Bread by My Starter

This post is all Mom, in honor of her recent birthday, we celebrate Andie Ellis. I like to think of her as my starter. She is the sourdough from which I’m torn. I’m just a bleb that bubbled off her blob. She is the master bread baker who has taught me everything I know. Now and forevermore the aroma of fresh baked bread summons her to mind and heart. May this also be true for you and someone you love. May you too be lovingly well fed and taught to do the same for others.

There is nothing so comforting as a warm slice of fresh bread with butter! Once a month, in 2020, we hope to warm your kitchen with an unforgettable bread recipe. This month, drum roll please, BEER BREAD and Bake This Day’s Five Pillars of Bread Baking! During the year, we will refer to this vital list for bread success.

Five Bread Pillars to improve your baking

Pillar One; Never, ever, DEGASS, your dough.

Pillar Two; The higher the bread percentage of water the chewier the crust and less dense the crumb.

Pillar Three; Taste takes TIME.

Pillar Four; Crust requires steam.

Pillar Five; Tension pulls increase oven spring.

Microbrew Bread

200 g active sourdough starter

700 g room temperature microbrew, your choice

300 g stone -ground whole -wheat bread flour

700 g un-bleached bread flour

20 g kosher salt

Step one: the autolyze

In a large ceramic bowl, mix your active starter and microbrew. Stir to dissolve and add the whole wheat and unbleached bread flours. Mix to a shaggy dough and let rest covered for 1-2 hours. This gives your starter yeasts a nice head start of fermenting without the fermentation slowing salt added. Think of your bread rise getting a 75 yard head start in the 100 yard bread dash!

Step two: the stretch and folds

Now, sprinkle with 20 grams of kosher salt and perform a stretch and fold every 30 minutes x 4. (Notice how your bread changes character!)

To stretch and fold picture your bread bowl as a clock face. Pick up the edge of the dough with wet hands, (not flour), at 12 o’clock and fold the dough softly over the center of the clock, without degassing or pushing down the dough). Turn your bowl and repeat this fold at 3, 6 and 9 o’clock on your dough. Now recover and repeat this every 30 minutes X 4. Stretch and fold is our method for retaining the byproduct of your starter’s fermentation, carbon dioxide.

A note on NOT degassing the dough

Why would we smash by kneading the hard work of a bunch of resilient lactobacillus and natural yeasts by pushing the air out of the dough?

Trust us, just stretch and fold. That’s right, no traditional bread kneading, at all. Your bread will slowly and surely become billowy and soft during this interesting process.

Step three: the final proofing

Carefully move your dough on to a flat counter- top, without flour, and divide for two loaves, by carefully sawing in two with a serrated knife. Shape into a round, dusting only the top with a bit of rice flour and place upside down in a towel lined proofing basket, dusted with rice flour.

Cover with plastic wrap and allow to proof. Indoors, this should take about 1-1.5 hours or you can let it have one hour on the counter and then go in the refrigerator or in the cool garage overnight for a cold rise.

Note: a cold rise will produce a bread with enhanced sour flavors, a warm rise produces for yeasty, traditional bread flavors.

Step four-baking: Heat oven to 500 with rack in upper third position with your empty pan/s inside!

Carefully move your final proof to a hot combo/pan or Dutch oven pan for the boule using the parchment slide. (See note below.) Slice the top, with a sharp knife or lame. Designs are fine, but a quick zig zag cut to ½ inch works perfectly well. Cover the hot pan and put in to bake.

Once in the oven, immediately lower to 450 and bake for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and bake for 10-15 more minutes. You might want to use your instant read thermometer at this point and watch for your desired temp of 198 -200 degrees.

Cool on a rack and then wait 1.5 hours before cutting, that’s the really hard part of this recipe!

*To perform a parchment slide, remove plastic wrap and place a piece of parchment paper over your dough. Top this with a dinner plate and carefully turn the entire basket over on the plate. Viola’, your bread is now sitting on a parchment slide on a plate. Pick up the plate and carefully slide the dough and the paper beneath it, into your hot pan, cover and bake.

Bathtub Meditations in Minnesota on Post-Mardi Gras Ennui and the Heaviness of Life in General

Dessa, the rapper/philosopher/dark-diva made this great point last night at the Castle in Rochester, MN that because the gravity on the moon is one-sixth ours here on Earth, her tits would look great there. Alas, we live where everything is heavier. In the same poem she describes the sinking feeling of letting bathwater drain around your body, becoming aware of the loss of buoyancy as your viscera take on their own heaviness and as your hair falls like a wet blanket over skin. “Whenever you take a bath, the bath takes back. And the five-sixths are yours to carry.” I think an analogy can be made here to the familiar settling state of post-Mardi Gras ennui– a sobering heaviness that remains in New Orleans when all of the confetti has fallen and the beads are scattered and the king cake has hardened to stale. The silence after the bands and paraders have retired from the streets, with perhaps only hollow echoes like the sounds of water thrumming down a drain pipe.

