New York, New Yawk

Here I am in the Big Apple, not doing so much as looking out the window while the rain comes pouring down, and reading a gothic romance (it's from the 18th century, so there's a little literary credibility there). My friends' daughter, Annika, is taking a nap, and so we're taking a break from city activities. Though truth be told, all we've done is gone to see Up in 3-D. We're planning on walking up to Fairway soon to procure ingredients for a great dinner, but I don't know how long the little one sleeps for. It doesn't really matter; I lived in the city for two years, so I don't feel like I have to run around shopping and seeing shows. Especially in the driving rain. It's cold here!

Tomorrow will be more of a city day. I'm going to meet with my friends Sue and Julia, probably for dinner and wine, and I'll probably leave my home-base apartment a bit early in the day to shop at H&M. I've been dreaming of a slice of Zabar's coffee cake for four years, so I might splurge Saturday morning on my way to the LIRR. I'll have to compensate with mountains of broccoli and gallons of carrot juice, but sometimes culinary memories have to be sated and re-explored.

To me NYC is food and parks, anyway. I'd forgotten how amazing the grocery shopping is here: loads of foreign staples and fresh pastas and amazing fruit and vegetables. Fairway was a wonderland last night despite the crowd and rude clerks, and I'm so looking forward to Zabar's. Dean & Deluca is tempting, too, because I know I can find nigella seeds there. My friend Glenna, with whom I'm staying, has been my city cooking companion since we met at seminary, and so seeing her always means making delicious food and indulging in the kind of easy, close friend conversations that one doesn't often have, and so are a kind of nourishment in of themselves. We used to take long walks up Riverside Park; I also took lots of solitary walks when I was lonely or thinking, and once T moved here, we would walk through the Inwood parks with overly sugared coffee and bagels and the newspaper and just be happy.

But the baby has awakened and I'd like to get back to this rare bit of city socializing. God, vacation is good.

Homemade Beef Jerky

I have to force myself to grade ten more papers in the next 2 hours, but I can't resist taking a break to encourage you to make your own beef jerky.

I've never really liked store-bought jerky--it's so hard and dog-foodishly over-processed--but in my search for new protein-rich snacks it occurred to me that homemade jerky just might prove the ticket: chewy, portable, salty, sweet, lean, and somewhat naturopath approved. Besides, my toaster oven has a dehydrator setting, and I've been dying to use it. (As it turns out, the dehydrator is nifty but the oven is better. But do use dehydrating racks, if you can. They'll save you the mess of wiping down greasy oven racks.) And I am so glad that I tried it out, because this jerky is yummy to eat and painless to make. The hardest part is waiting 24 hours for the strips to marinate and dry so that you can eat them with childish abandon.

After doing some internet research, I decided upon a relatively lean cut of steak (top loin) and a marinade of tamari sauce, sweet chili sauce, agave nectar, and thai fish sauce. The soy and sugar in the marinade aren't ideal healthwise, but they seem important if you want your jerky to be salty-sweet, which most people do. You want a pretty lean cut of meat because fatty jerky is both messy and disgusting. Plus, it will go rancid much faster than leaner beef. The same is true for poultry, so make your turkey jerky (so fun to say aloud) with breast meat.

The only downside is that jerky is a somewhat expensive snack, even homemade. 2 lbs of steak cooks down to around 1 lb of jerky. But compare that to the store brands, and this is a steal. Plus, it's a nice alternative to peanut butter crackers or cheese, and hits the spot if you crave something salty.

Here's the rough recipe:

1 C tamari (or regular soy sauce)

1/2-1 C sweet chili sauce (hot would be great, though)

a couple squirts of agave nectar (or some brown sugar)

2 T fish sauce (optional)

2 lbs lean steak

Freeze the beef for an hour or so, so that it's easier to slice into thin (approximately 1/8 of an inch) slices. Dump the marinade ingredients into a ziplock bag or tupperware and shake to mix. Add the beef, coat completely in marinade, and throw in the fridge overnight.

Sometime the next day, place foil on the bottom of your oven, and preheat your oven to 160 degrees (or 200 degrees with the door slightly cracked). Lightly oil your dehydrating racks or oven racks and place the beef strips in rows on top of them. Leave to dry out. This can take 2-4 hours, depending on how thickly you sliced your jerky. The oven temp is so low that you can go about your business without too much concern. I went to the gym, but maybe I'm reckless with appliances?

Pull the jerky out when its flexible but dry, and the coating is a beautiful dark caramel. Cool completely before storing in a tupperware in your fridge.

This won high ratings from T, and the cat seems pretty interested in it, too. Make some today and your family will love you forever. Or at least until the container is empty, at which point you just might make some more...

