new location

tired and weary of wordpress.com

i’ve packed up all my posts and relocated to http://dryflour.blogspot.com/

come on! get on the train!

Sincerely, Dryflour

sierra club factoids

bouncing on my exercise ball and reading the march/april 2011 issue of sierra club news that rescued from the library’s free magazine bin, i am alarmed. people, i bring you the zany truth.

“L.A County officially bans plastic bags.”

“The hormone-disrupting chemical BPA is found on half of all cash register receipts and nearly all dollar bills. Doubling the level of BPA in women’s blood, researchers find, halves the percentage of eggs that fertilize normally in vitro.”

“Children who live close to freeways are twice as likely to be autistic”

“Pregnant women who use cell phone are more likely to have disobedient children.”

“White ibis exposed to mercury are more likely to be homosexual.”

“South Korea is building a 500-Turbine, 2500-megawatt offshore wind farm.”

“There’s not enough ozone in the upper atmosphere so whales in the Gulf of California are getting severe sunburn.”

“California regulators OK a new carcinogenic pesticide for strawberries to replace the old carcinogenic pesticide that they  outlawed.”

“Endangered mountain gorillas in central Africa make a dramatic recovery, with one of two populations increasing by 26% since 2003.”

“Half the incoming Republican members of Congress do not believe that global warming is real.”

“World carbon emissions in 2010 are expected to be the highest in history.”

More on the web at http://sierraclub.org/sierra/201103/uptospeed.aspx

good night and good luck, world.

apple cashew honey cake

crushed and roasted whole cashews, combined with freshly gathered honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, sliced apple and oats, held together with an egg white, made for a scrumptious Sunday morning breakfast cake. my food taster went ahead and dolloped lingonberry preserves atop his bowl. the flavor was not too sweet, a little bit spicy, and nutty. the texture is delectable. soft and chewy and crisp. like a damn good cookie!

homemade sushi for a fraction

sushi cravings hit us about every two days. seriously, we are constantly in the mood for freshly riced rolled and sliced sushi soaked in tamari and loaded with wasabi. our favorite rolls include tempura vegetable, unagi, broiled black cod, and anything with tempura asparagus. well… these cravings can easily get quite expensive when we go out for sushi once or twice every week. why not buy a few pounds of organic white sushi rice, a package of nori wrappers, and stuff all our favorite ingredients inside for a grand total of a buck a roll! brilliant and delicious. no mystery, no foreign germs, no fancy price tag, no foolish fish…yep there’s nothing fishy about making your own delicious sushi at home!

while we haven’t taken the energy to tempura our ingredients, this is probably all the better for our bodies. what i love most about tempura in sushi is the warmth it brings to the mouthful. we achieve warm and bursting mouthfuls by using freshly cooked sushi rice that is still very warm!

inside this roll is a spicy mustard salmon mixture spread over a layer of freshly ground almond butter, topped with homemade spicy sauerkraut and lightly steamed asparagus.

next to dolma and cookies, sushi rolls are my favorite foods to prepare! as always, be creative and inventive! i hope this has inspired you to explore the healthy and tasty and versatile method of sushi rolls in your own kitchen.

we did it again!

even though we ran out of nori wrappers, we had plenty of rice and sushi stuffings so we took on the challenge of rolling without nori! extremely difficult! but pretty and tasty nonetheless.

recycled hummus casserole

how many times has this happened to you… your fridge is starting to funk up the kitchen and you decide the culprit must be that half empty container of hummus that hasn’t been touched since the last time you hosted a cocktail party… well don’t just throw it away! be brave! open the container! if there is mold on it, then er maybe it should be tossed… if there is just a tiny bit of mold in one specific spot, scoop that chunk out of there and then…

place the rest in a mixing bowl and get creative! add spices or fresh chopped vegetables. hey, a little more garlic never hurt any hummus! add more oil, vinegar, mustard, cheese, last night’s curry, this morning’s scrambled eggs, whatever! then thicken it up with a bit of cornmeal or flour… bind it all together with a whole egg and plop the whole mixture into a baking dish. bake at ~365 F until you deem it crispy enough… too long and it will dry out… but too little time and it won’t develop the desired crispy edges and crust.

let me know what you think, i figure if there is some mold on the hummus it will get killed at the high temperature and you will be good to go with a delicious hummus-y casserole :) enjoy!

crispy chocolate-granola-coconut cookie

i’ve been experimenting with coconut oil in baking. while i don’t let that grease pass my lips, my partner gobbles it up! he loves to eat it. so i bake with it. despite the fact that i forgot about these while they were in the oven, these cookies came out really well… crisp and toasty but plenty of moisture was locked inside.

here is a photo of the dry mix so you can get an idea of what all goes into my usual inventiveness:

banjo gal

i stumbled upon this hauntingly beautiful strumming and humming youtube video.

sister may sarton and vegetable tea

Like myself, May Sarton may have been a monk in another lifetime. Monkhood is so appealing to me, the solitude, the hermitude, the control, the restrictions, the reflections, the routines, the morality, the ideality, the simplitude, the love of nature and sensitivity.