As co-captain of the Midcity Dead Beans parade, my message at the start of our march this year was, “We make these [bean] suits which are heavy and fragile to remind us of the ways in which life itself is at once heavy and fragile.” With this year’s parade theme as “Extinct and Mythical Beings,” we toasted concern to all that may be now be threatened by extinction: bees, the Gulf Coast, turtles and other hosts of beings finding the ocean increasingly uninhabitable. Life is indeed heavy and fragile.

Janelle, generous hostess with the Minnesota-mostness

This week I’ve carried my five-sixths up to Minnesota for ongoing cancer care, a different kind of heaviness. I am both literally and figuratively walking on ice while awaiting my prognosis. I am grateful for the generous company of friends who host and treat and buoy my heavy spirits along this marathon sojourn back to health.

And while I’m rarely Cooking for One, the recipes in this lovely cookbook by Joanie Zisk can be multiplied to suit any amount of plates you plan to set. This shrimp dish was delicious. I think the concept of this cookbook is an important reminder that even when you are just cooking for yourself, it is tender and loving to prepare a healthy and full meal (rather than opt for a snack dinner). Feast and toast to solitude. Or make these recipes for you and friend who are trying to work on portion control…

Bake This Day weekly picks:

When I get back home to New Orleans, I look forward to diving headfirst into crawfish season. A Cajun Life has a panoply of spices and shrimp boils and hush puppy mix and jambalaya and, and, and. Another Oregon-Louisiana connection (like Bake This Day) with the founders having roots in Eunice, LA now operating out of Gresham, OR.

Betterine is a vegan, dairy-free butter substitute that does not have all the nasty chemicals of margarine. Mostly coconut oil. I tried it out to make some French toast (realizing that I was defeating the vegan spirit in doing so), but as a butter-ish substitute for cooking, worked great! Will try next in baking…

A note that hyperlinked products featured have been gifted. Opinions all mine.

Quinoa Cakes with Red Curry Veggie Sauce for Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras time in New Orleans! We are headed toward Deep Gras when everything is closed for business except Food, Music and Parades. Our city is now descended upon by revelers from far and wide, burgeoning fuller by the minute. Costumes are the new dress code. As the human equivalent of a hairless cat thanks to cancer, this year I’m wearing wigs with a whole new gratitude.

All of the food must be delicious. This is a great dinner, easy to pack up and bring to a parade potluck!

Quinoa Cakes with Red Curry Veggie Sauce

Note, this is a terrific recipe to use up leftover refrigerator bits of vegetables. You can add tofu to the sauce, a nice protein boost. Be sure to drain the tofu well, so it doesn’t water down your lovely coconut curry. It’s fine to use regular garlic if you can’t find the fermented variety.

Quinoa cakes

1 cup of red quinoa (cook in 2 cups of H20, bring to boil, simmer covered for 15 minutes, cool.)

1 one cup bread crumbs

1/8 cup whole wheat flour

1 clove fermented garlic, squished

2 eggs

Sauce:

1 shallot

3 cloves fermented garlic

1/4 cup fish sauce

2 14 oz cans coconut cream

1 cubed zucchini

1 portobello mushroom, also cubed

(or any fresh veggies totaling 3 cups)

1 roasted red pepper, chopped

1/3 cup cilantro chopped

1/2 cup fresh spinach chopped

1 fresh lime

1-2 tablespoons of red curry paste (I’m sure you could use green curry if you like that better!)

Quinoa Cakes:

Bring two cups of H20 to a boil and add 1 cup of red or white quinoa. Simmer for 15 minutes, drain and cool with the lid on, then cool.

Add 1cup bread crumbs, ⅛ cup flour and 1 clove fermented garlic, chopped.

Stir in 2 whole eggs.

Sauce:

Saute 1 or 2 sliced shallots, add 3 cloves fermented garlic, chopped.

Add 1/4 cup fish sauce, two 14-ounce cans coconut cream, and 3 cups of assorted chopped veggies. (This could be zucchini, mushrooms, red pepper, cauliflower, carrots or whatever else is handy and fresh.)

Allow this to open simmer until the veggies are barely tender crisp and add 1 cup of chopped spinach, ½ cup chopped cilantro and 1-2 tablespoons of red or green curry paste, depending on how spicy you like it.

Leave to simmer and begin grilling the quinoa cakes in another sauté pan, in EVOO. I cooked these in 2 inch patties, a heaping tablespoon of of the quinoa mixture, that I scooped and flattened into the skillet. Saute golden brown, about 3 minutes on each side. As each cake finishes, put them on a parchment paper covered plate to drain.

Always taste to finish your dish! In this dish, I often add a teaspoon of rice vinegar for acidity or a bit of honey for sweetness. Remember, we are always balancing the final flavor, by thinking of the five culinary tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami. There is no shortcut to skill in this area of cooking, just be brave and adjust the final taste of your dishes.

