$15 Coffee and $18 Butter–2 Months In

We’re already on the cusp of Spring and I have been remiss in documenting the Lessons of this Experiment–and there have been lessons learned.  Last month, comparing the amount of money spent in January ’15 with January ’16 showed a near doubling year-to-year.  I’ve no doubt that will be reflected in this month’s analysis, but I won’t be able to look at the real figures for a few more days as another deadline requires my attention.  And speaking of attention, two things caught mine this past week.

First, $18-a-pound butter.  From Magic Cows, you say?   Not that I know of.  From Vermont.  Not local, as I’d prefer to buy, but they did have the longer freshness date I need because I don’t use butter up quickly–usually.  I have to admit, this stuff is pretty tasty and might replace some of the olive oil (local) I’d come to prefer.  But at $18 a pound, I might have to “suffer” through tasty olive oil on things just to stretch out that butter.  Come to think of it, the two items are probably about the same cost per ounce in the end.

And speaking of ounces, any coffee available at the Marketplace comes in the form of cafe vendor Peet’s Coffee & Tea.   The problem is, I just don’t like my morning coffee to be a daily personal challenge of “How much roast can you tolerate in the name of ‘good’ coffee?”  And since I’d want to buy decaf beans at that, my choices are pretty limited.  (I happily bought $50/pound Kona coffee here in the past, but it doesn’t come in decaf.)

Since the Rules of the Experiment say I can buy at restaurants and other take out places, I opted for some beans from Philz Coffee across the way.  On the day I was there, I noticed a sign for help wanted.  I’m not sure what they pay, but for a minimum wage worker, they’d have to labor about an hour and a half to buy the $15 pound of beans I chose.  Luckily, coffee is mostly water, I suppose.  And I assume the job might include a few free beans or cups for the crew.

Speaking of Rules, those of the Experiment are getting tweaked to reflect the needs of my crew–specifically my lactose-challenged husband.  The work-arounds at the Ferry Building just aren’t working.  So far in this Experiment, I’ve overcome El Niño and a six weeks of Very Bad cold, but those were nothing compared to seeing my loved one struggle–the second thing I noticed–with my Big Idea to shop only at the Ferry Building.  Originally, he was welcome to go fetch whatever lactose-free things he needed from wherever he liked, and while the entire supermarket world is still open to him, what’s changing is who’s doing the fetching.  So, going forward, I am allowed to get one type of food from a market, lactose-free “dairy” substitutes.  And for now I’ll limit the places to get such items to Whole Foods and local haven, Rainbow Grocery.  Anyone dealing with these stores in SF knows there are plenty of dragons there so it’s not like I’m making things too easy on myself with this change.

What is the most expensive foodstuff/grocery item you’ve ever bought?  Was it worth it?

My Sprouted Love

The sprout selection at Brooks and Daughters at the Ferry Building Plaza Farmer’s Market looks like a field in miniature!

My love affair with alfalfa sprouts began at UC Santa Barbara freshman year.  Until then, my go-to green on sandwiches was lettuce.  Iceberg lettuce.  I still love a wedge salad every now and again, but bite for bite, nutritionally, I’ve come to know I can do better than my old friend Iceberg.  And since college, sprouts are my number one choice.

It’s been–ahem–a while since those early days of sprout love.  And while I’m still true to fresh Alfalfa, I have been known to mix it up with broccoli or clover sprouts.  The deeper green of the fully mature produce is detectable in the sprout and holds up more substantially to ham or beef in a sandwich.  I use the lighter alfalfa for meat-free or  poultry sandwiches.

And yes, sandwiches are still my primary use for sprouts but there are other ways to use them.  As you know if you’ve been reading, I like to keep things simple so unless I get bored with sammies (NEVER!!!), that’s how my sprouts will likely be used this season.

But I’m not above trying new things.  At the suggestion of my Veggie Sherpa, Cara, I did try, and bought, the Kraut Sprout Salad mix.  It was an awesome blend including sprouted caraway seeds often found in rye bread so the flavor was rather like the world’s freshest Reuben–without the animal products.

Hey, wait.  Caraway seeds?  Cara-way seeds.  Do I sense a little favoritism in The Sherp’s suggestion?

Buy your sprouts superdry and directly from a grower, if you can.  Store them well sealed and in the crisper drawer if you have one. Rinse them before using.  They will not last beyond a week, really, so plan to use them soon for best flavor.

