FDA Warns Against Eating Cookie Dough, But Not Because of Eggs
This story is a bit old by now, but flour sits on our shelves for a long time.  Apparently E. coli contamination of raw flour is potentially widespread.  It had never occurred to me that this was even possible with dry goods.

Out Here, Up Here
Includes the best kitchen tip ever, from Nikki McClure via Orangette:  soften butter by wedging it in cleavage.
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​There's a Price to Pay for Not Eating America's Ugly Seafood
Americans are only comfortable with certain types of familiar seafood, many of which are imported and/or overfished.  Meanwhile, other local ocean food resources are wasted or sold overseas.  What would buying local look like when it comes to seafood?



Discomfort Food: Using Dinners to Talk About Race, Violence and America
Chef Tunde Wey organizes dinner parties with diverse (but predominantly black) guest lists, to discuss race, social justice, and personal experience. “There was some sort of obscenity to the whole thing, this foodie movement,” he said. “You eat at one of these new restaurants with small plates, and the food tastes good, but it’s not saying anything. What it’s saying is just, ‘Look at me.’ It’s self-referential. That’s where the obscenity comes from: when you can say nothing, surrounded by so much to say.”

 
Unsponsored opinion: these Fig & Olive Crackers are like one of the best things I've ever eaten in my life.  And I got them on sale at Whole Foods for $4.99!  (Which seemed like a lot, until I saw that Amazon is selling them for $11.59.)

​My kid is greatly amused at "men's" versions of everyday products, such as bath grenades or Bounce fabric softener for men, so when I saw Men's Pocky at the HMart, I had to buy some.

​May 29
Breakfast: lemon water first; then a cup of coffee with half and half.  Finally, about 9:45 (it's Sunday), I make smoothies for my husband and I: carrot juice, hemp protein powder, avocado, plain yogurt, a few strawberries, a peach, and farm red leaf lettuce.  This tastes like a liquid salad.  The farm lettuce has a lot more flavor than the romaine I buy at the store.

About 11:45, we decide to head downtown to get brunch at my restaurant.  I have an omelette with crab and spring onions inside, broccoli on the side, and an English muffin with butter and jam.  2 cups of coffee with half and half, first a decaf and then a regular.  My husband also chooses with careful restraint. 

Then we go to the farmer's market, just across the street, where the holiday weekend has made things quieter than usual.  It is nice to be able to wander the stalls without the claustrophobia sometimes inherent in fighting one's way through the happy crowd.  I buy one big kohlrabi, a paper bag of shiitake mushrooms, a little basket of sweet potatoes, a basket of strawberries, 4 Gold Rush apples (always the first and best in the early summer here), and a bag of kale.  We also taste some local wines, then decide on a bottle of hard cider, as a gift for my stepson's girlfriend next time there is a suitable occasion.  She likes hard cider and dislikes beer. Total purchases about $40.

In the afternoon, before a 4:00 yoga class, I have a cup of green tea and prepare the Vegan Chocolate Tart with Salted Oat Crust from October's Bon Appetit magazine.  It will need to chill for a while, and we'll have it tonight for dessert.  The tart is fairly simple to make; I don't have a tart pan, but it works fine in a springform with the crust pressed a little ways up the sides.

​Dinner, after the yoga class, is the Egg Tartines with Asparagus Pesto, Dijon and Pickled Shallots from Smitten Kitchen, with a small fruit salad on the side made of orange, peach, and strawberry.  I am the only one who has pickled shallots on my tartines.  They are good, but their salty vinegariness does kind of overwhelm the subtle flavor of the asparagus pesto.  I think I might dial down both the salt and the vinegar next time (and/or use a better vinegar).  Still.  I like the tartines a lot.

​For dessert, while we start watching The Force Awakens (my kid has seen this on their own and is really excited to share it with us), we eat small pieces of the chocolate tart.  It is incredibly rich and intense, so small pieces are exactly what we want.  The chocolate is so, so dark, and the coconut oil with which it is blended is so smooth.  Totally decadent.  I will save another piece each for tomorrow, then take the remainder to work.
 
May 30
Memorial Day and another work day for me.  An ordinary breakfast: lemon water, coffee with half and half, a smoothie made from carrot juice, hemp protein powder, canned coconut milk, plain yogurt, farmer's market strawberries, and CSA farm red leaf lettuce.