The final finish for this dish always includes an extra sprinkle of cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice.

It is a lovely standalone main dish, so delicious, or can be a side dish to grilled chicken or fish.

Bake This Day weekly picks:

These quinoa cakes pair amazingly well with Flying Embers Hard Kombucha. SO many delicious, innovative flavors.

Another festive Louisiana beverage to take to the parade is Swamp Pop! Praline Cream Soda is my favorite.

While you are marching on the routes, if you need a little support for your joints, check out Incrediwear braces.

All hyperlinked products have been gifted.

Thai Meatballs and Staycation at the Magnolia Hotel

Parade season is here and now and the streets are alive with costumes and floats, the sidewalks a scurry of ladders and lawn chairs and strewn beads, the restaurants full and hotels booked! So important to schedule rest into the wild pace of Mardi Gras for locals. I highly recommend staycationing as a way to reset and recharge this month.

Bake This Day was invited to the opening of the new Magnolia Hotel in New Orleans on Camp Street and we got to enjoy an evening’s stay along with dinner and drinks at the Laurel Oak, the partner restaurant co-located in the Magnolia Hotel lobby.

We loved the boutique vibe of the hotel, with particular attention local detail. Each room has art featured by a local New Orleans artist (with plaques in each room curated to tell the story of each piece).

Mardi Gras Indian piece decorates the lobby.

Laurel Oak restaurant is amazing. Chef Wes Rabalais’s Houma-style gumbo and the fried chicken sandwich are my favorites on the menu, but the burger is also divine.

The gumbo comes topped with potato salad. As it should be.

I had been mostly a vegetarian eater until cancer treatment when I found that I needed higher caloric density and iron to keep weight on and my bone marrow resilient—for this time being, meat dishes checked all the new boxes. This recipe for Thai meatballs is particularly savory—prepared by Andie during her latest visit to New Orleans.

Asian Meatballs with Chili-Lime Sauce

Adapted from Food and Wine

This recipe is a classic example of balanced flavors! So much umami taste from the meat, soy and fish sauce. The lime juice, zest and salty peanuts are the perfect acidic and salty counter to keep your taste buds interested in the next bite, well, the whole plate!

For the meatballs:

2 large eggs

3 tablespoons fish sauce

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

3 scallions, finely chopped (about 1/4 cup), plus a few more for serving

2 teaspoons lime zest, from 2 limes

3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves, plus more for serving

1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint, plus more for serving

1 lb. lean ground beef (try Applegate organic blend!)

½ lb. uncured bacon, chopped to ½ inch dice

1 cup panko

For the sauce:

2 tablespoons Asian chili sauce, I used Sambal Oelek

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons fish sauce

1/4 cup lime juice, from 2 to 3 limes

1 tablespoon peanut butter, smooth or crunchy

For serving:

½ cup salted peanuts, halved or chopped

Additional chopped scallions and cilantro

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

For the meatballs, mix these ingredients together in a bowl. Form into ping-pong ball sized meatballs and place on a rimmed baking sheet, sprayed with non -stick oil. Bake for 15 minutes, take out and turn over, using a spatula. Bake 15 additional minutes.

For the sauce, so easy, just whisk together and then whisk again five minutes later to make sure all the sugar is dissolved.

To serve:

Assemble the meatballs on a plate, drizzle on the Chili-Lime sauce and sprinkle with chopped scallions and cilantro. Top with halved peanuts. This can also be served over rice, on Kimchi Noodles or as an appetizer.

For a healthier meatball or burger, please try Applegate Organic Blend burgers. These are a blend of mushroom and meat (but you really cannot tell by taste that they are vegg-efied!). Perfect for a BBQ next to the parade route…

Note that hyperlinks are sponsored.

Chicken Soup in the Spirit of Tiyospaye

I could not think of a more perfect antithesis to the DIY ethos which dominates the blogosphere than the cancer experience. Cancer treatment is a season of not being able to do much of anything yourself. Really tough for the stubbornly independent. Therewith, giant, hard-to-swallow doses of humility have become the mainstay of my treatment regimen here in the last month of the last cycle of chemotherapy. The help I have received is immeasurable—it is the work and ethos of tiyospaye. Ella Cara Deloria, the late Lakota ethnographer, wrote an incredible novel Waterlily in which she describes the life and culture of Dakota native American peoples before their invasion and destruction. Deloria writes of camp circles in which groups of families placed their tipis all together “where they could be in easy reach for cooperative living.”

“In their closeness lay such strength and social importance as no single family, however able, could or wished to achieve entirely by its own efforts…Almost from the beginning [of life] everyone could declare, ‘I am not afraid; I have relatives.’”

I am so grateful to have been surrounded and held for months by a tiyospaye that includes not only my nuclear family and my husband, but neighbors from Midcity, friends from Swamp Solstice, Redbeans krewe, Mondo Kayo, my book club, colleagues from Tulane medicine and psychiatry.

