Green Kitchen: The Cheap Healthy Guide to Canned Tuna for the Planet and Your Mouth (or Something)

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Eating delicious meat cheaply and environmentally is not easy. Grass-fed beef often starts at $7 or $8 a pound in New York City, and shows up twice or three times that at the farmers market. Fresh and frozen fish see the same price points, as do pork and lamb.Chicken is cheaper but chicken gets boring.

Which brings us to my recent love affair with canned tuna.

It is full of protein, super-cheap, easy to prepare, and does not send my fish-allergic boyfriend into fits with its cooking fumes. But while my local Whole Foods handily grades its butchered meat and fresh fish, cans of tuna are harder to suss out.

Well, harder to suss out unless you’re at a computer. The Environmental Defense Fund has a handy ranking of seafood choices based on eco-friendliness, and canned tuna is included. (The fish’s page also includes health concerns for adults and children, related to tuna’s mercury content.)

Canned tuna tends to come in two varieties – Albacore, or white, and “light,” which can be one (or several) of several tuna varieties. When it comes to what’s good for the planet, US or Canadian Albacore is tops, with general canned white and canned light both scoring the “eco-ok” middle rating.

In terms of mercury content, Albacore’s is higher, and so should be consumed less frequently, especially by kids. (The EDF recommends children under 6 eat it no more than once a month, and sets the limit for kids 6-12 at twice a month. Adults can handle it more often more safely.) Canned light (as long as the label doesn’t include Yellowfin tuna, which has about the same mercury as Albacore) is okay for younger kids about three times a month, and once a week or so for older children.

(The EDF page on mercury in canned tuna recommends canned salmon as a healthier option – "not only because the fish are low in contaminants and high in heart-healthy omega-3s, but also because they are sustainably caught” – but I haven’t fallen in love with that taste yet.)

I was relieved to learn – admitted months after getting back into the tuna habit – that this convenient can really isn’t such a bad option. (I’m not feeding any babies nor planning on gestating one any time soon.)

There is, of course, also the issue of taste.

I’d been buying store-brand canned tuna from Whole Foods, mostly out of a mostly-blind-faith sense that their fish would be more sustainability-minded than the StarKist or whatever I could get at my local supermarket, and for $1.39 a can (versus 99 cents or so), it wasn’t too bad a price. (According to Whole Foods’ website, both of their tuna varieties are caught responsibly, and are relatively low in mercury.)

But then I started worrying that I was a snob. And chunk light tuna was on sale for 75 cents a can at the supermarket. I bought two.

I kinda wish I’d saved that second seventy-five cents.

Whereas my fancy-pants Whole Foods tuna shows its extra 64 cents in nice chunks of recognizable fish flesh and easily drained water, the cheapo can started to splurt out fish puree as soon as I tried to drain it mid-can-opening. Inside that (five-ounce, rather than WF’s six) can I found fishy mush. It tasted okay, though the texture was alarming, and why does a can of tuna need vegetable broth in the ingredients? I will be sticking to my ever-so-slightly pricier chunk tuna from now on, thank you. And enjoying it (not too many times in a week) guilt-free.

Although I’m a big fan of standard tuna salad (with, sorry Kris, mayo, and plenty of diced celery), I’m always looking for ways to do it different, and with more vegetables. This recipe from TheKitchn scores on both counts – shredded raw cabbage adds a great crispness, and fresh herbs makes everything springy. I changed the original up a bit, first of all using one can of tuna for one big, healthy, satisfying serving, and second choosing dill over chives. (It was what I had on hand, it is delicious, and it goes well with the yogurt that subs in for some mayo. Kris, you’re welcome.)

I’ll probably slow down my tuna habit a bit now for mercury concerns, but when I do go for it, this is a super-easy and healthy way to appreciate – and eat – that beloved chicken of the sea. Especially when I’m a little sick of land-chicken.

~~~

If this looks good, you'll love:

• Herbed Tuna in Tomatoes
• Tuna and White Bean Wraps
• White Bean and Roasted Red Pepper Wraps with Spinach

~~~

Crisp Cabbage and Tuna Salad
Serves 1
Adapted from TheKitchn.

