Vinegar and Ice Cream, Cialdini, and Woot.com

Two weeks ago, I ordered thoroughly indulgent gourmet vinegar: Cavedoni Botte Piccola Italian Balsamic. The normally $56 bottle was selling for $39.99 on Woot.com. At first I resisted temptation, but after reading the enthusiastic discussion on the forums, I gave in. I am one of many who daily submit to the site's brilliant business model.

Woot purchases a single item in bulk and offers that item at a large discount until it runs out. Cialdini discussed this "weapon of influence": scarcity. We do not like when any choice, including the choice to buy, is taken away. Thus, we are more likely to buy something we know will disappear, just because we still have the opportunity to do so.

Continued...

Warning: May Cause Tastebuds to Spontaneously Combust

After a stressful morning and afternoon, I turned in the evening to cooking experiments. I figure if I self-medicate with healthy food, it's okay. Ha.

Since my last post I made another wallet-denting market trip, realizing that- hey, summer doesn't last forever and blackberry season is even shorter than that. Thus we have Exhibit A:
Dangerously tantalizing little things, aren't they? One more, because I can't help it.



That, right there? That's what blackberries are supposed to look like. Not those flavorless things you get at the grocer, which shouldn't even be allowed to call themselves blackberries. They taste more like weak orange juice really, nothing at all like the flavour you get from these. Real blackberries bleed purple juice all over your fingers. Mmmm.

The nice lady at the market warned me that whatever berries I didn't eat tonight I should freeze, because they were already so ripe. I've been making smoothies out of these guys and other fruit, so that sounded fine. I freeze the berries as they are, or chop bananas into chunks or scrape out all the mango/peach/apricot pulp into a bowl and freeze that, before throwing it in the blender with a splash of milk and a pinch of stevia. Heaaaven.

But today as I made my usual cyber walk around the gluten-free foodie mecca that is our internet, I saw the lovely Heather at Healthy Indulgences had recently posted a sugar-free blackberry ice cream recipe. No ice cream maker needed.

Ohgoshohgoshohgosh.

The only ingredient I was missing was the heavy cream, so I set out to Martin's to get some (and of course ended up buying a pile of Bob's Red Mill Flours I'd been wanting to get... me + good food and new recipes to try = empty wallet). I'm going to make gluten-free soft pretzels soon!

Anyway, blah blah blah, here is the result. It's beautiful. The texture is much better than I expected from the pictures- not too hard, not too icey- it feels absolutely delightful in the mouth and tastes aaaamazing.



As always, those of you not trying to cut carbs or gluten or sugar can substitute the sugar back in and do it that way. I understand- erythritol is expensive stuff (but so worth it!).

Want a bite?

Go to your Farmers’ Market. Buy some food. Drool. Eat. Savor. Repeat.

My first job was working at the Eastern Farmer's Market on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, selling produce for Marshall Farms. I think I was ten years old? Back then I didn’t eat much of the produce I was selling. Eggplant looked terrifying to me. Squash was untouchable. Even tomatoes were too strange, although I gladly handed out samples, explaining to customers that some were sweet, some tasted more acidic… parroting what I’d heard people say, and faking a southern accent. City folk trust southern produce.


There are a lot of socially conscious reasons to buy local, but my primary motive? Taste. Nutrition. A better, fresher, more flavorful and delicious peach than you could ever find at Food Lion. An heirloom tomato from Takoma Park that takes a sandwich that was alright and makes it heavenly. Blackberries too delicious to talk about without blushing. ..I wish I’d taken a picture before I ate them all. The carnivores will find happiness, too, enjoying flavorful, fresh cuts of beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, pork, and so on. The fresh butter is delightful. The eggs are scrumptious and hooray! –chemical-free. A necessity for allergy-crushed kids such as myself. My kitchen currently boasts farm-fresh peaches, cantaloupe, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, two types of squash, zucchini, cayenne, turkey, butter, and eggs. There are some things worth spoiling yourself over, and I think splurging on food that’s healthy and delicious is more than worth it.

I admit I’m selfish in that I target much of my activism toward personal benefit. Obesity-prevention initiatives to lower the costs of fruit and vegetables by taxing sugary drinks? Sign me up. Network neutrality to protect my precious internet? I’m there.

By buying local food, I get much bang for my buck. The food is delicious and nutritious. I know most of my money goes right to the farmer. I’m stimulating the local economy. I’m preserving the genetically diverse and thus varying flavors of heirloom produce instead of mass produced food only in the most easily shipped and preserved varieties. I’m taking care of my environment by taking trucks off the road and conserving energy. As I sit eating a piece of cantaloupe, I feel conscious and spoiled all at once. Glorious.