I had a small parade on the first day of my last cycle. Superhero littles really did the heavy lifting for the group.

Here in last week of chemo, Mom has come to make me her excellent and healing soups.

You know, when in New Orleans, might as well take a quick trip to the Fairgrounds to see some zebras race.

Chicken Soup from my Momma

Ingredients:

2.5 lbs bone in chicken thighs (bones=excellent fond)

2 cups chopped sweet onion

1 cup chopped celery

1-2 cups chopped carrots

6-8 cups of homemade stock, mine is usually with mirepoix

Either cooked noodles or equal amounts chopped potatoes, or cooked rice

Garlic, your preference.

2 Tbsp. Fish sauce or 1 Tbsp. Anchovy paste

1-2 teaspoons honey

Small amount all-purpose flour

Salt and pepper to taste

(You can always add almost ANY veggies, zucchini, yellow squash, other peppers, or chopped chard, etc.)

1. Lay veggies and chicken out on two full-sized sheet pans (18″ x 26″ is great) and salt, stand for 30 minutes. (This leaches excess water from the veggies and intensifies their fond during the bake)

This part is essential for the best flavor. Mom says “Fond is Flavor” and “even vegetables have fond” so you have to do this– it is the “fond step”

Then roast at 400 degrees, about 25 minutes for the veggies and 40 minutes for the chicken. Cool for a few minutes.

2. Remove the chicken to rest and deglaze the pan with 1/3 cup dry white wine. When the thighs are cool, chop the meat into bite size pieces.

3. In your large soup pot make a roux in this proportion: 1 TB butter for each cup of stock. Melt the butter over low heat and add in the flour cooking until thick.

4. Now whisk in your stock and bring to a vigorous simmer and add your spices, your choice:

Here are three options I use, depending on the following state of affairs:

“I have the wretched plague and ache all over.”

Add: 1-2 tsps of turmeric and 2 Tbsps of grated fresh ginger

1/2 cup chopped Cilantro

1 teas. Fresh rosemary

4-6 cloves chopped garlic

Use rice as the starch

“I feel great, it’s fall; the leaves are turning and I smell Thanksgiving”.

Add: 1 Tbsp fresh thyme,1 Tbsp. Sage and 1 teas. Fresh rosemary

1/2 cup chopped parsley

4-6 cloves chopped garlic

2 Tbsp. Whipping cream before serving.

“It’s Cinco De Mayo and I got a sinus infection to celebrate.”

Add: 2 Teaspoons Cumin

2 teaspoons red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 cup corn kernels (no pasta or potatoes in this one)

1/2 jalapeño pepper, no seeds, chopped

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1 cup chopped tomato, squeeze out the juice

Top with chopped avocados and cultured sour cream, squeeze of lime

5. Simmer for 30 minutes, covered.

6. Then add your chicken, vegetables, (Of course, at this point, a night in the fridge is best for the spices to marry) and cook your pasta, potatoes or rice.

7. Drain and add the pasta serving directly to the serving bowls, not the soup pot. This way the pasta doesn’t bloat up after a few days in the fridge, “like a sad sailor lost at sea,” –here I ask Mom if she means to liken days old pasta noodles to a dead sailor, and she says, Yes.

And with that happy imagery from Mom, Enjoy!

Also in the spirit of detox, birthday cards and get well cards and Mardi Gras decorations.

I am getting into the mindspace of resetting. “Detoxing” is such an overused foodie trend word, but in my case I use it literally. I have chemotherapy poisons hiding in all my tissues and probably will for months/years to come—so there is actual detox work to be done. Of course eating whole, clean foods is the best medicine for your body you can provide by way of eating. The time it takes to do this is not insignificant. Detoxelicious by Dena Dodd Perry I’ve covered before, but I want to highlight here a smoothie I truly have enjoyed and which is so simple and kind to do for yourself:

Tango Mango Smoothie

1-2 servings

1 cup chopped frozen mango

½ cup coconut milk

½ cup pineapple

½ avocado, peeled and scooped

Place all ingredients in blender. Add filtered water until liquid level is slightly above frozen solid level measurement in the blender. Blend all ingredients for about 1 minute until smooth. Pour into glass and enjoy!

Bake This Day weekly picks:

Here are a few other products we have recently reviewed and enjoy in the spirit of ongoing detox!

Purifyou Water Bottle. Glass instead of plastic for your eco-friendly daily hydration. I like the rubber casing especially.

Pure Synergy turmeric has been among the supplements I’m using to fight inflammation, but they have so many more—kale, astaxanthin, beet powder. Mom thinks the kale tastes grassy, but she has had four glasses on her visit because of how strongly she believes in the powers of kale.

