October Unprocessed Day 4: I can't eat anything in my cabinet and fried rice, sort of..

Being that I did not cook Thursday night, I was dismayed to find that I had nothing to bring to lunch Friday and very little motivation to make something unprocessed. Sandwich? No, I still had not baked, and the Brownberry sandwich thins that we had on hand are chock full of preservatives and other chemical-sounding things: calcium propionate, sorbic acid, monoglycerides, datem, citric acid, cellulose gum, xantham gum, reb A (evidently something related to stevia), corn starch, soy lethicin, soy flour.

I will never understand why bread requires sweetener in it. I make bread at home and it doesn't have any, and because I use a no knead recipe, I don't even use it to activate the yeast. Oh well. I've always found store-bought bread rather suspect after having been spoiled to death by my grandma's home made bread.

Ok, so no sandwich for me. Chicken salad? Nope. The Kirkland canned chicken includes such hits as modified food starch (vague much?) and sodium phosphates.

Hummus and veggies? Forget it. Sabra hummus has potassium sorbate. What about "Fresh 100% natural" greek yogurt spinach and artichoke dip? Nope: carob bean gum, citric acid, calcium chloride, agar, pectin (the previous 2 were listed under the greek yogurt ingredients, bullshit!), and finally xantham gum. Seeming less natural now that I read the label.

I did however have some fresh salad greens and a sweet Italian roaster pepper in the fridge, so I make a quick salad out of that and some of the aforementioned giardiniera, the only condiminent that is safe. No salad dressing, because the stuff I had on hand contains maltodextrin, xantham gum, autolyzed yeast extract (which i'm sure is delicious) calcium disodium EDTA, caramel color, and annato extract.

I was a little discouraged by this process, so when I went to make dinner in the evening, I went on a label reading crusade.

Cholula hot sauce? Xantham gum.
Goya chick peas? more disodium EDTA, for color retention... really? chick peas are practically colorless.
Basically all the condiments have all of the preservatives (not shocking)
Iodized salt? sodium silicoaluminate, sodium thosulfate, potassium iodide.
Canned soups: I did not even bother to look.
That apple sauce from yesterday's post: ascorbic acid!! I'm saying it's ok though, because that's merely vitamin C and i have some airborne tablets in the bathroom so I could totally make it at home :-P

And the most disturbing one to me at least: 
Preshredded cheese: potato starch, corn starch, and calcium sulfate to prevent caking and natamycin to inhibit mold. THERES ANTIFUNGALS IN MY CHEESE, WTF?!

So I WAS A LITTLE DISCOURAGED. And needed to go grocery shopping. But I was able to whip together a nice "faux fried rice"

1 cup basmati rice
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
4 jalapeños, chopped
whatever sweet peppers i had around, chopped. I don't remember how many.
2 daikon radishes, peeled and chopped
1 gigantic scallion
2 tbs olive oil
1 egg

I cooked the rice as per package instructions. While it was doing its thing, I peeled and chopped things as necessary, warmed the olive oil on medium high heat in a wok and stir fried the veggies until they were softening. Then I added the cooked rice to dry out the excess water, stirred for a few minutes. While that was happening I beat the egg, and threw it into the mix, to give the rice some stick togetherness. Salt to taste. Note the conspicuous absence of soy sauce, because it is a condiment and therefore is not an option during the month of October. It was actually a lot tastier than i thought it would be, due to the scallion and the jalapeños. I ate way too much of it but still had leftovers for today.

This week is really brining home just how out of the habit of reading labels I've gotten. When I first started this blog originally, I was trying to do something similar, but mostly I think I just wanted to expand my recipe repertoire back then, given that I'm almost certain that I posted a meatloaf recipe that included ketchup as an ingredient. Anyway, this has been eye opening. I don't know if I'll always avoid things with weird ingredients, but I would like to be more aware that they are there.  

Day 3: Unprocessed the slacker way

Weekdays can be hectic, and I get unmotivated/too hungry to cook when I get home. Luckily, I live in a major city with access to lots of really awesome places to eat quality food. So yesterday I went out to lunch and ordered in for dinner.

Lunch @ Uncommon ground on Devon, supposedly the "world's greenest restaurant" in 2011 anyway. I had some lovely perch tacos and a green salad.

Dinner from Sultan's Market on Clark, Tasty, fresh falafel and spinach pie.

I suppose I don't 100% for sure know that everything was 100% unprocessed, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Also frankly, the other realistic dinner option was decidedly processed.

But to make up for the lack of interesting things in this article, I will include the aforementioned banana bread recipe from my mother in law. 

