Tomato Basil Pasta

• Tinkyada gluten free spaghetti or fettucini pasta
• 2 cloves garlic
• sea salt
• 2 or 3 large fresh tomatoes or the equivalent amount of grape or cherry tomatoes, coarsely chopped into bite-sized pieces
• a couple handfuls of fresh basil, coarsely chopped
• olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• Parmesan for garnish, optional

Smash and peel garlic cloves, and put the whole smashed cloves in the bottom of a mixing bowl. Mix in enough sea salt to coat the garlic and press garlic into the salt. Add tomatoes, basil, a drizzle of olive oil (not too much, just a tablespoon or so, max), and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside at room temperature to let the flavors develop.

Cook your pasta per usual and drain, then immediately toss pasta with the tomato mixture. Serve, garnishing with parmesan, if desired. That’s it!

What’s your favorite summertime dish?

This dish is so good I made it two nights in a row, the first night with just eggplant, then again last night I used eggplant, zucchini, sweet bell pepper and onions. I could easily see this being adapted for fall and winter veggies too. So easy. Just chop, stir bake, and serve over rice, millet, quinoa—your grain of choice.

You can substitute your favorite hot sauce for sriracha or use honey instead of agave nectar, just do so to taste as they have different potency.

Spicy Summer Vegetables

• 1.5 pounds vegetables, chopped into largeish bite-sized pieces
• 6 oz. (3/4 cup) tomato paste
• 1 to 2 Tbsp. Sriracha (depending on your heat tolerance)
• 2 Tbsp. agave nectar
• 2 Tbsp. oil
• 1 heaping Tbsp. dried oregano, or 3 Tbsp. minced fresh oregano

Preheat oven to 400. In the bottom of a large bowl, combine everything but the veggies. Add vegetables and mix well. Spread mixture onto a cookie sheet and bake until fork tender. Serve over your grain of choice—rice, millet, quinoa, buckwheat, etc. Garnish with sesame seeds. Rub your belly for joy.

Serves 4 as a main course, 6—8 as a side dish.

Growing up, I hated sauerkraut. Loathed it. My mom would make sailor sandwiches and oven baked hot dogs with kraut occasionally, and from the first odors I was set against it. It was mushy, stinky, ugly, and revolting in every way. I’ve never been one for subtlety of opinion.

Well, I’m hereby changing my tune. Sauerkraut has become a favorite treat at the Purple House, regularly added to salads and soups as a condiment, taken along to cookouts to adorn all manner of grillables, and it’s not rare for me to just eat a couple mouthfuls straight out of the jar (I also do this with nut butters).

How did this shift occur? Well I’ll tell you I still don’t buy the flaccid canned mess from the store. I make my own fermented kraut at home with local cabbage and sea salt. It’s crispy, zesty, a great source of vitamin C, and of course it’s purple because we’re the Purple House people.

This is as easy as can be. The steps are pretty much the same as the kimchi, just fewer ingredients.

Purple House Sauerkraut

• 2.5 pounds purple (or regular) cabbage
• 1.5 Tbsp. sea salt
• de-chlorinated water (boil and then cool, or use distilled)

I make this in 2-quart batches. Sometimes I double it and just divide it into smaller jars for the fermentation stage. Anything more than two quarts during fermentation just seems unwieldy to me.

Shred the cabbage using the slicer of a food processor or a mandoline. I like thicker pieces because they stay crispier.

Layer cabbage and salt into a large stoneware or glass bowl and allow to sit 15 to 30 minutes, allowing the salt to start drawing salt out of the cabbage.

Use a pounding tool to pound the cabbage, pulling liquid out of the cabbage. This will be your brine. Continue pounding and stirring alternately till you have a good amount of brine in the bowl. This will take a while, so put on some good music and have fun with it!

Begin to spoon your kraut mixture into a 2-quart glass jar(s), pressing it down with your fist to drive out any air bubbles every couple inches.

