The Minerva Awards

On October 22nd,2008 in Long Beach California 5 women were awarded the Minerva Award by First Lady Maria Schriver. The Minerva Awards were created in 2004 and are awarded to women who have made extraordinary contributions to California in the arts, health and sciences, community activism, business and technology, motherhood, innovation, education and lifetime achievement. Why do I write about this on my food blog? Well, because this year, one of the extraordinary women to win this award is from our neck of the woods, Eureka CA. And she earned this award by helping to feed the homeless for the last 20 years. Her name is Betty Chin and she's a pretty remarkable woman. She started out by spending what she earned at a part time job at a school to go out and feed the needy. She rises every morning at 2 am to pray and meditate. At 2:45 she goes to her kitchen to see what she has to feed hundreds of homeless and she proceeds to prepare the meals. At 6 am she picks up homeless children to make sure they have showers before school starts and gets them clean clothes, school supplies and visits to the doctor if needed. By 8 am she loads up her truck and heads to Saint Vincent DePaul parking lot and serves 200 donuts and coffee. Then she heads home and prepares dinners of sandwiches and what ever else she can find in her cabinets, or that people have donated. By 11 she goes to her part time job then after work she loads up her truck and heads back down to Saint Vincent DePaul to offer meals, care baskets and clothes to families in need. She goes home by 7 to start the whole process over again.

Why? This is Betty's passion. As a child in China she was homeless for 4 years. The Chinese Cultural Revolution tore her family apart. Her father fled the country and her mother was imprisoned, leaving her and her siblings on the streets. She knows what it's like to be hungry and alone. She walked 1600 miles across China and eventually found her way to America and to the town of Eureka. She was able to get on her feet in America and rather than be bitter for what she went through as a child, she has chosen to give back to the needy people of the country that has given her so much.

Betty struggles everyday to keep going. She works part time and her husband is a retired professor. When asked by a reporter "what can we do to help" her response is, "give me peanut butter". She makes 400 sandwiches every day and she relies heavily on community donations. So, in the spirit of the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday, I felt it would be appropriate to honor this wonderful woman here, and in doing so, possibly inspire some desire out there to help this woman with her passion to serve the needy.

What can you do? You can donate money or supplies through the Humboldt Area Foundation or through the
Betty's Blue Angel's site
So, while you sit down to that wonderful meal at Thanksgiving, think to help out those who are less fortunate then you and give thanks for people like Betty Chinn who make our world a better place to live.

For more information on the Minerva Awards go here

No more bake sales in California schools?

“I don’t think all celebrations need to be around food,” said Ann Cooper, the director of nutrition services for the Berkeley school district. “We need to get past the mentality of food used for punishment or praise.”

This is from a New York Times Article, Bake Sales Fall Victim to Push For Healthier Foods

Ok, yes I agree to some extent. But how far do we take this? To the point of no more bakes sales to raise money for school programs? I think soda machines and candy vending machines have no place in schools, nor do hostess cupcakes and the likes. I'd like to see all meals actually cooked, not nuked out of a box in our schools, and I'd love to see all schools with gardens and the return of home ec. But how far do we take this? To the point that we can never ever bring a homemade goodie to school, just because the fat content doesn't fit the government mandate? We can eat good wholesome food that is occasionally a bit on the high side in fat or sugar, as long as we learn to slow down and eat, not gobble. As long as we savor and enjoy and stop eating when we're full instead of ramming as much tasteless cardboard burgers down our throats as fast as we can. If we learn to slow down and enjoy our food (read real food not fast food) and quit worrying about the fat and sugar content, as long as it's real and natural fat and sugar, we lose our urge to over indulge. And, we need to get our kids away from the computers, tv,s, cell phones and all of the rest of the menagerie of tech items that keep them from getting up and exercising, playing, and interacting with each other. We don't need a nanny state going over board and feeding us nothing but sprouts and hummus. We need to educate our kids about nutrition and exercise, about a healthy lifestyle. You can enjoy good savory food cooked in butter. Look at the French. It has flavor, and they sit down and eat together and make an event out of it. Who said food isn't a celebration? That's just bunk. If we made it more of a celebration and less of a competition we wouldn't have the problems we do now. At least that's how I see it.

So what to do?

So... What to do with a 1 lb chicken breast and one potato for dinner for four? I was tired today, I've been tired all week now that the days are shorter. I haven't been thinking well and I'm out of whack with having Tuesday off for Veteran's Day (God bless them all). This week has been a two Monday week for me. I couldn't get my brain in gear to come up with a thing, so I got on the internet on my break at work and found a chicken chowder recipe from Cooking Light. You can find it here . I'm cooking it right now, so I'll have to let you know how it turns out. What I liked about it, besides the fact I had all the ingredients I needed at home, I wouldn't have to stop at the store, and there would be enough to feed all 4 of us, is that, even though it's a Cooking Light recipe, it called for bacon. I like that we're losing our uptightness about fats. I remember back when, when Cooking Light would have called for margerine (YIKES!) or olive oil only. But bacon fat has so much flavor! You don't need all that much, and a little really can't hurt you, unless you have some serious health issues. This recipe calls for you to fry just two strips of bacon, which I'm lucky enough to have from a locally butchered pig. You then remove the bacon to later crumble on top of the soup and fry the chicken and veggies in the bacon fat and voila' you have minimal fat usage and very flavorful veggies and chicken. I can tell you right now, it's smelling super nummy! I'll let you know how it turns out.
Bon Appetite!

Post Halloween Post - The Brain!