Goli apple cider vinegar gummies are soothing on the dyspeptic belly. I have enjoyed several of these in the throes of chemo-induced burpiness. I could never really get behind the “take a tsp of apple cider vinegar” thing so this gummy form is a lovely alternative. They also have a nice folic acid and B12 bonus.

Vitafusion makes these lovely gummies, and here is my public service announcement that any woman who is or who may be pregnant should be taking a prenatal vitamin. When in doubt, supplement iodine and folate.

All hyperlinked products have been gifted.

Looking ahead to the bright days of Mardi Gras and a birthday celebration (one week deferred) this weekend. But so happy to have the infusion days in the rear view mirror. Much love to the Tulane infusion center nurses who made my last day feel like a small parade.

King and Queen Cakes with Penance Pizza

I cannot imagine a better kick off to the Mardi Gras season than the confetti snowfall finale of the LSU victory in the National Championship Game Monday night.

In exchange for access to the field pre-game, we volunteered for a bizarre job in the press box—like a scene from the Office, in a post-paper world, KP and I handed out paper copies of stats to grey-haired sports journalists at the end of each quarter; the elders sat silent and shoulder to shoulder with millennial journalists busy whipping up Joe Barrow-Joe Pesci Home Alone memes and Googling the stats. Memorable evening. Don’t you think I fit in the line up of commentators? Let’s hear from our local cancer patient who has a lot of opinions about the inappropriate financial excess of the sports industry, chauvinism, TBI and, well, food.

The sports industry remains so male dominated. Are these not testicular topiaries? Also, the Superdome pressbox level has three bathrooms for men with multiple stalls and only one toilet marked for women. Hoping Gayle Benson has new plans for this in the remodeling!

The personal-sized Randazzo king cakes were a nice touch. I took home six.

With them, I decided to do random acts of kingcakeness around the neighborhood in loving memory of our neighbor Susan Finch who is passing from this world this week. I already miss her waving from the corner with her sweet dog Nola in tug. Somehow giving away seems an appropriate response to death—passing along something beloved, a reminder that nothing can be kept.

LSU cookware gifted by College Kitchen Collection

And then I cooked comfort waffles, adding 1/2 cup of hazelnut flour to my usual recipe. Eating always an affirmation of life.

I love cake season. The official Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club King and Queen cakes made by Chef Milan at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans are incredible. The salted caramel queen cake is my favorite.

The proceeds from the sales of the cakes fund scholarships for local New Orleans high school students to attend local universities. Pay your bacchanal calories forward this year and order your cake here.

These cakes would pair so nicely with Difference Coffee Espressos. We loved the Panama Geisha and Jamaican Blue Mountain luxury café experience at home.

And after all the king cake eating, as my mother does after the holidays, it’s time for some penance dinners. Try this recipe from our Portland headquarters.

Penance Pizza on Cauliflower Crust, nearly zero carb for the keto fans

Inspired by The Dirty Lazy Keto Cookbook

Perfected by Andie Ellis

1 medium head cauliflower, cut into florets

1 cup grated Parmesan

1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

2 large eggs

In your food processor, turn the cauliflower into “crumbs”. Put in a microwave safe bowl and heat for 5-6 minutes, partially cooked. Then spread out on a kitchen towel and cool. (20 minutes) When cool, wring out the cauliflower to remove water, then repeat in a dry towel. Put back in bowl and add remaining ingredients.

Form a 10-12 inch crust with oiled hands on a piece of parchment paper. Preheat your oven pizza stone to 425 degrees.

Now bake the crust for 10-12 minutes until very light brown.

Cool for five minutes and add:

Sauce; spread on the crust with a spatula. I used pesto, but red sauce would be fine. Cheese; your choice, I used Asiago cheese about a cup. Meat; I used 3 ounces of prosciutto and a bit of diced salami I had in the fridge. Olives; any kind, I used sliced black olives, about 1/2 cup. Red pepper, to taste. A few sliced cherry tomatoes.

Give this a final grated dusting of parmesan and back into the oven for 10 minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbly. Let it sit for five minutes before slicing. Soooo good.

Hyperlinked products are gifted or sponsored.

Blank Pages and Bonsai and a Year of Less with More Curry

All things need pruning. Today it was the bonsai juniper, and in the quiet snipping meanwhile, sap-full fragrant bits of myself tumbled into the pile of bright green castaway clippings. The new year will be new whether or not we make it new, and after the tunnel passage experience that was the last week of my fifth cycle of godawful poisoning in the name of therapy, when the sun hit my face at long last, the brightness found less to light up. Less hair, less plump around my cheekbones, less curious certainty.

What cancer takes away has no shape. Still, I collected all the shorn scraps of juniper from around the exposed roots of my funny twisted trunk and put them in a glass; now and then, I raise the glass and take a swig of the scent of loss.

For some reason, having a candle guttering next to my notebook is my natural remedy to writers block.

It is time to write again, I think. Ghost Paper makes these journals perfect for sketching and writing with embossed lines, faint enough to follow and faint enough to ignore. The new year is always the best blank page.

