Chasing Away the Blues at the Farmers' Market

There are a number of things that can brighten anyone’s weekend, especially in the summertime. That’s where Grill Day, wild fish, and the local farmers’ market come in. 

(source)

Mama Dazz and I drove to Ben Brenman Park in Alexandria, just a few miles from SportRock. The West End Farmers Market has two rows of white tents, filled with tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumber, eggplants, crafts, baked goods, flowers, and more. A nice gentleman, either picking up my need to smile or hearing my comment on the beautiful sunflowers, gave me a pink carnation to enjoy.  

It was a nice excursion, and we walked to the car with Cherokee Purple tomatoes, basil, collard greens, yellow zucchini, purple okra, and eggplant in hand.

We cooked the tomato, zucchini, and eggplant on the grill with the (wild) corvina fillets, and pan-fried the okra lightly dusted with Maseca® corn flour in our cast iron pan. (Let it be known to cyberspace that this was the first time I ever enjoyed okra.) The basil made a wonderful salad with sweet onion and cucumber, and harmonized well with the other components of the dish.

Whenever we have these sort of meals, I wonder why we don’t go to the farmers’ market more often. It is certainly worth it.

Oatmeal Bars: The Beginnings of a Beautiful Breakfast

After perfecting my oatmeal breakfast bars, you can say I’ve become quite fanatic about them. They’re great because I’ve essentially made breakfast for the majority of the week, and it is so fun pairing different ingredients and switching  up the binders (i.e., egg, applesauce, banana, nut butter, etc.). I’ve also tried using different grains along with the rolled oats, particularly buckwheat and steel cut oats, but I wasn’t too keen on the texture. I like them soft, not crunchy. Oh, and toasted... (almost) everything is delicious toasted.

I aim to make them as balanced in nutrition as possible, little hand-held meals if you will. As I get more creative in making them, I plan on incorporating savory ingredients, maybe one that only has vegetables in it. Carrot has been my favorite vegetable for my oatmeal bars, and I enjoyed this recipe immensely while camping.

Vegan Carrot Tahini Oatmeal Bars

160 g Rolled oats
15 ml Unrefined apple cider vinegar
64 g Tahini
4 (162 g) Carrots, shredded
104 g Dried currants
1 tsp. Sea salt
1 tsp. Ground ginger
Stevia, to taste

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the rolled oats and cider vinegar, add enough filtered water to cover at least an inch or two higher, and let it soak for eight hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
Drain the water from the oats and rinse thoroughly before returning to the bowl.
Fold in the remaining ingredients into the oats, and pour the mixture in an 8x8” pan lined with parchment paper and spread it out evenly.
Bake for 40 minutes to one hour or until golden brown.
Remove from the baking sheet (parchment paper = easy lifting) and cut it into the number of square bites or bars to your preference.
Serve warm and toasted.

Makes 4 – 8 bars, or 4 servings.

It certainly got the job done in keeping me full until lunch time (paired with a Granny Smith and a dollop of almond butter, of course), but I wanted to play around with using egg as a binder, making it nut free (if you don’t use the shredded coconut as garnish) as a result. This one was my favorite of the two.

Nut-free Carrot Mesquite Oatmeal Bars

160 g Rolled oats
15 ml Unrefined apple cider vinegar
1 Large egg
45 g Unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp. Sea salt
1 tbsp. (10 g) Mesquite powder
15 g Cacao nibs
4 Carrots, shredded or finely chopped
Shredded coconut, as garnish (optional)

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the rolled oats and cider vinegar, add enough filtered water to cover at least an inch or two higher, and let it soak for eight hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
Drain the water from the oats and rinse thoroughly before returning to the bowl.
Fold in the remaining ingredients into the oats, and pour the mixture in an 8x8” pan lined with parchment paper and spread it out evenly.
Sprinkle the shredded coconut and lightly press it into the bar (omit if you are allergic and/or want to keep this nut-free).
Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.
Remove from the baking sheet (parchment paper = easy lifting) and cut it into the number of square bites or bars to your preference.
Serve warm and toasted.

Makes 4 – 8 bars, or 4 servings.