Banana bread:

3 ripe bananas
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. applesauce
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. flour (i use one cup white, one cup whole wheat)

Place bananas in large bowl and mash with electric mixer. Stir in the sugar and let stand 15 minutes. Add the apple sauce and eggs and beat well. Beat in the baking soda, baking powder, salt and vanilla, then gradually beat in the flour, mixing thoroughly. Pour into a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan that has been coated with nonstick spray.

Bake at 350°F for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf comes out clean. Remove from oven and let stand 10 minutes before removing from the pan.

Makes 1 loaf.

The recipe is super versatile. I have added walnuts, chocolate chips, dried cherries, chopped rhubarb cinnamon. I've also subbed ripe pears for the bananas. I'm willing to bet most fruits would go well in here. My fav. combo was pear bread with dried cherries, but banana rhubarb comes in a close second.

Also, it occurs to me that i never checked the apple sauce jar for preservative content. Damn you unprocessed October!

 

Unprocessed October Days 1 and 2: how I learned that not all canned/boxed foods are evil

Day 1 was sort of a comedy of errors.

I don't usually eat breakfast, so that was easy enough. Coffee, milk, raw sugar. Done. One could assume that I have this every day for breakfast unless otherwise noted.

Also I had some home made banana bread at work. I'll post that recipe in the future.

I thought I was being good by bringing some leftovers that I had made over the weekend, a dish my grandma makes that I will lovingly refer to as "eggplant goo" because I have no idea how to spell it in italian:

4-5 cups of eggplant chopped into cubes
6 small sweet peppers
6 cloves of garlic
4 oz can of tomato paste
12 oz can of diced tomatoes

Salt the eggplant cubes and set aside while you're chopping/cooking the other stuff.  I used 4-5 long skinny Japanese eggplants from the CSA. One regular large eggplant should do it. I don't bother peeling them. Chop the peppers into small pieces. I used red italian roasters, yellow flavorburst, and chocolate peppers (CSA). Heat about a 1 tbs of olive oil in a skillet, and sauté bell peppers till they get soft on medium heat. (Covering them speeds up the process, because they get sort of pseudo steamed.) Add the garlic and the eggplant and sauté until the eggplant loses structural integrity. Then add the cans of tomato goodness, bring to a boil, and let simmer on low for 20 min or so. This dish gets better the longer it sautés or ever sits in the fridge.

I would typically eat this spread on fresh bread but i was lazy and didn't bake, so I had it with some whole wheat noodles. Seems legit right?

So I'm eating lunch on October 1, and I'm thinking that I made this stuff on Saturday and did not check an of the labels of the things I used. I assumed that they were all chock full of some sort of preservatives. I was sad and we had a Groupon so we went out for sushi, which seemed relatively clean but who knows what they put in those delicious sauces. And I had some very clearly processed Boy Scout caramel corn. Only later did I decide to check the labels:

Organic Costco brand tomato paste and diced tomatoes only had one ingredient: diced tomatoes.

Barilla whole grain noodles: Whole grain durum wheat flour, Semolina durum wheat flour,  oat fiber.

Evidently, lunch was preservative free. Lesson learned.

Day 2 was less interesting. I ate the same thing for lunch and then had potatoes that I coated in olive oil and dill and cooked in the oven, topped with home made giardiniera.

Cooking with food LIVES!

October unprocessed (http://www.eatingrules.com/october-unprocessed-2013/) was brought to my attention by my lovely pal Sarah. This event fits really well with the theme of the blog, so I'm going to reinvigorate this blog. I'll include recipes where appropriate, but the focus will likely be more about my successes and failures about adhering to the rules of the challenge.  After day 1, I can tell you it's pretty challenging. Hopefully Sarah will contribute too!

squash and dried cherry bread

During the fall I always get more squash than I know what to with in my CSA box. As I've mentioned before I'm trying to become a better baker, so I thought I'd try my hand at making a squash bread. I got lucky because the base recipe I used must have been damn good, because this bread was damn good.

Squash bread

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground allspice
2 1/2 cups mashed squash (I used a combination of honeynut, butternut and acorn)
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs, beaten
1/2 cup water
1 cup dried cherries

Mashed squash: Cut the squashes in half, de-seed (keep the seeds for roasting!), and bake at 350 until they're soft (about 45 minutes depending on the size of the squash). Scoop out the guts and mash them with a potato masher.

Bread: Preheat oven to 350. Generously grease a 9x5-inch loaf pans (I forgot to do the greasing, they turned out ok though). In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, set aside.

