Day 15 - Value Eating on 02/05/2010

Day 15 and really easy calculations:

Breakfast: an apple and a banana: 53c

An espresso at Link’s Sweet Bean – a tiny coffee roaster basically in Wilmette’s town square. I enjoyed that – I miss real good espresso!! 1.69$

Lunch: a second serving of yesterday’s zuppa: 1.29$

Dinner: a slice of artisan bread (30c) with a nice French pate’ (54c) I bought at Schaefer’s in Skokie (they have such nice cheeses & meats… yumm): 84c

A nice cup of organic roisbush chai for after-dinner: 0.15c

Total Food Cost for Today: 4.5$

day 14 - Value Eating on 02/04/2010

Today, I had my banana moment. I swear I had not eaten any bananas for five years – besides the small sweet one’s in Brazil, on vacation two years ago. Back in Italy, I would never buy bananas, but stick to local food. Although there are no oranges in Tuscany, we had kiwi, apples, pears and of course the whole set of summer fruit. But in winter, I would eat the apples from a organic farmer down the road from my home.

So now, here I am, in Chicago. And I realize that the demand for local food is so limited, that the supply in an average shopping environment is terrible. Sure, you can drive to a farmer’s market on the weekend or get lucky in one of the few stores dedicated to local & sustainable food, like the Green Grocer. But what if you have no car to go cross town and on top of that it’s a Wednesday, so the next market is in four days from now. I passed a Trader Joe’s and thought I give it a second try – never judge anything from your first impression only. So there I was, standing in front of the apple selection - Michigan Apples (conventional) or organic apples from California. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I like to support conventional local producers, cause I think through the interaction with them and a dialogue you can eventually motivate them to change towards sustainable agriculture. Then I read “apples have been coated with XYZ” – I was so horrified that a) I forgot what they were coated with and b) decided to not eat that. So I got Californian apples. In Chicago. At that point, I thought, I might as well get a banana from Chile. Fond memories of banana & peanut butter made me grab some bananas (I choose the ones which were less green) and a jar of organic peanut butter.

And that was my lunch (see, eventually this story would tie into the project of Value Eating): banana and peanut butter that tasted nothing like what I remembered from childhood vacations at my grandparents’. The banana had absolutely no taste and I wonder why people buy them? Because they think it’s good for you? It is certainly no fun to eat! Anyways, the peanut butter was much more runny and less sweet than the big name brand I had when I was a kid, but I really appreciated that as a sign for being an honest peanut butter, without added sugars, fillers and what not. Will I have more banana & peanut butter? Maybe in five years, when I have forgotten about today’s experiment and want to relive childhood once more. Price for this disappointment: 2 bananas 25c each + 4 tablespoons of peanut butter 42c =92c

Breakfast was an apple for 28 c

Early dinner was a nice zuppa, once more, this time I added not only Fabio’s & Nicoletta’s rice from The Scrumptious Pantry to the 17 bean mix, but also 1/3 of a local & organic butternut squash. Finished off with a drizzle of Cosimo’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil from The Scrumptious Pantry a very filling and – most important of all – warming meal! Costs for this meal: bean mix (24c), rice (15c) squash (50c), Finishing Oil (40c) = 1.29$

Total Food Cost for Today: 2.49$

Day 13 - Value Eating on 02/03/2010

As I said, my kitchen has arrived. I am behaving like a little Duracell rabbit, zooming around the kitchen and wanting to cook, bake, braise, fry… as if I had been deprived of my favorite toys and now wanted to make up time using all of them at once.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I feel that this is exactly the case. Plus, a fully furnished kitchen with an inviting space to sit and eat does bring back an appetite!

So today I had:

Breakfast: no surprises: 1 cup organic yoghurt, ½ organic apple and 1 organic orange: 1.99$

Lunch: are you Italian? If the answer is “yes”, ignore this paragraph and continue reading starting with “snack”. Cause Italians are religious to their traditional recipes and even more traditional when it comes to pasta and I do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I did attack my tastebuds. I really like Yams, their sweet taste and their consistency when they are sautéed… so as I was getting (maybe overly) creative in the kitchen, I thought: why not use Yams in a pasta dish inspired by carbonara? Substitute the (sweet & salty tasting) bacon cubes with sautéed yams. And that is what I did. Three slices of yams were sautéed in olive oil, Carlo’s Durum Wheat Pasta from The Scrumptious Pantry was boiled, two happy eggs were beaten together in a bowl, the sautéed yams were mixed unter the eggs, the pasta was added, as were salt and pepper and that was it (classic carbonara recipe would read: sautee bacon cubes, boil pasta, beat two eggs, slide drained and warm pasta into egg mix, add bacon cubes and equal parts of grated Parmeggiano-Reggiano and aged Pecorino cheese). Mix well, add salt & pepper and enjoy). I did not add cheese, cause I was not sure about the pungent taste of aged cheeses with the yams. I liked the idea of the sweet tasting yam cubes as a substitute for the bacon, though. This is by no means a ready recipe, but I will not shelf it immediately, it might have potential… Costwise we were at pasta (1$), 2 eggs (82c), ¼ organic yam from grocery coop (15c), 29c for olive oil, salt & pepper = 2.26$

Afternoon snack: one cup of organic green tea (6c) and two of Niccolina’s Brutti ma Buoni Hazelnut Cookies from The Scrumptious Pantry (1.70$) = 1.76$

Dinner: I grated a beet (78c) and ½ apple (25c, all organic) to go with two slices of artisan bread (60c) and farmstead blue cheese (32c)= 1.95$

Total Food Cost for today: 7.96$

Day 12 - Value Eating on 02/02/2010

Another day, another series of meals, very simple though cause I was unloading the truck with all my stuff, so no time for a lot of thinking over the stove. Thinking in the kitchen I was – it took me several hours to unpack the six moving boxes of kitchenware and figure out how to best organize my new favorite space…. Made me wonder how all those ready kitchen units are designed? Based on the average space in a small kitchen? Is there a model/average American who the thing was modeled after? And why is the fridge always big enough to store stuff for a family of six even in a small studio where another cabinet would be in much greater demand? A kitchen is such an individual space…

Anyways, even if my meals were simple, I enjoyed dinner as if it were a feast, cause I was sitting at my grandfather’s dining room table again, zipping out of my favorite cup and had a nice stainless steel pot to cook with (no offense to the double boiler, but it is, well, a double boiler).

Breakfast was 1 organic orange (1$) and a cup of organic green tea (6c) = 1.06$

Lunch-time snack was 1 cup organic yoghurt (74c) with 2 tablespoons of homemade fig jam (88c) = 1.62$

Early dinner was a nice plate of steaming Pasta (Carlo’s biodynamic artisan pasta from The Scrumptious Pantry) and some of the open jar of tomato sauce to which I had added three carrots, finely chopped. At this point I have to repeat my initial comment when I first opened that tomato sauce: very tasteless, very sad ready-to-eat sauce. We really need to get kids into gardens and into kitchens and give them their tastebuds back. One “Generation Tasteless” is enough! Not only would it be much cheaper to make a sauce from scratch, it would certainly taste better. 1.12 (pasta), 0.57 (sauce), 0.25 (onion), 0.60 (carrots), 0.50 (olive oil) = 3.04$

Total Food Cost for Today: 5.72$

Day 11 - Value Eating on 01/30/10 and a challenge on day 12 & 13

The last three days were everything but representative, because due to a trade event and visiting business clients I was eating out for two days straight.

Saturday I started with a late breakfast of my yoghurt and a half apple and half pear (all organic for 1.24$) , nibbling on the other two halves of the fruit in the afternoon, together with a piece of cheese and a cup of organic green tea (96c). Totally aware of what was going to come, I tried to stay on the fruity and light side!

Dinner on Saturday was eaten out, as was lunch on Sunday, dinner on Sunday, breakfast on Monday (a terrible pastry that tasted of nothing much than sugar and fat, really…), dinner on Monday. In between, I tried to eat some fruit, but as these events often go, was missing the quiet time to eat them, so nothing much but carrying them around in my purse…
Although I was very happy about the occasion to have great food at great restaurants, I really have to say, I appreciate the fresh taste of home cooked food. Looking forward to my carrots today.

So now the question really is how to consider these dinners in the cost calculation? It is only a 90 day project, and my job brings about more eating out than the other professions. My suggestion: If I were to consider 30$ for dinner on Saturday, which is maybe what I would have spent going for dinners with friends. And then Sunday and Monday we just plainly blank on and I will add two more days at the end of the 90 calendar days?

I think this is what would be best in terms having a representative result, so if there are no objections, we will keep 32.20$ on record for Day 11 of Value Eating on 01/30/2010 and will be back with Day 12 on 02/02/2010.