After chemo, I remain ravenous for curry and spice. Last week, I ate this delicious meal from neighbors every day. I imagine my insides bright with turmeric—sun for another sad tunnel.

Indian Curry from Mary Kelly and Bert

1 large onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 slice fresh ginger root

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

½ teaspoon ground cardamom

1 (1 inch) piece cinnamon stick

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

2 bay leaves

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

6 skinless chicken thighs

1 (14.5 ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, crushed

Place onion, garlic and ginger in a food processor and process into a paste. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat, add onion paste and saute, stirring continuously, for about 10 minutes.

Stir in the cumin, turmeric, salt, pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves and nutmeg. Saute, stirring, for 1 to 2 minutes. Place chicken pieces in skillet and stir them around with the spice mixture until they are well coated.

Saute for another 4 minutes, then pour in the tomatoes with liquid and stir. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 to 2 hours, or until the oil has separated from the liquid. Stir occasionally. Mary Kelly says this is very crock-potable, and I imagine, insta-potable as well. I Love My Instapot by Aileen Clark has 175 options for making dinner under twelve bucks!

For the little ones interested in curry, check out this fabulous subscription service Lil’ Gourmets –the sweet potato curry was my absolute favorite!

(yes! This baby food is worth snacking on for adults, ha). But our little Midcity taste test queen Clark loved them too. When you buy their food, they donate meals in Chicago.

Also the homeopathic cold and flu season products from Hylands are great alternatives to put up a gentle fight for all the viruses floating through the winter air.

Your garden called. It said, Remember me.

All hyperlinked products have been sponsored.

Ginger Eggplant Tofu Curry with Roti for a Hard Candy Christmas

I’ve been on a surprising Dolly Parton kick lately. Whilst getting my teeth cleaned today, and just after learning that my saliva production is now “not normal” (cancer, what else will you take away from me!?) I almost started crying when from the dentist office radio I made out the lyrics of Hard Candy Christmas for the first time. Damn, Dolly’s good. “Me, I’ll bounce right back!.”

“I’ll be fine and dandy/ Lord it’s like a hard candy Christmas/ I’m barely getting through tomorrow/ But still I won’t let/ Sorrow get me way down.”

If there is to be more chemo, this song is getting added to the playlist. KP and I have been trying hard to not let sorrow get us down. The Roosevelt hotel (wearing the closest to Marvelous Ms. Maisel I could muster from vintage thrift shopping and gold toed shoes matching KP) and the Swamp Solstice bike ride this last weekend were helpful in that regard. Buoy on.

Monday Night Football Saints home game was the Perfect time to go downtown (while everyone else was in the Dome)

Swamp Solstice Winter Ride 2019– our biggest turn out yet!

Swamp Solstice theme was Ray Charles: Night Time (and bike time) is the Right Time.

And still the kindness of colleagues and strangers—this meal was brought to me week before last, and I’m still salivating with the glands and tastebuds still intact when I remember how delicious this was. Thank you, Deb!

Ginger Eggplant Tofu Curry with Roti

Recipe from Deb Levy (handwritten to me, and transcribed)

1-2 tablespoons high heat oil, like coconut

75 g Maeploy red curry paste “country style”

2 cans coconut milk (DON’T SHAKE THE CAN LIKE IT SAYS)

1 block firm tofu

Handful of broccoli florets

½ small eggplants, diced into ½ inch-1 inch size pieces

1 kefir lime leaf (torn but kept in one piece) and zest of one kefir lime

Cilantro for garnish

1 TB sugar

1-2 TB fish sauce (to taste. Deb first wrote optional but then crossed it out and wrote “per Michael, 100% NOT optional,” haha- Go Michael, apparent king of savory)

Thumb-size piece of ginger

1 cup stock or water

Cut tofu into desired size pieces, and pan fry in oil. Set aside. In pot, heat 2 TB coconut cream off the top of the coconut milk can, unshaken. Once oil separates, add curry paste and fry until fragrant. Add broccoli and eggplant to coat in curry paste. Bring to a simmer, but keep the veggies in the good stuff. Add ginger, kefir lime leaf and zest, sugar, fish sauce, and stock. Simmer about ten minutes. Add tofu now. Remove ginger and lime leaf. Add salt and fish sauce to taste.

Serve with steamed jasmine rice and roti flatbread. Garnish with cilantro.

What is roti flatbread? A revelation to me! This is the first time I had had roti, but Deb made it with 1/3 spelt flour to healthy it up a bit.

She adapted her recipe for roti from Vatch’s Thai Street Food by Vatcharin Bhumichitr.

This is seriously one of the best dinners I’ve had in months. Thank you Deb! In other vegan news, I’ve been perusing the mouthwatering pages of Catherine Gill’s latest vegan cookbook The Complete Hummus Cookbook which has over a hundred variations on a hummus theme. Can’t wait to test!