1 5- or 6-can of tuna, drained (calculations reflect Whole Foods Tongol tuna)
1/4 a medium head of cabbage, cored chopped finely (about two cups)
1 ½ T mayonnaise (you could use reduced-fat to save calories, but don’t lie, it tastes awful)
2 T Greek yogurt (I used 2% fat)
1/3-1/4 c chopped dill
salt and ground pepper to taste (this works well with a lot of pepper)

1) Combine everything in a bowl.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Price Per Serving
335 calories, 17.1g fat, 4.5g fiber, 32.9g protein, $2.04

Calculations
1 6-ounce can of tuna: 120 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 28g protein, $1.39
1/4 medium cabbage: 44 calories, 0g fat, 4.4g fiber, 2.3g protein, $0.25
1 1/2 T mayonnaise: 150 calories, 16.5g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.10
2 T 2% fat Greek yogurt: 19 calories, 0.6g fat, 0g fiber, 2.5g protein, $0.20
1/4 c dill: 2 calories, 0g fat, 0.1g fiber, 0.1g protein, $0.08
Salt and pepper: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.02
TOTAL: 335 calories, 17.1g fat, 4.5g fiber, 32.9g protein, $2.04
PER SERVING: 335 calories, 17.1g fat, 4.5g fiber, 32.9g protein, $2.04

Green Kitchen: Use-Up-Your-Herbs Cilantro Pesto

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Give me your tired, your poor, your wilted herbage straining for the trash can, the rotting refuse of your crisper drawer. Send these, the yellowing, long-forgotten to me, I will make them into awesome pesto!

That’s what your food processor is saying right now, if it were also the statue of liberty.

Talk about eating and cooking in environmentally friendly ways often comes back to the same ideas – eat local, eat unprocessed, eat happy meat. These are awesome ideas – they connect your kitchen to lovely, independent farms, shortening the distance from the soil to your fridge – but they are also sometimes difficult ideas.

Not everyone has access to greenmarkets. Not everyone has the education or skills to choose or prepare unprocessed foods. Not everyone can afford local, free-range, grass-fed, ethically raised meat. It’s sadly easy to sigh in resignation when we can’t manage those good choices and lose sight of a good choice every single one of us can make.

Do not waste food.

You know what makes a box of Dunkaroos an even less worthwhile investment of raw materials, industrial production, and your dollars? Not eating them! Want to completely negate any power for good contained in that conventionally grown midwinter Peruvian tomato? Throw it out! Wasting food is the surest way to guarantee that its environmental impact is all for naught. It’s also a surefire way to waste your money, too.

Living in a largely Dominican neighborhood means a lot of nice things for me, culinarily, not the least of which is the prevalence of cheap cilantro in the supermarket. It is not local, it is not seasonal, but it is 99 cents a bunch, and tempting to pick up to throw on sautés and in omelets and such.

But let’s be honest – more times than not, that 99-cent bunch of delicious, delicious cilantro sits in my crisper drawer until it is yellow and wilted, and it ends up not in my mouth but in my compost.

This time, I resolved to do it differently. Not to remember to use any of the cilantro for its intended purpose, of course, but to salvage it once it had gone forsaken.

A while back I’d seen a recipe online for cilantro pesto that specifically addressed this forsaken cilantro issue. No surprise, my interest was piqued. What’s that, you say? Pesto can be made with nasty, wilted cilantro? And does not require billion-dollars-a-pound pine nuts? Please, go on!

And go on this recipe did! Cilantro + oil + nuts = pesto! My cilantro wasn’t so much wilted as yellowing (with, okay, a couple of rotten leaves), but I overcame my squeamishness, pulled out the gross stuff, and was left with about two cups worth of usable greenery. “Usable” not really as it was, but hopefully the alchemy of pestoization (yes, that’s a proper use of the Italian root word) would be enough.