Taking Deep Breaths and Focusing on the Inner Carrot

I'm learning a belated lesson in patience and the evils of superficiality. As my body detoxifies from its fairly benign history of misuse, my skin continues to worsen. I probably have the worst acne of my life right now, and age 15 didn't find me looking too pretty. It's getting difficult to work up the courage to put on my clothes and walk out the door, and even scary to host friends at our house without feeling pressured to cake on concealer and wear my long hair down around my cheeks. Poor T has to deal with a wife who's an emotional wreck with zero self-esteem and listen to my angry tirades against the naturopath who has me looking like this.

But. I'm sticking with it. The no wheat, no dairy, no sugar, no caffeine, all veggies, all meat, all water diet: the wacky nutrition regimen that has me drinking carrot juice and eating broccoli and turkey for breakfast. Because as horrible as this is physically and psychologically, I know it's good for me. And once all of this gunk is out of my body, and once my body is able to digest everything more easily, my skin will improve.

The thing with naturopathic medicine is that it is a slow, creeping process. Americans are used to going to the doctor and coming home with a miracle drug that cures our acne in 3 days; it is not in our collective patient psychology to wait 3 months for improvements to occur. The waiting game is hard. It's hard to wake up each morning, look in the mirror and cry. It's hard to have a gorgeous husband and not begin to question how he can look at you each day with such wonder and love; can such blind passion be real? And it's hard to admit, also, that this problem you're facing is a minor one in the grand scheme of the world, and that you should be grateful to have acne and not leprosy, and to have health insurance and a job and a beautiful man who loves you no matter what you look like. It is so much easier just to take a drug and stop thinking and feeling. And it's even easier to be seduced by our society's dominant ideas about beauty, and to associate one's beauty, or lack thereof, with one's success in the world.

So as I prepare to travel back east this week to visit friends and family, I'm working on finding my self-worth beneath my face and projecting it outward. I'm drinking lots of carrot juice and trying to focus on the positive. And it's hard. But if I'm going to detoxify my body then I might as well detoxify my mind and spirit, too. I think that both of those things have been neglected for a long time, having been filled with negative thoughts and energy.

This doesn't mean I won't wake up tomorrow morning and cry. It doesn't mean I feel proud of my face or that I want to leave the house. But it does mean that I won't let these feelings consume and define me, and I'm going to try really hard to reach that mythic "inner beauty" we're always hearing about.

Besides, I'm going to need to be in a real zen place when my father and grandmother both tell me how horrible I look. Which they'll do. Repeatedly. So that when the inevitable occurs I'll be able to stand there and smile, focusing on the inner carrot. And plotting revenge.

Weird Science

Remember when you were little, and you would mix up a bunch of kitchen ingredients or bathroom supplies or backyard dirt and berries in a container like an amateur alchemist, just for the sheer joy of concocting something new? To see what fantastic, smelly potion you and your compatriots could design? And then dare each other to consume?

I still love doing that in the kitchen. These days I don't mix ketchup and vanilla extract on a double dare, and the only mud pies I like are of the Mississippi variety, but I love perverting other people's recipes and making them my own. My father calls this shit cooking, swearing up and down that this is the Yiddish term for kitchen improvisation. I don't know about that. It sounds like an excuse my Russian great-grandmother came up with to justify Sunday night failures. Still, it's the term that rings in my head every time I tie my apron on and set to deconstructing someone else's recipe, and it always makes me smile.

Now that I'm doing a lot of gluten-free baking, my mad scientist urge has to be curbed a bit. All successful cooking relies on chemistry, but GF baking in particular, because the unusual flours, starches and gums are simulating the protein, taste and texture of wheat gluten. Too much brown rice flour can leave pastry chalky and bitter. A heavy dry:liquid ingredient ratio makes for dry, crumbly inedibles. A heavy liquid:dry ingredient ratio yields mushy goods. Plus, you have to use more flavorings and sweetness to mask the flavor of rice and bean flours. A good recipe is hard to come by, and it's tempting to adopt an orthodox attitude when you find one you like.

The thing is, I just can't do that. Why leave well enough alone when you can put your own unique stamp on something, and then feel extra proud when you succeed in producing something delicious? So, after reading a bunch of GF blogs (I love Gluten Free Girl) and the introductions to trustworthy GF cookbooks, I decided to get jiggy with my muffins.

