, is that it introduced me to You Are What You Eat by Mark Menjivar, “a series of portraits made by examining the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the United States.” It’s not quite as amazing as Material World: A Global Family Portrait, but darn close.

(Thanks for the links, Martini-Corona!)

The leeks were the start of this, because there were lots of them and they were lurking in my crisper, getting brown and wrinkly. Fortunately if you peel off the outer layer, they’re just fine. Chop ‘em up, leave ‘em in a bowl of water to sift the dirt out.

The standard thing to put in this is potatoes, but standard is boring. The red potatoes do need to get used up, though — they’re sending up alien tentacles and getting soft (though that doesn’t matter because I’m boiling them anyway); red potatoes aren’t so good for storage, it turns out. Wash and chop about 6 small ones. Note to self: come up with more ways to use red potatoes in the very near future.

That monster celeriac would free up a lot of space in my fridge, and add a nice clean taste to the soup. In it goes, along with 3 apples I got from the school Dining Center today. They’re local, but too mushy for eating raw and too small to cut up large-scale for baking, so I got sent home with a huge bag. (Uh, anyone feel like making applesauce this weekend?)

Oh, and there’s a beet. A very tiny wrinkly beet that I was going to throw in the compost, except why not add it? It’s still jewel-red on the inside.

Saute the leeks and then everything else in a couple of tablespoons of butter, then add 5 cups of water (enough so the chunks are not quite covered) and simmer about 20 minutes, until the veggies are soft.

Now to make it taste like something. Salt, and… I’d originally been thinking rosemary, but that’ll be weird with the celeriac. End up deciding on a couple of big globs of the local sweet brown rice miso, because I’m obsessed with it. Oddly, it’s really good. If I were less lazy/hungry, I’d puree it now, but instead I’m just going to eat it. With a dollop of sour cream on top, because I happen to have some (though in retrospect maybe not next time with the miso).

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1.5 c flour mix*
3 T sweet rice flour
2 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
9 T cold butter, cut into cubes
1 large egg
1.5 T lemon juice

Make sure food processor is really, actually clean of wheat flour, as opposed to just masquerading as clean. Mix dry ingredients in the food processor, then add butter and process until it’s the size of small peas (which is what you always do with pie crust). Be weirded out by egg in pie crust, but shrug and add egg and lemon juice and pulse until the dough starts to come together.

See that the dough is failing to come together as advertised, and start adding ice water until it can actually be pressed together into a ball. Make two balls, put them in tupperware, and chill in the fridge until it’s pie-making time.

Preheat oven to 400. Sprinkle rice flour on a cutting board. Attempt to roll out the dough. Have it crumble all over the place. Give up and press it into the pie plate with your fingers. Dump in filling — in this case, apple slices mixed with brown sugar, molasses, and cinnamon. (These were the last of the fall apples. Turns out Honeycrisps really do last forever in the fridge! Thanks, Tommy Nicewicz!)

Notice that S, who is more patient than you are, has managed to work the rest of the dough enough that it actually rolls. Yay! Unfortunately, there isn’t enough of it to cover the whole pie. Break his nicely rolled dough into ice-floe-like chunks all over the apples. Bake the pie for 15 minutes on the bottom rack, turn the heat down to 375, then bake for another half hour on the middle rack.

Wheat-eater and non-wheat-eater agreed: it tasted like pie! Or, you know, it tasted like molasses-y apples surrounded by crunchy butter, which is more or less what I want from my pie.

*Yes, I used a commercial flour blend, in this case Beth’s All-Purpose Baking Flour from Gluten-Free Pantry, because that’s what Harvest sold me. Using a mix offends my from-scratch sensibilities, though, so next time I will track down enough damn flours and mysterious powders whose names end in “gum” to make my own.

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Pre-Made Meals
3 servings + 1 large IF** tomato, kale, & white bean soup w/ rosemary
1 IF + 1 large IF spicy carrot peanut soup
1 IF + 1 large IF corn chowder (add cream & cheese)
1 large IF Greek stew
1/2 large IF mystery (matzoh ball?)
2 large IF + 1 IF ratatouille
1 large IF sweet potato coconut soup
1 IF + 1 serving Balti roast veggie paste (add coconut milk or cream)
1 IF mystery (green beans & basil…?)
1 large IF curried roast cauliflower & eggplant puree
2 IF Moosewood Indian vegetable coconut soup
2 large IF + 1 IF moussaka w/ beef
1/2 lasagna

Frozen Veggies
5 zucchini
1 bag beet & radish greens
3 big bags + 2 small bags chard
2 bags corn
1 big bag + 1 sm. bag + 1 qt. jar green beans
1 bag peas
1 qt. + 4 pts. + 1 serving tomatoes
1 big bag + 1 sm. bag roasted red peppers
1 sm. bag roasted jalapenos & poblanos
1 qt. + 1 IF parsnip/celeriac puree
1 qt. + 1 12-oz. sweet potato puree

Frozen Fruits
4 1/2 bags blueberries
14 halved plums (mostly Black Amber)
4 bags raspberries
3 bags blackberries
1 qt. golden raspberries

Frozen Meat
1 pkg. Stillman’s sweet Italian sausage
1 pkg. Austin breakfast sausage
1 pkg. Austin garlic & cheese sausage
(3 sausages ea.)

