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Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 2

Jess Lundie — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:45:05 +0000

Week 2 of the Real Food Challenge was way easier than Week 1. Much less bitterness. Many more pancakes. Correlation? Yes. Causal relationship? Also maybe yes.

Day 8 – Fats for High Heat

If we are what we eat, I am becoming a sourdough pancake. Cold, hot, plain, sweet, savory – good no matter how you eat them! High heat fats task today, but no coconut or palm oil at the standard grocery store – surprise, surprise. Why is the co-op so out of my way? Will have to continue using butter and being careful not to let it get too hot. Set out dough for tomorrow: noodle day.

Day 9 – Fight Against GMOs

First, please go check out Nourished Kitchen’s Action Alert: Genetically Engineered Alfalfa. The USDA public commenting period on GE alfalfa ends tomorrow.

Not pretty, but very noodley.

Made sourdough noodles. Took forever and couldn’t possibly be worth it. Was. Ate with homemade alfredo. Never realized noodles were actually a food, not just a vehicle for sauce or an inexpensive filler. Sauce was weird, but who needs it with these noodles. Recommendation: Watch The End of Suburbia while making noodles to decrease whining about how hard it is to make noodles.

Day 10 – Fats to Eat Raw

Attempt #2 at wet sprouted rye bread-food. Different method, equally inedible result. Looked like a loathsome little heap of oatmeal, tasted like… not food. Discouraged. Nothing resembling bread in my house for a week now. No end in sight. I can feel the sprouted rye staring at me from the fridge. Pathetic.

Day 11 – Sourdough (!)

Bread! Could there really be bread? Yes. Maybe. Not for at least twelve hours. Mix dough, knead, cover, wait. *tap foot impatiently* Also, discovered that the spiced butter used to cook many Ethiopian dishes is a type of ghee. Score! That has been on my To Do list for years, literally. Bumping it up and adding plain ghee alongside it.

Sourdough bread (mine!)

Day 12 – Finding Real Milk

Found some real milk in my fridge – so there, Day #12! Domestic goddess today: two loaves of whole wheat sourdough, sprouted lentil yum, red cabbage yum, sourdough started naan and puffed rutabaga gratin. That’s a lot of food, people.

Day 13 – Get Your (good) Bacteria

Leftovers make me happy. Not cooking anything makes me happy. Real food with no prep makes me happy. Also, still no old man smell. A little disappointed, a little relieved.

This made my house smell like curry. But I like curry.

Day 14 – Valentine’s Day, yo

Finally made it to the co-op – raw milk, eggs, onion (local, woo), spices for niter kebbeh, corn meal and coconut oil (I know, days behind). Trying wheat berries instead of rye, because all the best cooks know to blame the ingredients if something doesn’t come out right. Treated myself to a tasty kombucha drink because Day 14 told me to!

Bring on Week 3!

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Real Food Challenge Recap – Week 1

Jess Lundie — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:43:31 +0000

The first week of the Nourished Kitchen 28 Day Real Food Challenge is complete and I survived! (Mostly due to rampant cheating.) Good times.

Day 1- Throw Out Processed Food

Looked in the cupboards, threw a tantrum, decided I was going to be a massive cheater and not throw anything away. Decided to grow up and at least box it up and put it away. Didn’t actually end up touching any food, but thought about it and pretended I was doing it.

Day 2 – Go Buy Real Food

Continued to eat processed food while I wait for repair person to show up. Vowed to take a trip to the co-op as soon as he/she leaves. Justified my actions with some vague reassurance about not wasting food.

Day 3 – Improve Your Grains

Actually went and bought real food today. Discovered that even more of the grocery store is now irrelevant to me. Real food – very little. Organic real food – even less. Organic, local, in season food – none. Bagged all my processed food, save for a small shelf of food refugees (my popcorn…). Soaked oatmeal!