Total Food Cost for Today: 37.02$

Day 10 - Value Eating on 01/29/10

Another weekend, so the following three days might be a bit mixed up. Luckily, weekends are about meeting friends, cooking together, sharing meals and possibly going out for dinner. On the one hand that makes this exercise of keeping an online expense account a bit difficult (no matter how worthy the cause, it is rude to ask the host’s or hostess’s recipe and grocery receipts in order to calculate you share of expenses). But then again what happier moments can there be than those of a shared meal: Sitting around a table, talking, laughing, telling stories. Nibbling on a cheese plate, while the delicious smell of food simmering on the stove and roasting in the oven is rising from the kitchen, waltzing into the dining room and making you feel warm, cosy and happy?

It is such an important thing to do: eating together. And it is so sad to read that there are so many families out there that do not share their meals, although they have the opportunity. Gosh, I am so jealous, sitting here all alone in my little kitchen every evening, cooking for myself (still enjoying it tremendously, though). But how much more fun if there was company. And 41% of families in the US have this opportunity and throw it away (59% of families have shared dinners five times a week according to a 2006 study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse by California University). That makes me sad. Maybe they do not even know what they are missing? Is this the “Generation Microwave” that is just doing what it saw their parents doing? Where did this start? And how can we stop it?

Maybe we should commit to cooking for friends twice a month. Not always the same group of friends that are the “slow food types”, but those we usually meet in a restaurant, café or bar. Let’s create experiences of eating together and reach out to those friends we know that do not cook for themselves, cause they are alone, or too busy and stressed with work, or traveling too much. Let’s reach out with a shared meal, share the experience and hopefully that experience will be appreciated and remembered.

But I am being carried away here. So let’s get back to food costs: Friday’s eating! Somehow I have developed the two meals a day habit over the last weeks, why I do not know. But it is a late breakfast and early dinner and a snack in the afternoon for most days of the week. Same today:

Brunch: three sautéed organic carrots (60c) with a little organic kale (75c) and organic onions (25c), a slice of pumpernickel (16c) and artisan blue cheese (32c) and a cup of organic green tea (6c) = 2.14$

Dinner was a delicious meal at a friend’s house, composed of beautiful cheeses for an appetizer, stuffed cabbage and gravy over potatoes and then some artisan patisserie for dessert. All accompanied by an organic French wine. Based on the costing of the last ten days, I approximate my share of the cost of this feast with all organic ingredients to sum up to 11$, mostly because of the ridiculous amount of cheeses that I ate!

Total Food Cost for Today: 13.14$

What I do not understand at all though, is that according to the CRONoMeter I was not eating enough, I am supposedly only at 70% of the necessary calorie intake. Now, that seems just ridiculous to me. I am wondering if there might be a bug of some sort in this program…

For further reading I recommend a very information rich TIME article from 2006 “The Magic of a Family Meal” online at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1200760,00.html

Day 9 - Value Eating on 01/28/10

Today was not a very inspired day, cooking wise. I had too much on my mind to be overly creative in the kitchen, lucky me I had prepared a bit too much the previous days (on purpose), to fall back on!

Breakfast: 1 cup Yogurt (74c) with one orange (1$) and ½ apple (25c) - all organic = 1.99$

Lunch was some of the sautéed kale (75c) leftover from yesterday’s dinner mixed with two happy eggs (82c) to become a frittata (olive oil 25c) which I enjoyed with a piece of the delicious artisan baked demi-baguette (19c) I bought for dinner yesterday. Drink: a cup of green & mint tea with spices (organic from coop grocer): 15c = 2.16$

For snacks I finished the other half apple: 25c

Dinner was the second batch of chili (1.67$) over Fabio’s & Nicoletta’s rice from The Scrumptious Pantry (50c), with a glass of Kilgus milk (31c) = 2.48

In the evening another refill of tea leaves: 15c

Total Food Cost For Today: 7.03$

But I started an interesting exercise today: a reader wrote expressing his concerns that my diet might not be healthy, in the sense of meeting all nutritional requirements. He recommended using a very simple tool called CRONoMeter (available online for free at http://sourceforge.net/projects/cronometer/) to monitor if what I was eating was balanced. I highly recommend it to everyone, if only for a couple of weeks to get a better feeling of how balanced your diet really is. You input the quantities of food you have eaten, and based on the official database of USDA & FDA your intake of lipids, carbs, calories, minerals, vitamins and protein is monitored and compared to your recommended levels.
I found that so interesting that I did not only input today’s meals, but also the last couple of days. The finding: overall I got the ratios right, but that system wants me to eat much more! Which I am not really sure I can do. If I am not hungry, so what can I do?? Anyways, I will be monitoring my food intakes on the CRONoMeter every day from now on and shall report in this blog if there is anything interesting coming from there!

Day 8 - Value Eating on 01/27/10

Over the last couple of days I received comments indicating that my “Value Eating” can easily be misinterpreted as “discount diet”. So before calculating today’s expenses, I want to stress that this project is not focused on how to eat well on a tight budget. Rather the opposite, it is about keeping track of how much indulging in artisan, sustainable, local, farm fresh foods actually costs.

And today was the best example for that: I had a craving for a nice fish fillet, pan-fried in olive oil, with some freshly sautéed kale. Getting the kale was easy, thanks to the really nice organic grocery coop I have around the corner. Fish was less so. I mean, you would think with all the water in front of our doorstep, there should be some fresh fish available. Wrong! I walked an hour from my fairly central Chicago home to get to a fishmonger, but it was worth every step. Such a great selection of fresh fish, carefully selected for sustainable fishing methods. Of course, a nice glass of white wine makes the experience even more wonderful, so I got a bottle of Pinot Gris from a small biodynamic vineyard in Alsace: Domaine Martin Schaetzel. And cause all that walking had worked up an appetite, I got a small serving of smoked salmon spread as an appetizer. Food cost for this very delicious meal (for which I made a point to clearing my table of all papers and work and setting it nicely with the little stuff I have available after my thrift shop spree):
¼ organic artisan baguette 75c, salmon spread 1.75$, ½ organic onion 40c, 0.7lb organic kale 1.50$, 3 tbsp olive oil for fish and kale: 75c, fish fillet: 4.5$, salt & pepper: 4c, 1 glass Pinot Gris (2cl): 4$ = 13.69$

Other food expenses for the day: Fabio’s & Nicoletta’s Polenta from The Scrumptious Pantry (80c) for brunch with ½ cup Kilgus milk (15c) and ½ pear & apple each (50c) = 1.45$

Late evening unwinder: organic roisbusch tea with chai spices, I boiled 15c of loose tea in a pot of water that lasted me about four cups.

Total food cost for today: 15.29$

Another very interesting comment from a reader (thank you, Natalie) was that the food budget share on available income for an average American family is between 9-14%, considering 50% at home consumption and 50%”away” (which we assume includes school lunches and the afternoon triple-moccha-pumpkin-americano-with-low-fat-whipped- cream), whereas based on last weeks expenditures I was on a 18% food share (if I were a four person household with average income). That seems to be quiet a sharp difference – it will be very interesting to see how numbers develop over the 90 days! As a learning from this comment, starting from today I will now also include “away” costs if I occur any (like restaurant meals, I doubt though I will make the 50% mark cause I prefer to take homemade sandwiches with me rather than stopping at some place for lunch)

Day 7 - Value Eating on 01/26/10

After the first week of “value eating” I have to say there was not a meal I was not happy. I savored the tastes of beautifully crafted foods, like the superb organic lamb bratwurst or the fantastic artisan baguette. I had tasty eggs from happy chickens. Yummy milk with cream on top! And a whole lot I ate from The Scrumptious Pantry. Cosimo’s Olive Oil, Fabio’s & Nicoletta’s Rice & Cornmeal. Roberta’s Roasting & Grilling Salt and Spreads gave a special twist to my meals.

So were these cheap meals? Probably not. You could have probably spent less on milk, eggs, rice. Would the taste have been the same? Probably not. I enjoyed every bite, eating slowly as to keep the tastes alive as long as possible. As a result, I ate fairly small quantities (at least to my understanding). And the average food cost per day was about 5$! I admit two dinners are not included in this calculation, cause they were not eaten at home. But 5$ per day for a food that nourished body and soul does not seem exaggerated to me! How much is a Value Meal at the Golden Arches these days?? Guess I have to stop by tomorrow to find out!

So, this was week 1. Curious to see if and how the pricing changes once I can cook more elaborate meals.

