Let's Make Pickled Vegetables

I'm not a big pickle eater. Loved them when I was a kid - the big, sour dills, and even then I preferred the crunchy kind.

But as I've gotten older, I've found the taste too tart, and mostly I've avoided them. I've considered making them myself, and I did pickle some beets last year. I also made some marinated vegetables for a buffet - spicy ones to go with Mexican food.

Then, last week, I had someone's homemade pickles, both sweet and sour.

Oh, boy. What I've been missing. Like anything else, Industrial Food has ruined our pickles for us. The homemade variety are outstanding.

But I didn't run out and buy a bunch of pickling cucumbers. No, if I can pickle cucumbers, I can pickle anything. And I've got vegetables to use up!

It bears saying that pickled foods are good for you. Pickles used to be served at the beginning of every dinner, as a way to prepare the digestive system for a meal. The bacteria in the vinegar are the kind that do good things for us.

And it's ridiculously easy to make.  Follow along.

Step 1: Cut up your vegetables. I used carrots, Armenian cucumbers (didn't have the pickling kind), red and yellow onions, and garlic. They're all tossed together in a big bowl.

Step 2: Stuff the veggies into jars. Really cram them in there. You'll still have lots of unused space.

Step 3: Here's the rest of the ingredients. Simple, right? This is a Cooking Light recipe for pickling zucchini, but I figured it would be good for anything. It's a not-too-sweet and spicy brine. I love the taste.

I'm afraid I can't find the recipe online, but it was in the August issue for this year. For 4 cups of vegetables, boil 1 cup of vinegar, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tsp. mustard seeds, 3/4 tsp red pepper flakes, and 3/4 tsp salt. Just bring it to a boil, then pour it into the jars. I had to quadruple the recipe for what I had.

The result: gorgeous, delicious, crunchy vegetables!

Cauli-flower

My friend Nicole has a thing for roasted cauliflower. I have tried do this, but never got more than an "eh" reaction. I just can't seem to get into cauliflower, certainly not with Nicole's passion.

Mind you, I've eaten Nicole's roasted cauliflower. Somehow, she manages a sweep of magic that eludes me. Hers was marvelous. Mine is "eh."

I do like it steamed.

Truly. A full head, washed and placed in the steamer basket and cooked to a fork-denting softness. Brush a little olive on it, sprinkle generously with salt and pepper...

It's really quite good.

But I just might have gotten the hang of this roasting thing.

Instead of breaking the head into dozens of tiny florets, I slice it thinly. All the way across. I brush the slivers with olive oil, apply the salt and pepper, and oh... oh... then I sprinkle them with vinegar.

Yeah. Vinegar.

And roast. Until crisp.

Have you ever had those salt-and-vinegar potato chips?

It's kind of like that.

I could nibble away at the entire bowl, except then I'd be doubled over with gas pains.

Yeah, I've learned to make awesome roasted cauliflower.

It just hasn't learned to get along with me.

Spring cooking

Ah, fava beans. Aren't they great?

We had some last night, just mashed like they were potatoes, with a smidge of butter, cream, and salt. I served them as a side with pork roast and a salad.

Now frankly, I think the best way to have them is pureed with garlic and salt and served on crostini, but I didn't have any. Crostini, that is. I have no bread in the house at all, which puts me in a mild sort of panic. But we're heading out of town for a couple of days and I don't have time to make more. I'll get to it on Sunday, I promise.

I've been busier than usual, so cooking has been reduced to using the leftovers stored in my freezer, although I am still getting the CSA veggies every week and that gets me in front of the stove once in while. Hence, the fava bean fun.

Oh, and the peas! I love peas, always have. I remember chasing them around my plate as a child, making sure I got every last sweet morsel. My CSA is very generous with peas and I find, these days, my favorite way to eat them is raw, on a salad. Crunchy and sweet!

We also got the World's Best Strawberries in the box last week. They don't get any more perfect than those were, although I'm hoping for more that will be just as good. I made a sweet sauce with the last bit of my raw whole milk, a touch of stevia, and some cornstarch. Just mixed it together and microwaved it until it was slightly thick. I served the sauce with the sliced strawberries and a few amaretti cookies. A wonderful, light dessert!

Getting Your Children to Eat Vegetables

Let me warn you up front: this post may piss you off. Honest, I'm more subtle when dealing with clients, but since this is my blog, the gloves are off.

