All Posts Tagged with "spring"

21 Mar SPRING 2012: Spring Cleaning and Arroz con Pollo!

After not much of a winter, spring is upon us. The blossoms on the plum tree outside of my house have already faded, sweet peas are in full bloom in the back yard, and finally some rain. And while romanesco and broccoli have dwindled at the farmers market, a whole new crop of goodness awaits (hello strawberries! hello asparagus!).

Although the new year is traditionally the time most of us take to examine where we’ve been and where we want to go in our lives, spring and fall are the seasonal transitions that move me to look a little deeper and to get excited about change and possibility. Below you’ll see lots of new classes and two great cleanse opportunities to help kick off or support your health goals.

Speaking of supporting your health … earlier this month, I co-presented at the 2012 Womens Entrepreneurship Retreat at Asilomar on staying healthy and nourished during stress. It was a fantastic weekend and I met some pretty inspiring women who are making the world a better place through their innovations and entrepreneurial ventures. Take-aways from our talk? Make the time regularly (once a season sounds pretty reasonable, no?) to check in with yourself, to identify your sources of stress and what areas of your life are draining to you. This is also a great time to recognize your sources of joy and nourishment. The goal: reduce the stress, increase the nourishment! Both of which are easier to do if you make the effort to really see what’s going on in your life. Spring cleaning is for your house, your body and your life!

Happy spring time to you all!

What’s New …

2012 Spring Clean 21-day cleanse will start on 4/18. This whole foods-based cleanse is completely customizable and includes 4 group teleclasses, recipes, resources, and discounts from complementary care providers (think acupuncture, personal training, chiropractors, massage… that kind of thing).

Anti Candida Cleanse, a 4-week, supported cleanse to balance candida overgrowth, starts on 5/23.

New teleclasses will start in May:

• Gluten 101
• Eating Stress 
• 8 Common Cravings (and how to stop them)
• Sugar v. Fat: What’s really making your pants too tight)

What’s in Season …

Spring is bountiful!! (This list is loosely organized according to how my brain bunches things together. Don’t judge.) Get thee to the farmers market as soon as possible:

Fruit:

• Apricots, apriums, plums, pluots, peaches, nectarines
• Oranges, mandarins, limes, lemons, guavas, loquats, kumquats, grapefruit, pomelos
• Cherries and berries!! (black, blue, boysen, straw, rasp, tay)
• Rhubarb
• Avocados, cherimoyas

Veggies:

• Artichokes, cardoons, asparagus, cactus pads, cactus pears
• Eggplant, cucumbers
• Greens!! (arugula, bok choy, collards, chard, kale, dandelion, mustard, spinach, lettuce, purslane, nettles, orach)
• Herbs of all kinds
• Endive, chicory
• Horseradish, jicama
• Green beans, fava beans, fava greens, peas, pea shoots, sprouts, celery, fennel
• Beets, turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, celeriac, radishes, carrots, parsnips, onions, green garlic, leeks, scallions, shallots
• Broccoli, broccoli rabe, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage,
• Potatoes
• Mushrooms

In California we’re so lucky to have access to so much variety all year long. I for one have been craving beets like mad and am ready to swap my collards for dandelion greens. Can’t wait to get cooking.

What’s Cooking …

Arroz con Pollo with a spring twist.

A few weeks ago I found a flurry of recipes for arroz con pollo among the collection of food blogs I read. I quickly created my own recipe “mash up” between several favorites.  The key changes for me: more veggies and use the whole chicken. Sadly, this was gobbled up before I could snap a photo.

Arroz Con Pollo de Primavera

Part 1

• 1 orange, juiced
• 1 lime, juiced
• 2 garlic cloves, pressed
• 1 t salt
• 1 T olive oil

Part 2

• 1 whole 4 – 4 1/2 lb chicken (have butcher cut it up, keep everything!)
• olive oil
• 2 bell peppers (favorite colors), diced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 C asparagus (cut stalks into bit-sized pieces
• 2 t cumin
• 1 t paprika
• 1/4 t saffron, crushed
• 1 1/2 t salt
• pepper, to taste ( a couple or three turns of the grinder)
• 2 cans roasted diced tomatoes
• 1 bay leaf
• 3-4 cups chicken broth (make from the back and neck of the chicken above – see below
• 2 cups brown rice
• 1 C green peas
• 1/2-2/3 C pimento stuffed green olives, roughly chopped

1. Clean chicken, cutting off any big glops of fat, but leave skin on. Set aside neck, back and innards. Place everything else in a shallow dish, big enough that all pieces fit nicely side by side.