Before I forget, the calculations for day seven of “Value Eating”:

Late Breakfast: a slice of Pumpernickel which I bought at Aldi, yes, yes, I know not the source for the most sustainable food, but Aldi for us ex-pat Germans is like a delicatessen, as we can get some food there not available in other markets (at least I have not found a source for artisan pumpernickel in the Windy City). Anyhow. From The Scrumptious Pantry I took a Roberta’s Sun-dried Tomato Spread and dolloped it on the pumpernickel (about 1 tablespoon. It is so rich in taste, you really only need a little for full sunny tomato taste), I topped the yummy-ness with two farm fresh eggs sunny side up (advice on a side note: eggs sunny side up are really difficult to fry in a pot. When you do not have a pan, boil your eggs...) fried in organic olive oil and then sprinkled some of Roberta’s Roasting & Grilling Salt on top. This came with a cup of organic green tea. Cost: 16c bread, 79c tomato spread, 82c for two eggs fried in 25c of olive oil and 5 cents for the herbed salt (248 pinches to go!), tea bag 6c = 2.13$

As afternoon snack I heated a cup of the farmstead’s milk (31c) and dissolved a piece of dark chocolate (35c) for a soothing hot drink. The chocolate I bought at Aldi, as well. They have my favorite German chocolate brand. I just love the way Europeans do their chocolate. Over Christmas I had a long discussion with my family over which chocolate to buy given the child labor in the cocoa plantings… Should we stop buying brands which are not clearly marked “fair trade”? We decided to continue buying the chocolate we always buy, but to write letters to the company’s customer service asking them about the labor practices in the plantings they buy from. I firmly believe that you as a critical consumer can stimulate change when asking questions. Boycotts though are not the right thing. What are these kids to do, if they have no more work in the plantations? Yes, the conditions there suck. It is heartbreaking. It has to be changed. But remember when years ago the rug industry started the fair trade mark on rugs? It is proven that the biggest part of those kids that lost their job in the rug workshops ended up prostituting themselves. Sometimes, we have to think what results we really want to achieve and what side effects our chosen path can have. So I dissolved my chocolate in my milk and hoped that my letter to the producer would maybe maybe start a process somehow.

Dinner was a nice spicy chili. I totally love chili. Could have it every day. What I love most about it, is how the intonations of the various chili peppers intermingle with the sweetness of the tomato. Sigh… For real great sweet tomato in your chili you really need tomatoes canned at the perfect moment. Really something you would want to remember to do in summer. Now, given that I had to leave the contents of my pantry behind in Italy (thanks, FDA, what harm could my canned tomatoes have done to the USA?), I had to use store bought. Where another level of difficulty was added – the current lack of a can opener. So I bought a ready sauce cause that comes with a twist cap. Marinara sauce (what the hell that is I did not understand. There are Marinara sauces in the store which have “Parmesan Cheese” on their ingredient list?? Gracious, I do not even want to start discuss Parmesan & Parmeggiano at this point, but how can you cook a cheese in a tomato sauce that is to be canned?). It was organic Marinara sauce though, and the less adulterated kind I could find. Came with a price tag of 2.29 for 25 oz. and was the most acid, unbalanced tomato sauce I can remember tasting. But then again, I have not tasted ready made sauces for a long time. A can of diced organic tomatos at 1.49 for 30 oz would certainly have been the better deal taste wise, but as I said: no can opener. Blame US customs for having pulled my container for inspection. Well, this is what I did with it: browned 1.5 organic onions in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Added organic beans (1.5 cups in their dried state, but of course they had been soaked and pre-cooked a while) and half of the sauce. Chilli pepper, cumin, salt. And had it simmer for 90 minutes. Served on Fabio’s & Nicoletta’s rice from The Scrumptious Pantry very yummy and very filling and very nutritious and will last also tomorrow at only 75c (onions), 50c (olive oil), 84c (beans), 25c for spices and 1$ for rice = 3.34$

Total food cost for today: 4.46$ (assuming that half of the chilli will be eaten tomorrow).

Try the "Love Apple" Menu for Valentine's!

When the tomato arrived into Europe it was slow to catch on, the red color became associated with poison. However the French and Italians dismissed this myth and the tomato became known as poma amoris or pomme d’amour. It subsequently became known as a symbol for the aphrodisiac qualities of food and was labeled as the Love Apple. Every cook knows the way to the heart is through the mouth, so we have created an easy-to-make, tempting and light three-course Valentine’s Day dinner that includes several tomato-based foods.

Start with antipasti with our sun-dried tomato spread and a green tomato jam. Next, enjoy the primo with a heart-warming tomato sauce served over farfalle made from durum wheat. Finish the delectable meal with dolce served with tomato jam with grappa. The Love Apple is the secret ingredient to the heart, so there’s no need for cupid’s arrow! Adding The Scrumptious Pantry’s sweet and savory tomato ingredients of love to your romantic Valentine’s Day dinner is guaranteed to woo the apple of your eye.


The “Love Apple” Menu

Antipasti: Heart-shaped crostini with Roberta’s Sun-dried Tomato Spread (or Roberta’s Eggplant Spread) served with cheese nibbles with Barbara’s Green Tomato Jam as a condiment

Ingredients
2/3 cup cream cheese
1/3 cup Roberta’s Sun-dried Tomato Spread (or 1/3 cup Roberta’s Eggplant Spread)
Cosimo’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil “Premium Blend”, as needed
1 loaf of bread, cut into heart shapes (use a cookie cutter to make heart shapes)

Method: 1) Mix cream cheese and sun-dried tomato spread (or eggplant spread). 2) Spread mixture on breads hearts. 3) Drizzle with olive oil.

Cheese nibbles: Serve aged sheep cheeses, Parmeggiano-Reggiano, Grana Padana or fresh mozzarella. Break chunks of cheese out of the Parmeggiano or Grana using the tip of a knife. Cut aged sheep cheeses first in slices and each slice in to three triangle shaped bites. Cut mozzarella in slices and cut each slice in four bite-size pieces. The mozzarella also can be briefly grilled on a slice of bread in the oven, with a layer of green tomato jam between bread and cheese! Serve condiments on the side in small dessert bowls or shot glasses with small spoons. You also can use honey or Cosimo’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil as cheese condiments.

Primo: Carlo’s Durum Wheat Pasta with heart-warming tomato sauce

Ingredients
1/2 bag (9 ounces) of Carlo’s Durum Wheat Pasta—Farfalle
1 garlic clove, slightly crushed
3 tablespoons Cosimo’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil “Blend”
1 chilli pepper, small
1 ½ lb. canned and diced tomatoes
1 Tablespoon Roberta’s Sun-dried Tomato Spread
2 teaspoons Guido’s Balsamic Dressing Sauce

Method: Note: Tomato-based sauces are more flavorful after simmering at least one hour. They can also be made a day ahead to enhance its flavor and save time on Valentine’s Day. 1) To make the sauce, in a frying pan, heat crushed garlic glove in olive oil until the garlic is slightly browned. 2) Take garlic out of oil, add one small hot chilli pepper and tomatoes. 3) Add the sun-dried tomato spread. Sauce should simmer on medium heat for at least one hour. (Note: If a meat sauce is preferred, add 8 ounces of ground beef, 3 ounces of finely chopped prosciutto and 3 ounces of finely chopped bacon. Brown meats in olive oil before adding the tomato and chilli pepper) 4) Bring salted water to boil for the pasta. Do not add oil to the water. 5) Add pasta to the boiling water. When the pasta is almost al dente (after 9 to 10 minutes), drain and put the pasta in the pan with the sauce. (Note: Do not rinse the pasta because you will wash away the starch needed to have the sauce stick to the noodle.) 6) Add balsamic dressing sauce and let stand for two minutes. Serve on warmed plates/bowls.

Dolce: Ricotta with Barbara’s Tomato Jam with Grappa

Ingredients
½ pound (8 ounces) fresh ricotta
1 shot glass of grappa, dark rum (aged for a minimum of 7 years) or pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons of sugar
Barbara’s Tomato Jam with Grappa, as needed (or another jam of your choosing)
Nutmeg, freshly ground, as needed.

Method: 1) Mix ricotta, sugar and grappa/rum/vanilla until well combined. 2) Spoon mixture into small glass bowls (or tall shot glasses). 3) Top with a thin layer of tomato jam with grappa. 4) Garnish with freshly ground nutmeg.

Day 6 - Value Eating on 01/25/10

The first week of Value Eating is almost done and I am really curious what the weekly expenses will have been. For today, having enjoyed a late breakfast and “lunner” (lunch&dinner at 5.30pm), I ran up the following costs:

Breakfast: 1 cup of organic yoghurt which I bought at Trader Joes, with ½ apple and ½ pear, both organic. The yoghurt was 74c, apple and pear 25c each = 1.24$

For “lunner” I used the last ¼ of broccoli still in my fridge to prepare a “zuppa” – a thick Italian bean & grain soup. I am a soup and stew girl. If I have to choose between caviar and a nice pumpkin soup or chilli, I will most probably ignore the caviar. Anyways. I first steamed the broccoli and then used the water to cook the soaked beans. I had actually found a “17 beans & barley” mix at Trader Joe’s, which I tried in this occasion. A mix like that is in every Tuscan household. Italian convenience food, so to speak. I was happy to find this mix at Trader Joe’s, cause having to buy 18 different beans seems quite a hassle to me – even when bought at a natural food store in the bulk aisle, still they need to be weighted individually etc. The Trader Joe’s mix seemed a bit short on grain, so I added some of Fabio’s and Nicoletta’s Originario rice. Being a short grain ice, it is perfect for soups!