In a large bowl, combine mashed squash, sugar, vegetable oil, eggs, and water until well blended. Add the flour mixture and stir until just blended. Lightly stir in the cherries.

Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for about an hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Makes 2 loaves.

Tater tot casserole (LOUDLY!)

That's right. You read that right, tater tot casserole. I mean...if a can of cream of mushroom soup, frozen tater tots and ground beef doesn't represent cooking with real food then I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK DOES!
Actually, this casserole was made mostly from scratch. Mostly because I didn't milk any cows, or ferment any soy beans, but if you're doing that then you SHOULDN'T BE READING THIS!
This whole recipe is pretty simple, I used some of the cream of mushroom soup that I've posted here before, I mentioned it's good to freeze and use for cooking AND THAT'S WHAT I DID!
I took a pound of grass-fed CSA ground beef and put it into an 8x8 baking pan, MAKING SURE TO PRESS IT DOWN AND OUT INTO THE CORNERS! Put about 2-3 cups of cream of mushroom soup on top of the beef, a point though, the soup needs to be thick, so if yours isn't that thick than THICKEN IT WITH CORNSTARCH!! Put about a quarter cup of soup into a cup and dissolve in some cornstarch, than MIX IT BACK INTO THE SOUP! This should THICKEN IT NICELY!
Now for the FUN PART! We're going to MAKE HOMEMADE TATER TOTS! This is actually pretty easy, and QUITE A BIT OF FUN! Take your potatoes, I'd say 5-6 good sized potatoes, because you're going to EAT A LOT OF THE TOTS WHILE YOU COOK THEM! Shred the potatoes, you can do this by any method you'd like, I USED A GRATER! Next, you need to squeeze excess water out of the potatoes, the easiest way to do this is with a potato ricer, but you could probably come up with some other CLEVER WAY TO DO IT!
After you've got your de-watered potatoes mix a small amount of flour and beaten egg in with THEM! Be careful with how much egg you add, the goal is to make the 'taters a little sticky, NOT GOOPY! Then add in your spices, I used salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder, PRETTY CLASSIC TOT SPICES! Stir the mixture and FORM IT INTO BALLS! DEEP FRY THOSE BITCHES! After you've fried the tots, hopefully you still have enough to make the casserole, COVER THE BEEF/SOUP MIXTURE WITH TOTS!
DON'T BE STINGY!
Put the casserole in the oven at 350 and bake it for about 45 MINUTES! The tots should be dark brown and the soup hot and bubbly when you TAKE IT OUT OF THE OVEN! Let it cool and EAT IT!

Beirrocks/Runzas/Hot Pocket thingyjobbers

Ok, I have actually been cooking in the past year or whatever since I posted something, maybe I'll try to do this more frequently. Or maybe I'll continue being a lazy turd, we'll see.
Anyways, this recipe is good enough that I have to share it with whoever I can. I'll post what I did the first time, but it's completely amenable to all sorts of filling changes, but more on that in a minute. This is basically a stuffed pastry, like a pasty or a stromboli.
Pastry:
1 package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3 cups flour

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Stir in sugar, oil, salt, egg and 1 cup of the flour. Beat until smooth. Mix in enough remaining flour to make the dough soft but easy to handle. Turn onto well-floured surface; knead until smooth, about 5 minutes. Place in greased bowl; turn greased side up. Cover; let rise in warm place until double, about 1 hour.

The filling is the fun part. Typically these are made with beef and cabbage. I made 2 different versions; a sausage/cabbage/onion one and a broccoli/potato/cheese one. Both were fantastic, and I'm going to make all sorts of different ones (feta, spinach, red onion and olive? Chicken, peas, and carrots? Bacon?), but this is what I did for the sausage filled one:

1 pound mildly spicy sausage

1 head of chopped cabbage
1 large onion, chopped
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Cook and stir beef until light brown. Stir in cabbage, onion, water, salt, caraway seed and pepper. Heat to boiling, reduce heat. Cover and simmer until cabbage is tender, about 15 minutes.

Then you put them both together!

Punch down dough. Roll into a 16-inch square and cut into 4 inch squares. Place about 1/4 cup (these measurements are EXTREMELY rough, and I made several different sizes of pastries, since the filling is cooked already the size of the pastries doesn't really matter when you're baking them so you can play with size and shape all you'd like) filling onto the center of each square, bring corners up and together, then pinch to seal. Place seam side down on a greased cookie sheet. Shape into rounds. Let rise again until double, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375 °F. Bake until pastry is light brown, about 20-25 minutes. Brush tops with butter. They keep well in the fridge and they freeze like a boss.