I carved myself a spare brain for Halloween. You like it? This is my melon brain. I carved it for our office Halloween potluck. I also carved one for my daughter's birthday party. She's lucky enough to be a Halloween baby. I'll tell you what. The kids had no qualms about eating it, unlike the adults at work.

I surrounded my brain with severed monster fingers, which were quite tasty. The adults had no qualms about eating those.


I served up the brain and monster fingers with some severed and bandaged goblin toes with blood (ketchup) and bile (Larrapins mustard) to dip them in. These went even faster than the fingers.
It was a deliciously vile Halloween. I just hope those nasty birds don't come back....

Using up leftovers

I had a half head of napa cabbage and some leftover sausage in my fridge last night and I was wondering what the heck I was going to make for dinner after spending the last five hours peeling and coring apples for apple pie filling and apple chutney. Well, here's what I came up with:
It was yummy!
Cabbage and Potato Soup

• 2 or 3 tblsp olive oil


• 1/2 head napa cabbage thinly sliced


• 3 large potatoes sliced in 1/4 inch pieces, peel on


• 1/2 lb cooked pork sausage (I used Gourmet Signature roasted red bell pepper and carmelized onion sausage)


• 1 can black eyed peas drained and rinsed


• 1 small yellow onion thinly sliced


• 4 cloves garlic chopped


• 5 cups chicken stock


• 1 tbsp Mexican oregano


• 1 tsp dried marjoram


• 2 tsp dried thyme
• pinch of allspice
  


• Parmesan cheese

1. Heat olive oil


2. Add chopped potatoes and large pinch of salt and cook on medium high covered until softened, about 8 minutes. Stir occasionally.


3. Stir in onion and garlic. Cook until onion starts to turn clear.


4. Add stock, canned black eyed peas, cooked sausage and spices. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes.


5. Stir in chopped cabbage and cook until it has softened, about 10 more minutes.


6. Salt to taste. You'll need more or less depending on whether you used homemade or canned stock.


7. Serve up topped with Parmesan cheese.


8. This is a hearty soup and is great with some crusty bread. It makes great leftovers, as we found it tasted even better the next day.

Cabbage Potato Soup @ Group Recipes

Farmer in Chief

This is a fascinating article written by Michael Polan in the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

Great to see some real solutions put forward. It will be interesting to see if any will ever get implemented.

Harvest Time - A series of havest meals.

October is harvest time, and I've been meaning, for some time now, to show off some of our harvest. We've worked harder this year to get more out of our efforts, and I think we've done a pretty good job. We've learned a lot along the way, and I think we may have an even more bountiful harvest next year. That is if we, mostly I, can stay motivated. My husband is always motivated and does most of the work. I follow around in awe, trying to do my best, and to not get in the way too much. (Until it comes time to cook it, then you better get out of my way.)

Our first success was our potato harvest. We discovered that russets grow very well here, but the blue potatoes, not so much.
As you can see from the picture we also had beets and carrots. An excellent year for both, except for the tragedy that befell my carrots. I had tons of huge king carrots ready to be pulled. I didn't have time to pull them before leaving for a 3 day weekend. When I got home, all but a couple had been snagged by a nasty little gopher. I was having fantasies of blowing the little jerk up like the caddy from Caddyshack. Oh! and let's not forget the plums I harvested from the plum tree down the road. I was swinging like a monkey from the limbs to get these. My husband harvested a bunch of yellow plums from an old tree just off our property as well. They were good to eat, but didn't make the best jelly. I need to work on that.And the beautiful rainbow chard you see above has been the most incredible plant in our garden this year. This picture was taken in August. The same plants don't look much different now in late October. I have harvested tons of leaves off of these. Unfortunately my kids have decided they don't care for it. I personally love it with a little olive oil and basalmic vinegar. I have found I can successfully hide it in frittata's, and they'll goble it up.

Below you can see our first full harvest meal.
Chard and potatoes from our garden and a roast from the pig our friend raised and my husband helped with the culling.

And the final result....
YUM!
The next harvest dinner was a salad and herbs from our garden, beats, beat greens and cod that my husband caught.
Then there were the trout we brought back from Medicine Lake. Man was that tasty!

And a harvest breakfast. Home grown potatoes, beats and carrots and eggs fresh from the coop.

Then there were the huckleberries! This was my first harvest from the little bush down the road. I made some very yummy muffins with this.
Then! My husband went berry picking! (And I forgot to even take a picture of all the black berries I picked - 7 lbs worth!)
That's a lot of huckleberries! And below is what my fingers looked like after cleaning them for a pie. They didn't go back to normal for a week!
And here's my very first huckleberry pie. I'm so proud!
And then we finally did it. My husband and his friend, who raised the pigs, killed and butchered one of our goats. Actually 3 of them. We were able to sell two, so we made a bit of money off of them. So we had a wonderful goat curry along with some zucchini pancakes made with the neighbors' zucchini and our fresh eggs. To top it off a yummy zucchini bread. My mom's recipe of course.
And finally! For our most recent harvest dinner. A friend of mine at work is married to a guy who is a bear hunter and I lucked out and got a couple of bear roasts from them. I haven't eaten bear in years, and I've never cooked it. I wasn't sure how this would turn out, but I was more then pleasantly surprised. We've wiped out our potato and pea supply from the garden, so those are store bought, but the chard (everlast chard) is from our garden and the bear is from Humboldt County. It turned out very good, if I do say so myself.

Before - it's a very pretty pink before you cook it.
After a nice long roasting:
And the final delicious meal
It's been a tasty harvest! You just can't believe how much better food tastes when you grow it, hunt it and fish it yourself. The hard work makes you appreciate it all that much more, and it is so much more fresh and nutritious when the source is only 100 feet from your back door. Yum!