And so, dear reader, it was.

~~~

If this looks good, you'll surely adore:

• 156 Cheap, Healthy Recipes for Ten Common Leftover Herbs
• Gingered Carrot Soup with Lime and Cilantro
• Pesto

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Cilantro Pesto
inspired by The Lazy Localvore.
makes about 6 one-tablespoon servings
(quantities are flexible for two reasons – one, so you can suit the recipe to your taste; two, because who knows how much of your languishing cilantro will be salvageable.)

2-3 cups cilantro leaves (& little stems)
1-2 T olive oil
1/8-1/4 cup slivered blanched almonds (or other nut)
1/8-1/4 t salt
dash of garlic powder

Put cilantro, almonds, salt, and garlic powder into bowl of food processor. Process, streaming in olive oil as you go. Pulse until it is a thick paste, with nuts chopped finely but not pulverized. Adjust seasonings to taste.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Price Per Serving
60 calories, 5.7g fat, 0.7g fiber, 1.1g protein, $0.22

Calculations
3 cups cilantro leaves: 18 calories, 0g fat, 1g fiber, 1g protein, $0.99
1.5 T olive oil: 189 calories, 21g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.12
1/4 c slivered blanched almonds: 155 calories, 13.3g fat, 3.3g fiber, 5.7g protein, $0.15
1/4 t salt: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
dash garlic powder: negligible calories, fat, fiber, and protein, $0.02
TOTAL: 362 calories, 34.3g fat, 4.3g fiber, 6.7g protein, $1.29
PER SERVING (TOTAL/6): 60 calories, 5.7g fat, 0.7g fiber, 1.1g protein, $0.22

Green Kitchen: The Cheap Healthy Good Guide to CSAs

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

One of my favorite things about shopping at a farmers market – if talking about this with snow in the forecast and sprouting onions lingering in the greenmarket bins – is the adventure of it. Yes, I sound bananas, but hear me out. I don't shop at the farmers market with an unlimited budget. So every week – in season, I mean, and can it please hurry up in coming – I buy what's cheap. That's often not one of the three vegetables I learned to cook growing up. So I buy things and learn how to cook them. And there are some crazy things at the farmers market. (Love you, three-foot-long green beans!)

From Erin.kkr

So I guess it makes sense that the main appeal of a CSA to me is the challenge. A box of mystery vegetables every week? Bring it on!

But there are plenty of other reasons to take your relationship with local vegetables to the next level, and maybe some reasons not to. But before we get to that...

What Is a CSA?

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. When you join a CSA, you purchase a “share” of a farm's output. You pay up front for the season, usually June to October or so, and then every week of the season you pick up a boxful of vegetables. Whatever's fresh and bountiful that week? That's what you take home.

CSAs are generally just vegetables, but some include fruit. Others allow you to add on a fruit, dairy, egg, or even honey share.

Why Join a CSA?

Lots of reasons!

Oh, you want to know what they are? I'll throw it over to Just Food, an awesome NYC organization that works to connect city residents to local farms.

Buy Local
Your support helps small local farms stay afloat.
Connect with the food you eat by meeting your farmers and exploring the farms.

Eat Well
Buy the freshest food for your family.
Explore new foods and learn to cook with them.
Find out that beet greens aren’t just good for you, they’re tasty too!

Be Healthy
Eat more fresh vegetables and fruit.
Share healthy eating habits with your kids. Expose them early to a variety of regional produce.

Protect the Environment
Support farmers who take care of their land by growing food in ways that take care of the soil.
Cut down on the number of miles your food travels from the farm to your plate.

Thanks, Just Food! But then, on the other hand...

Why Might a CSA Not Be Your Best Choice?

CSAs aren't for everyone. First of all, they include some financial risk. You don't pay per pound of produce, but rather invest in the farm at the beginning of the season. If the farm has an awesome summer, you get an overflowing crisper drawer. But if weather doesn't go right, or pests are a problem, you share the burden of the farm's meager year.

From Bill.Roehl

What if, one week, you come home with a CSA box with four bunches of kale and an onion. Can you work with that? CSAs are awesome for adventurous cooks. Maybe not so much for families with picky eaters? Spring brings piles and piles of lettuce; a week in fall may yield nothing but potatoes. You can supplement your haul with greenmarket (or supermarket) buys, but that can get pricey. If trying out new (or strange) vegetables won't be fun, or at least pleasant, you might want to stick to keeping your own shopping list.

Do you have friends or neighbors who might be willing to take excess veggies off your hands? Cause you might end up with a lot of kale.

How to Find a CSA

Okay, you've weighed the pros and cons, and you're up for a summer adventure. You want to get to know your farmer. You're ready to take on a small share of his or her financial risk. Now what?

Head over to Local Harvest and do a search by zip code or state. Read about the options in your area. Compare prices, pick-up times, requirements for helping at distribution or (and I will be jealous) on the farm. Some CSAs will even tell you what was in last year's shares. Past performance is no guarantee of future etc etc, but here's 2010 for my nearby Inwood CSA. (Blast them and their Thursday afternoon distribution!)

Readers, are any of you CSA members? Do you love teaming up with a farmer, or do you get overwhelmed with corn (or lack thereof)?

(If anyone joins a CSA this summer, just let me know if you have more kale than you can use.)