Use It Up Monday…or Tuesday…or Whenever

Rooibos tea for Use It Up Monday

There may come a time when I learn to photograph beverages, but right about now, in the early days of blogging, that takes up way too much bandwidth, and I’d rather talk about Tea, Use It Up Monday and living life near.

LLN is very much about going ahead and shuffling off the Contraries–those delusions, illusions and aspirations about your life.  Why?  Because the life you are actually living is, in fact, the life you are, well, living.

Which brings me to that glass of iced rooiboos.  In the truth of my current ability–or lack thereof–I am, at the time of this post, not a great food photographer.  The “fail” was not necessarily this photo (well, sort of, you see the melty ice here because I forgot to put the straw in for the first six shots), but was the photo I took of the tea bags prior to brewing.  That one was too blurry for my liking and sent deep into my computer’s trash bin!

As for “Use It Up Monday,” once a week, before I go to market, I make an effort to use up what’s in my refrigerator–particularly the produce since it really can’t be “kept.”  I’ve bought it, and though many times I’ve sent it to compost, to use it up, I think, best honors those who grew and picked it, he who labored to earn the money for it, and she who labored to bring it home.  It honors the earth from whence it came, the sun’s energy, given freely, but also the water–precious, limited–and the earth, kept as natural as can be thanks to the efforts of many who fought and persuaded that the growing medium should be safe.  And, of course, “Use It Up Monday” can be any day of the week most helpful to usefully emptying your home of unused food.  You not only save money by not buying more, but you also save energy by not having to go out to get it!

As for the rooibos, while not my favorite tea–and a big disappointment to find this brand packaged in a lot of plastic–from inside my reality, the truth is I really don’t love plain water–yet.  And if I hold on to the illusion, the lie or even the Aspiration, that I’m a water drinker, which is not the life I’m actually living, I still won’t drink enough plain water and then go about pretty dehydrated all day.  OR I can live in my nearness, get to brewing, use up this previous purchase, and guzzle one last batch, hydrated and grateful for not having to only drink plain water or go dry.

Use It Up Monday…or Tuesday…or Whenever…is very much a part of living life near.

Is there anything lurking in your cupboards, produce drawer or freezer that you can use up for a meal this week? 

Market-to-Table Demo: Neka Pasquale, Urban Remedy

Neka Pasquale prepares a Blood Orange-Carrot-Almond Dreamsicle

The warming weekend in San Francisco was the perfect atmosphere for a demonstration by Neka Pasquale of Urban Remedy of her Healthy Winter Salad and “Dreamsicle.”  Pasquale is the founder of Urban Remedy a kiosk at the Ferry Building and shop in Mill Valley, and the “remedy” to which the name refers is a detoxification regimen of juices and their philosophy of “Food is Healing”.

The offerings at UR are healthy and delicious, as were the recipes demonstrated.  And, of course, they were seasonal.  Though the pomegranate arils used in the salad are soon out of season, it is something to look forward to using next winter.

The Healthy Winter Salad is pretty enough to serve to guests!

Her dressing of garlic, sea salt, olive oil and cider vinegar is a year-round gem of simplicity.  She offered up a secret to it’s success:  well mash the garlic with the sea salt before whisking it up with the rest of the ingredients to remove the potency of the garlic, resulting in a balanced flavor.

One of the items to be found at Urban Remedy is the VLT, a vegan wrap–sort of.  Did you know eggplant can taste just like bacon?  I’m thinking my exploration of that item deserves a post all it’s own!

Is it springlike where you are yet?  How do you get through the long winter?  How do you plan for spring?

 

 

What’s In Season, Doc?

Lovely bunches of carrot love.

Carrot Cake. Carrot Muffins. Carrot Raisin Salad. Roasted Carrots. Carrots in Soup.  Carrots in Stew.  Carrots in Orange Sauce.  Carrot Juice.  Raw Carrot Sticks…

You could list delicious carrot dishes for ever!  Yes, it’s carrot season and there’s no point in holding back the love.  In my area, temperatures are on the rise and so my preparations are going to be a little lighter than they were through the coldest part of winter.  No stews or roasted carrots for me.  And while I reeeeeally wanted to simply mash some up with brown sugar, sort of like sweet potatoes, the carrot-raisin salad has won the day.  Yes, it’s a little more prep than the mash, but still simple enough weighed against the deliciousness.