Once the bean & grain mix was cooked, I added the broccoli back into the soup (which is supposed to have a dense consistency, pretty much like chilli), added salt and pepper and drizzled a tablespoon of Cosimo’s Olive Oil on top for a perfect finishing! Voila – broccoli 40c, 21c for the beans & barley (1.69/lb), 15c for the rice, 40c for the olive oil and 4c for salt & pepper = 1.20$
With it I had another glass of the totally delicious Kilgus Farmstead milk @ 31c

Total food cost for today: 2.75$ and I am stuffed!!

Day 5 - Value Eating on 01/24/10

Today is proof that I am not one of those super-consequent, food-growing, roadkill-savouring people out of Idealland. I am human. After a day in which most of what was supposed to happen did not, hic everything went wrong, I want my favorite comfort food. I want pizza. Plus, I do not want to be in company of strangers in some restaurant, but want to eat it on my bed in front of my laptop, browsing silly internet sites, with my cats by my side.
So what does one do when new in a city and not knowing which delivery to call. Yep. Frozen pizza. Now, I have to admit this is most probably the first frozen pizza in six years (no frozen pizza in Italy for me, that is for sure!). And I bought it at the first supermarket I found. It is not organic, not sustainable, although I added ¼ of my organic broccoli to sex it up. For my defense I have to say that I bought the smallest one I saw. It still counts 700 calories (yieks!) and reads 101 (!) items on the ingredient list. Of which I can identify not more than a third. I best like the “bha and/or bht (to improve stability)”. Anyways, I still live. It did taste like a bunch of chemicals on dough. But then, for 99c, what can one expect? With the 40c of organic broccoli I threw on the pizza this dinner was 1.39 and on the borderline of Value Eating.

Breakfast and lunch though compensated:
Breakfast was Fabio’s & Nicoletta’s Polenta (80c) with one blood orange (56c) and a glass of the fabulous milk I bought at the Kilgus Farmstead yesterday (31c). It is not homogenized, so the cream is on top. Delicious! Total Breakfast: 1.67$
Lunch was a lamb bratwurst (one more to go!) for 2$, a big serving of Fabio’s & Nicoletta’s yummy rice (1.50$) and one 99c organic fair-trade avocado from the coop (no, not local, I know, but it was bought when I had no pots and cutlery and an avocado can come in handy in such a situation). Lunch expenses: 4.49$

Total food cost for the day: 8.05$ considering the organic pear I snacked on.

Day 4 - Value Eating on 01/23/10

Today was very inspiring. I went down to Fairbury, Il - about 2 h from Chicago - to visit Spence Farms and meet Kris and Marty, two greatly motivated farmers that want to bring change to the Midwestern agricultural mindset. But more about that visit in a later post. What the trip brought with it, were hours in the car and no willingness on my side to stop at one of the famous pit-stops along the road. So I brought two carrots and an apple to be my lunch (no breakfast cause I had eaten far too much the night before). Calculate the vanilla ice cream cone I bought at the Kilgus Farmstead – farm fresh ice cream so to speak – my lunch came in at 1.90$ (1$ for the ice cream, 50c for the apple and 20c each for the carrots).

The stop at the Kilgus Farm was delightful indeed, I am so glad I stopped there following Marty’s advice. Even if they were out of goat meat (heck), I bought some beautiful cheese from a farmer friend of theirs, a roastbeef, a couple of steaks and some milk. Which had me debating with myself for a while, cause it comes in a plastic bottle. Ever since I have seen the documentary Plastic Planet over Christmas, food that comes in plastic makes me worry. So I asked Trent, one of the owners, why he did not use glass bottles. And he made a very compelling argument: here is this small family farm with pasture raised jersey cows. They have better tasting milk than, but have to sell it to the big bottlers, not knowing today what price the market will determine tomorrow. Everyting else but motivating! So they invested in their own bottling plant. Which -although small in size - this is a huge step for the farm. Glass bottles would have increased the magnitude of the operation beyond levels they felt comfortable with: washing & storing the bottles, logistics of their return. Trent really gave me the feeling that they had thought about it a lot, and that they were considering switching to glass once they had the whole chain figured out. So I happily bought my milk with them, cause it is clear that this is a family with vision and on a mission that needs to be supported! I have not yet tried their non-homogenized milk, but it is supposed to be sublime.

Ok, so now to dinner: bite size pieces of ½ organic yam and 1/3 organic butternut squash (both from Dill Pickle Coop), ½ organic onion (Trader Joe’s), coated in an organic olive oil from California I found at the Dill Pickle Coop, together with 1 lamb bratwurst (they come in packages of four and I was unable to separate them in their frozen state, so now it is Lamb Bratwurst for four days!), and popped into the oven for 20 min. Finished off with some cumin, salt, pepper and chilli flakes. Very delicious. Total cost: 30 c yam, 50 c squash, 25 c onion, 2$ bratwurst, 8c total for spices, 40 c for two tablespoons of olive oil = 3.53$.

Total food cost for today: 5.43$

Day 3 - Value Eating on 01/22/10

Well, today was all screwed up, eating wise. The combination of yesterday’s feast and an extensive to do list (keeping me out of the house and away from the fridge and it’s calling) led me to skipping both breakfast and lunch. Not healthy, I know. But I also believe in the capability of my body to send me the signal “feed me” when it really needs to be fed. Brief cravings (“have you seen that muffin, oh, I want that NOW”) in my mind are disconnected with what the body needs. When you are hungry, eat. Otherwise don’t.

Anyways, en route to one of my to-do’s today, I passed a huge thrift store. Not in the mood of experimenting with one pot and no plates for the next ten days, I hit the brake, swung into the parking lot and purchased a fantastic double boiler for 4$. Now that IS neat, cause a double boiler is something I do not yet have (maybe that also means it is not really the most important kitchen item, but whatever) – it translates into two pots! With the perspective of suddenly having the luxurious possibility of using three pots at the same time, a stop at a grocery store was imminent. A kitchen with three pots also needs salt and pepper! That was when a Trader Joe’s caught my eye. Now, I have to admit, I am probably one of the few that have never been in a Trader Joe’s before, so I was curious. I had always perceived the brand as fairly “healthy”, a grocery discount with a fair deal of natural and organic foods. Boy, was I wrong. Yes, they do carry organic products in many categories. But healthy? It is a convenience store. The aisle with the frozen meals is longer that the one with the produce. I asked for dried beans – do not have them. Seems as if you are asking too much of the consumer when he has to soak his beans. So here they are, cans of them. My catch of the day was the Himalayan Sea Salt, harvested in Pakistan (sure, it is the Himalayan) and packed in South Africa, before shipped to the US. Right.
My shopping cart was fairly empty when I arrived at the cash register. Some canned tomatoes (cannot wait till summer and the real tomato canning sessions!), spices & herbs. And with those, I was all set to prepare a delicious stir fry made of Fabio’s & Nicoletta’s Carnaroli rice, a lamb bratwurst from a small farm and organic broccoli. Yu-hum! And as I enjoyed it so much, I finished all of it, although it was supposed to last for tomorrow, as well…
Actual costs: one organic onion (Trader Joe) 50c, 125g Carnaroli Rice 1.99$, 1 Lamb Bratwurst 2$ , ½ lb broccoli 85c. if you consider the chilli flakes and salt sprinkled on this meal, you are looking at 5.37$ for a portion that could/should have fed two…

Day 2 - Value Eating on 01/21/10

Day two of my bookkeeping and I have to say I already find this exercise very interesting. How often have you thought about how much you really spend on one dish? Maybe if we were all aware of the cost of half an onion, the started package of cream cheese – maybe the amount of food going to waste would be less (some statistic I saw once stated that 17% of what the US sends to landfills is food scraps). But before I start another topic, back to Value Eating.

Breakfast. When it is cold outside, I need warm food. Especially breakfast calls for something warm to give me energy to start the day. As much as I admire people that follow the raw diet, I could never do it. Never. So breakfast for me was Fabio & Nicoletta’s Polenta, with a drizzle of honey and a tasty organic blood orange. Cost of this breakfast: 80 cents for the polenta, which I cooked with water, not milk. A teaspoon of honey from our beehive back in Tuscany, which would translate into 15 cents, assuming that a jar of farm fresh honey costs 7$. Finally add 56 cents for the orange and you got the perfect start into the day for 1.51$

Lunch was simple, but not less delicious. I still had to make use of the ¼ baguette left from two days earlier, and as that meant baking it briefly in the oven anyhow, I crumbled two slices of Wisconsin Blue Cheese onto one half of the baguette. While the cheese was slowly melting and the bread gaining a nice crispiness, I briefly sauteed two carrots in a little olive oil. While I still have to be convinced that carrots and blue cheese are the perfect match (but as I mentioned in an earlier post, provisions are really low after having moved in only four days ago), the sandwich did only cost me 87 c (bread), 40 c (carrots), 31c (cheese – I was surprised to see that a 5$ piece of cheese translates into 32 slices. Which kind of freaks me out, cause from a slice perspective it is a lot of cheese and I am worried I might not be finishing it before it goes bad. My next apartment will be chosen only if it has a basement appropriate for the storage & ripening of cheese!). The olive oil I used was so little that I really have difficulties putting a pricetag on it. Assuming it was 25 c worth of olive oil, the HUGE sandwich has cost of 1.83$.