~~~

If you liked this article, you'll really dig:

• Ask the Internet: CSA Reviews, Ideas, and Experiences?
• Roommate Living: Your Food, Kitchen, and Sanity
• Why Eat Local?

Green Kitchen: Chopped Liver

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

As you may have read in this recent edition of Ask the Internet, I recently concluded thirteen years of vegetarianism. (The short version is that, back when I was fifteen, I tried going veg just to see if I could, and stuck with it largely out of stubbornness/determination. I later – like Queen Elizabeth & the Church of England – added some principles, but my belief that eating animals isn't wrong, but making them suffer is, is still compatible with conscientious meat eating. Also, I don't eat a lot of grains, so I was really, really bored.)

And lo, adding an entire food supergroup back into one’s options is fun! And tasty. It’s been a long time – I guess since I fell in love with farmers markets and cooking itself three or four years ago – since I’ve had such exciting culinary adventures. I roasted a whole chicken! I made stock from its carcass! I am developing an addiction to hamburgers! Etc.

I’m also reconnecting with a lot of foods from my (distant, almost-half-a-lifetime-ago) past. Rotisserie chicken is one of a very few meat-foods that never stopped making my vegetarian mouth water, and sure enough, it is amaaaaaaazing. I would take it over bacon any day.

This chopped liver comes out of both of those impulses – the adventures and the amazing foods from way back when. (Oh, and my new friendship with the small butcher’s shop half a block from my apartment.) Who am I to be afraid of some organs, I who have ventured into the unknown recesses of greenmarket farm stands, I who have taken home the ugly, strange, and cheap vegetables of every season? Also, dude, organs are CHEAP.

I bought my pound of chicken livers from Bob and Julio down the street from me – they sell organic chickens (among many other things, like homemade lasagna), and I guess not everyone wants every part of the bird? Which is bananas, because these things are tasty and super good for you – howsabout some vitamin A, a bunch of B vitamins, folic acid, iron, copper, and CoQ10, which helps your heart do its thing, along with plenty of protein?

And then there is the flashback factor. Specifically, flashbacks to my Grandma Martha’s studio apartment on Long Island, hanging out before a holiday dinner, tiny Jaime with her tiny cousins and sister in tiny party dresses, scooping rich chopped liver onto crackers or, given the season, little matzah squares. Were we too young and carefree to know that livers might be squicky? Or would we not even entertain that thought because the stuff was so darn good?

This recipe comes not from a Jewish Grandma but from my friend’s decidedly non-Jewish own mother, a lovelier and WASPier lady you never shall meet. But somewhere in the mists of history her great-greats and mine lived in adjacent cottages in a Polish village, and as far as I can tell across the gulf of, like, twenty years, this chopped liver recipe yields a product identical in taste to Grandma’s.

