Call me Popeye...

Ok, I know I'm going to lose some of you on this one, but I love Spinach. Always have done. In bad IBS years it was not so easy for me to tolerate but I'm doing better with all that these days.

Even as a child, when my Mom would take me to the Hot Shoppes Cafeteria at Tyson's or Landover (a long gone chain for you young folk) I always asked if I could just get mashed potatoes with gravy and steamed spinach. She'd raise her eyebrows at my choices but she let me and I was in hog heaven. I'd usually get one of their scrummy white cloverleaf dinner rolls as well. What REAL foods did you love years ago that you may have left in the dust of memory? Can you try to rekindle what it is you liked about it in order to make something like that as a gift to yourself and your family now?

As an adult I discovered how yummy creamed spinach is and there was a brand I can't recall, that used to make quite good frozen creamed spinach. Seabrook? something like that. I think Birdseye made a similar thing. A couple years ago when Glenn and I went out to dinner at the Cottonwood Grille, I had a lovely cream of spinach soup there. With this in mind I went off to foodgawker and hunted away. I settled on a recipe by Mark Bittman from the New York times. Made as it was, I found it a bit thin, so I made a roux with butter and flour and added this, which made it more like I had in mind. To be fair, it's probably not an issue with the original recipe,I may have accidentally had thinner soup due to having to halve his recipe. Anyway it's good to know if you want it thicker you can make it so. I also might try it with some Parmesan cheese added.



This one is a keeper! And it made a great companion to the Bagel chips.
(Take two bagels, slice across so you are left with circles, sprinkle up to 1/4 cup of oil-I used olive and if you like sprinkle them with some garlic salt. Bake on a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan at 300 until lightly brown, check every 5 mins so they don't burn, this made enough for soup and a snack the next day.)

That Barefoot Contessa...

Never seen her, never watched her, but her name comes up in recipe recommendations from my daughter. Took out one of her cookbooks months ago and didn't find anything that sounded like I'd make it, so I must have gotten the wrong book because the few things I have her recipes for look and taste wonderful.I've not been able to find this recipe exactly under her name, so this may be an adaptation. I am quite pleased with my substitution of Bob's Red Mill Large Flake coconut. I love coconut but don't miss the sugaryness of the old fashioned kind. Also the large flake is pretty. Bob's also makes a small traditional grated unsweetened. Many grocery stores are carrying Bob's products and they are also easily available online.



My hubby loves this. I find it a bit too sweet, so I'm going to tweek it for my own taste and I'll get back to you. I think the sweetness I find too much isn't in the base, that's perfect, it's the cranraisens.

Homemade Granola

makes 12 cups

4 cups old fashioned rolled oats
2 cups sweetened shredded coconut(some folk omit, or use just a handful to omit calories...I substituted unsweetened large flake coconut by Bob's Red Mill)
2 cups sliced almonds
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup good honey
1 1/2 cup of cranraisins
1 cup of golden raisins
any other dried fruit that you would like (I like a cup of Pecans)


preheat oven to 350 degrees
Toss the oats, coconut, and almonds together in a large bowl. Whisk together the oil and honey in a small bowl. Pour the liquids over the oat mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until all the oat mixture and nuts are coated. Pour into a 13x18 inch baking sheet.(What is called a Jelly Roll pan, improvise as needed) Bake, stirring occasionally with a spatula, until the mixture turns a nice even golden brown about 45 minutes. (you need to check this frequently as you don't want it to burn)

Remove the granola from the oven and allow to cool, stirring occasionally. Add the cranraisins, golden raisins and pecans. Store the cooled granola in an airtight container.






If you have never tried Greek Yoghurt please do so for me, just one little thing, pretty please? I don't like regular yogurt very well, but the greek, yes indeedy. AND it's better for you. It is a bit thicker than the American style, not as tart, and nicely creamy. I believe it is lower in fat and higher in protien as well.
Even though this was too sweet (just a bit) It was glorious soon after cooling with my greek yogurt. I find it in regular grocery stores now, but if not, try health food stores or ethnic markets if you have such.

Roasted Veggie Pasta

Even though I do not like Raw tomatoes, I do like this dish quite well using the tiny grape tomatoes. The one's I got at the co-op were a gorgeous assortment of 4 varieties including an almost purple heirloom tomato. I'd eaten this at my daughter's house and enjoyed it, even though I did let my 2 year old grandson eat many of the tomatoes off my plate. They get to a consistency I can appreciate and lose that raw taste. I leave out the basil of this recipe because for my taste, as Fabu as basil is, it can overpower. Here's the link to the recipe at Everyday Food, a favorite site and magazine... with pictures following.I have Rebecca to thank for my making this as I'd not likely have tried the recipe without her having fed it to me first.

Roasted Summer Vegetables with Pasta.

Veggie Before and After. Do watch them closely after the first 10 mins or so. I cooked them until there were some veggies blackening as it tastes best that way and I like my veggies softish. I also used more yellow squash and less zuchinni as the recipe calls for. The later is prettier I think but I don't fancy zuchinni as much as summer squash. You can really splash out and do what you want with this. In face I only made a half recipe and it was enough for the three of us for one meal.



This is a very satisfying and yet healthful dish. I ate mine as was, hubby wanted a lot of black pepper and some parmesan on his. To each his own!

First a trip to my Beloved Boise Co-op

Lately, my cooking begins with thinking about what is in season and then web browsing for food that looks good, usually via FoodGawker Then comes the inevitable trip to the Boise-Co-op. On this day there were lovely figs and the marvelous strawberries grown by Farmer Richardson.

What you've missed...