Then I go to work, and work I do, very hard.  It is busy from the get-go.  I do manage to drink a cup of decaf coffee with half and half, over the course of the day, but it is so busy that I forget to offer my coworkers any of the chocolate tart that I have brought and left in the refrigerator.  Tomorrow.  I leave a little late, about 2:45.
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At home, I make coffee, eat a lunch of leftover pasta with oregano pesto and the other half of my tuna melt from Saturday night.  After that, I have a cup of peppermint tea.  I am exhausted, more than I realized while I was actually working.  And sore, and I have cramps and my whole body hurts.  Especially and also feet.  Eventually I recover and start working on dinner, which has to be begun early, because the beans need long cooking.

Oh, and when I got home from work, my kid was baking.  They were making vegan cookies (their girlfriend is vegan) frosted in the colors of various Pride flags.  4 rainbow, 3 non-binary, 3 trans, 3 pansexual, and maybe one or two other things, I forget.  Tomorrow is the end-of-year party for the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at their old middle school, an organization my kid and her girlfriend personally started last year.  The club is still going strong, and my kid will be paying a guest visit, with cookies.

​Dinner is Madhur Jaffrey's Spinach with Tomato (Saag) recipe, some black beans with Indian-ish flavorings, whole wheat pitas, and plain yogurt.  The black beans are still a little undercooked by the time we eat; also, I added too much seasoning, I feel.  My kid, however, says they especially like them.  I'm glad to know they (the beans, not the kid) are not inherently unpleasant.  The saag has a good flavor.  I've used a couple of the fresh onions from the farm, complete with scapes, instead of yellow onions.  I'm always stunned, though, at how much spinach has to be purchased in order to make a substantial spinach dish like this.  For the saag, which made about 5 decent side-dish servings, I used some spinach from the CSA farm in addition to 2 full 1 lb. containers from Whole Foods.  Those are the big containers.  The smaller boxes and bags are typically 5 oz.  Over $10 worth of spinach.  I guess that is still only $2/serving, less than you would pay in a restaurant... but somehow painful when you are laying down $20 on spinach on a single shopping trip (there is another spinach recipe to come, later in the week).

​In the evening after dinner, while watching the rest of The Force Awakens, I eat my second allotted piece of chocolate tart.

Breakfast: glass of water with lemon juice; green tea; shake consisting of almond milk, canned coconut milk, hemp protein powder, frozen blueberries, and fresh strawberries.

Lunch: Evolution Essential Greens with Lime juice, with strawberries and frozen blueberries added to try and render it palatable (only partially successful).  Celery sticks with almond butter.  Cherry tomatoes.

After lunch, I could definitely feel the impact of the new probiotics I'm taking-- a period of quite remarkable belching, as well as a roiling sensation in the stomach.  It wasn't intolerable, just odd.  And then it stopped and I felt okay the rest of the day.

My kid needed to be picked up at school, so we decided to take a trip together afterwards to visit an old friend.  Roots Market, up in Olney, MD, was a favorite destination a few years ago when we regularly went to Olney to have kid's foot warts treated by a podiatrist there.  The wart treatment turned out to be a massive waste of time, as well as painful, but the discovery of Roots (plus the weekly drive to Olney together, sometimes singing in the car) made the entire experience more joyful than unpleasant.  We ended up with fond memories.  And a store we can visit when we've got a couple extra hours and are craving some novelty in our diet.

I told my kid they could get whatever they wanted (although they just can't break the lifelong habit of saying "is it okay if I get..." about every single item); the inventory below reflects this.  It also reflects that my kid has great taste in food and reasonably healthy inclinations.  Things of which I am so proud.