Everyone's heard about the cookbook debate. Did Jerry Seinfeld's wife rip off a nutritionist's cookbook? For the record, I doubt it. She's got kids, someone advised to "try this," it worked and since she's married to a celebrity, she had an in for getting a book published. End of story.

That's not what bothers me.

It's the whole idea of catering to our kids. THAT bothers me. Seriously, I've met people who always feed their kids separate meals, because the little tykes don't like "grown-up" food. This seems to be a big thing with the current crop of American parents, especially the middle/upper-income, educated group. I cringe every time I hear about it. What do these people think they're doing?

I can imagine how it gets started. New Mom home from the hospital has very little help or support and can't get the hang of breastfeeding. Maybe she has to go back to work. The hospital gave her formula, so why not use it? So Mom starts feeding the baby it's own special food, made bulk in a factory someplace and shipped in a cardboard or plastic container. When baby gets older, Mom and Dad buy the little jars of "baby food." Because it's a baby, right? Babies can't eat Real Food, can they? The parents never learned they could start with things like mashed potatoes, applesauce or bananas, rice cereal, etc., and as baby gets older they could just mash or blend up the food they eat and feed it to the kid. Graduate to cutting the real food into tiny pieces so an older baby can eat those. They don't NEED THOSE JARS OF BABY FOOD!

But Mom and Dad are now well convinced that the child must have special food. It's always had special food. So they never actually give the child the food that Mom and Dad are eating. And suddenly, we have an incredibly picky child who won't try anything except quesadillas and boxed macaroni & cheese, or pizza. With just cheese. Along with anything from McDonald's or Taco Bell, of course.

Look. If you're serving fresh, homemade meals with lots variety and vegetables, you're kids are not going to starve if they don't like something! Even if they don't like lots of things and at every meal, they're hiding something under the plate or surreptitiously feeding the dog under the table. It's OKAY.

Just keep feeding them. Don't make a special meal. Heck, don't even argue with them. Just serve the food, eat it yourself, clean up the kitchen (or have the kids do it) and get on with your life. Don't give them snacks later. They should have no other options except what you prepared for dinner.

They'll figure it out. You can encourage them, you can dress up the veggies with sauces or seasonings or cheese or anyway that you like to eat them. Serve them plain once in a while, but make things look attractive on the plate. Place a slice of lemon on the broccoli. A tiny pat of butter on the peas. Let the kids use the salt and pepper shakers. And if they turn up their noses and only eat the meat and potatoes, so what? I promise, if you keep serving them, if you cook them skillfully, and make them look nice, someday the kid will surprise you and start eating it.

Maybe they'll try it at a friend's house or at a restaurant and decide it's okay. After all, you're just Mom, what do you know? But somebody else's mom, or a chef somewhere, can give them something and they'll go for it. It's the nature of the beast.

Expose them to food. Let them watch the Food Network or those silly chef competitions. Take them to the farmer's market. Take them to a "pick your own" orchard. Have them flip through the cookbooks and choose a meal for you to cook. Let them help cook. Plant a garden. Get their school to plant a garden. Make food fun. Enjoy it yourself.

But DON'T cook them special meals. You'll still be doing it when they're teenagers and they will not be grateful. They'll think they deserve it and you're the one to provide it. Makes me shudder.

Leftover Soup

I’m sure you know that I mean soup made out of leftovers. Must eat more vegetables! I’ve been saying this to myself for years and progress is painfully slow. I really like bread. I like cheese. I LOVE corn chips and salsa (with cheese or without). So my sincere attempt to add vegetables sometimes involves throwing these things on salad. But I’m nowhere near the several servings a day I need.

So – today, I made soup. I didn’t have much in the frig: my main goal was to use up the celery. You know how it is. You need one stalk of celery for a recipe and what do you do with the rest? So I cut it up, along with an onion. I sweated these in a little olive oil, then added a can of chicken broth. There was a rind of parmesan cheese in the frig, so I threw that in and let it all cook a bit. Then I took out the rind, mashed the vegetables with my stick blender (I love my stick blender), added a bit of milk and some leftover frozen mixed vegetables that had been hiding in the freezer.

A little salt, pepper and parsley: great soup! I’m sure the parmesan rind helped a lot. I’m going to save these from now on for just this purpose!

I didn’t skip the bread: I had some croutons I threw in there. I’m big on crunch. But I ate extra veggies, today! And I have more soup for tomorrow!