Healing with Smoothies

Between the smiles and the sighs, I’ll have to say that turning my life upside down has been a worthwhile experience. The things that ended brought about opportunities, so I know this crisis will blow over soon. I’ve started regaining my drive towards what I really want to do for the world, feeling so sure and secure with my efforts that I rarely have time for much else. Funny how that happens once you are honest with the universe, give up television, and nourishing myself for a change.

So don’t worry about the turbulence that comes with an abrupt change, my friends, because sooner or later the storm quiets down.

In the midst of all this change, I’ve been making recipe after recipe after recipe, sometimes losing the paper I wrote it down on (I really ought to get a notebook for this sort of thing), but truly focusing on balance. While camping, I attended a class called “The Five Elements of Nutrition”, and immediately purchased the recommended books when I had access to my laptop. Since I’ve started reading these books, I’ve been thinking about foods in the aspect of “cold” and “warm”, “damp” or “dry”, “sour” and “sweet” and “pungent” and “spicy”, etc. As I work on using food as a form of healing, I’ll definitely post my efforts as I read through it.

After coming back from our trip, I was really big on smoothies for the days following. Green smoothies, sweet and savory smoothies, fruit and vegetable smoothies… you name it, I tried it. It helped me deal with the heartbreak, knowing that I was cleansing from the inside out, and I am thinking of making smoothies a usual thing in my daily meal plans.

Green Goodness Pineapple Smoothie

280 g Frozen pineapple chunks (Mango works beautifully as well)
100 g Frozen spinach
1 English cucumber, seeded and cut into chunks
1 Green bell pepper, seeded and cut into chunks
Fresh ginger, to taste (at least the size of your thumbnail)
500 ml Coconut water

Place all of the ingredients into the blender and mix until thoroughly combined.

Makes 2 servings.

Barefoot Lessons

Four days have passed since I came back from New York, walking around barefoot and dancing to the beat of drums. I miss the late nights under the stars, watching the Scorpius constellation hide behind the trees as I walked the candlelit labyrinth. A lot has come from that trip, a lot of change, the obviously good and the most certainly hard. 

Brushwood Folklore Center is a place without static and distraction. Once your bare feet touch the soft grass and feel the dirt roads, truth comes to you in waves. From these realizations, I regained the tribe I felt I had lost, recovered my sense of self I thought would never come back, and I have never felt so sure of anything in my life. I struggled with accepting why I felt so secure and confident on land eight hours from northern Virginia and not at the place where air conditioning, artificial light, and refrigeration was in great supply. And for some reason, after realizing what was holding me back, everything started falling into place within the hour. To quote JFK:

“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity.”

This saying is used in a few of my conflict resolution classes, and it has taken me up until this point to understand what it really meant. I get it. I finally get it.

Along with all the hard bittersweet lessons coming from camping, I learned a lot of wonderful sweet ones, such as:

Amish sausage is AMAZING.

The person behind Magpie Mead is as deep (and sweet) as his product.

• Tequila with kumquats and mixed with sea salt are two great combinations.
• Helping a hummingbird leave the confines of a blue tarp with an umbrella? Priceless.
• Community is everything and everywhere.
• Humanity and altruism exists. Really.
• Public speaking at the grassroots level (in the name of the conflict analysis and resolution discipline) is as rewarding as it is inspiring.
• There may be something to the five elements of Chinese medicine relating to food.
• Walking around (i.e., not being bored) + eating less + eating smaller portions = a happy Morri.
• I like the aspect of walking everywhere.
• I could live on land with indoor-outdoor facilities that has distance in between.
• Camping gluten-free is not as hard as you think it is. 

So here I am, my sunburn fading and freckles forming by the day, and I cannot wait until next year for another week of “pretty people” and family fun. As I said, it really isn’t so difficult camping with food allergies (in addition to mine, we also had lactose intolerance, allergies to mesquite, mango, mushrooms, green bell pepper, and black pepper). I was put in charge of making sure I had food for the week, so I brought with me:

• Homemade fruit-nut energy bars (recipe posted below)
• Oatmeal bars (click here for the recipe)
• Cereal and rice crackers
• Almond butter and cream cheese
• Apples and clementines
• Cooked chicken, canned tuna, and smoked salmon
• Grits
• Hard-boiled eggs
• Various veggies 
• Mozzarella string cheese and sliced smoked Gouda

There were also the family dinners and the morning coffee, sure, but the only thing that mattered was that no one got sick and we had an amazing experience. 