Dinner calculation I have to skip, once more. But I was enjoying a feast prepared by friends for my birthday and that is priceless. Plus, it is rude to ask your host how much was spent on the singular ingredients. Especially knowing that most of what we were savoring had been homegrown, canned and handmade. Priceless in every sense.

Day 1 - Value Eating on 01/20/10

Well, these first days of my posting might be pretty uninspiring. I just moved into a new apartment, but my furniture has not arrived yet, so all my kitchen is equipped with besides the stove is a pot, a wooden spoon and a knife.

Anyways, one has to eat and so I had

Breakfast
I had bought an insanely good artisan baked baguette at the Dill Pickle Co-Op grocery store. Just delicious. Perfect for breakfast with fig jam! So now, I had 1/4 of baguette, which would translate to 87 cents. The jam was homemade, but if it had been a store bought organic jam I guess I would have had to pay 7$ for the jar. So the two tablespoons I enjoyed on the bread were another 88 cents. Add one orange at 56 cents. I only drink hot water for breakfast, so total cost for my breakfast was 2.33$

Lunch
Another sandwich, that baguette is to die for! I boiled two happy eggs from a local farmer (again bought at the Dill Pickle) and sliced them onto my sandwich after drizzling the baguette with 1 tablespoon of Cosimo's Extra Virgin Olive Oil and sprinkled some of the super flavorful Roasting & Grilling salt Roberta does back in Vinci. Ok, so now for costs: two eggs 41cents each, 1/4 baguette for 87 cents, the pinch of salt... now that is tricky... I have to admit without my kitchen scale, it is difficult to asses how many pinches in one jar. I approximated about 250. Will double check once my kitchen scale get's here. A pinch of salt equals approx. 5 cents. A tablespoon of the olive oil (assuming we have 45 tablespoons in one bottle) is 70 cents. So my lunch sandwich came with a price tag of 2.44$. Again, drinking hot water (this will be the boring part of this blog. It is either hot water of wine)

Afternoon snack: one organic apple (50cents) and one delicious red carrot (20cents) I bought at the Green Grocer on 1402 W. Grand Street = 70 cents.

Dinner: Given the desperate state of my kitchen I went for dinner with my Cousin, so no local sustainable dinner tonight, but a burger. But I had organic lamb bratwurst planned with yams and potatoes!

90 days of value eating.

Ok, another one. Another self experiment posted online. I know we thought we had read them all: blogs and books keeping diaries of how they cooked their way through Julia Child, hunted & gathered in a 100 miles or 250 mile radius or within the borders of their home state. How they stopped to contribute to carbon emissions. So I am not going to copy those. I promise.

But now that I have taken on the widespread prejudice that eating organic/sustainable/real food is too expensive, I will now keep an online expense account of my meals. So the "value" in the title of this experiment does not relate to monetary value. It is about eating according to my own personal values.

I will not eat exclusively local food, cause I love the pungent Tuscan olive oil and a nice bottle of imported wine. I will not necessarily only eat from farm to table, cause sometimes an ingredient you need is not available directly. And maybe not all of it will be 100% organic. I will just continue eating as I did before, only change to my behavior being this online record. Fancy meals one day and a sandwich the other. I have no intentions of kicking off a discussion of the nutritional value of the food I consume, or on cooking skills. Although I appreciate any comment suggesting changes either in my diet or ideas of how each meal could taste better, it is first and foremost about money. How much does eating according to my values cost?

The Economics of a Value Meal

2010 has started well - at least when it comes to discussions in the media and various online forums about local eating, sustainable farming, Michelle Obama & the White House garden, Michael Pollan's "Food Rules"... hope this momentum keeps going.

One statement that can be read over and over again is that local, organic, small-farmer farmed food is more expensive, hence it is supposedly out of reach for most people and only something the overly rich can spoil themselves with.

WRONG. What most of the debate fails to mention are external costs.

The average packaged food available in supermarkets is heavily processed. It is sure not healthy, if I may challenge the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-calcook6-2010jan06,0,6888223.story). If we as a society were to consider the future costs of today's food production & eating to the bill, boy, would everyone be surprised how expensive today’s mass-produced fare is. The long term cost for society of these foods and their production is enormous, if directly on our health (allergies, diabetes, obesity, five year old girls in puberty), or indirectly through the environment like C02 emissions, soil erosion… the list goes on. And it is our tax dollars eventually paying for it.

We need some respected economists to use all their skill to come up with a number. How much does a Value Meal really cost??

More exciting feedback - from Daily Candy

How I enjoyed reading this product review

"Give your chemically corrupted taste buds a break (thanks Hot Pockets) with green tomato jam, Charlie-Trotter approved durum wheat pasta, and insanely aromatic roasting and grilling salt".

To read the full article go to

http://www.dailycandy.com/chicago/article/78785/The-Scrumptious-Pantry-Artisanal-Products

An ancient wheat fights it's way back into the limelight - oh, glorious Farro

I love farro. Ever since living in Tuscany, farro is my preferred grain. In summer, we eat it cooked & cold with veggies and greens in salads. In winter, it is the base of warming stews and soups. And I love the earthy, hearty taste of farro cookies and cakes. Now, as days become shorter and the temperature drops (yes, even in Tuscany), there is nothing more scrumptious than the nutty-sweet taste of a farro cookie and a mug of hot coffee.
So I was flabbergasted just now, while doing research on farro for the introduction of Giovanna and Niccolina’s new Christmas cookie (which the Chicago Tribune rated “tasty to boot”, by the way), to find out that farro was considered a “health food” in the US. You do not know what you are missing!

Farro is spelt. Although there is a fair amount of debate out there if the Tuscan farro is really spelt or emmer (very close cousins), I can say to the best of my knowledge that farro is spelt. Farro is the mother of all wheat. It originated in Palestine in the bronze ages, it was found in the pyramids in Egypt and fed the Roman legions building their empire. And it has been a staple in Tuscan cooking and baking forever. I guess it is fair to say that farro is a very “stubborn” plant. It needs little and can thrive in harsh ecological conditions. Which is why it was so established as a staple crop in many areas of the world. It was even grown in the US, where it is said to have been introduced in the 1890s. But as agriculture advanced, high-yielding varieties were bred (also, high-volume commercial baking operations wanted varieties rich in gluten) and mankind learned to manipulate the land with a mix of fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides and other gadgets of modern agriculture. Those new varieties spread like wildfire and farro was replaced. Some areas, such as Tuscany, would not let go of their farro and continued farming this grain, which is as Tuscan as Chianti wine.
Luckily with a growing interest in more natural farming and more wholesome eating, farro is now experiencing a renaissance also elsewhere. For one, given its nature, farro requires less fertilizer than other wheat varieties, and is hence a natural crop for organic farming, although it will yield less than bread wheat (which explains while it is more expensive).
But it also has more protein than wheat and thanks to its tough husk, freshness and nutrients are maintained better than in other grains. So, I guess these factors make farro a “health food”. Well, then so be it! Eat healthy, live happy, enjoy your farro, and try this recipe for farro & raspberry jam cookies recently posted on Lucullian Delights (a very inspiring Italian themed foodblog) http://www.luculliandelights.com/2009/11/farro-and-raspberry-jam-cookies.html

If you do not feel like baking yourself, enjoy Giovanna’s and Niccolina’s handmade Spelt & Figs Cantuccione. You can enjoy it slice by slice just like that, or toast the slices a second time to make the classic Tuscan “Cantuccini” – biscotti as they are usually called in the US. Available online at www.piazzaitalianmarket.com/store

GIOVANNA & NICCOLINA & THE CANTUCCIONE

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: THE CANTUCCIONE IS "TASTY TO BOOT"

Quoting TODAY'S CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"Seeing the smiles of those who crafted your ..food...on the label makes the experience exponentially more CHARMING. And The Scrumptious Pantry's Cantuccione (Tuscan fig cookie) is TASTY TO BOOT..."

We obviously could not agree more with this feedback, but I have to say we are delighted to see that Giovanna's & Niccolina's dedication to quality and hard work in their tiny bakery finds such an important forum!

The Cantuccione is a cookie loaf, basically. When baking biscotti (bi = twice, cotti = cooked, hence cooked twice), the cookies is first baked in a long loaf - the Cantuccione - before it is then sliced and the slices toasted again for biscotti. This is the Cantuccione after the first baking: you can enjoy it as it is, slice by slice, or make your own biscotti!