If you had been visiting me (please do but call ahead!)or if you'd been a fly on our wall (oh no, not flies)here are some snaps of what you'd missed. Alas, the last two weeks have not had any photos, I'm "unwell" again, but have still been trying to eat as well as I can given my inability to shop or cook for myself.

This has meant sometimes I've just had to open a can of split pea soup and call it a meal, sometimes I've had Alexia brand Frozen organic waffle fries (great after a migraine or when one is coming on) and yes, one time I was so weary and hungry and hurting I had my dear man bring me a McDouble with fries. Oh well, I made a point to try and eat even those, with gratefulness and awareness and it does make a difference. It turns a desperation dinner into food to although inadequately, nourish the body for that moment in time, it does not a lifestyle make, and that is "ok."

That said as a person who has always loved a home cooked meal (even better when someone else has done the cooking)it makes me very sad to think many children in particular, have gone from McD's being a rare treat as it was in our childhoods, to being a way of life.

Photo's below.

"Really" enjoy your food!

Cinnabon....

Makes me really want one, sadly. We haven't any here in Boise, which is I'm thinking, a good thing. Though seriously, one or two halves a year, is enough for anyone.

Migraine days...

I was going to take a picture of a bottle of pain medicine, an ice bag, gingersnaps and coffee to sum up my migraine days, but I happen to have this accidental shot of my living room and it seemed to say "yeah, that's about how you've been feeling" The light too glaring, the images fuzzy, the overall feeling nauseating.

I've been hording up food experiences and pictures but now I've gotten so far away from their occurring that I have little to say about them.

I have gone from women's "issues" to migraine days without much in between. I have had maybe 3 whole good days in the last two or so weeks. They have been glorious giddy good days, the kind where the absence of pain feels so euphoric. I have not forgotten to eat well or real, but I have not done wonderfully either, I've just existed with my new consciousness intact. No pans of brownies have been scarfed down, though last night I will admit to eating a good 500 calories of "Dirty Chips" (a brand, not my judgement of them) in a middle of the night gotta have it, binge. The first thing remotely resembling a binge of any type since I've started this new way of looking at food and of choosing what is "good." That said, they were part of the former weeks "allotment of dirty chips" yet uneaten, so I won't feel too bad about it, and for extra good measure I'll skip buying any more for another week. Maybe I'll just buy two of the small bags instead of three as well. I don't want to buy just "one" cause that will feel punitive and make me think I'm suffering and then I'll do myself more harm than good with ensuing obsession about lack of chips.

I do best when I have plenty of what pleases me around and instead just show moderation. I have a person in my life, I'll call her my "friend" who is slim and has an opposite view. She has to keep the things far away or she'll eat them all, say, for example Entienmen's chocolate iced donuts (and to be critically fair, they don't keep well and they do seem to taste better eaten in multiples of two or three) Maybe my "friend" has a point, given that she is slim, she must know what she's talking about. Or maybe it's just a particular food that would affect one so. I'm not going to scarf down three bags of reflux inducing mouth burning salt and vinegar chips in the middle of the night, so I'm reasonably safe. Let's face it, if one is in a scarfing down mood, one will likely find "something"....I had a friend who used to re-constitute cocoa powder with butter if she was in a pinch. Never tried it myself but I've kept it in the back of my mind, just in case.

All that said, I am in a strange place with relation to food right now. When I am in a lot of head pain, I don't eat anything, or at least I used to not eat anything. Of late I've been more nauseous with migraine and so I've followed a friends suggestion and laid in some ginger snaps to help with that. (I suppose I could get some kind of ginger capsules to do the same thing but these are "health food" section, rock hard, reasonably low fat and calorie ginger snaps so I think, ok, they will do) I have wondered if I might make my own low fat/cal gingersnaps as part of my real food effort(Honestly I wonder if they are EVER high fat cal , I think the dry hard beast is itself, lean. You can tell I don't think of ginger snaps as a serious snack contender.) I doubt I could pull of baking with a migraine, not without serious collateral damage to Lord knows what, the kitchen, myself (I envision burns on arms, flour fluffed into my eyes, turning beaters on with my hands in the bowl?) so for now, the pre-made things seem a reasonable stand in.

Ok, where was I....food, migraine...yes...so I don't eat when I'm in the worst of it. I don't move when I'm in the worst of it, and talking is nearly out of the question as well though I manage to moan fairly well. Something about the sound of certain notes hitting some spot inside my head as it vibrates....When my migraine is abating, as it is now having gone from a 9 to a 5, food can be glorious. It can't take much by way of effort and there is no telling what I might desire, though it is not a bad guess to say it will be starchy.

I careened toward the kitchen a while ago intent on cooking an evil box of mac and cheese deluxe (something I've not had or desired whilst on my real food path, if I wanted mac and cheese I'd be making it from scratch) and while it was boiling, my eye lighted upon a bagel I'd bought intending to make chips for soup (an entry I haven't made that I photog-ed last week) and remembering I had fresh cream cheese in the fridge, scarfed it down while waiting.

I must tell you, it was seriously the best bagel and cream cheese I've ever had in my life. If I bought a dozen of them and ate them every day for a week, I'd surely not have another that came close, it would at least pail by comparison, likely to the point of grave disappointment. It was a flavor I don't normally buy (Fred's had none of the bins labeled,oddly enough) I am not sure what flavor it was, I could detect poppy seed but when I bought it I was thinking it could be a so called "everything" bagel. It was not a proper chewy one like you'd get in a real deli back east, in fact it was wrongly soft, but my teeth were glad for that fact as I noshed through it, thinking as I did that the Yiddish word Shmear would NOT apply to the amount of cream cheese I put upon it. It was a simple pleasure, the kind that remind me how good it is to be hungry, to have an appetite, how the laborer sleeps best and what grace there is in being able to joy in real food.