2. Mix all ingredients in “Part 1″ above. Pour over chicken, cover with plastic wrap and chill for an hour.

3. While chicken is soaking, place neck and back in a medium sized pot, cover with 4 C water and bring to a simmer. Simmer for an hour.

4. While all that’s going on… prep all the veggies.

5. After an hour, remove neck and back from stock and set aside for later (oh, yes, we’re using the whooooole bird).

6. Heat a splash of olive oil over high heat in a large, heavy oven-safe pan or pot (a dutch oven will do). Add as many chicken pieces as will fit and brown on both sides (~3 mins each side) – remove to a plate and repeat until all pieces are browned. Pile all the pieces on that plate.

7. Now saute all of your veggies with the garlic (except the peas, olives and tomatoes), and season with all herbs/spices except the bay leaf. After about five minutes, add the tomatoes and bay leaf.

8. Add 3 1/2 C chicken broth and bring to a boil (if your stock yielded less than 3 1/2 C, no worries just supplement with water). Then add rice and simmer covered for 20 mins.  At this time, turn on the oven to 350 degrees.

9. After 20 minutes, add the pieces of chicken, cover and bake in over for 20-25 mins (rice will finish cooking in the oven – check about 15 mins in to make sure rice hasn’t already absorbed all the liquid, is still hard and burning. If rice is still far from done and most of the liquid is gone, just add a little more warm stock or water, try 1/2 C at a time).

(While the chicken is in the oven, in a small sauce pan, fry up the chicken livers – and any other innards you like – in a little olive oil. And remember those neck and back bones from the stock? Carefully remove all the bits of meat and place in a medium bowl. Chopped up cooked livers, etc. and add to bowl. Now, make your favorite chicken salad – dice up a stalk of celery, a small carrot, add a pinch of salt, a dash of curry powder, a tablespoon or two of Greek yogurt or mayo – and have it for a snack or lunch tomorrow. Whole. Chicken. Used. Up!)

10. Remove your Arroz Con Pollo de Primavera from the oven. Remove bay leaf, stir in the peas and top with chopped olives.

I serve this over a layer of braised greens, with hot sauce on the side. This is hearty and warming for March rain, but with the bright colors of spring. Leftovers are terrific. If you have any. Serves 5 to 6.

(Of course, you don’t have to use the whole bird. You can use a box of chicken or vegetable stock instead, and a couple of packages of chicken thighs. If you use white rice instead of brown, skip cooking the rice on the stove and reduce stock to 3 C.)

19 Jun Strawberries: The Saga Continues…

This is how hard my life is: I have so many strawberries on hand, I just had to make scones this morning.

Poor me, right? Don’t worry, I shared them – my life may be a burden but I’m not selfish about it. Actually it was the combined inspiration of the bottomless bowl of strawberries in my refrigerator and this post from the Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen that resulted in a batch of delicious, moist scones with a lot of texture. What attracted me most to the original recipe was that it was gluten-free without using a dozen gluten-free flours, starches and gums. (I feel best when I avoid gluten, but it sure is a pain in the butt to bust out simple baked goods when the gluten-free versions call for tiny amounts of a ton of ingredients. It can be expensive too.)

I made a few adjustments to the original recipe (e.g. it was a little too sweet for me – maybe because the flours were on the sweet side already, combined with the ripe strawberries – so I cut back the sugar a wee bit) and the result was both a yummy treat and a fun experiment with two gluten-free flours: sorghum flour (a drought-resistant grass originally grown in Africa and India with a neutral, if slightly sweet, flavor) and brown rice flour (ground from whole brown rice kernels, it has slightly sweet, nutty flavor). You don’t have to have celiacs disease or a gluten sensitivity to play with non-wheat flours. Always using wheat is convenient, but its rather neutral flavor will make the base of all your baked goods taste the same. So, I encourage you to break our of your AP flour box and have fun with some readily available alternatives, such as almond flour, buckwheat, sorghum, coconut flour, rice flour, etc. I’m sure I’ll be posting more about many of them in the future.

Okay, enough with the alternative flour PSA. Let’s get back to business!