If you are looking for stocking stuffers, I think A Little Bit of Mindfulness by Amy Leigh Mercree is a nice nudge toward health. This is a large pocket-sized precise on why and how of a mindfulness practice. It’s hard to put yoga in a stocking, but I would still try.

Or maybe a neti pot? These from Nasopure are a nice size and come with little packets of salt to make hypertonic saline to squirt into your dusty sinuses. And they are stocking size.

I still don’t know quite myself why I’ve kept my Phantom of the Opera decor in my bathroom. Maybe every day I’m imagining myself the tragic ingenue in an opera while I get the stage make up on and hum a few bars?

Definitely put Garner’s Garden products in stockings—these are all lovely: body balms, oils, face washes, natural deodorants and mouth washes, all great and you can feel about these ingredients going into your drain and eventually into the ocean—less toxic! All hyperlinked products have been gifted.

Oatsome Buckwheat Pancakes and Spiced Water Melon Punch with Love to Keep Me Warm

“How wonderful to be understood/ to just sit here while some kind person/ relieves you of the awful burden/ of having to explain yourself, of having/ to find other words to say what you meant…and you have only to sit here and be grateful/ for words so quiet so discerning they seem/ not words but literate light, in which/ your merely lucid blossoming grows lustrous. How wonderful that is!”

Thank you, Irving Feldman, for your literate light on a Sunday evening. I’ve got my love to keep me lustrous and blossoming this winter. His name is Karl-Peter.

Windsor Court in New Orleans for Tulane Psychiatry holiday party. Luminous literate light.

KP and I love to make buckwheat pancakes on weekend mornings, and so we did! This is a re-experiment with an old favorite recipe of mine, but with oat milk (instead of almond milk). Still delicious!

Oatmilk Buckwheat Pancakes

Adapted from a man named Miller in Wisconsin, served at People’s Food Co-op in Rochester, MN, sleuthed and gifted by Ed Hayes Sr (aka, bread guru)

1 cup buckwheat flour

¾ cup brown rice flour

¼ cup light brown sugar

1 T cinnamon

½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

¾ tsp baking soda

2 cups Oatsome oatmilk

1 T Wild Groves olive oil

1 T apple cider vinegar

Bob’s Red Mill is just the best. And Oatsome is too! First time trying!

Whisk dry and whisk again the wet ingredients in a large bowl. It is important to whisk to avoid any lumps. This is a direct quote from the break baking guru, “Do this or feel the wraith!” Heat up Kaila non-GMO organic canola oil, or some other very heat-tolerant oil on a skillet on medium heat. Expect that you will ruin the first two pancakes trying to find the right temperature, we all do.

Serve with real maple syrup, and watch out because the pancake will absorb liquid so quickly and completely that if you get distracted, you won’t be able to tell if you have already put the syrup on or not, so pay attention! Or get a double dose of maple. Dairy-free, gluten-free homemade pancakes, what? YES.

And now for the latest fun products and books to arrive at Bake This Day’s test kitchen:

Detoxelicious by Dena Dodd Perry. Soul food vegetarian and vegan recipes from a wellness diva? I think you can handle it. Perry incorporates yoga poses into her ten day course prescribed for fitness and this book is a great gift for someone who may need a structured nudge toward their New Years Resolution, don’t we all?!

The Lemon Cayenne flavor was my favorite.

Wonder Melon. Delicious solo or when mixed into cocktail/mocktail. Here is a recipe to try-

Spiced Wonder Melon Vodka Punch

Ingredients:

½ cup vodka (or trade out with selzer water with a dash apple cider vinegar to mocktail it)

1 lime, juiced

2 cups Wonder Melon, Lemon-Cayenne flavor

1 cup lemon sparkling water

4 cinnamon sticks

Lime and lemon slices

Instructions:

Combine the vodka, lime juice, and Wonder Melon in a pitcher.

Divide between 4 glasses and top each glass with 2 ounces of sparkling water

Garnish with a cinnamon stick, lemon, and lime slices.

Finally, I am SO into pre-biotics/pro-biotics right now. In the cancer saga, I am currently neutropenic and needing antibiotics to keep me from getting hospitalized and super sick. But we all know antibiotics, while life-saving at times, can wreak havoc on our GI tracts, killing off much of our precious microbiome, which we know to be integral to mood, sleep, and belly symptoms. SO. I have been taking probiotics daily. I have tried a bunch of different brands and haven’t noticed much difference between them. Recently Klaire Labs had been my brand of choice, but I received a sample gift from Happy V who make pre and probiotics and immune supplements for Ladies.

Somehow they have made pill bottles which appear to be friends, smiling and holding hands?

The Immune Boost is a Vitamin C with cranberry concentrate for those sad UTI times. And the Pre and Probiotic are similar to what I’d been using for my gut, but let us not forget about our vaginas and the flora also needed down there!