I also mixed up my linear perception of time, thinking that I had my vacations in New York and Pennsylvania back-to-back. I’ll be going next Sunday, though I’m not sure if it will be for the whole week. Still, it will be exciting all the same.

For this week, I’m going to work on Meals with Morri, embrace my brother's powerful mantra “Shift or be shifted”, send out my resume to a number of community-oriented organizations, work on my application for graduate school, make sense of all these lessons that instantaneously came my way, get back into my routine of rock climbing and yoga (they’re offering it on Wednesday mornings now!), and give you a fruit-nut energy bar you swore was the filling of a Fig Newton (only healthier).

Chia Hemp Energy Bars

60 g Raw hazelnuts
60 g Raw almonds
100 g Dried Black Mission figs
75 g Prunes, pitted
48 g (4) Dates, pitted
30 g Chia seeds
30 g Hemp protein powder 

Place all of the ingredients in the food processor and pulse until it starts forming into a ball (it should be fairly combined, but clumps of individual ingredients are encouraged).
Lay the mixture in a small, square baking pan lined with parchment paper, and lay another sheet of parchment paper on top.
With another pan of the same size, press down into the mixture to flatten it out.
Continue folding and pressing until you have reached the desired size and thickness of the bar.
Remove the large “bar” from the pan and place it onto a cutting board, where you will cut it into the desired number of bars.

Makes 8 bars, or 4 – 8 servings. (Seriously, crumbling a serving over puffed rice cereal gives off the "Fig Newton" vibe. And it's amazingly filling and filled with so much good-for-you ingredients that you won't even miss the other stuff.)

New Adventures and Oatmeal Bars

These last three weeks of camp have been absolutely fantastic. I’ve laughed, cried, and learned the beauty of teambuilding, the creative mind, and working with kids. Children are amazing eye openers to the very existence of sentience. They want to do so much in the day, be so much in their lives. 

I’m going to miss it all.

For two weeks I’ll be away from camp, and likely from this blog. I am leaving for the family’s annual camping trip in New York first thing tomorrow, and subsequently another family vacation immediately after in Bedford, Pennsylvania. And then I come back, not as the Art Specialist, but a counselor working with kids with special needs. 

Pareve BBS: Duck egg socca, veggies, and ricotta cheese

It’s going to feel so strange, not walking between classes with the “Art Cart”, communicating over a walkie-talkie, and having Pareve Bento Box Snapshots to share. There will, however, be quite a lot of grill days, hilarity, learning experiences, and maybe foodie adventures (if I ask politely albeit loudly enough) in both vacations. For now, I’m getting ready to pack, post a recipe, and give it my all today for the camp. 

These oatmeal bars were created for hectic mornings when I was rock climbing before camp and the start of Morri-friendly on-the-go sort of food. With camping and staying at a house that is not necessarily gluten-free, I needed to come up with breakfasts, lunches, and snacks that I can have on the assurance my tummy will be happy. As I search all over cyber space for the oatmeal bar I could eat, it was difficult to find any that had all of my requirements (i.e., gluten free, soy free, low sugar content, and refined sugar free). So I decided to come up with my own, and it was the start of a beautiful breakfast. You may want to add salt or sweetener to fit your tastes, but I loved it toasted with some apple butter or left plain. 

Vegan Oatmeal Bars

160 g Rolled oats
15 ml Apple cider vinegar
1 (very ripe) Banana
64 g Almond butter
42 g Cocoa nibs
30 g Unsweetened dried coconut
Salt, to taste
Sweetener, to taste

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the rolled oats and cider vinegar, add enough filtered water to cover at least an inch or two higher, and let it soak for eight hours or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
Drain the water from the oats and rinse thoroughly before returning to the bowl.
In another bowl, mash the banana with a fork and mix it with the almond butter.
Fold it into the oats as well as the cocoa nibs and the shredded coconut.
Pour it onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (remember: the thinner the crispier and the thicker the softer) and spread it out evenly to the desired thickness.
Bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown.
Remove from the baking sheet (parchment paper = easy lifting) and cut it into the number of square bites or bars to your preference.
Serve warm and toasted.

Makes 4 - 8 bars, or 4 servings.