Strawberry Lime Scones

• 1 C sorghum flour
• 1/2 C brown rice flour
• 3 T + 1 t turbinado sugar
• 2 t baking powder
• 1/2 t sea salt
• 6 T shortening (I used a vegan version here)
• 1 lime, zested
• 1 C strawberries, cleaned and sliced
• 2 T ground chia (grind in a coffee grinder, then measure 2 T)
• 2 T hot water
• 3 T applesauce
• 1/2 C unsweetened soy milk (cow and almond milk will likely work just as well)

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees and prepare a baking sheet by lining with parchment paper.

2. Combine flours, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl, stir with a fork or a whisk to blend thoroughly. (Remember, I reduced the sugar slightly, so if you want sweeter, add a full 4 T sugar.)

3. Add shortening to dry ingredients. Use hands to incorporate. You want the traditional “pea-sized” bits.

4. Then add the strawberries and zest and set aside.

5. In a blender, combine ground chia seeds and hot water. Give it a spin. If it’s too insubstantial to blend much don’t worry about it. Then add applesauce and soymilk, and blend well until you have a pretty creamy mixture. It will thicken as the chia absorbs moisture.

6. Pour wet ingredients into dry, scraping down sides of blender to get it all. Use a fork to incorporate. Don’t over mix, but don’t under mix. It should hold together pretty well.

7. Turn out onto prepared baking sheet and shape into a flat circle, ~ 1 inch high. Use a knife to cut into eighths. (You can also shape and cut on a cutting board, either dusted with sorghum flour or not, then transfer the pieces with your knife or a spatula.)

8. Bake for 20 mins or until top and edges begin to brown. If your edges brown but the insides look way too undercooked, place a piece of foil on top for the last couple of minutes. Let cool on baking sheet for a minute or two to firm up, then transfer to a wire rack to cool either all the way or until you just can’t stand waiting anymore.

(I did a nutritional analysis through the Spark People Recipe Calculator, which is pretty nifty. Then, because I foolishly didn’t save the recipe in their database, nor did I save the Word document I copied it to, I lost the data. I’m not so much in the mood to re-enter all of the info, but if I recall correctly, it said these were ~250 calories each.)

12 Jun French Onion Soup …

Look at those beautiful onions. Aren’t they just begging to be turned into soup? Maybe it was the dreary rain of last weekend, but once I got these babies home from the farmers market, I was pretty focused on making a lighter french onion soup – this is spring after all and not winter. (Right? Please?)

After looking up a ton of recipes – traditional, vegetarian, vegan, etc – I settled on this template from Tyler Florence, but with some lighter, vegetarian and gluten-free changes (this can easily be made vegan, just substitute olive oil for the butter). You can always add back the beef stock and the bread and cheese, if that’s what makes you happy.

Springy French Onion Soup

• 1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick)
• 4 large spring onions
• 1 stalk green garlic, bulb and tenderest parts diced
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 large sprig fresh thyme
• sea salt
• 1/2 C red wine
• 1 1/2 T arrowroot powder (potato starch or regular all-purpose flour will also work)
• 1-2 T miso, to taste (I used brown rice miso for this)
• 1/2 C hot water
• 1 quart vegetable broth
• 1-2 t lemon juice (optional)
• parsley, chopped (optional)
• nutritional yeast (optional)

1. Wash and trim onions. Cut in half length-wise, stem to stern. Then slice into thin half-moons.

2. Melt butter in a large pot over medium high heat. Add onions, bay leaf, thyme, and a generous pinch of salt and let cook, stirring once in a while until onions are soft and sweet (aka caramelized), ~ 30 mins.

3. When onions are soft and sweet to taste, add wine and simmer it off, ~5-10 mins.

4. Remove bay leaf and what’s left of the thyme sprig (most of the little leaves will likely have come off – that’s good), and add the arrowroot powder. Stir to incorporate. Cook for 5-10 mins.

5. Boil water and dissolve 1 T miso in 1/2 C hot water.

6. Add vegetable broth and miso to onions. Add another pinch of salt, stir and simmer for ~20 mins. At some point, maybe 10 mins in, taste for seasoning – add more salt or miso as desired.

At this point, the soup should be good to go and have a pretty traditional, earthy, almost beefy quality to the broth. If this works for you, then ladle it up. However, if you want something a little more springy, a little brighter… add 1-2 t lemon juice to the soup and serve it up topped with a couple pinches of chopped parsley. Further to go? Want a little hint of cheesiness without busting out the gruyere? Add a dash of nutritional yeast.

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