From spelt flour and the best dried figs these two talented artisans could procure comes a Christmas treat that also makes a great stocking stuffer!
ORDER YOUR CANTUCCIONE NOW ONLINE http://www.piazzaitalianmarket.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=71

Pasta you can see the wheat in (with porcini mushrooms)

Comparing Carlo’s pasta to another artisan Italian pasta widely available in the US during a comparative tasting last week, one taster had comment, which I want to share with you today: “you can really see the wheat”, she said.

I always put a standard pasta next to Carlo’s pasta when doing tastings and in store demos, just because the texture looks different, the color is richer – the pasta looks more alive to me. But I never came up with these simple words. Yes, you can see the wheat!

So today, as Carlo and his staff are shelling this year’s grain harvest (which by the way was great in quality but not really satisfactory in quantity due to the heavy rains in early spring and the dessert like temperatures in summer. Side note: it amazes me how what is celebrated as the perfect climate by one crop farmer can be deadly for the other. In this case, the weather conditions were absolutely perfect for the vines, a notion not shared by Carlo and fellow grain farmers…), let me talk pasta.

Carlo’s pasta is made with a richer form of flour, the so called “semolato”, rather than the “semolina” which is the typical white flour. To explain the difference, let me remind you the composition of a grain kernel (from the outside to the inside)

- the protective skin is called the husk (or hull)
- then comes a layer of bran, which mainly contains fibers
- next is the endosperm, divided into two layers, of which the outer one contains proteins, fats, minerals, vitamins and enzymes. The inner part of the endosperm (which is ca. 80-85% of the kernel) is composed of starch and gluten, a protein.
- protected by all these layers is the germ, the living cell of the kernel, and it contains antioxidants, vitamins E and B, minerals and proteins.

The classic white flour (“semolina”) is milled to separate the inner layer of the endosperm from all the other components, using only 60-64% of the actual kernel and loosing many of the positive properties of bran and germ in the process.
The semolato Carlo uses for his pasta is the result of stone-milling the grain and significant amounts of the bran, the germ and the outer layers of the endosperm.


The results are more complex taste profile of the pasta, which is easier to digest, contains more nutrients and shows off the wheat in the pasta itself! It is NOT a whole wheat pasta though, because it does not contain ALL the kernel. Speaking among us, we use the term “semi-integrale”, which could be translated into “partly whole wheat”. In any case wholesome, especially as Carlo follows strict organic agricultural procedures on his farm and also respects organic regulations during the actual production of the pasta: it is dried at low temperatures in order to maintain the proteins, vitamins and amino acids, which are heat sensitive.

Having said all that, how about a nice plate of pasta with porcini mushrooms, while they are still in season (for four people)

1 box of Carlo’s Durum Wheat Pasta Farfalle Shape
½ stick butter
Cosimo’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 garlic cloves
2 cups sliced porcini mushrooms (make sure the gills are white and not yellowish-greenish, which is an indicator that they are old!)
½ cup white wine
¼ cup chopped parsley
freshly grated parmesan cheese
salt & pepper

Melt half of the butter in a saucepan with a dash of olive oil, at low temperature add the slightly crushed garlic cloves to extract their aroma. Add the mushrooms, but be careful not to fry them! Add salt, pepper and white wine. Let simmer for a couple of minutes.
Cook the pasta in a separate pot (contrary to popular belief you do not need to put oil in the water, nor should you rinse the pasta with cold water. The latter would wash away the starch that is needed to have the sauce stick better to the pasta), when al dente drain, take garlic cloves out of the sauce, add the pasta, stir and let sit for one minute, adding the remaining butter and the parsley. Serve with freshly grated parmesan cheese to your liking.

Autumn is here - let's have Polenta!

First, I need to apologize for being absent so long, but I was traveling all over the US for five weeks presenting the wonderful foods and wines of Italy and had no time left to write something worth your time. But now I am back and I promise that posting frequency will be back to normal asap!

When I left Italy, it was still summer: nice and warm, eating ice cream outside at 1am and wearing light summer dresses. I returned to a walk-in fridge. It is cold, foggy and absolutely no summer anymore. I am not even sure that this is even autumn - which would be in line with my earlier post about the loss of seasons. From not knowing how to create a breeze in our heat drenched apartments to turning on the heating - all in six weeks. Pretty impressive.

With colder weather comes the quest for all those nice autumn and winter dishes - risotto with porcini mushrooms! With white truffles! Or some nice, hearty polenta. Polenta is my favorite comfort food. I love the creaminess of the polenta (Italian for cornmeal), which goes hand in hand with a nice structure of the stone milled corn. This is important. Instant cornmeal is nothing I believe in. Too finely ground cornmeal is nothing I believe in either. My polenta needs to have a bite to it. And if that means that I have to stir it over a low flame for 50 minutes, than that is what I happily do. Plus, there is nothing more relaxing than zipping a nice glass of wine while observing at the bubbles in the polenta alining their tunes.

Try yourself with my favorite polenta recipe:

1/2 lb. Il Covone Cornmeal
10 fresh Italian style Sausages
2 cups mixed fresh mushrooms
1 shallot
1 cup dry white wine
½ cup parsley
2 leaves of sage
2 tbsp. of Cosimo’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil
salt
freshly ground black pepper

Peel the sausage and cook the meat in an on olive oil lined pan over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Chop the shallot and sauté it in an olive oil in a separate pan. When the shallot is transparent, add chopped parsley, mushrooms. Add salt and pepper to taste. Once the mushrooms are soft, add the sausage and the wine, cooking over a medium-high temperature for about an hour.

To prepare the polenta, bringing 2 liters of salted water to boil. Gradually add the cornmeal, whisking it for five minutes. Continue to stir every four - five minutes with a wooden spoon at medium-low temperature until done (ca. 50 minutes).

Serve the polenta in a deep dish and the sauce in the middle (serves six)

Happiness

On Olives and Water

Picture yourself in the Tuscan countryside. With a glass of wine in your hand. On the terrace of a small farmhouse surrounded by vineyards, you take in the beautiful countryside, the vines standing in perfect formation, just like disciplined miniature soldiers (of the peaceful kind). Your gaze wanders over the rolling hills, you watch people harvesting grapes, happily bringing the fruit in the cellar. You hear children laughing loudly, as they play hide and seek in the vineyards, their hiding places being told by their dogs which are curiously running back and forth. What a happy scenery! Then you glance at one of the old olive trees mightily lining the estate

**Screetch **

And that is when all happiness comes to an abrupt hold. Because what you see are shriveled somethings, shadows of what the olives should be like at this time of year. Weak and tired they struggle to hold onto the branches that should nourish them, feed them water, make them grow until their green skin seems to be bursting from the juice that has build up inside.

Not so. This summer of 2009 was hot. Too hot. And dry. Too dry. And it is not only the olive trees suffering. After all, these are the strongest and most independently minded plants around. Peppers have been practically burned up before they ever had a chance to grow. Eggplants dried up on the vine. Berries never reached maturation. Water is life. And without water, we are in serious trouble.
Why no irrigation you might ask? Well, yes, irrigation would solve a pressing situation in a year like 2009 has been. But what are the long term impacts of irrigating? Of lowering the levels of the ground water? Because irrigation always also means pumping water out of their safe wells. None of the water used for irrigation ever finds its way back into the depth of the soil.

What is worrying us farmers here that there are no “normal” years anymore. Seasons have merged or plainly disappeared. There are no weather patterns to count on anymore. It is, as if we had completely lost touch with nature. And nature is our vocation, our life, not just what feed us (and you).

I surely have no answer, I surely do not know where to start to resolve this problem. So if you were expecting a solution from this post, I am sorry to disappoint you. But maybe this post is increasing awareness among all those of you who live in environments that lack the intense daily contact with nature. And maybe one of you has an idea, the solution, our salvation?

Mokka!

(picture courtesy of Bialetti press office, 2009)

Espresso Wars

The „Caffé“ – what in the US would be called espresso – seems to be a simple drink, but it is not. It is a religion, and its preparation a religious ceremony. The „Caffé“ is what moves the Italian nation. The fist staggering steps every morning are directed into the kitchen, to prepare the dense, black, strong liquid. No lunch, no dinner without „Caffé“ to celebrate the closing of a meal. Classically, the „Caffé“ at home is prepared in a “mokka” – a little coffeemaker which is sat on the stove. And this is where – as with every religion – differences begin. How to prepare a good „Caffé“? After five years of living in Italy and hearing my own „Caffé“ preparations being accompanied by frantic “mai che cavolo fai?” (“what the heck are you doing”) from my Italian friends every time I thought that I had resolved the puzzle, I called for a „Caffé“ summit. To decide on the issue once and for all.

The only thing not debated, are the ingredients water (bottled, not from the tap, as not to interfere with the pure taste of the „Caffé“) and ground coffee beans (from a bag of beans or ready ground coffee that is not open for longer than 3 weeks).

