I went to Dr. Fuhrman's Princeton Immersion last weekend. It was a wonderful trip for many reasons! It was a great road trip with my friend Suz. We stopped in Pittsburg to see my best pal Gail, sadly, only for a few hours. I worked with a student for a day at Princeton which was very productive. We visited with Suz's parents in Philidelphia. And the immersion was fantastic. It was jam-packed with lectures. Dr. Fuhrman is so energetic and interesting, you really can listen to him for hours. Even better was the food. This is the main reason I go, though I did learn a lot from the lectures. I thought I knew it all by now, but one thing I get out of the in-person lectures is what Dr. Fuhrman is passionate about, and what is less certain scientifically. It helps reinforce what the most important things are to keep in mind. But the food! It was the best I've ever had at one of these events. I think that was in large part due to Chef Martin Oswald's contributions. He owns a nutritarian restaurant in Aspen, Colorado! (called the Pyramid Bistro). He gave a talk on the last day and I have been having fun putting his tips into practice! We got the recipes from the immersion and slides from his talk. They are worth a lot!
So today I'm back from the holidays and putting some of my new knowledge into action. My soup today has Indian spices and I cooked up the onion as Chef Martin described: first you heat up a stainless steel pot until hot, then put the onions and garlic in. They sizzle up, slightly brown, and then release their juices. You don't need oil, and they still gain a nice flavor. Fun, it worked! I did that with the leeks, celery, collards and kale too. Then the pot was looking pretty burned and I thought, this will take forever to clean up. But then I did the mushrooms the same way. Well, they release so much liquid that it just ended up cleaning up the pot. When they were done, the pot was clean. ha! a nice accidental discovery. My soup was just my usual pile of things that I found in the co-op or my freezer. I soaked beans, red himalayan rice, lentils, and purple barley overnight, and started cooking them in the morning. Then cooked up the onions, garlic, celery, leeks, mushrooms, even the collards and kale, like Chef Martin described. Added them to the pot one by one. Oh I cooked up a festival squash in the oven, then added it to the soup after it cooled. Oh yeah, and while cooking up the onion and other veggies, I added some graram masala and curry powder as they cooked. Add the end I added some currants and fresh ground ginger. It made for a nice hearty soup. I froze most of it in single-serving containers. yum. I think I'll have it for breakfast every day. I'll be doing my food prep at night this week.
My food plans for the week are soup for breakfast, and salad and roasted veggies for lunch and dinner. The salads will be micro-salads made from lettuce, cabbage, maybe some broccoli and cauliflower, all cut up finely in the food processor; and topped with pomegranate seeds, grapefruit or orange, seed mixture, and flavored vinegar. I love these. The name should be changed from micro-salad to high-powered salad because it is so nutrient rich. Tonight I'll experiment with roasted veggies. I hope I can get this right. I'm going to follow Chef Martin's advice to cover with foil at first so they essentially steam cook (before burning on the outside), then take of the foil to roast at the end. I'll top with fresh herbs. The veggies available now (that I like) are broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrots, onions, leeks, and sweet potato. I'll do a little of each. I am just learning to do this. It would be nice to do a big batch and eat them for several days but I'm not sure how well they will keep. I think I'll start off by just trying to do one day at a time and hope it isn't too time consuming. I will add some flavored vinegar and mustard as marinate. I got some fresh sage and rosemary at the co-op and have some basil from the garden in my freezer. I hope this works!
Well, this post is long enough so I won't go into Thanksgiving much except to say I made apple sauce for my "brother-in law." He had two 18 lb bags of apples! holy cow, we had all the burners going:
whew. time to go fold laundry, then start tomorrow's food prep. whew!