akostalas's Profile

yeah this looks like a recipe for disaster...

well, i heard a segment on the radio (KQED, i forget if it was an NPR show or not) that talked about the nutritional quality of organically grown produce being substantially higher than conventional because of the way conventional methods deplete soils, and that made a lot of sense to me. i can't seem to find it but here is an article to the same effect:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/25/HOG3BHSDPG1.DTL
so i guess the question for me is "what am i looking to get out of the foods i eat?" if i'm buying something thinking it has great nutritional value, i should probably look into the organic version. (also, "what does trader joe's have in stock?" is a biggie)

when i just need a squeeze and don't need to get ALL the juice out at once, i slip the lemon half into a plastic mesh bag like cherry tomatoes or onions come in (from Trader Joes, especially) and squeeze - no seeds and all you have to do is rinse the bag so it doesn't get sticky...i just keep it in my utensil drawer. i also have a wooden handheld citrus reamer that was $4.

yum! at the office we get one that has dried cranberries in place of raisins and sunflower seeds in place of nuts. i didn't think i'd like it but i tried it anyway - it's hard to stop eating!

this sounds great. i used to make my own BBQ sauce when i had a roommate that had a fructose allergy, so i couldn't use tomatoes or any other fruity thing you might want to substitute. i ended up using steamed mashed carrots as the base - found a carrot ketchup recipe and took it from there. it was actually really good.

wow, i thought that was a photograph. crazy!

i recommend also checking out your state/local parks department and sometimes even your transit system - many of mine are printing posters they have recently commissioned and they are beautiful and definitely have a connection to the time when i am using them. i think i will still appreciate them many years from now when i remember living in this town and using these resources :)

i made stock from the bones, etc. of a rotisserie chicken we got at the grocery store this weekend. the only kind they had at that time was BBQ flavor, so our stock is a bit BBQ-y. i think i might use it for baked beans...sounds pretty good to me!

does anyone know of a good way to get...um...slugs out of a bunch of chard? there was a slug in the last bunch i got from the farmer's market and i could barely eat the greens even though i was pretty sure it was the only one. i ended up only eating the leaves that i had the time to look over individually...the rest went in the fridge and stayed there till they went bad :(

lemon bars! lemon bars! lemon bars! the joy of cooking has a GREAT recipe!