Spring cabbage and
cashew cheese terrine,
not just (but also) for
raw food freaks,
vegans and hippies
June 17, 2006
Not counting nut loaf and enema, does an uglier word exist than cashew cheese? Overexposure to Cheech and Chong while growing up has affected my sensibilities such that I can’t even hear the word loaf without chuckling silently like an eleven year old. And the word cashew cheese makes me think of all the cheeses we produce with our very own bodies. I know, I’m immature. Still.
The cashew hummus recipe (mo better?) I’m working on is finally getting really cheeesy thanks to the discovery that you can ferment anything if you just forget about it long enough. Last batch I let the cashews grow a sentient microbial film that was capable of speaking short sentences in Esperanto. Then I rinsed them, (tasted them to see if they were palatable, kaj lo kaj rigard and turned them into… cheese. That’s what you get for learning Esperanto. Cashew fromaĝo estas ni! (Cashew cheese is us!)
Cut the cabbage in half, remove the core (and toss that into the chipper-shredder that is my mouth), spread layers of the cashew in between the leaves, put the cabbage back together, smoosh and slice. My kind of recipe. Are young cabbages looser than old cabbages? Are cabbages like me? Look for a ‘loose’ cabbage.
The puddle is a dressing made with miso, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, sambal djeroek and a dash of maple syrup. Not a local ingredient in the lot, though I’m preparing for a career in miso making when I’m in my 80’s to compensate. Seriously. And now, this same entry in Esperanto!
(Please read more… )
debra at 17:10 | No comments | post to del.icio.us
Let farmers be bygones
Let bygones be farmers? On the other side of my neighbourhood park there is a monument in honour of the ‘lost farmer’, farmers lost to change. The text on the back of the pedestal says, The Bygone Farmer by artist Henk Gomes commemorates the farmers that for thousands of years lived and worked in the fens to the west of Amsterdam’s city limits. Until the 1950’s this was the border between city and the country. In the 2nd half of the 20th century this border was pushed back to the peripheral waterway beyond the Haarlemmermeer.
The placement of this statue has been made possible by funding from private donations and with donations from the Amsterdam borrough of Bos en Lommer, the Amsterdam Foundation for Visual Arts, the Amsterdam Rabobank and also the Foundation for the Bygone Farmer.
The task of translating the Dutch verb verdwenen has been preventing me from writing this entry since I took these pictures back in April. Verdwenen can mean a lot of things, and none of which sound particularly as poetic in English as Verdwenen Boer does in Dutch.
Lost,
extinct,
vanished,
disappeared.
They used to be here.
Nice that the artist included the boerin in the actual sculpture, although he left her out of the title. In Dutch, the female farmer has her own word. Maybe Gomes was using the term boer as a general term.
Speaking of Dutch public art commissions, check out the iron line drawing on top of the tax building.
debra at 6:48 | No comments | post to del.icio.us
Master cleanser, for juice fasters and thirsty people
June 14, 2006
If you just think of this as lemonade, you might actually drink it. Master cleanser is the unfortunate name for a cayenne-spiked ginger lemonade, sweetened with maple syrup and sprinkled with sea salt. When you fast or do sports or simply exist in warm weather, it’s wise to drink liquids that don’t make you pee immediately. Most softdrinks, alcoholic drinks and all caffeinated liquids do this, removing the benefit of drinking for the purpose of hydration in the first place.
In this lemonade, the maple syrup and the fleur de sel allow the liquid to hydrate the body more thoroughy than if they weren’t part of the mix. As a master cleanser, the cayenne and ginger are vasodialators and gently invigorate the gut.
If you’re fasting, Master Cleanser is the sort of drink that you take with you and sip throughout the day. But if you just want a refreshing summer drink, call this Super Spicy Lemonade or rosé and do the exact same thing. You can even pretend you’re fasting and be holier-than-thou, always a refreshing feeling and one of the least mentioned benefits of juice fasting.
Picture recipe after the jump.
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debra at 16:49 | No comments | post to del.icio.us
