Chia experiments

Alrighty, here are some updates on the great Chia seed butter replacing experiment!  We decided to go with a traditionally high-fat cookie for the project. Hermit cookies are a classic New England dessert that I had never heard of until I moved here. They are a soft, buttery, molasses spice cookie. Pretty good if you like gingerbread and the like.

We first replaced half the butter with chia seed gel, then 75%. In my subjective opinion, it worked very well! In fact, the chia seed cookies had a soft, pillowy quality that is supposedly characteristic of hermits. The 75% replacement, however, lacked the crispy edge I personally find appealing in a cookie. The batter looked significantly thinner and darker, but no big differences were apparent after baking.

I would use these Chia again in soft, dense baked goods like cookies. A great way to get some more fiber and healthy omega 3 fats into your diet.

Update – Lahey bread is tops!

Good news folks – the bread was fabulous.

Taste: slightly salty, wonderfully “bready” without a strong yeasty flavor.

Crumb – nice and open, slightly chewy, just right for me! Here are some interior pictures:

The Crumb

The Crust – Oh, the crust. It was, indeed “shatteringly crisp.” The first day anyway. Days 2 and 3 were pretty good as well, though not quite as divine.

Here is a link to the recipe and here is a link to a follow-up article with some extra suggestions, weights, flour substitutions, etc.

Next: variations, including whole wheat and spelt. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Early AM Bread Making

This is the bread I baked this morning:

A “shatteringly crisp” crust?

Pretty good-lookin’ right? The picture with the teacup is meant to give you an idea of the size.  This bread was made using the now-ubiquitous Jim Lahey no-knead recipe, which became very popular after being featured in the New York Times some years back.  I’ll be back later with a full evaluation!

Adventures in Food Science pt 1: Chia Pet Soul Food?

For my Experimental Study in Foods class, we have to conduct a piece of original food science research modeled after studies published in such titillating journals as Cereal News World and Meat Science. The basic model is as follows: pick a topic that some people have previously studied, put a new twist on it, and feed your control and experimental products to a panel of tasters to see if they can tell the difference. Then (and here’s the exciting part folks), you get to make all kinds of strange measurements. There’s a special machine that measures resistance. You can find the height to width ratio of baked products. You can even photocopy your product to compare the textures. Kinda neat, huh? When was the last time you Xeroxed a quiche?

Our project delves into the weird world of vegetable gum fat substitutes. Chia gel (yes, from seeds you grew on your Chia Pet in the 70s and 80s) can apparently be used to replace fat in baked goods. We are going to use chia gel to replace part and all of the fat in either cream biscuits or some kind of quickbread. What? Cream biscuits with no cream, you ask? What is the world coming to?! I kind of agree. But this is science, folks. Personally, I would just make my biscuits using cream but we need to forge new territory here! They might be gray colored. They might be rubbery. But at least Chia biscuits are novel!

What do you think? Can we achieve high quality biscuits or quickbreads with chia seeds? Comments and gentlepersons’ bets are welcome below!

Stay tuned for more on this process over the next few weeks!

Fast Food Nation – finally read!

After many years of wanting to read it, I finally polished off Fast Food Nation. I picked it up for a buck at a local library book sale! It was pretty much what I had expected. After reading Omnivore, seeing Food Inc. etc, I wasn’t really blown out of the water by any new information. Except for the section focusing on the working conditions and worker exploitation in meat packing plants. That was shocking and very sad. If the processed food scene is old hat for you, I recommend skipping or skimming most of the book and focusing on that part. If you are not very familiar with this aspect of the food business, Fast Food Nation is a pretty good read.

Curried Avocado Soup

Today’s supper included this wonderful soup, adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe.  (I threw in the curry powder, which I think is a wonderful addition!) Click here for the original if you want to start from scratch with your version.

I like to cook from the Minimalist videos, and this one is particularly charming, so here’s that as well!

I know it probably seems like I use nothing but Mark Bittman recipes, but I can’t help it! I just love the guy! Seriously though, we do cook many other things.

Blend all ingredients until smooth:

3 small to medium ripe avocados

about 1 cup of plain yogurt

about 1  1/2 cups of milk

juice of 1 small lime

juice of 1/2 of 1 small orange

about 1 tbsp curry powder

a healthy pinch of salt

After blending, thin with water if needed to achieve the consistency and adjust the seasoning to your liking. A little extra acid (more lime, some lemon, or a dash of rice vinegar) might be needed. If you like a little texture variation, you could add some sliced tomato, cilantro, and/or shrimp after blending.

Serve chilled. We had ours with black beans and rice.

Being cooked for

Yesterday,  my wonderful housemate made breakfast, start to finish, for my husband and me. No special occasion, other than it was a Saturday morning, we were all hungry, and we had the fixin’s for a good meal. She made a cheddar and broccoli frittata, toast, and a lovely breakfast salad with mixed baby greens, tangerine slices, and strawberries. It was colorful and beautiful.

It is wonderful to cook for myself, for others, and with others, but it is also wonderful to be cooked for! It makes me feel very loved, and that is extra nourishing.

Mindfulness meditation

For the past two weeks, I have been attending a meditation group led by a psychology professor at my school. It’s a way of creating space for myself in the midst of schoolwork, home life, and other goings on. My teacher practices zen meditation at home and brings a type of zen-flavored mindfulness meditation to this group.

We sit, sometimes on chairs and sometimes on the floor on books or cushions, and breathe. Focusing on the breath is a way of brining one’s self back to the present moment, to “be here now,” as it’s said. We also do a walking meditation. I know very little about the practice or philosophy of zen but for me, the walking brings meditation gently into the arena of real life. It reminds me that even while moving, it is possible to be in the present moment.

In the US and most parts of “the west,” we are mostly encouraged to learn about ourselves and the world through experience and critical thinking. We gain knowledge by wrestling with ideas, by turning them over, reshaping and re-combining them until some sense of truth is felt. It is pleasurable to do this, and it does give us insight about our place in the world. But It is also amazing what you can learn about yourself by essentially thinking nothing.

I think it is very brave to sit quietly with oneself, to remove the mind from the day, the year, bygone years. My teacher mentioned something yesterday how attached we can get to our personal stories. I am not sure yet how I feel about the notion that all we really have is the present moment. I do know that yesterday, it was comforting to think about the possibility that my story, though it shapes me, is not me per se. It felt freeing. Big existential questions aside, I feel fabulous after meditation.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any experiences with meditation, or other practices you would like to share?

Maine Shrimp

I got to bring home these beautiful Maine Shrimp from the CSF yesterday. Some people like to cook them with the head on and suck out what passes for shrimp brains. However, we removed the heads, cooked some up and froze the rest. Apparently, Maine shrimp are spawning right now, so most of them had roe. We washed off the roe but you can also eat that if you are inclined. We were not. Maybe next time.

We also made stock out of the heads, leek stubs and parsley stems. It will make a nice base for a fish soup or seafood pasta. A word of warning if you make stock yourself- I added too much water, so we had to boil it down for a long time and now the whole apartment smells of shrimp. Thank goodness for scented candles!

5 lbs with shells! (After shelling, the pile looked much smaller.)

I named this one “Hector”

The dark spots on the belly are roe

Mark Bittman does whole grain pancakes

The Minimalist is super good at getting beautiful fluffy pancakes out of whole grain flours. Click here for the link.