Refrigerated Fruits/Veggies
3 purple potatoes
4 turnips
11 parsnips
1/2 red onion
2 green cabbage
1 red cabbage
4 sweet potatoes
4 radishes (assorted varities)
5 little beets
1 big beet
4 celeriac
1 big bag carrots
13 leeks
1 bunch kale
1 big cauliflower
12 apples (mostly Honeycrisp)
a few hen-of-the-woods mushrooms

Dried
2 big bags apples
2 bags peaches
1/2 bag cantaloupe
2 sm. bags plums
1 container strawberries

“Root Cellar” Ingredients
5 red onions
13 yellow onions
32 1/2 heads garlic
5 butternut squash
3 potatoes

Canned
3 qts. + 1 pt. peach pie filling
2 qts. peach & plum pie filling
1 pt. Deborah’s pickled watermelon rinds
1 pt. + 2 12-oz. heirloom tomato salsa
1 12-oz. last year’s heirloom tomato salsa
3 12-oz. + 2 1/2-pt. peach-cucumber salsa
1 pt. + 2 12-oz. + 2 1/2-pts. + 2 4-oz. salsa verde
1 1/2-pt. Liz’s Concord grape jam
1 pt. last year’s canned blueberries
2 12-oz. last year’s applesauce
1 pt. Deborah’s marinara
3 qts. + 2 pts. tomatoes
1 qt. peach & plum syrup
1 12-oz. + 5 1/2-pts. + 1 4-oz. apple butter
2 12-oz. honey plum jam
1 4-oz. last year’s peach ginger jam
1 4-oz. last year’s apple maple jam

Other
3 cubes mint pesto
30 cubes basil pesto w/ walnuts
12 cubes cilantro pesto w/out nuts
6 cubes spicy cilantro pesto
10-12 basil pesto w/out nuts
20 cubes garlic scape pesto
1 sm. container + 1 IF heirloom tomato salsa
1 IF heirloom tomato salsa w/ cilantro
1 sm. IF tomatillo salsa
1 large IF veggie broth
1 large IF margarita mix
4 Fiore di Nonno mozzarella
2 classic plain goat cheese
1 cardamom & orange goat cheese
1 garlic & basil goat cheese
sm. amt. bacon fat
beer butter
raspberry-lemon ice cream

* The background on my grand experiment: I don’t buy produce in the winter. I dry, can, and freeze what I can from the farmer’s market until it closes at Thanksgiving, and then I bumble along supplementing all of that with dairy, eggs, and dry goods until June.

This is my 3rd winter. Year I ended with a lot of tomato and potato soup. Year II I learned my lesson and bought a chest freezer, and my winter was far more delicious. Now I feel like I’ve got it down to a science, but because doing the same things every year would be boring, this summer I’m getting a pressure cooker so I can start canning my soups, thereby freeing up more freezer space for other things. (Um, make that “for my beleaguered roommate.”)

** IF stands for “Indian Food” — Indian take-out containers are the world’s best plastic food storage, so most of my frozen stuff ends up in them. I haven’t bothered to measure how much they actually contain; “IF” and “large IF” make such handy units!

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I immediately informed Sherman Market, the little market just up the street from me that sells (almost) only local goodies. And just this week they announced that the miso had arrived! (When I went in this morning and made a beeline for the miso, they said, “Hey, are you Sam?”) How’s that for service?

So I picked up a jar of Sweet-Tasting Brown Rice Miso and a brick of my favorite tofu, made by 21st Century Foods across the city in Jamaica Plain. I cut the tofu into cubes and fried it in a pot (because I like the texture of fried tofu better than steamed/boiled), then added a couple of blobs of miso, a sliced onion from my pantry and the last of the (slightly pale and sad but still edible) kale from November.

Per the wise suggestion of a Sherman Market employee, I boiled some water and poured it directly over everything, so the kale steamed (and turned a nice perky green again!), but didn’t over-cook. Yum! All-local miso soup (well, ok, except for the original soybeans).

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