Something I found out about storing carrots.  After years of dragging dry, cracked–and yet somehow rubbery–carrots out of my refrigerator veggie bin, I started keeping them in water (changed every few days) in a see-through container.  They last long and well like this, rather like those bagged ones at the market–but without getting slimy.   Many farmers bring carrots to market, so buy singles rather than bunches if you won’t eat them quickly–fresh is even better than the best storage technique!  And if you buy them with tops, most vendors with twist them off for you so you don’t have to fuss with composting them later at home.

Versatility is very helpful in a vegetable–like a carrot, in a wardrobe staple–like a pair of white jeans, like a hobby/skill–like sewing.  What is your favorite versatile food, clothing item or whatever?

Yes, It’s Time to Talk About Money

Jam and Bread.  Simply satisfying with tea.

Last week, running out of jam, I thought to look, first, at the wares from the farmer’s market vendors before simply grabbing something off the shelves of the Marketplace grocer.  That is the default preference in this Experiment, and because jarred foods need not be “in season,” I stood a good chance of finding something.  And I did.  Glasshoff Farms had some beautiful jams available.  I tasted their Three Berry jam–delightfully tart and full of berry flavor– and immediately knew that some of it was destined for a scoop of the best vanilla ice cream I could find.  It was so good, I added a jar of their strawberry–the jam I’d originally sought–without a taste test.  The price for two was $19.00 or almost $1/oz.

I came home and at some point prepared to make a sandwich of bread and jam for Robert, my husband.  I emptied the last of my Trader Joe’s organic strawberry fruit spread (about $5/10 oz. or approximately $.50/oz, about half the cost of the Glasshoff) on a slice of Acme Bread Company’s Pain de Mie .  Then, I opened the new jam.

Cue the angel choir.

It was like opening a jar of Spring.  I’m not simply justifying the price I’d paid.  After all, I’ve loved Trader Joe’s for years without reservation.  This jam was slap-whatever’s-nearby, beyond-comparison delicious.  It was so good I was dancing in my kitchen.  I wondered how I would EVER be able to eat any other strawberry jam.  Ever.

In time, I may become indifferent to this new jam.  As the warmer weather rolls in, competitors may usurp this jam in my heart and in my shopping basket. But for now, I had to concede, this time, more expensive was also better.  Light years better. Incomparably better.

Which brings me, at last to the first bit of empirical data in this experiment, the messy attempt at a quantitative analysis.  I took last year’s credit card statement from January, and extracted all the food/coffehouse/grocers/restaurant charges for that period, and compared it to our charges January 2016, the first month of this experiment.  Like the jam numbers, our costs this year were about double that of the money spent in 2015.  Perhaps the biggest difference was due to an increase of more eating out, on my part.  I’m finding I want to cook less, and because there isn’t the prepared food stock at the Marketplace, the very lifeblood of “convenient” stores like Trader Joe’s, it looks like I’m substituting eating out for prepared groceries.

But I am, as yet, not prepared to prepare more than I have to.  And as in the case of the new, delectable jam, the qualitative feedback may balance the quantitative.  The ultimate question, yet to be answered, of course is, “Is More Costly Better?”  But I don’t think that’s the only question to be probed. “And if so, better how?” is probably a question whose answer is yet to be revealed.

What, despite all the bargains available, are you willing to spend more on?  In what ways is the more expensive expenditure “worth it?”

Chef Demo: Exec. Chef Jorge Lumbreras, Public House SF

CUESA hosts cooking demonstrations most Saturdays a the Farmer’s Market.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!  I think…?

I knew a woman who, for years, loved Football Sundays, the gatherings, the tailgates.  And Super Bowl Sunday was a huge event for her–the culmination of that sport’s season–and the season’s eatings.  One year, for health reasons, she’d elected to keep to whole and healthful eating and at the following year’s Super Bowl celebration, having chosen to have her healthy dinner before the party, in the absence of all that super snacking, she finally had to admit something to herself–

She didn’t even really like football.

Living Near is living authentically.  For instance, if on your day off you’d happily do the same thing you do to earn your living–now that’s some authentic living.

Chef Jorge Lumbreras at work.

Chef Jorge Lumbreras, Executive Chef of San Francisco’s premier sports gastropub, Public House, located at the beautiful AT&T Ballpark, home of the San Francisco Giants, recently presented a healthier and delicious version of potato skins for Super Bowl noshing at the cooking Demonstration, hosted by CUESA at the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market.  While he sauteed the butternut squash and chard filling for his Winter Vegetable Potato Skins, he took questions from the eager and curious audience.  One woman asked, “On your day off, where do you like to eat?”