Once all the cabbage and brine are in the jars and all the air bubbles have been pressed out, you’ll need to make brine baggies to weigh the cabbage down below the surface of the brine, preventing exposure to air during fermentation. Using 1 Tbsp salt per cup of water, dissolve salt in water, then pour into sealable plastic baggie(s). Place the baggie on top of the kraut mixture and arrange it so all the cabbage is submerged. Wipe the exposed inside of the jar clean with a paper towel, and put the lid on the jar.

Allow to sit out at room temperature, burping the jar 2 or 3 times a day to release gases and avoid a sauerkraut sprinkler system (ask me how I know). If you see air bubbles building up down in the cabbage, just use a clean hand to press the mixture down and drive out the air bubbles.

Every couple days you may want to rinse off and dry your baggie, wipe out the inside rim of the jar again, and replace the baggie. If the baggie breaks, no problem! That’s why it had brine in it.

Fermentation times vary, as short as 5 days in a warm kitchen, much slower when it’s cool. You’ll know it’s ready by taste and smell. If any of the cabbage gets exposed to air and discolors, just remove the affected pieces, press the mixture down again, rinse and replace the brine baggie, and wipe out the rim again.

When your kraut is ready, store it in the fridge, keeping the rim clean and the baggie in place. It will last months.

This may sound complicated but I have a tendency to be verbose and err on the side of over-explaining. Trust me: once you’ve done it and thoroughly enjoyed the end product, you’ll be fermenting everything you can get your hands on!

A great resource for other projects is the book Wild Fermentation, one of a very few food books I’ll actually read in bed.

Have fun, and feel free to send your questions and comments!

I wrote this recipe last year for Agriberry, a local Richmond fruit CSA. It’s so good, probably the best rib recipe I’ve ever had, and so I give it to you.

I find that one set of spareribs, about 1.5 pounds, is good for two generous serviings. If you are feeding more people (or have smaller or bigger appetites than ours), feel free to adjust the amounts below.

Blackberry Ribs

• 1 1/2 lb spare rib
• 3 t. chili powder
• 3 minced garlic cloves
• 1/2 t. salt
• 2 c. fresh blackberries or more
• 1/3 c. ketchup
• 1/3 c. maple syrup
• 2 1/2 t. ginger powder
• 1 1/2 T. balsamic vinegar
• 1 t. sriracha (or your favorite hot sauce)

Preheat oven to 400. Mix chili, garlic and salt and rub into both sides of the spare rib. Place ribs meaty side up on a rimmed baking sheet and cook for about 50 minutes.

Meanwhile, place all six remaining ingredients in a blender and liquefy. Pour blackberry mixture through a sieve into a sauce pan, pressing mixture with a spatula to work the juice through. Discard the pulp and seeds. Cook the blackberry sauce over medium-high, uncovered, for about 10 minutes, stirring constantly once it starts to bubble. Set aside.

Once ribs have cooked 50 minutes, take out of oven and brush both sides with a liberal amount of the blackberry sauce. Return ribs to the oven, again meaty side up, and cook for another 10 minutes - no longer. Cut ribs into individual pieces, divide between two plates, and spoon more sauce over the top. Serve with leftover sauce on the side for dipping.

Apparently I’m feeling nostalgic this month. Did I tell you that I got more than a little verklempt (and more than a little pissed off) when I found out they canceled Gourmet magazine? The BEST magazine ever? Well, this recipe is a very distant cousin of a recipe in the big yellow book. Theirs is for winter vegetables in a horseradish butter sauce. Mine is a springy-er version.

Carrots & Radishes with horseradish herb sauce

• 1 bunch fresh carrots, scrubbed with ends still on (but leaves removed)
• several radishes—half as much as there are carrots
• 1/4 c. olive oil (or other oil or butter)
• 2 T. horseradish
• 1 1/2 T. white balsamic vinegar (or other)
• 1 t. honey
• 1 t. or so sea salt
• 2 T. fresh herb minced—dill, parsley, thyme, or a combination thereof
• fresh ground pepper to taste

In a small bowl, whisk together everything except the carrots and radishes. Set aside.

