More Nothing

Okay: we haven't had much food blogging of late, so let's talk recipes, shall we? Last night's concoction is from the Moosewood Low-Fat Cookbook, which may be my single favorite cookbook ever; it's certainly in the top five. The recipe is for Lentil Sambar or some such, and it includes lentils, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, and a bunch of spices. The pot I used is quite large and does not have a lid, so the potatoes and cauliflower took forever to cook, but it was quite tasty.

I didn't have the mango peach chutney (recipe in the book, too), but I had some apricot ginger chutney in the fridge--only four years old--and threw some of that on it, and I added some brie while I was at it, thinking the ammonia of the brie and the creaminess would make a nice complement to the warmth of the spices. I liked it a lot, because of the complex flavors, but it may not have been to everyone's taste; hard to say.

Tonight's dish, from the same cookbook, is supposed to be garlicky black-eyed peas and greens (kale, in my case, though you could use collards or mustard greens or presumably even beet greens or swiss chard). You cook the beans with some cloves of garlic, saute the greens quickly with more garlic, mix them, serve over rice.

I, of course, must fiddle with the recipe. I added some fresh ginger to the pot in which the beans and garlic cooked, and I added a diced sweet potato (I had bought two, but they were large, so one was enough last night0 and an onion to the pan in which the greens were cooked, and served tonight's over whole wheat pasta instead of rice. It was quite tasty, at least to me.

Which is always an issue on some level. I put combinations together that I wouldn't necessarily serve to anyone else. Friend is pretty willing to try my experiments, and, for that matter, Chuck was, too, but I try not to come up with anything too crazy if I know someone else is going to be eating it. I think part of that is because I don't necessarily make the same thing the same way twice--the brie was quite good in last night's dinner, but I wouldn't go out and buy brie just for that; same with the chutney. I happened to have both around, and I thought the flavors and textures would complement the curried cauliflower, and I was right, but it would have been quite tasty on its own. Tonight I ended up with more of the beans/potatos mix than I had greens to go with it, so I froze some of the beans/potatos in separate containers and I'll mix it with spinach or whatever I have handy when I make it for dinner, or I could have the beans/potatos over rice. And so on.

Part of the point of yesterday's and today's cooking was to fill the freezer with lunches. I'd depleted most of my stores before the move, to reduce the amount of food that had to be moved, but it's time to stock up again and start eating (and exercising!!) in a more healthy manner.

This weekend's other challenge was convincing my mom to take my dad to an acupuncturist. His full-body rash continues; it can only be kept under any kind of control when he's taking steroids, and, even then, he's itching all the time. It's been going on for six months, and no one seems to know what it is or what to do about it, and it's getting him down. I pointed out to my mom that it wouldn't hurt him--it might not help, but it won't hurt--and that western medicine hadn't actually done much for him so far. And I think I got through to her. I'm going to try to find a few accredited people near where they live (the google is a wonderful deity), and I think she's ready to go for it.

The biggest problem is that the person who sounds like he might be best is Taiwanese--which is a problem only because, if the website is any indication, his English isn't terribly fluent. My dad is already nearly deaf, even with hearing aids, so thick accents pose an additional difficulty in understanding. Given that it's a modality with which he has no experience, understanding is probably key. The other part of that is that nearly everyone will want to give him herbs, and I can tell you that ain't happening.

I'll keep looking, though; the fact that my mom is agreeing with it is a sign of just how bad it's gotten for my dad. And, really, it would be nice if something helped.

The other thing I got, from my acupuncturist, is a list of foods that supposedly help with "yin deficiency." I was laughing with my mom today, because a number of things on the list are not things that my dad is going to be eating (he loathes asparagus, for example, and I don't expect my dad to be eating mung bean sprouts any time either). But other stuff, yeah, so I'll send the list to my mom, along with some dead sea salts (for bathing) and some cream with calendula in it. Cross your fingers that something works.