Day 4 – Start Your Sourdough Culture

Trip to the co-op for more real food – local eggs, raw milk, flour, kefir culture, parsnip, rutabaga. Mocked on Twitter for asking what to do with the parsnip and rutabaga (#StuffWhitePeopleAsk). Helpful answer from Kelly @ Centsible Life and Virgina @ Living the Local Life (we love them). Ate soaked oatmeal – delicious! Oh… and restarted sourdough culture. Hoping for better luck this time.

Day 5 – Improve Your Grains

Guess what? No organic grains at Safeway. Surprise, surprise. Another trip to the co-op for rye, lentils and mung beans (!). Sourdough is bubbling and fluffing! Put grains to soak – trying rye first. Unbelievably busy day. Broke down and got take-out pho. Styrofoam galore. [Insert self loathing here.]

Day 6 – Milling Your Own Sprouted Grain Flour

Managed to avoid another trip to the co-op by virtue of the fact that my grains weren’t sprouting yet. Sourdough increasingly sour. Surprised it’s doing anything with as cold as my house is. Busy day out of the house, but the morning’s soaked oatmeal came through. Soaked oatmeal is awesome! Hubs sent me a link for rain barrels and asked me what I was going to do once things sprouted. *crickets*

Day 7 – Relax and Evaluate

Woke up to sprouted rye! Found a few recipes and decided to try rye flatbread after garden planning and seed saving class. Completely inedible and permanently adhered to my pan. Put more grains to soak. Hoping for better luck (or a better recipe) this time.

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One Small Change & 28 Day Real Food Challenge

The Day My Sourdough Died

Jess Lundie — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:45:41 +0000

My sourdough culture is dead. Again.

I don’t know why I can’t seem to get this thing to live. I am alive. My pets are alive. Even my incredibly finicky bonsai tree is alive (and blooming!). But this little colony of yeast and lactobacillus just isn’t happy with me.

Not my sourdough culture.

I try to do the right thing. I feed it organic flour and water without too much chlorine in it. I weigh everything carefully to ensure the proportions are correct. But my sourdough just bubbles halfheartedly at me from its jar. I’ve tried several times to make it into bread, only to have it sit, dismal and sour like my teenage cousin that time her parents dragged her to Great Aunt Ida’s birthday party.

As I dumped my deceased culture into my compost bin, I asked myself why it mattered anyways. Why is so important to me to get this flour and water to rise into a fluffy loaf of goodness, when I could just go buy bread at the store like everyone else?

I think it’s because I should be able to make bread. I mean, it’s just flour, water and salt! How can I suck so badly at making something as fundamental as a loaf of bread?

It is one thing to not be able to make a car or a computer. I don’t mind lacking the ingrained knowledge to repair the space shuttle. But I don’t feel like I should need corporate assistance to make what is, for me, a staple food. Something that feels wrong about that, like kids who don’t realize the part of the carrot that we eat is a root that grows under the ground. Shouldn’t we know these things?

Not my bread either.

Kids today are growing up with a new set of “fundamental survival skills.” They manage a diverse range of online identities. They seem to effortlessly walk the line between their online and physical lives (or perhaps for them that line has faded away entirely). And that is a good thing, because they will need to be masters of that world.

But what if they lost access to Easy Mac, ramen and delivery pizza? Would they be able to turn the contents of their pantry or their garden into a decent meal? Would they know how to tell a carrot from a weed? Would you?

This kind of knowledge is a certain type of resilience that many of us have lost over the past several generations. I don’t think it’s something we can afford to lose for much longer.

So I’ve been working on it for myself. I’m getting much better at making actual meals from the food in my pantry. My freezer is filled with chicken stock instead of Hot Pockets. But I still can’t tell food sproutlings from baby weeds. And my sourdough is dead.

I am determined to keep learning and trying. Because you can’t eat Farmville vegetables, no matter how hard you try. But you can eat a nice loaf of sourdough bread.

Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dklein/ / http://www.flickr.com/photos/karloskarmattsson/ / CC BY 2.0

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