Scrub your carrots but do not peel them. Trim the leaves off but leave the very tip of stubbly end. If they’re nice small carrots, you can leave them whole—otherwise cut in half lengthwise as necessary (I like to keep them long, it’s pretty). Trim the ends off your radishes and cut them into matchsticks.

Place carrots in a steamer basket. When it starts to boil, wait one minute and then add the radishes. Steam only until fork tender—err on the side of underdone as you want these a little firm and they will continue to cook a bit after you remove them from the heat.

Place carrots and radishes on a platter and spoon the horseradish sauce over the top. Serve hot or cool—it’s great both ways.

Having just put a pot of quinoa on to cook, I received a call demanding a needs-your-immediate-attention Web site update. The quinoa had just started to boil, so I turned off the heat and left it to do the update, thinking I would just come back later and finish cooking it.

Well, it might sound like the most obvious thing in the world, but when I returned to the quinoa about thirty or forty minutes later, it was *perfectly* cooked. So my conversation with my friend came back to mind and within that week tried doing amaranth and rice and hulled oats the same way: bring it to a boil, then cut the heat off and let it cook the rest of the way passively. LIKE A CHARM it worked. Perfectly tender grains, sometimes a little leftover water to drain off even (I often have to add more), energy saved, and my kitchen doesn’t get so goshdurn hot - a consideration because I try not to run the AC until it’s sweltering. And I’m pitta, so that’s saying something.

So I had to share. Have you tried cooking things passively? I’m wanting to try this with pasta and potatoes and such - has anyone tried this already?

Love from foodie land - Anna

The inspiration for this torte comes from a chocolate tart recipe I tried out of the big yellow Gourmet recipe book.

Many thanks to my herbalism class at Sacred Plant Traditions for letting me take pictures. This was our last day of class together, and we had quite a feast. This group knows how to eat: marinated broccoli, quinoa with apple and chive blossoms, vegetarian chili, curried egg salad, and that’s just what I remember off the top of my head.

So without further ado:

Gluten Free Dark Chocolate Torte

Crust:

• One 9-inch springform pan
• 1 7.25 oz. package of Pamela’s ginger cookies (yields about 1 1/2 cups crumbs)
• 5 T. butter

Filling:

• 10 to 12 ounces 60% or 70% cacao dark chocolate
• 9 T. butter
• 3 eggs
• 1/3 c. organic raw sugar
• 1/2 c. whipping cream
• generous pinch of sea salt
• 1 1/2 t. vanilla extract

Wrap the bottom plate of your springform with foil or parchment paper and assemble the pan. Preheat oven to 350 and place a cookie sheet on a lower rack to catch any drips (my springform always seems to leak a little butter from its bottom seam).

Soften the unsalted butter for the crust and mix with the cookie crumbs. If you use a different kind of cookie for the crust, you just want to make sure that it equals 1 1/2 cups of crumbs. If you don’t have enough, I’ve had good luck mixing in some shredded coconut to make up the difference. Press the crumb-butter mixture into the bottom of your springform, bringing it about an inch up the sides.

Bake your crust for about 10 minutes. It will be slightly puffy and the sides may have slumped down a bit. Set the springform on a cooling rack and use a spoon to press the sides back up if necessary. Allow crust to cool.

In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, melt 9 Tablespoons unsalted butter with the chocolate until completely combined and melted. Remove from heat.

In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, cream, salt, and vanilla, then add the chocolate mixture. Pour this filling into the crust, using a spatula to make sure that you’ve gotten every single delicious drop. Smooth the top of the torte with the spatula, then place in the oven to cook for about 25 to 30 minutes. It will not rise much. The edges will be set but the center will still be wobbly. Remove and place on cooling rack to bring to room temperature, a couple hours.

Once cooled to room temperature, place in the refrigerator to chill until the torte is firm, another couple hours. Cut into small slices and serve.

Some variations I plan on trying in the future: adding a layer of jam between the crust and the filling; mixing coconut, dried fruit, or nuts into the filling, or using half dark chocolate batter with half white chocolate batter to do a swirled torte.