She is a sister to me. She is a strong and independent female poet and novelist. When I say strong I mean her totem, her spirit, is strong and cannot be overpowered by many other spirits. She moves through her world by way of her emotions and spiritual stirrings. She moves through a single day attuned to the augmentation and declination of the sun’s light. Most f all, her words move me. The very obstacles she endures provide therapy and comprehension of my own struggles. May I never be free of struggle and strife for “goeth with the devil, goeth the angels too.” In order to have inspiration and creativity flowing, I need hardships, challenges, shortcomings… I can never be fully satisfied.

In her published journal, “Plant Dreaming Deep” © 1968, Sister Sarton plants herself in the sweet settlement of Nelson, New Hampshire, located about 1 1/4 hours east of Keene, New Hampshire. Intrepidly, Sarton purchased and renovated an ancient and decrepit farmhouse and farmland… meadow… view… gardens… all near the base of majestic Mount Monadnock.

Sarton is a stranger to New England as she was born in Belgium. However, perhaps it is the European in her that makes her feel just at home in a quintessential New England village. Reading “Plant Dreaming Deep” helps me to cure (or cull) my New England homesickness. Sarton is startled by the beauty and poetic bounty that each New England season offers it’s inhabitants. While Sarton writes as if she notices subtle details simply because it is all brand new to her, this is not so. I believe that New Englanders are surprised by each season, if not each new day! For instance, the New Englander is enlightened in the moment of the deafening snowfalls of January, “…it is the time of the most extraordinary light and the most perfect silence. When the first snow floats down on the rock-hard earth, first a flake at a time, then finally in soft white curtains, an entirely new silence falls. It feels as if one were being wound up into a cocoon, sealed in. There will be no escape, the primitive person senses, always with the same shiver of apprehension. At the same time, there is elation. One is lifted up in a cloud, a little above the earth, for soon there is no earth to be seen, only whiteness- whiteness without a shadow, while the snow falls…The silence is as thick and soft as wool.”

I etched these lines into my forever journal. She captured the paradoxical crushing silence that comes from the lightest form of vapor on earth. The woman is a master poet. She engraved these experiences in her fifties. I am only 19. While she told me that the young are naively expectant of praise for their talent, I only ask to preserve my talent and cultivate it. If I am as good as she was in her prime… then one would expect to be incredibly great after years of cultivation. I then estimate, sure I may be a talented writer and poet, but can I make a living from it? No. Not yet, there are so many other skills that I would like to explore and cultivate.

For now I grow in a town of high craftsmanship. I think that this is a good environment to be in for a budding craftswoman. My partner is a craftsman as well. He has keen eyes and has enriched by perspective of craftsmanship and how to look more carefully.

I’m able to write a decent book review because I have nourished myself. The last seven days I have been malnourished and thus irritable and listless. Every action took all of my energy too focus. You see, I limit the amount of solid food that I digest. For the past week I have continually replenished a stock of vegetables and spices including cabbage leaves, celery, carrot tops, habanero peppers, chile tops, cinnamon, apple peels, onion scraps, salt, wild stinging nettles… Basically all of the vegetable scraps that we would otherwise compost, but I am leeching out their nutrients with the crock pot, seasoning to taste, and slurping the scalding liquid that stimulates my neurons and scours my intestines.

Vegetable tea, my elixir.

dolma love

lights out, bodies woven, and I blurt out… “i feel like i need to make dolma.” and then turned on my side to dream up other creations, not dolma related. the next day I went to the food bank and the vegetable lady handed me a thick pile of cabbage leaves, “dese make excellent soup!” she quipped. sure… soup…sounds good… i got home, poked in the fridge and there was a tall jar full of leftover brown rice! i mixed up a spicy, tomato-y, sweet and savory rice combination and got to work on stuffing cabbage and swiss chard leaves to make the most scrumptious dolma to date.

that’s stale sourdough bread on the bottom to protect the delicate dolma from burning.

close up

stacked and golden warm

i love making dolma. once again, food is art.

sauerkraut cookies

here in the Nest we make a lot of homemade kraut. ingredients usually list something like…

6 heads of green cabbage

4 carrots

3 onions

12 fresh chilies

1/2 head garlic

bunch of celery

spices

salt

ferment in large ceramic crock for at least 2 weeks… the longer you wait, the better it gets! it is SO sour, so crunchy, so much delicious, nutritious, lacto-bacterica packed, and SPICY kraut. it is awesome. we carry a jar of kraut with us wherever we go and people always wanna know… “what can I trade you for some of that kraut?! it is awesome!” we of course just give them the gift of knowledge and encourage them to make their own fermented vegetable spread. delicious.

i took our favorite lunchtime combo of sauerkraut + peanut/almond butter on toast to a new dimension.

peanut/almond butter + sugar + dried fruit + chocolate chips + granola + spices + an egg = a delicious cookie

peanut/almond butter + sugar + dried fruit + chocolate chips + granola + spices + an egg + a heaping spoonful of homemade kraut = a complex and mouth watering treat.

see that red chile pepper poking out? delicious! moist! spicy! sweet!