When it came to water levels, emotions started to run high. Discussion if the water container must be filled exactly below the little valve, exactly to its middle or rather filled completely led to loud voices waging back and forth and at a point I was wondering if tonight would be the end of some lifelong friendships. Through all the heat, no one was able to give me a reason for their choice – no explanations about physics and water pressure, but simply “e più buono” (“it tastes better”).

And the coffee? Press it firmly into its little strainer? Yes, said one. It becomes denser and stronger! Yes, but only if you take a toothpick and make three holes into it, added the next. Nooooo, interfered the rest. Pressing makes it too bitter, you have to fill the strainer loosely. Yes, said the next, but fill it over the top. You have to heap a little mountain of coffee on top – loosely. The remaining heads present around the table nodded. Yes, yes, a small mountain. I gave them an astonished look: would this mountain not be pressed down by the upper part of the mokka? Would that not be the same then pressing from the beginning? No, was the answer: that way it is “più buono”

And the cooking process? Have the water pass slowly to get denser and stronger, everyone agreed with that. But how could that be achieved? Well, turn the flame on its lowest, with the lid closed, said one. Noooo, said the other, turn the flame high, with the lid open, so the cold air can get into the mokka, and turn down the flame the moment the coffee starts to flow. Almooost said the third group: turn the flame on low, with the lid open and close it as soon as the coffee starts to flow.

I sat around the table and was desperate. Because over the discussion we had finished the meal, enjoyed the sweets and it was time to prepare the “Caffé”. Beaten, I pushed back my chair, got up and reached to my mokka. My hand was shaking when I picked up the water bottle. I poured, and sure enough, when I put down the bottle, I heard voices rising: “Ma nooooooooooo, che cavolo fai”?

Figs!

Nutty Fig Cake

I love the late summer, when the fig trees are loaded with their sweet fruit, tempting me with a delicious ready to pick snack outside my window. And I could swear that there are much more of them this year than last. At least I have been eating them for breakfast, lunch (with gorgonzola on a sandwich) and dinner (caramelized over panna cotta or ice cream for desert) and the tree is still presenting me with more. Two solutions: many jars of fig jam for cold and dark winters (homemade jam and preserves also always make a very thoughtful and lovely hostess gift!) and ....

...a nutty fig cake!

And it is easy as 1-2-3

250 g flour
50 g ground pecan nuts or almonds
100 g sugar
200 g butter
1 egg
3 lb. ripe figs

Quickly mix all the ingredients in a porcelain bowl until the dough stops sticking to the sides. The less you actually work the dough, the better. Put to rest in the fridge for 15 min. In the meantime decide how high you want the crust to be: I use the above quantities for two cakes of 10 inches (25 cm) each in diameter, but I am a thin crust kind of girl (you can easily freeze the second batch for later use).

Spread the dough in the cake pan, cut the figs in half (make sure there are no bugs inside) and place them tightly on the dough. If your figs are not super ripe and sugary, you want to briefly caramelize them in a pan beforehand, in order to reduce their water content.

Bake at 375°F (175°C) for 20 minutes, about 5 - 10 minutes more if you choose a thick crust.

Buon Appetito!

Summer

Stuffed Eggplant with a Cinnamon Twist

Summer, short for: abundant supply of zucchini, tomatos and eggplants. I have to admit, I like summer, but I am a bit tired of always the same zucchini, tomato and eggplant recipes. Plus, today I had this really strong desire to indulge in spices, so I went creative in the kitchen.

Taking the classic Calabrian stuffed eggplant, which my good friend Domenico’s mum taught me (eggplant, minced meat, cheese, capers, anchovies, tomato, bread crumbs, mint, chili peppers, oregano, olive oil), I went a couple of additional km further south towards the Arabic world and used cinnamon. And as I am not the biggest meat eater in a hot summer, I substituted the minced meat with brown rice. The outcome was a very juicy eggplant “da forno”, with a lot of fruity and fresh flavors – the cinnamon really brought out the fruity taste of the tomato and the freshness of the zucchini. Even my Italian (!) roommate approved… so here you go (quantities for four people)



Two large eggplants
Two small zucchini
Two medium-sized tomatos
1 small onion
2 minced garlic cloves
1 cup steamed brown rice
½ cup loosely packed grated cheese (I used salted ricotta, but you can also use an middle-aged pecorino)
2 teaspoons minced salted capers (not those stored in brine!)
5 tablespoons of Cosimo’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 small hot chilli peppers
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon


Preheat oven to 350°F. Shave out most of the eggplant’s flesh, leaving a shell ca. ½ inch thick. Place in baking dish. Sprinkle one tablespoon of Cosimo’s olive oil onto the eggplant shells and bake in the oven for ca. 10 min.

Cut the eggplant’s flesh into small cubes, grate zucchini into mix, add minced onion and garlic, as well as tomatos cut in cubes. Mix in one tablespoon of Cosimo’s olive oil. Add in steamed rice, cheese, capers, chili peppers and cinnamon. Add two more tablespoons of Cosimo’s olive oil and mix well. Take eggplant shells out of the oven and fill with the mix, making sure the shells are densely packed.

Add a dash of olive oil on the stuffed eggplants and bake for 30 min at 350°F.

If you are looking for a wine match, try a fruity, un-oaked white, for example a Chardonnay.

A trip to the heel of Italy - Eating in Apulia

Orecchiette (the ear shaped pasta), burrata (cream stuffed mozzarella), taralli (salty circle shaped snack) are the products the Italian Region Puglia (Apulia) is best known for outside of Italy. But these three yummy treats are just the tip of the iceberg! During a brief two-day visit I ate my way through the area –
Apulia is the “heel” of Italy: it borders on the sea, looking towards Croatia and Albania. Which means fish and seafood in abundance, and the most curious varieties.
As I stayed by the seaside, I jumped on the opportunity to indulge in the rich offerings of the sea every dinner. Raw fish, just briefly steamed prawns, marinated octopus – it all was delicious and so fresh, you could taste the sea! A local raw fish specialty is the octopus. Although there was a slice of lemon on my plate, my Apulian friends (aka food consultants) voted against “diluting” the taste with it.

This story showed me: Apulians are purists when it comes to food. They like the unadulterated taste of the ingredients. “Wait a moment”, you think right now, “Is it not the Italian style of cooking in general to use only a few ingredients of the best quality and have their tastes stand out?” And you are right. Italians are purists, but Apulians are the ueberpurists. Let me give you another example: there was not a drop of olive oil on the foods that were served. Not the raw fish, not the grilled one, not the cheeses. All were served plain. Tuscans would have, well, maybe not exactly drowned their food in olive oil, but they would have used is as a finishing touch. Not so in Puglia, where they shake their heads in disbelief at the Tuscans and their weird tastes. What I found interesting, as Puglia is well known for its olive oil. But in contrast to Tuscany, they use their olive oil for texture, not for taste. They quite frankly admitted that they found the pungent taste of Tuscan oils unbearable. They want their oil slightly fruity, but in no way dominant in its taste. An oil for every occasion, blending perfectly with the dishes it is used to prepare.

While driving through Puglia, with olive trees steched till the horizon, I wondered if this demand for a more basic taste profile of oil results from the fact that Apulian agriculture is not set up for individual, small scale quality production. Those were literally forests of olive trees, which are impossible to pick by hand, no matter how much cheap labour is available. Talking to some elders in a village, I was told that most of the times the olives are picked off the ground once they have fallen off the tree. Which would mean that the olives are harvested in a state of deteriorate – not the most promising start for great olive oil.

But Puglia is vast, and agriculture is the predominant sector. Most of the farms are focused on quantity production, not quality. Organic agriculture is mostly unheard of. When I asked a sales veteran for Apulian food about where could I find small quality focused organic farms, he just looked at me in disbelief. Some farms are slowly moving towards this new “lifestyle” (cause it is more than a production method, it is a different approach to agriculture and how we see nature as such), but it will take years, until we will see a substantial shift from quantity to quality production in Apulian agriculture.

The main crops in Apulia are table grapes, grain (hence also famous for its pasta, such as the one made with the grain of Gargano), artichoke, and grapes for winemaking. Then there is the lifestock, which lays the ground for the fabulous cheesemaking Apulia is famed for: fior di latte (mozzarella made of cow’s milk), burrata (think fior di latte stuffed with little pieces of mozzarella and heavy cream), ricotta, scamorza, caciaricotta (of sheep’s milk)… and so much more!
Every little, better: tiny, town has there “Caseificio”: cheesemaker.Cheeses are produced in the morning, around 10 am, and – as I had to find out the hard way - are usually sold out by 12am… It took me three stops at three Caseificios in the small town of Noicattero (Bari Province) to finally get my hands on a burrata. I assure you, it was worth the wait! Ohho… how the heavy cream slowly pouring out of the burrata was glittering in the summer sun, when I finally was in my B&B and digged my fork into the shiny white ball shaped goodness… I was an Apulian that moment: burrata, just burrata and nothing to go with it. Pure and simple deliciousness.