A favorite teacher at my high school kindly described all this rage as “teenage angst.” Angst! What a perfect word! The “ahhhhhh!” sound, open-throated out only to be choked off by an awkward gaggle of consonants tangled up trying to get through the door at the same time, all knees and elbows. Yep, angst. That about sums it up.

Today, I was reminded today of this angsty period, fortunately with more of a sense of humor than I had at the time. I had dated a boy, the first boy I ever dated in fact, and oh, if I’d known the warning signs then – this boy was a die-hard Republican, conservative to his bones, a fundamentalist hellfire sorta guy, and besides being my polar opposite in every way except age, he loved to get me riled. (I’ve observed this as a recurring pattern over the years. I now recognize it – the people who like to poke at you and laugh when you get mad. I double dog dare you to laugh at me now! *grin*) Knowing how I worshipped at the funky patchwork shrine of Bob Dylan and all his folksy retinue, my boyfriend relished playing that Cracker song that goes, “What the world needs now is another folk singer like I need a hole in the head.” And then that red rage would rise, my cheeks would burn, my eyes would flash, and he’d laugh his scrawny boy butt off.

What was I thinking? This question, by the way, has also been a recurring theme as years go by.

So I was reminded of that today. My mom lent me a book recently. I think my mom and I sometimes speak to each other in books. It’s like a subtle code: “I want you to understand me. Read this. This rings true. Please understand.” Each book shared and opened, more than just a book opens. So my beautiful, patient mother lent me Traveling Mercies by Annie Lamott, and I have been thoroughly enjoying it. It’s a very humorous, wry, and heart-full collection of stories and memoirs from a hilarious, tough ol’ softy kind of dame, dancing around issues of faith and spirituality. I’m not Christian myself, but I am deeply spiritual, and I think my mom knew that I would “get it.” And I do. And I love it, and I love that she shared it with me, and I love what it says about her. It’s passed the great reading test—even when reading it in public, I still get misty-eyed at moments or laugh out loud.

So about two-thirds of the way through the book, this poem by Nanao Sakaki appears:

In the morning
After taking cold shower
—–what a mistake—–
I look at the mirror.

There, a funny guy,
Grey hair, white beard, wrinkled skin,
—–what a pity—–
Poor, dirty, old man!
He is not me, absolutely not!
Land of life
Fishing in the ocean
Sleeping in the desert with stars
Building a shelter in mountains
Farming the ancient way
Singing with coyotes
Singing against nuclear war—
I’ll never be tired of life.
Now I’m seventeen years old,
Very charming young man.

I sit down quietly in lotus position,
Meditating, meditating for nothing.
Suddenly a voice comes to me:

“To stay young,
To save the world,
Break the mirror.”

This was a “woah” moment. I’ve been studying herbalism for over a year now, which led me to permaculture and to ayurveda, which led me back to yoga and meditation, all of which led me to a much deeper understanding and compassion to my own pains and patterns, joys and strengths, and the humility of seeing the road to wisdom disappearing into the distance ahead.

Now I’m laughing at myself for getting so ridiculously riled about that Cracker song lyric. I actually find myself in agreement: “If you want to save the world, shut yer mouth!”

The poem’s last phrase, “To stay young, / To save the world, / Break the mirror!” That’s the commandment. Don’t live in negatives—don’t spout invectives, don’t let rage be your food, don’t let your present life and work waste away for want of nourishment while your soul is mourning things on the other side of the earth: BE PRESENT. Here and now, live in affirmation. Rather than talk about injustice, practice justice. Do something. Live: build create nourish strengthen grow teach learn inspire breathe and be.

A while back, another great teacher told me to make wise choices, because I might be the only bible some people ever read. I still believe in the spirit of that advice. Every choice we make in our worlds matters. Every dollar we spend is a vote. Every bit of love we put into the world, every song we sing, every rift we mend, everything that we learn and teach and learn again—it continues outward, weaving in, passing the thread hand to hand, rippling out until our one tiny moment has touched people in places and times that we will never know ourselves. Our present, our presence, every minute act—positive or negative—has great power. It colors the threads we spin. It stains the fingers of every other person who touches these threads, blending with their own colors, passing on and on and on, under and over and under again.