“At home.  I like to cook for myself.”

WHAT?  Of course Lumbreras does go out too, to try a restaurant he’s heard or read of via an interesting review or word of mouth–just like the rest of us.  And he has a “go-to” place he’ll frequent, Blue Plate, in the Mission District of San Francisco.  But his first response was an emphatic testament to the fact that Chef Jorge is indeed in the right profession.  He still does what he does, even when no one’s paying him to do it.  That’s passion.

And like any good story, his food story is a love story.  The ingredients in his Potato Skins were not simply “local” but, I thought, very much ingredients of the Americas–pepitas, squash, potatoes, chard.  I asked him about that.  He said his cooking story began in Mexico, the country of his birth, and that, indeed, that influence is in his cooking.  Many of his ingredients are those he saw his grandmother use in her kitchen–even the chard he used in the demo referenced the wild chard they’d harvest from her garden.

Winter Vegetable Potato Skins

Speaking of love stories, we might be spending our upcoming Valentine’s Day at Public House, which might seem like a strange choice–a gastropub Sports place on the most Romantic day of the year?  Don’t get me wrong–I want to try the menu like any other curious eater–but now I know my instincts were right.  There’s a love story of generations somewhere in all that fun.

And Chef Lumbreras’ offerings look so tempting, I don’t think it will even matter if there’s only hockey on the big screens.

 

 

 

Two Super Bowls–Battle of the Broths

Chicken Broth (l) vs. Chicken Bone Broth (r)

Since this Super Bowl Weekend looks, for us, more like a Chicken Soup-er Bowl Weekend–thanks to some tenacious colds around here–I thought to post about the broths I investigated for the daikon radish soup a few weeks ago.

There’s a whole lotta stuff on the InterWebz about bone broth, and as I had need of broth for the radish soup, I thought to try two different broth types–bone and a basic, low-sodium chicken.  And to keep it apples-to-apples, so to speak, I went for two boxed versions from the same manufacturer.

As you can see from the photo, there is a decided difference in the appearance of the two.  They both have chicken and vegetable ingredients, but there’s a bit of sugar in the Low-Sodium version and some balsamic vinegar in the Bone version.  But what you want to know, I know, is, what is the difference in flavor?  As a cooking medium?

The Low-Sodium is a clearer liquid, and despite obvious saltiness, still doesn’t taste quite salty enough for a decent soup.  Feel free to add more for electrolyte-increasing purposes.  As for the Bone Broth, it was not much thicker in any way, despite the appearance, and was more watery tasting, which would make it useful for the shot of protein many diets use it for.  You could chug this without feeling like you’d just had soup.

Crowds in my neighborhood are expected to be downright ponderous this weekend, due to Super Bowl Events.  My “gameplan” is to charge hard toward the goal–the Farmer’s Market–then get back home as quickly as possible.  That’ll have to be enough of a score for this week.  Some days you just can’t worry about anything fancier than that, or as the man once said, “Just win, baby!

 

So Close and Yet…

It looks so close from here.

There will be no Super Bowl City for me.  I could go, probably worsen my cold, possibly get others sick, but then that wouldn’t be acting very Near of me.

I’d planned to visit SBCity, then hop over to the Ferry Building for groceries today.  I’d planned that Saturday, when I only felt the teensy bit of a cold coming on.  I could rationalize doing it all today, I could get done what I wanted to get done, what I am “sure” needs to get done…

Living Near gives many gifts, but it presents challenges too.   It is a practice, a preference, of putting Reality first, for the well-being of the Many and the sublimation of the personal.  I don’t always do it perfectly.  But for at least today, I am willing to encounter the icky feelings of Not Doing, because I know from experience that the much worse feeling of Forging Ahead with My Will will arrive after the fact.

And only a consciousness of Others can help me sit with my inner whining of “Not Fair!” that comes with not getting my way.  Others may enjoy SBCity better without an extra body there; Others will go home without exposure to my cold; Others will not have to take care of me should my cold worsen and morph, as it frequently does, into any one of any number of crazy health permutations.

Others.  Why does thinking of them make me feel better than thinking of myself?

Hey you Others!  Have great time at Super Bowl City–I mean it!  And maybe make a spectacular rolling catch on that mini-field for me!

A basic tenet of Near Living is, “When in Doubt, Leave it Out.”  Have you ever regretted doing something you “just knew” you shouldn’t be doing?  Would thinking of Others have helped you make a better choice?