I need to pause here and mention my love for muffins, and pretty much every other carby breakfast treat. I love scones, rolls, buns, biscuits, croissants, tarts, savory pastries, even toast with really good butter, or mashed avocado and lemon juice, or crushed tomatoes and garlic. Breakfast just isn't the same without a wheaty companion, and I've been eying my recent egg and veggie breakfasts with lackluster appetite. So I allow myself to splurge on Sundays, which is when we go to the in-laws for brunch. My father-in-law is a rail of a man who disdains dietary guidelines, and so their house is a wonderland of salty, buttery, white-floured foods. It's pretty much impossible to follow any sort of diet there, and so rather than sit and mope while everyone else indulges (I tried that, and it was terrible), I've started bringing goodies that we can all share.

Truthfully, my goodies have run the gamut from delicious to "eh," but I think this week's sour cream apple muffins with grated coconut and toasted walnuts will be a hit. And what's so cool about them is that they worked--they rose, fluffy and moist, with a tender, slightly sweet crumb--even though I threw a bit of this in and a bit of that in, and basically turned my nose up at the GF gospel of no alterations. I did start with Annalise Robert's phenomenal recipe for a brown rice baking mix (I mix up big batches and keep it in my pantry) and I drew inspiration from her pumpkin muffin recipe and Gluten-Free Girl's sour cream apple muffins. But then I changed the sugar to honey and reduced the amount, added some vanilla extract and cardamom, used pureed apples, added some sour cream and molasses (it gives the apples a kick), and 2 big handfuls of unsweetened coconut and toasted walnuts. The best part? I didn't measure a thing once the leavening and flours were in the bowl.

There's something liberating about using your own kitchen sense to concoct something that will warm people's hearts and tummies, and something so satisfying in recognizing that you're learning to work with new materials, and doing so well. Baking is the best way to set a poor day aright.

Here are my muffins. Enjoy!

Sour Cream Apple Muffins with Coconut and Toasted Walnuts

1 1/4 cups brown rice flour mix
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon xanthan gum
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg or cardamom
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
2 large eggs
water as needed
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons Canola oil
2 tablespoons molasses
approximately 1 C apple puree or sauce
1/2 C honey
couple handfuls each unsweetened coconut and toasted walnut pieces

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix dry and wet ingredients separately. Add the wet to the dry and mix until just combined. Don't leave floury pockets in the bowl, but don't over-mix because this will lead to drier muffins. Scoop batter into a greased muffin tin (go ahead and fill it to the top) and bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean when you insert it into the middle of a muffin. Remove from the pan and leave to cool on a rack.

Eat with a warm cup of chai and your sweetie by your side. Or, at least with the chai. Let's get our priorities straight here.

The Little List of 21st century Irritables

1. Facebook applications. (And the social taboo of ignoring them.) (And the fact that they always, invariably, do something terribly obnoxious to my computer.)

2. Text messaging. Yes, I understand its convenience. But does one have to text all the time: during rehearsal, in the middle of conversations, at the dinner table? What would Miss Manners say? I'm tempted to take the next texting phone that gets between me and the conversation/dinner/project/lecture I'm working on and throw it out the window.

3. American politics. Okay, so the American body politic is not an exclusively 21st century annoyance, but our government (including our eloquent, dashing president) can go suck the text message that just went flying out the window. War in Afghanistan? Increasing funding for the Pakistani government? Letting GM declare bankruptcy after giving the company billions of dollars in tax-payer funds? Refusing to close Guantanamo because heaven forbid a "suspected terrorist" acquire a cell in a Colorado maximum security prison? (Apparently we're okay with American born terrorists; we only break the Constitution for Muslims.) Paying attention to that gargoyle Dick Cheney, and running ads accusing Sotomayor of racism for suggesting--gasp!--that a judge might approach the bench with individual biases? Insinuating that North Korea behave or we'll kick the country's ass? And yet, somehow, despite all of this, today's top news story is about the government's new commission against computer hacking?

COME ON PEOPLE! This is making Mussolini's War Against the Mosquitoes look well-considered.

Nothings.

You know those days when you're just very glum, and you yell at your husband for nothing in particular (and yet for everything: never making the bed or doing his lunch dishes or making money); when you desperately need a vacation, and looking in the mirror makes you feel like committing hari kari?

I'm having one of those days. My naturopathic regimen is doing a great job of keeping arthritis at bay, and an equally good job of giving me tremendous acne. I'm beginning to look like someone ate Elmo, had indigestion, and then threw up all over my face. And I'm just cranky, too. I finally have 2 entire, consecutive days off--a first since Christmas--and I'm too embarrassed to leave the house, which needs cleaning, anyway.