This is just my own experience, so be sure to consult your own doctor before fiddling around with over the counters (obviously), but I’ll share what’s working over here for me. Also note the hyperlinked products have been gifted.

Happy holidaying y’all. Light it all up this year. Inside and out.

Guess what I wished for on the Windsor Wishing Tree? Grit and Grace. And swift cancer remission

Garlic Rosemary Spelt Focaccia Knots and Thanksgivings during Chemo Week

“Wounding and healing are not opposites. They’re part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to find other people or to even know they’re alone with an illness,” reads the cancer patient (me) in Rachel Naomi Remen’s lovely Kitchen Table Wisdom on the eve of yet another chemo infusion.

“Hope Never Fails” Michael Buble meets Lady Gaga Saints fan Janelle Monae? These are not costumes, just our actual clothing choices for a festive friendsgiving.

We gave such thanks over this weekend. Midcity Friendsgiving at the Wilkinson’s was a smash. I baked for the first time in months (has it really been that long?) and I made rosemary garlic knots from a mash up of a Tartine Baguette recipe hybridized with focaccia, with spelt and wheat bran flakes just to healthy it up a bit. Do tell? But of course.

Lucy and I upcycled her wedding centerpiece glassware into Midcity vase party favors! We are willing to teach classes on techniques in glue and glitter for those who identify as non-New Orleanian.

Garlic Rosemary Spelt Focaccia Knots

First, make a poolishof 200 g water, 200 g flour, and a dollop (~100 g) of sourdough starter, cover and let it rise overnight, or at least four hours.

Then, make a baguette dough

Sourdough starter 400 g

Water 500 g

Poolish 400 g

Spelt flour 250 g

Wheat bran 100 g

All purpose flour 650 g

Salt 24 g (always make in a slurry of about ¼ cup water)

Wild Groves Olio Nuovo olive oil– you’ll need almost a whole bottle

10 large sprigs of rosemary, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

Follow the classic Tartine steps for bulk fermentation for the next 3-4 hours, adding the salt in the last hour in a slurry. For this batch, I put the dough in the fridge to slow rise overnight because [exhaustion from chemo] of timing for the Thanksgiving meal. I took it out with about 10 hours to go before the meal, let it come to room temp for two hours.

Then I dusted my surface with flour, chopped the rosemary fine, the garlic too. I put the garlic into a small bowl with olive oil.

This is my favorite cooking smock. Full body apron, circa 1960s.

And I just can’t get over how much I love this olive oil.

Then I cut off small pieces of the dough, approximately 100-120 g each, and rolled each into a snake, slathered with the garlicky olive oil, then rolled in rosemary and tied in a knot, like so. I dusted with kosher salt and sesame seeds and covered.

Hi Janelle. I am smiling every time I see this rock you sent me. Holds parchment great.

I let rise for another 2 hours, then baked at 450 for 10-12 minutes until bottoms browned. They did not rise much, I think because I really overdid it with the olive oil so as to turn them basically into focaccia—but OH the FLAVOR. WOW.

I’m sure this is why the Saints won. Golden good voodoo from the Bake This Day kitchen.

I read up on various techniques in this Fabulous artisan bread baking book—stay tuned, when I really get back into my bread baking full time it will be recipe after recipe from Living Bread by Daniel Leader. I love sprouted grains bread, and currently in my neutropenic state I am avoiding sprouts, but very soon I’m hoping to have my white blood cells back on my side and my fridge full of sprouting grain tendrils.

See Queen and Slim, the movie. Here’s my ride or die.

This next week I am anticipating pain, thanks to neupogen, but given my go-around once before, I know a few more tricks. This is just my own experience, be sure to consult your own doctor before fiddling around with over the counters (obviously), but I’ll share what’s working over here for me. Also note the hyperlinked products have been gifted.

Quanta CBD muscle rub, along with a hodge podge of Doterra oils and Deep Blue Rub as often as I can convince my husband or kind neighbors to lather up my aching back. CBD bath bombs are also a godsend when it comes to neupogen bone pain (but be sure to take an antihistamine like Claritin for best effect!)

Lidocaine patches are helpful too, I used a few of these from Salonpas.

For the skin dryness plaguing those who are unlucky to have chemo treatments coincide with the winter season, body butters from Garner’s Garden, along with their super duper natural skincare products are wonderful. I switched to all natural deodorant after my cancer diagnosis (too late) but I find these essential oil-based, magnesium and arrowroot/baking powdery deodorants to be lovely. I just have to keep one in my purse because I need to reapply like three times a day (due to New Orleans humidity and also my hypermetabolic state). Their mouthwash and charcoal toothpaste is nice for the mucositis and alcohol-free (less sting!)

And then for funzies and laughs, I love the silly products from Teddy the Dog—a dogs rule corner of the cybersphere. I’m probably going to wear these This Totally Socks tomorrow to chemo. Kermit approves.