In Celebration & Loving Memory

July 4th came and went like any other holiday: family and food, laughing and loving, planning and remembering. I meant to write about it, because I had a recipe I was particularly proud of to share, but it was put to a screeching halt when I found out a person in my life had passed away.

This person has never been mentioned on this blog before, so I want to take a moment to mention that all of the usual folk (i.e., the cats, Mama Dazz, Daddy-O, the Burt-man, Grandpa B, Grandma D, the family in general, friends aforementioned, and the boyfriend) are fine and well. Regardless, his death was a blow to my core, and the next few days after the Red, White, and Blue Grill day were spent in mourning.

 

I learned a lot about myself in that moment, how much we came together as a community to celebrate the life of someone we cherished, how to make the day count with hearts wide open, and how family and children both can help with the pain in different ways.

Making art with kids...

... is the best kind of healing.

The children at camp are pure energy. They feel completely and act accordingly, taking you along for the ride. For two days I forgot my sorrow as I watched “The Lorax” with the rising kindergarteners, took photos of the various hustle and bustle throughout the camp, and told a group of kids to “go crazy” with the paint on the recycling bins. But after I left the kids, I remembered my sadness, and I felt it throughout my body. But I learned from it, and have been telling everyone in my life how much they mean to me since then. Life's too amazing and precious to be angry, stressed out, or focusing on the small stuff. Value everything, even if times are hard, because often times it does get better.

Independence Day is a holiday that honors what every day should be about: celebration of life, remembering the fallen in how they changed us, and looking to the future with a bang (fireworks included). I’m not afraid of living anymore, and like him I will walk tall, speak and think honestly, and be the change I wish to see.  

Angel Food Cupcakes (adapted from Ruhlman’s recipe in Ratio)

380 g (roughly 10) Egg whites
175 g Coconut sugar (from the palm blossom)
185 g Maple sugar
120 g Rice flour
1/2 tsp. Sea salt
1/2 tsp. Cream of tartar
15 ml (1 lemon) Lemon juice
1 tsp. Bourbon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
Measure out the egg whites in the mixing bowl and place in the mixer using the whisk attachment.
Combine the coconut sugar and the flour in a food processor (I would use a spice grinder for the sugar first), and set aside.
Beat the egg whites on medium for a minute or so, then add the salt, cream of tartar, lemon juice, and vanilla and increase the speed to medium-high.
Once the foam has been established and the mixture is opaque, begin drizzling in the maple sugar.
Continue mixing until the maple sugar is incorporated and the foam just passes the pourable stage (it will hold a weak peak).
Pulse the coconut sugar-rice flour two or three times to aerate it, and sprinkle over the meringue as you fold the meringue with a rubber spatula.
Continue to sprinkle and gently fold the mixture over itself until all the remaining sugar-flour has been incorporated.
Using an ice cream scooper (or 1/2 c. measuring cup), dollop the batter into 24 paper-lined muffin tins and bake for 25 minutes (it’s done when a skewer or a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean).
Allow the cupcakes to cool for thirty minutes to an hour before removing from the tins, and serve with berries and whipped cream on top.

Makes 2 dozen cupcakes, or 24 servings.

The Bento Box Snapshot: Another Week of Pareve (and a recipe!)

Making pareve (parve, parv, or whatever you call it) Bento Box Snapshots have been quite exciting to eat. I have enjoyed thinking outside the box (heh.) with my creations, and the combination of flavors I created every day.

As I’m rather behind in posts, I’m simply going to post the photos with their descriptions below, along with a dried fruit and seed bar recipe I think you will enjoy as much as I did.

 

BBS 1: Sliced veggies (not shown) with ricotta cheese and hummus, and short-grain brown rice with sun-dried tomato slivers, toasted sesame seeds, and a dash of Living Intention's Salad Booster.

 

BBS 2: Cucumber sushi, raw veggies, and refried beans.

 

BBS 3: Vegan quinoa salad (not shown), baby zucchini and sugar snap peas drizzled with tahini, Parmesan cheese wedges, and homemade dried fruit-seed bites (recipe below). 

BBS 4: Cold noodle salad dressed in coconut oil and lemon juice, more raw veggies, and my  homemade dried fruit-seed bites (yes, it's that good).