I did meet our new neighbors (well, one of them), whom I am determined to be friends with. T and I are both tired of having polite but superficial relations with our neighbors. It would be so nice to come home and share a beer out back, and feel comfortable asking someone to look after our cat and vice versa. Jennifer and John seem like really friendly people, so we may be in luck. They're also closer to our age; for too long we've been surrounded by silly college students who are in the dramatic throes of living together for the first time. I teach the fools. I don't want to live with them. Anyway, I'm going to invite the newbies over for a slamtastic wheat-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, caffeine-free dinner. Maybe we'll all develop moderate acne from dietary asceticism and form a club.

I do intend to leave the house to go to the gym in an hour or so, and to take a hike and have a BBQ with some friends tomorrow afternoon. One can't hide one's face forever--it's vain, and of all the seven sins I could commit today, I'd much rather indulge in gluttony and sloth.

So, I suppose that's all. If I was a songwriter or novelist I could write an angsty and yet emotionally accessible and literarily genius piece about my acne and become a millionaire. Alas, I am neither of those things, and so must content myself with some red bush tea and a rice flour scone, and the sunshine, which is quite nice despite one's unhappiness.

Vegan Gluten-Free Banana Yum

Even the most skeptical gourmands will fall in love with the vegan gluten-free banana muffins I made this evening. The muffins are so good that I'm posting the recipe now, in the hopes that someone else will make them and be surprised by their spicy, moist homeyness.

As you know, I'm new to the gluten-free world, and as an avid baker I've been casting around for recipes that not only approximate the flavor and toothsome qualities of wheat products, but actually taste good, as well. Too many gluten-free breads and pastries crumble at the slightest touch, taste oddly beany or ricey, are prohibitively expensive, or require eight zillion obscure flours and additives to rise or bond ingredients. Thanks to my friend Abby I've found Annalise Roberts, who has a great gluten-free baking book titled Gluten-Free Baking Classics. Ms. Roberts provided the foundation and inspiration for tonight's banana muffins.

The original recipe is for pumpkin bread, and so the first substitution I made was to use 4 bananas in the place of 1 C of pumpkin puree (I do this switch-up all the time with quick breads: sweet potatoes, yams, bananas, squash, and pumpkin are all interchangeable). The second change I made was to swap 1/3 C + 2 Tb virgin coconut oil for the canola oil that Ms. Roberts calls for. I've been doing a lot of reading on coconut oil lately, and though it is high in saturated fats, not all saturated fats are made equal. Once consumed, the fat in coconut oil quickly converts into energy, and is not stored in the heart or arteries. It's a favorite with serious athletes and dieters. It lowers bad cholesterol, has antimicrobial and antifungal properties, aids in digestion, and helps boost immunity. A surprising number of people use it to treat acne. It also tastes amazing (in the muffins, at least) and feels very good as a facial moisturizer. The third change I made was to substitute cardamom for nutmeg, though to be honest this was a substitution borne of necessity rather than experimental verve. The fourth and final change was to use brown sugar in place of granulated white sugar. I just like the taste better.

Bake and eat these, because they will warm your soul. A word to the wise, though: these are not diet muffins. Just because they lack dairy and wheat, are whole-grain, and use a healthy fat does not mean that they are a health food. Treat them as you would any muffin, and at least eat a big bowl of fruit alongside one at breakfast. One more word: you could probably substitute regular flour for the mix as long as you keep the batter wet-thick and omit the xanthan gum.

Little Chef's Vegan Gluten-Free Banana Yum Muffins (inspired by Annalise Roberts)

1 3/4 C brown rice flour mix (see below)
1 C brown sugar, not packed
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp xanthan gum (Bob's Red Mill makes this and it lasts forever)
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp each cinnamon, ground ginger & cardamom or nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
2 large eggs
1/4 C water
1/3 C + 2 tsp coconut or canola oil
2 Tb molasses (I use blackstrap for its health benefits--potassium, magnesium, iron--and very rich flavor, but any molasses will do)
4 mushy bananas

(To make the brown rice flour mix: combine 6 C finely ground brown rice flour, 2 C potato starch--not flour!--and 1 C tapioca flour. Mix in a bag or Tupperware container and store in the pantry for easy access.)

It's just occurring to me now that I may have used only 1 1/4 C flour mix, in which case the muffins still turned out beautifully. They'll be a bit less moist with the proper flour amount, so I suggest adjusting the flour:ingredient ratio to meet your tastes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix the dry ingredients (including the sugar) in one bowl. In an second bowl, combine the eggs, water, molasses, bananas and oil. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until well combined. Do not over-mix. Add the batter to muffin tins, filling them up almost to the top. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into one of the muffins comes out clean. Let the muffins cool completely (well, you can eat one lukewarm if you like, I did) and store in a Tupperware or wrap well in plastic and tuck in the freezer. Enjoy!