For my Blacksburg crew, the market is on the corner of Roanoke and Draper Roads and is open on Wednesdays from 2pm-7pm and Saturdays from 8am-2pm. Come out August 22 for the Tomato Contest and taste over 40 different tomatoes!

For everyone else, find local farmers’ markets by typing your zipcode into LocalHarvest.org.

Enough from me. Why do YOU buy local food?

Persian Chicken with Apricots

I made this dish for the second time tonight, and I'm thrilled. It's absolutely delicious! I modified the original recipe and adjusted to make it cheaper by substituting other ingredients for the cardamom and leaving out the saffron, and by substituting my sweeteners- which do NOT raise blood sugar!- for the sugar. The first time I made it I substituted raisins for the dried apricots, which was okay, but now that I've had the apricots I'll never go back. The fat dried apricots soak up all the delicious seasoned broth.. the taste and texture are just to die for.

In adjusting this recipe to make it for only two pieces of chicken, I've done two things:
First, I kept all the ingredients the same but reduced the amount of chicken broth and lemon juice. This made a thick, very flavorful, very sweet sauce, which I saved to brush on chicken and fish for grilling. If you do this, be sure not to pour too much over your rice- it really is an extremely full-flavored sauce.

The second time, I kept the amount of liquids as what the recipe called for, and it's more of a broth. And I could eat a ton of the stuff. I'll do something with the leftovers tomorrow and report back what I ended up doing with them.



Today in the grocery store when buying a piece of ginger root, the cashier had to ask me what it was to ring it up. So, for those not yet familiar with this amazing ingredient- get familiar! It wasn't a staple ingredient for me until I realized in eating Nate's congee how much I really do love it. I've been buying it ever since.

Persian Chicken with Apricots

2 boneless chicken breasts
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon all spice
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
Olive oil
1 large vidalia onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and minced
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup erythritol
A pinch of NuNaturals Stevia (all stevia is NOT created equal!)
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup dried apricots, halved

Rinse chicken and pat dry. Mix the nutmeg, allspice, cumin, cinnamon, and salt to make a rub. Rub half the mixture on both sides of the chicken, and set half aside.

Before beginning to cook your chicken, make sure all your ingredients are chopped, measured, and on-hand. This made round two turn out a lot better than round one for me!

Using a large pot with a heavy bottom (like a Dutch oven, cast-iron pot, or in my case- an old fashioned pressure cooker), pour a thin film of olive oil and set pot over medium-high heat. Let the oil bubble a bit, and then set your chicken inside and DO NOT TOUCH IT. A cooking tip- anything you want to brown will brown quicker if you stop tossing it around. Just let it set! 5 mins on each side, and then pull it out and set it on a place.

Add onion, garlic, and ginger to pot and cook and stir for one minute. Then add your cayenne and remaining spice mixture. Add lemon juice, erythritol, and stevia, stir and let it come to a boil. Pour in chicken broth and replace chicken to pot. Let liquid come to a boil again, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, stir in apricots and cook for about 10 minutes more.

To serve, I spooned some broth/onions/apricots over white rice and had mine with my other recent love: beets! My grandmother and I have been doing a farmer's market hunt off the interstate for weeks, and finally came upon some. Thank you to my grandmother and to Tom Robbins, for turning me on to this sexy, red, heavenly, delicious vegetable. And to Molly for giving me Jitterbug Perfume!

Chocolate Black Bean Cake!

Check it out. There are two food bloggers that I follow consistently, and others whose blogs I occasionally wander off two. One of the two is Lauren, who has a blog called "Healthy Indulgences"-- absolutely chock full of amazing recipes, many of which are candida-friendly.

This chocolate cake, which entirely follows the candida diet with no changes made, is absolutely, without a doubt, to die for. Yes, it has black beans in it. Just trust me on this one, okay? It's cheap to make, and it's good for you, so there's no reason not to try it. This was a nice relief after spending an arm and a leg on almond flour recently, and holy crap does it feel good to eat chocolate cake and not feel guilty about the sugar. Although it's not at all shy on butter...

Lauren's also a carb counter, so for those of you who care about carbs it's ~65g net carbs for the whole cake with icing. So if you eat 1/10 of the cake you're at 6.5g carbs. I'm not a carb-counter, so that means nothing to me, but there it is.