If you feel hungry by now, I brought you a souvenir: the recipe of
Grano alla marinara (Whole grain with seafood)
1lb. whole durum wheat
11 oz. mussels (cleaned)
11 oz. shrimp
11 oz. clams (cleaned)
1 lb. peeled tomatoes
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (yes, you can use Cosimo’s!)
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Black pepper
2 chopped garlic cloves

Bring to boil five quarts of water. Add the wheat and cook for 30 minutes without stirring.

In the meantime, in a big frying pan, sauté the garlic and the parsley briefly in the olive oil until slightly browned. Add the shrimp and fry for another couple of minutes. Add tomatoes and a pinch of salt and cook for 20 minutes. Add clams and mussels and let simmer for another 10 minutes.
Drain the wheat and put in a big serving bowl. Put two mussels aside for decoration. Add the sauce and mix briefly. Finish with some fresh parsley and some black pepper sprinkled on top. Add mussels on top and serve.

Ristoro Podere del Grillo - a new farm store concept

Directly from the farmer to the table. I strongly believe that this concept is worth supporting. It gives us consumers the freshest food, highest in nutrients. It allows the farmers to make an additional margin in exchange for having grown a crop with tender love and care – an important factor, given that margins in agriculture are usually low, if not negative, and most farmers live on subsidies they receive in return for producing industrial crops for the various agribusinesses.

Farmers’ markets and farm shops are hence my shopping of choice, and when I get to the north of Italy where the farmstays (agriturismo) actually use farm grown products exclusively in their restaurants, I am in sevenths heaven!

Imagine how excited I am for Barbara and Fabio of the Podere del Grillo and the success they are having with their “Ristoro” in San Miniato (Tuscany). The creators of treats like the Tomato Jam w. Grappa and Tuscan Red Onion Chutney wanted to create a space in which they could sell their jams, sauces, condiments and increasingly fresh produce from their farm.Well, judging the crowds that bustle around the place every day and night, I guess it is safe to say customers felt the same way! The concept is great, because it is more than a store and not a full fledged restaurant. It is a relaxed bar, where you can sample the energetic couples’ products as condiments to a cheese and salumi plate, have a nice glass of wine and watch the cows grazing outside (well, they are fake, but they look pretty real).Barbara also prepares one dish every day with the fresh produce that comes off the farm that day: vegetable minestrone in summer, bread & bean soup in winter, fried artichokes in spring… very yummy, simply tasty Tuscan dishes that bring out the best of the ingredients. They have substituted their offering with other food products from quality farms of the area, like sheep cheeses from Giovanni in Voltera, honey from Ilaria or meats from Serse.
It is great to see how an initiative like this thrives, and it makes me hopeful for the future. Should you be in the Pisa/Florence area, why don’t you stop by? A trip to the Ristoro del Grillo is worth a lunch or dinner visit, or only a brief stop to shop for produce, salami, cheese and the Podere’s delicacies.
Ristoro del Podere del Grillo, Via Serra 3, San Miniato (PI). Open from 11 am to 3 pm and 5pm to 11pm. Closed on Tuesdays.

What's special about specialty food?

Back from the "Fancy Food Show" in New York, the leading marketplace for specialty food in the US. Back with a huge sense of disappointment.

Specialty food seems to be reduced to chocolates, tea and various salsas and sauces. But the sad thing is that it seems that there is no difference if they were made in Maine, Florida, Texas or California. Peach salsa everywhere… Chipotle everywhere...ah yes, and now everything is "natural".

How come that in a country as vast as the US with all the different zones, climates, ethnical influences and heritages those producers who call themselves "special" predominantely have these standardized products? How come that there is more industrial made food at a show like that than artisan one? Is calling your product "natural" or targeting it to a special diet group all that it takes to be special? Is it not about being different from the mass-marketed, processed food products? Of creating food that tastes of terroir?? That tells a individual story???

There has to be someone in the Midwest making a unique yambutter and someone in California that catches the Mexican and Asian influences and interprets them in a novel way. The question we have to ask us: What is the signature crop/produce of an area/state? What are the signature tastes? Who puts it together in a jar/bottle/box? Does anyone?

It's Christmas Time!

You might think I am joking, but I am not! Although it is only July, we have started to prepare for Christmas. Most importantly, we have asked us the following question: what would our American friends like to have made available to them?? As I have a pretty sweet tooth, Giovanna, Niccolina and I sat down together to think about a Christmas item that is true to Italian tradition, to Tuscany, can be transported all the way and does not need any preservatives? And something that Americans will also like to eat...If you are shaking your head at this point, wondering why this is so complicated, let me assure you: it ain't easy. Take for example the most classic Christmas cake of all: The Panetone. It comes traditionally from Milan, but has been sitting on dinner tables at Christmas all over Italy for many decades now. Because it is just so darn good. But unfortunately it is impossible to bring it to the US without compromising the natural ingredient list. The humidity, temperature changes, pressure... they would ruin the Panetone, if it were not for preservatives and other additives. Which we do not like in our food. So - no Panetone.

Next big Christmas cake is the Panforte: dried fruit and nuts, it comes from Siena and was once so valuable that it was used as currency: Sienese paid their taxes this way. Giovanna and Niccolina do a Panforte that any king would accept as tax payment even today, but for some reason it is really difficult to convince the American palate of it's yumminess.

So we took the most classic Tuscan cookie - the Cantucci - and varied the ingredients to give it a christmassy taste. Kamut flour, chestnut flour, spelt flour, walnuts, hazelnuts, chocolate, orange peel, cinnamon, cardamom .. you name it, we tried it!
We went through a lot of tasting (which we thoroughly enjoyed) and finally decided on a Cantuccione of …. no telling yet! It will be our November surprise! And if you have any ideas of ingredients for Cantucci, pls. let us know! We would love to hear them!

Fish on the gill!

Summer, sun, long nights out on the porch. What better way to cook your dinner than on the grill, gathering friends and family around the table and enjoying summer and your backyard! Surprise them with an delicous fish course, full of Italian flavors. And it's really easy to prepare, so you can join the outdoor fun, too!

1 whole sea bass, cleaned & w/o scales. (ca. 3 lb.)
1 untreated lemon, sliced
Fresh parsley
3 tbsp. of Roberta’s Roasting and Grilling Salt
6 tbsp. of Cosimo’s Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Place the whole, cleaned fish on a piece of aluminium foil big enough to completely wrap it in foil. Stuff fish with parsley and slices of lemon. Rub it generously with Roberta's Roasting and Grilling Salt and drizzle Cosimo's Extra Virgin Olive Oil over the fish. Close aluminium wrap well and put on the grill for ca. 20 minutes, turning the package once.

Summertime - Zucchini Flower Recipe Competition!!

The huge vegetable garden on Cosimo's estate is my favorite indicator to define the season: huge artichokes: spring, ripe tomatoes: late summer, yellow zucchini flowers greeting every passerby: summer summer. Yes, looking out on that patch of land one can state without a doubt that summer has arrived.


And, oh so many yummy things can be cooked with those flowers ("fiori di zucca"). Deep fried as an appetizer, stuffed with ricotta and parmesan cheese and then baked in the oven, with pasta...

WHAT ARE YOUR ZUCCHINI FLOWER RECIPES?? Post them here as a comment and I promise I will try them all out with a trusted panel of Italian eaters to award a set of Cosimo's Extra Virgin Olive Oil to the one recipe that brings out best the authentic zucchini flower taste! Deadline July 10, 2009.

My two personal favorites: briefly fried in an olive oil lined pan with some parmesan cheese sprinkled over it, a hint of salt and black pepper. Nothing else.

Or a zucchini risotto with the flowers giving a colorful touch to the dish, carrying the warmth of the sun into your plate.

Easy risotto recipe:
2 cups of Carnaroli Rice from Il Covone (in The Scrumptious Pantry)
1 medium sized onion, diced
2 small zucchini
6 zucchini flowers
½ cup white wine - I personally recommend a good Chardonnay; do not try to save money using cheap wine, you can taste the difference. It is better to buy a nice bottle to also go with the meal!
4 cups broth (vegetable or chicken) – depending on altitude, weather etc. you might need a little less or more. Taste your way to your perfect quantity!
1 stick butter (8 tbsp.)
1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Choose a low-rising and wide pot – you want to give the risotto lots of room to absorb the liquid evenly!

Sauté the diced onion and the grated zucchini in 4 tbsp. butter, add the rice and sauté until it becomes translucent. Add wine, stirring until the liquid is totally absorbed. Add finely sliced zucchini flowers. Add ½ cup of hot broth at a time, letting the rice absorb the liquid, stirring every 3-4 minutes. After about 15 minutes (the rice should be almost done), turn off the heat, add the remaining butter and the parmesan cheese, stir well and let sit with lid of the pot closed for another 5 minutes. NOTE: you can always substitute wine with broth, if you prefer!