Somewhere under all these vegetables is an entire beef tongue. If you’ve never seen one, you might be surprised. It’s really big. And, of course, it’s just the sort of thing to gross out 9-year-old daughter, who took one look at it sitting on the kitchen counter and ran out of the room screaming.
Seems I will be [...]
Entries from October 2009
Boiled Beef Tongue
October 31st, 2009 · 5 Comments · Recipes
Kids Make Ndole
October 30th, 2009 · No Comments · Ethnic, Recipes, kids
Fresh ginger? Dried fish flakes? Peanut butter?
These are not ingredients we normally think of together, but they all play an important role in a traditional stew from the West African nation of Cameroon called ndole.
Ndole is the local name for bitterleaf, a popular green. Lots of fresh greens, tomatoes, protein and healthful fats make this [...]
Tags: African·greens·peanuts·tofu·vegetarian
Brined Pork Tenderloin
October 29th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Recipes, dinner
The menu my wife devised for a recent catered dinner party included a pork tenderloin brined, then grilled. The pork was so outstanding–as evidenced by guests visiting the kitchen to make comments–I thought the process was worth sharing.
There’s nothing really new about brining meats to infuse flavor, but pork seems to benefit especially. This particular [...]
Kids Love Grass-Fed Beef
October 28th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Sustainability, kids
One way to improve school meals is to include more locally grown food, and apparently that doesn’t mean just local fruits and vegetables. In one school district in Oregon, they decided to switch out the commodity USDA burgers in the cafeterias with local, grass-fed beef and the results are now in: The kids loved it.
In [...]
D.C. School Food Goes Back To The Future
October 27th, 2009 · No Comments · kids
Here’s a news flash: The District of Columbia public school system is in the process of ditching pre-made, heat-and-serve meals and converting to fresh-cooked lunches. In some school, the meals will actually be cooked in on-site kitchens.
This move seems to have flown under the radar. But the intel we have as of today is that 74 [...]
Tags: school lunches·USDA
We Are Melting
October 26th, 2009 · No Comments · Sustainability
Time to get out of the car and walk.
New satellite data indicates that the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting much faster than anyone expected. As measured by 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, the rate of thinning in some areas of Antarctica is 50 percent faster than just a decade ago. [...]
Tags: environment·global warming
DC Food For All: A Blog Is Born
October 25th, 2009 · 3 Comments · food news, urban agriculture
People were spilling out of the Big Bear Cafe onto the sidewalks at 1st and R streets NW last night. You might have thought it was just another wild party night in the nation’s capitol. But the drinks were all donated, the long line of food on the bar was made from ingredients gleaned earlier [...]
Tags: blogging
Breakfast
October 24th, 2009 · 3 Comments · breakfast
Poached eggs with fresh salad from the garden
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Shopping: none
You can always tell fresh eggs. When you slide them into your poaching water, they remain in neat little bundles. They don’t spread out all over the bottom of the pan. These eggs were very fresh.
I poach them in a skillet filled with water [...]
Kids Make West African Curried Rice With Greens
October 23rd, 2009 · 7 Comments · Ethnic, kids
It’s finally happened. Our food appreciation classes have left the Americas and entered completely uncharted territory for us: Africa.
The trip from Brazil did not take very long. If you look at the map, there’s only a couple inches of ocean separating the two continents. Heck, you could probably swim. But culturally this represents a gigantic [...]
Tags: African·curry·food appreciation·greens·rice
120 Degrees
October 22nd, 2009 · No Comments · garden
Peeling back a layer of our compost pile this morning to deposit some kitchen scraps I was hit with a blast of heat.
“I wanna see the steam! I wanna see the steam!” daughter shouted when I returned to the house to tell what was happening in our garden.
She approached the compost pile warily, holding her [...]
Tags: compost
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