For those not omitting sugar, replace the stevia/erythritol with regular sugar in the cake and powdered sugar in the icing if you wish. For those using the substitute sweeteners, a note: I used a looot more stevia in the icing than she recommended, so be sure to taste as you go. And salt is a necessity for the icing. An absolute necessity. Without it, it tastes bitter.

Here's my cake. I was feeling lazy and took the picture with my camera phone, so it's not that pretty. Once my digital camera can email my computer, I'll use it more often, but the whole USB process generally means I go for low quality pictures for things like blogging about cakes.

But man is it delicious.

You can see that I added almonds on the top. They really add a lot to the cake- I highly recommend this. I took regular whole, unsalted almonds, crushed them up, threw them on a cookie sheet under the broiler for a couple minutes, and scattered them on top.

Here's the recipe, taken from her blog.

Chocolate Cake Made with Black Beans

Makes a single 9" layer cake, which can be halved and stacked for the taller cake you see here!

Ingredients:
1-15 ounce can of unseasoned black beans
OR 1 1/4 cup cooked beans, any color
5 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
6 tablespoons unsalted organic butter OR extra virgin coconut oil
3/4 cup erythritol plus 1/2 teaspoon pure stevia extract OR 1/4-1/3 cup honey plus 1 teaspoon stevia
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon water (omit if using honey)

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray a 9" cake pan with extra virgin olive oil cooking spray, or just grease it with a thin layer of butter. Dust cocoa all over the inside of the pan, tapping to evenly distribute. Cut a round of parchment paper and line the bottom of the pan, then spray the parchment lightly.

Drain and rinse beans in a strainer or colander. Shake off excess water. Place beans, 3 of the eggs, vanilla, stevia (if using) and salt into blender. Blend on high until beans are completely liquefied. No lumps! Whisk together cocoa powder, baking soda, and baking powder. Beat butter with sweetener (erythritol or honey) until light and fluffy. Add remaining two eggs, beating for a minute after each addition. Pour bean batter into egg mixture and mix. Finally, stir in cocoa powder and water (if using), and beat the batter on high for one minute, until smooth. Scrape batter into pan and smooth the top. Grip pan firmly by the edges and rap it on the counter a few times to pop any air bubbles.

Bake for 325 degrees for 45 minutes. You may need a little longer, as my oven runs hot. Cake is done with the top is rounded and firm to the touch. After 10 minutes, turn out cake from pan, and flip over again on to a cooling rack. Let cool until cake reaches room temperature, then cover in plastic wrap or with cake dome (I use an overturned plastic chip bowl). For BEST flavor, let cake sit over night. I promise this cake will not have a hint of beaniness after letting it sit for eight hours! If you are stacking this cake, level the top with a long serrated knife, shaving off layers until it is flat and even. Frost immediately before serving.

Healthy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Makes enough to thickly cover one layer, or fill and frost a halved stacked layer

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted organic butter, softened, OR 7 tablespoons nonhydrogenated shortening
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon erythritol, OR 1/4 cup xylitol, powdered
5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons half and half OR coconut milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of sea salt
Good-tasting pure stevia extract, to taste

Optional addition for a glossy finish:
1 fresh organic egg yolk

Preparation:
Cream the butter in a small bowl until fluffy. Powder erythritol or xylitol in a coffee grinder or Magic Bullet for a minute or two, until extremely fine. Let sweetener settle in grinder before opening the top. Stir powdered sweetener into butter with a spatula, then beat until smooth. Slowly blend in the cocoa powder (unless you want to redecorate your kitchen), vanilla, and sea salt. Beat in the half and half and egg yolk, if using. Add stevia, starting with 1/16 teaspoon. You'll probably use less than 1/4 teaspoon. Just keep tasting and adjust sweetness to your liking.


Enjoy!!!

-Jess

Candida Cookies and Job Hunting

I'm on the jobhunt, and the stress requires sweets. This recipe was invented to use the ingredients I've got...ingredients I can actually eat on this diet. Many of the ingredients could be substituted. If you aren't on the Candida diet, try this recipe with sugar instead of the erythritol/stevia and stick a hershey kiss on each one. Also, any nutbutter or combination of nutbutters would work, and 1 1/4 cups of almond flour would work if you don't have the crushed pecans. Experiment- have fun!