Many of the kids at the camp are allergic to nuts, so I thought I’d give “nut-free” a go. It’s definitely a pareve sort of food, and it’s vegan and grain-free too! 

From this...

... to bite-sized delicious energy!

Nut-free Cinnamon Raisin Sesame Bites

30 g Pepitas, raw and unsalted
66 g Sunflower seeds, raw and unsalted
27 g Hulled sesame seeds
40 g (5) Dried Black Mission figs
75 g (6) Medjool dates, pits removed
45 g (6) Prunes
50 g Thompson raisins
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
Pinch of Sea salt

Place all of the ingredients in the food processor and pulse until it starts forming into a ball (it should be fairly combined, but clumps of individual ingredients are encouraged).
Lay the mixture in a small, square baking pan lined with parchment paper, and lay another sheet of parchment paper on top.
With another pan of the same size, press down into the mixture to flatten it out.
Continue folding and pressing until you have reached the desired size and thickness of the bar.
Remove the large “bar” from the pan and place it onto a cutting board, where you will cut it into the desired number of bars (or bites, as I did).

 
It makes 5 – 10 servings, depending on if you want a bite-sized snack or a meal great for on the go.

Learning from Kids and their Art

When you work with kids, you start seeing things in a brand new perspective. You start seeing how amazing the world is, how fascinating the creative mind works, and just how brilliant sentience can be. The kids I work with range from going into kindergarten all the way to entering middle school, and all of the artwork they’ve created thus far is simply too beautiful for words. 

In the working environment I find myself in this summer, with its amazing staff and equally amazing kids, I come home so energized and inspired to make the next day even more spectacular. They’re bringing out the best in me as I hope I do the same in leaving a positive mark in their lives.

As I work with these kids, it is phenomenal how effortless being yourself actually is. They keep me on my toes, sure, because each child needs something different from me, but I strive for that sort of life. Whether it’s how I teach, what art project I have them do for the day, or working with what kind of day they’re having, I feel limitless in my abilities to be that person for them.

If it is one thing I’ve learned so far, it’s this: if there are no mistakes in a child’s artwork, then there are no mistakes in my own growth and progression. Why should my inner critic talk so loudly over something that can only get better over time? If I find children’s art so amazing – with their perceptions of reality shown in shaky albeit heavy marker lines, large words and figures out of proportion – and their imagination so incredibly infinite in their tiny finite bodies, then I should realize how far I’ve come and far I’m going.

To celebrate my first forty-hour workweek in my life, I made a cake. It’s a sticky, moist, apple cake that tastes amazing warm from the oven to sitting in the fridge for a few days. It isn’t too sweet, but life is sweet while you eat it.

“While we try to teach our children all about life,
Our children teach us what life is all about.”
~ Angela Schwindt 

Sticky Apple Cake

240 ml Sparkling water
2 Large eggs, yolks and whites separated
60 g Unsweetened applesauce
42 g Honey
1 Apple (I used a Pink Lady, but whatever you have is fine), grated
1/2 tsp. Bourbon vanilla extract
120 g Buckwheat flour
90 g Mesquite flour
30 g Blanched almond flour
1 tsp. Baking soda
1 tsp. Sea salt
1 tsp. Cinnamon
1 tsp. Ground ginger
1/2 tsp. Nutmeg
80 g Apple butter
Walnuts, optional

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.
In a medium-sized bowl, blend together the sparkling water, egg yolks, applesauce, honey, grated apple, and vanilla, and set aside.
In another bowl, mix the flours, spices, and leavening agent thoroughly before integrating the wet ingredients with the dry.
With a hand blender or a whisk, form the egg whites into stiff peaks and gently fold them in with the batter.
Pour the mixture into a greased (I used coconut oil to keep it dairy-free) 9-inch pie pan.
Using a small silicon spatula, place the apple butter on the top and form a swirl indentation to create a marbled appearance.
Bake for 45 minutes or until the center is thoroughly cooked through.
Remove from the oven and let it cool for fifteen minutes on the counter before cutting into the cake and serving.
Smear your choice of nut butter, creamed cheese, or whipped cream, and serve warm or chilled with coffee, ice cream, or whatever you’re in the mood for.

Makes 1 cake, or 8 servings.