We are so powerful. Wield with care.

Canning season has officially begun, and my first foray: strawberry jam. On toast, spread over brownies, spooned over yogurt - this stuff is divine. This is the recipe I used this year, no doubt next year I’ll have learned something new and be doing it differently, but this worked this year. You’ll need a water bath canner and clean 8 or 16 ounce canning jars with bands and new lids. Also, I never follow the directions on the box. So, yeah. There’s that. If you have experience with other variations on lower sugar water-bath canning recipes, I’d love to hear your tips - please share your experience/tips/recipes/variations in the comments.

Strawberry Jam

• 8 cups crushed strawberries (from about 5 pounds whole strawberries, cleaned and tops removed)
• 1 1/2 c. raw organic sugar
• 1 packet (1.75 oz) no-sugar-needed fruit pectin
• organic lemon juice

Heat water in your water bath canner to boiling, and make sure jars and lids are clean and warm.

Clean and remove tops from strawberries, then crush them using food processer or, if you like chunky jam like me, a potato masher. Place 8 cups crushed berries in stock pot.

Add sugar and pectin and stir well, heating to a rolling boil - even when you stir it it continues to bubble. Allow to boil, stirring constantly for one minute. Remove immediately from heat and skim any foam off the top, if necessary.

Using a canning funnel, ladle strawberry mixture into jars, filling to a quarter-inch from the top and adding about a teaspoon of lemon juice to the top of each 8-ounce jar and about a tablespoon lemon juice to the top of each 16-ounce jar. Top with lids and bands, tightening only finger tight. Note: no need to stir the lemon juice - I just add it to ensure that the jam has enough acid to prevent nastiness such as botulism. We don’t like botulism, not one bit.

Place each jar in the water bath canner rack as you fill them. When full, lower the rack into the boiling water and cover the pot, allowing cans to boil for five minutes.

Remove cans from rack and place on towel, listening for each seal to “pop.” It may take up to ten minutes for some, but usually it happens pretty quickly for me.

Store jars in cool, dark place until ready for use. Enjoy

Springtime, the farmer’s markets have reopened, glory be to the PTB! Another winter past, another year springing anew, and nothing shakes off the last residual frosty shivers like a curry. In celebration, I got more produce from the farmer’s market than one girl could possibly stand a chance of eating on her own. But I’m going to do it. With a little help from my friends of course. And here was last night’s creation.

Spring Lentil Curry

• 1 1/2 c. dry lentils
• 1 to 2-inch knob of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 whole Arbol pepper, or similar dry medium-hot pepper
• 1 carrot, chopped
• 3 to 4 spring onions, white parts and greens chopped and separated
• 1/3 c. chopped fresh cilantro
• several handfuls fresh spinach, chopped (3 cups maybe? ish?)
• 1 can organic coconut milk
• 2 T. curry powder
• sea salt to taste

I use sprouted lentils, and if doing this, be sure to start them sprouting the day before. Regardless, cook your lentils, sprouted or otherwise, in chicken or vegetable broth. Set aside, reserving a little bit of the liquid.

Heat a broad, deep skillet over medium heat. Add butter, ghee, or coconut oil for sauteing, and then add ginger and bay leaves. Cook until aromatic, about a minute. Add carrot and the white parts of the chopped onion and sprinkle with a smattering of salt, stirring until the carrot is slightly tender.

Add lentils, coconut milk, the hot pepper, and curry powder. Mix well and adjust curry to taste, adding more salt if necessary. Allow to cook and thicken a bit, uncovered, about twenty minutes. Add spinach, cilantro, and the reserved green onion. Cook another five minutes and adjust salt and curry to your taste.

Serve over rice. Rub your belly with joy and gratitude for spring.