4 Nut Cookies
* 1 cup almond flour
* 1/4 cup finely crushed pecans (reeeally fine- the stuff used for pie crust)
* 1 teaspoon guar gum
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 egg
* 1 cup erythritol
* 1 tsp stevia extract
* 1/2 cup nut butter (I used 1/2 cup cashewbutter, 1/2 cup peanutbutter)
* 1/4 cup butter, room temperature
* 1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Using a blender on low, cream the erythritol and stevia with the egg first. Then add the butter and vanilla. Next, add a cup of nutbutter (I used half each peanutbutter and cashewbutter.. I technically shouldn't have peanutbutter on this diet, but I'm almost through my 1st month and I couldn't resist adding juuust a little bit). My Mom's tip: Put 1 cup of water in a measuring cup, then add nutbutter to the water until it raises to 1.5 cups to measure. This way it's easy to get out of the cup- just scoop it out of the water with a spoon.

Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Then slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet, blending on low. When you're done, carefully lift the beaters out of the ingredients but keep them as low as possible in your bowl and turn the speed up a little to get all the ingredients out of the beaters.

Make small balls and drop them onto a greased cookie sheet. Criss-cross the tops with a fork to give them the standard peanutbutter cookie appearance.

I baked mine for 13 minutes, didn't wait long enough for them to cool, and burnt the heck out of my mouth. But.. they're delicious!!

-Jess

Feeling empowered

I spent over $70 at Eats today, so I'm hoping this commitment of my tax return actually clears up this terrible skin of mine. I bought Candida Clear: a combo of Pau D'Arco, Oregano Oil, Black Walnut & Caprylic Acid, a bottle of Acidophilus (a probiotic), brown rice flour, guar gum (a yeast-free leavening agent), and stevia (a natural sweetener). I also bought an awesome multivitamin complex that gives me a ton of energy- he had given me samples the last time I went, and sold me. It's called "Unbounded Energy" by New Chapter Organics. This stuff is AMAZING. If you live in Blacksburg, do yourself a favor and inquire about it and then ask for a sample. It works quickly, like caffeine, and makes you feel amazing.

I'm feeling totally empowered by my choice groceries- there are a ton of recipes I can make now using these substitutes. I'm going to knock out some schoolwork and then try to find some sweet goodies I can make... maybe some cookies or muffins. I'm thinking snickerdoodles or something else with lots of cinnamon and nutmeg. Mmmm.

I'm still making two huge sacrifices for awhile. The first is chocolate. I freaking love dark chocolate, but I'll have to give it up at least in this next month. The second is alcohol. I'll do my best to skip on the wine and whiskey for awhile. Hopefully my skin will love me for this and I'll be wearing shorts in no time.

Time to crunch out some serious schoolwork...

-Jess

Candida diet

Oh, drat. The foodie and wino in me are both frowning and very upset, as my path to healthy skin has limited my consumption of so many wonderful things for awhile. I've been trying to heal myself of eczema for the last three years, having success with a few changes.. particularly eliminating caffeine and soy and by identifying a few key food allergies- Goodbye strawberries! :(

I've read quite a bit about Candida over time, and according to many claims, sticking to this diet could heal my skin while improving my ability to focus and increasing my level of energy overall. That said, Candida is apparently over-diagnosed by holistic doctors, as the symptoms are extremely broad. Considering that I go through a bottle of Cortisone a week and that I've had about as many steroids as I can take and I'm STILL dealing with this project that is my skin... I figured, hell. How bad can this be?

For those unfamiliar, the Candida diet begins extremely strict, and then slowly you add in different foods and see how your body adjusts. The idea is to cut out things that promote mold growth, so no sugar, no yeast, no dairy (except organic yogurt, which promotes good bacteria). The biggies for me were- Bread, pasta, cereal, fruit, and milk, so I went seeking alternatives for three of the four.

Today I bought hemp bread and hemp milk, yeast and dairy free respectively, and no- there's no THC in these. I had read that hemp is supposed to curb sugar cravings, so when I saw these options I thought they'd be worth a try.

The vanilla hemp milk tastes a lot like soy milk (which I can't drink)- it has a similar, light nutty flavor, and is more dense than rice milk.. which is too watery for me. It was great over cereal, and I think it would be fantastic in a smoothie. Served very cold, I can drink it plain as well, although I probably won't. I have heard that the chocolate version is fantastic alone, but that wasn't available in Kroger.


French Meadow's hemp bread, made with hempseed, flaxseed, and pumpkin, is absolutely delicious. It's a very dense bread, and if you've had a sprouted-wheat bread or anything similar, the taste won't be too surprising. But alas!! My lack of education on this subject failed me, and it turns out despite claiming to be "yeast-free" the bread is not gluten-free... Damn. What am I going to do with this whole loaf of expensive bread, now? Still deciding how bad this is for me..