Shopping (Roots): Olivia's Power Blend salad greens, 3 portobello mushrooms, organic strawberries, heirloom tomatoes, organic orange bell pepper, organic lemons, 4 organic avocados, carrot chips [kid], dried green beans [kid], mixed vegetable chips [kid], tamari roasted almonds, 2 individual goat milk yogurts [kid], raspberry kefir [kid], organic whole milk, frozen strawberries, 100-bag box of green tea, freeze-dried blueberries, coconut water, hemp milk, dish soap, 2 cans tuna, single-serving maple water [kid], lingonberry jam, Effie's nutcakes [kid], peppered goat cheese [kid], turkey tenderloin, salmon fillet, baguette [kid], 3 quarts of housemade soup (moroccan lentil, curried split pea, minted green pea), "ocean combo" sushi [kid], cilantro and roasted garlic hummus [kid], Ricola herb cough drops [kid].  $200.  Yes, certain items I regretted once looking over the receipt (e.g., the two! heirloom tomatoes I bought for the low, low price of $7.09).  But there are so many things available at this grocery that I don't find anywhere else, it is worth the occasional special trip.  And the quality of everything is always excellent.  Great baked goods, not that I can enjoy those right now.  Great sushi.  Great cheese section.  Great, though limited, hot bar, salad, and soups.  Amazing bulk/snack section.

Dinner: salad of romaine lettuce and green cabbage, with shredded carrot and orange peppers; topped with roasted cauliflower, quinoa, and two boneless chicken thighs.  Apple cider vinaigrette dressing.  This was so filling that I was quite stuffed, and then overstuffed when I ate all my kid's uneaten roasted cauliflower so that it would not go to waste.  I guess there are worse things to binge on than roasted cauliflower, though.

After dinner, A. complained that I was using their name too often in order to avoid using pronouns (teenaged translation: "Pronouns do exist, you know!").  Perhaps this is so.  I've been slipping back into a almost-but-not-quite-thoughtless use of "she,"  because it is easier and less emotionally-confusing, and because A. said she, sorry, they didn't mind.  But I'd also figured that the use of a proper name was the least gender-loaded choice.  This discussion led to A. saying definitively for the first time that they would really prefer us to use "they" consistently.  Husband and I immediately switched.  More practice needed.  But it is good to have greater clarity in this area.
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Snacks: cup of rooibos tea with almond milk, 3 strawberries, celery sticks, carrot sticks. 2 cups of green tea.

Breakfast: 8 water crackers, with raspberry Bellavitano cheese; hard-boiled egg; slice of rosemary toast (open-face) with curried chickpea sandwich spread and raw spinach.

I make an appointment for kid at the orthopedist and we go there mid-morning.  They confirm that the bone looks fractured, but not too badly.  Talk about a cast, but decide on just a splint at the last minute.  It's the left arm, thank goodness, and it should only take a few weeks for this minor crack to heal.

A note about pronouns.  I am trying to use the "they" construction here on the blog, because it is kid's preferred form at the moment, and this is a public space, and it's good practice.  I will say that I totally suck at it in real life, when speaking-- it's all "she" this and "her" that-- so nobody give me any Parent-of-the-Year awards just yet.  I want to do and say the right thing, but somewhere on the way from my brain to my mouth, "she" jumps out anyway.  Especially when there are other matters to think about at the same time, such as broken arms.  I hope to improve.

After we get home from lunch, I go over to the Co-op for some supplies: organic 1% lactose-free milk, black currant jam, half and half, applesauce, quart of Brown Cow maple yogurt, Food Should Taste Good kimchi tortilla chips, 2 individual Liberte yogurts, Field Day organic wheat squares cereal, Field Day organic raisin bran, dried pineapple, cage-free white eggs, 3 lb. bag of mandarin oranges, organic strawberries, 3 avocados, 5 champagne mangos.  $63.

Then, despite having just eaten lunch, I eat the whole bag of kimchi tortilla chips.  I don't even like them that much.  I also play Civilization while eating the chips, instead of writing, which is what I should be doing.  I am at the end of my rope.  The thought of doing anything else this afternoon is overwhelming.  I even fall asleep, though only for ten minutes.

Dinner: somehow I manage to get back up and cook.  First I make the Caramelized-Honey Nut and Seed Tart from October's Bon Appetit.  The tart dough calls for a food processor, but I use my fingers and this works fine.  For the mixed nuts and seeds, I use almonds, cashews, peanuts, and pumpkin seeds.  This color mix is so, so beautiful, with the reddish color of the almonds and the green of the pepitas.  Really I think I made this tart in the first place because the magazine photo is so gorgeous.  I take pictures of the nuts in every stage until the battery runs out on my camera.