A few other new purchases..

Lundberg's Wasabi Rice Chips were on close out sale for $1.20 a bag. I grabbed two, and glad I did- these things are delicious! Unfortunately I plow through them.

Honest Tea has a wonderful Yerba Mate that's- hooray!- sweetened with agave! Bottled tea is usually overloaded with sugar, but this one holds true to the words on the label: Just a tad sweet. The other flavors are cane-sugar sweetened, which I'll avoid for now, but the low-glycemic agave works for me. If you're a sweet tea drinker this won't be sweet enough for you, but for me it was perfect. And I was thrilled to have something I can grab other than water to drink! They're also certified organic, which both makes my sensitive body feel better and satisfies my need to be kind to the earth.

Speaking of which, I've learned a little bit about organic wine this week. A very long (sorry my underage Eve, who was waiting in the car!) conversation with one of the nice men in The Vintage Cellar educated me as to the details. I came in seeking a sulfite-free wine in order to ease my allergic reaction, but learned that there's actually no such thing.. The process of wine naturally creates sulfites. That said, most wine production in the United States involves adding sulfites. The reality is, he said, you really have no good way of determining the amount of sulfites in a bottle of wine. That said, by choosing organic wine you are more likely to avoid extra chemicals (including sulfites) that contribute to allergic reactions. While they do carry wines that claim not to have sulfites, I ended up leaving with an organic Cono Sur Pinot Noir. An interesting fact: Many organic wines from small wineries do not actually say this on their label, because it is expensive to earn this certification and small wineries can't afford to do this. That said, if you go to a wine store like The Vintage Cellar, they can tell you which wineries (like Cono Sur!) are committed to creating organic wine. At this store in particular, they have all the little shelf labels for organic wines colored green, even if the winery has not earned that label. What does this mean? Organic wine for cheaper- because you don't have to pay for the government seal!

I've yet to taste this wine, so I'll report back once I do. I finally submitted to modern times and bought a screw-top bottle, which is said to be smart-sealing but is decidedly unsexy. I have not bought a Pinot Noir in awhile, having started to consider it too plain in comparison to the Red Zinfandels and Chambourcins I've grown to love alone or the Syrah or Chianti I often pair with food. But unwilling to censor my wine adventure, I let myself be talked into this bottle to try later in the week. It is a 2008, though, so my bets are I'm going to be wishing I had a decanter.. but a few minutes/swirls in a big fat red wine glass will have to do.

That's it for now. I'll post my attempts at gluten-reduced (free is too hard) meals in the upcoming days as I find the time around cramming out my last few weeks worth of schoolwork. Oh, summer.. come quickly!

-Jess

Easy Poached Eggs with Hollandaise Sauce and Veggies

I'd never really attempted to make poached eggs before, because everything I'd ever heard or read made it sound like some extremely difficult task. I eat eggs in the morning, so my energy level was never enough to take on such a challenge.

But au contraire! The poached egg is no longer elusive. Here's how to make this morning's breakfast:

Saute chopped breakfast veggies in a pan with oil- I used green peppers, onions, and mushrooms, and left them in the pan on med-low while I made the other ingredients.

Turn a pot of water on high to get it to come to a boil.

Grab a blender, and add one egg yolk, dijon mustard and lemon juice (a tiny bit of each if you're like me.. and lemon pepper will suffice if you don't keep fresh lemons on hand), any other spices that appeal to you (I added thyme, basil, cayenne and black pepper).

Turn the water down to half, gently crack two eggs into the water (some people use a spoon so that they don't break in the process, but I find if you turn it down to half and quickly add the eggs this isn't necessary). After you drop in the eggs, turn the water back up to return to boiling. These will need to cook for around 3 mins, so hit a timer if necessary. If you cook too long you'll just have funny-shaped boiled eggs- you want the yolks to stay runny!

Put an english muffin in the toaster.

Heat two tablespoons of butter in the microwave for 1.5 mins or until hot. Turn the blender on high and pour in the hot butter in a slow stream.

Hopefully at this point your eggs will have been cooking for 3 mins, your english muffin is toasted, and your sauce is ready. Using a slotted spoon, remove the eggs and set on a towel (paper towels will do) to drain excess water. Then spoon vegetables on top of the toasted english muffin halfs, place the eggs on top of the vegetables, and top with the hollandaise sauce. If you want, crack some pepper or add a sprig of parsley or something as a garnish.

Add a mimosa and a cup of hot tea, and voila! Sexy, delicious breakfast.

-Jess