(That means it’s delicious.)

~~~

If this seems neato, you will also appreciate:

• Guacamole-Bean Dip Mashup
• Sweet Potato Kugel
• White Bean Dip

~~~

Chopped Liver
(makes 16 2-Tbsp servings)

1 lb chicken livers (thawed if they came frozen)
3 Tbs butter
½ onion, chopped (1/2 to ¾ cup)
A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp mayonnaise (sorry Kris!)
Juice of half a lemon (or to taste)

1. Melt the butter in a sauté man over medium-high heat. Add onions and a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce, and sauté until onions start to soften.

2. Add chicken livers and sauté until they are cooked through (no pink), about 10-15 minutes.

3. Pour/scrape all of that into a food processor. Add mayonnaise. Pulse until it’s the consistency you like – the worst that’ll happen if you overdo it is you’ll get a classy-as-heck mousse – adding a few squeezes of lemon juice to taste.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Price Per Serving
82.6 calories, 5.4g fat, 0.1g fiber, 7g protein, $0.23

Calculations
1 lb chicken livers: 758 calories, 29.5g fat, 0g fiber, 111g protein, $2.50
3 Tbs butter: 305 calories, 34.6g fat, 0g fiber, 0.4g protein, $0.48
½ onion: 48 calories, 0.1g fat, 2g fiber, 1.3g protein, $0.30
A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce: 3 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.05
2 Tbsp mayonnaise: 200 calories, 22g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.20
Juice of half a lemon: 8 calories, 0g fat, 0.1g fiber, 0.1g protein, $0.13
TOTAL: 1322 calories, 86.2g fat, 2.1g fiber, 112.8g protein, $3.66
PER SERVING (TOTAL/16): 82.6 calories, 5.4g fat, 0.1g fiber, 7g protein, $0.23

Green Kitchen: Five Delicious Ways To Eat Broccoli Stalks

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Okay, so, for how long am I allowed to open my column with some reference to my continuing, undiminished excitement to have a working oven? Because I'm still grateful and a little surprised every time I hear that tick-tick-tick-whoosh of the flame igniting, and I may never lose my renewed appreciation for oven cooking. Mainly the part where I put something in the oven and, as I never could with a pan on a hot plate, walk away. 45 minutes later I have food, and that is glorious.

From El_Matador

More times than not, what I'm pulling out of the oven is a sheet of roasted broccoli. I might be addicted. Broccoli's not the cheapest vegetable around – I can eat three or four dollars worth in one sitting – but the recipe is super easy and delicious, and since when is eating a pound of dark green vegetables a bad thing?

The only problem is all the stalks left behind. They're good enough sliced into discs and roasted along with the florets, but they're not amazing that way, and I'd rather devote baking sheet space to more delectable florets. And so all too often the broccoli stems end up with my eggshells and banana peels, going to compost.

Compost is a very silly – and wasteful, and lazy – fate for perfectly good, edible, healthy vegetable parts. Of course, “edible” isn't exactly high praise, or high incentive for the expenditure of kitchen effort, especially when the couch is so comfy. So here – for you and for me – are five recipes and ideas to keep our broccoli stalks out of the trash, and in our happy mouths and bellies. (They're happy because of the broccoli stalks.

1) Fridge pickles. You can make your own pickling brine, or go even more frugal and reuse the brine from a jar of tasty store-bought pickles. Once in a while I splurge on a jar of Rick's Picks, a delicious NYC brand. (Pickling is very chic among Brooklyn hipsters.) When the pickles are gone there is still plenty of goodness left behind in the brine. Peel your broccoli stalks and slice into spears. Pour the brine into a saucepan and bring to a boil, and wash out the pickle jar. Put the broccoli stalks in the jar, then pour in the brine. (Add some white vinegar and water if there's not enough liquid.) Screw on the lid, and pop that jar in the fridge. After two or three days: pickles!

From Cookthink

2) Crudite. Peel and slice into spears and use along with carrots, peppers, and any other raw veggies you like to dip into hummus, dressing, or your spread of choice. You get all the broccoli flavor without the awkward mouthful (and teeth full) of floret.

3) Slaw. Use a mandoline, grater, food processor with a grater wheel, or careful hands and a sharp knife to shred broccoli stems. Add some shredded carrot and mix with your favorite cole slaw dressing.

4) Stir fry. I think part of the reason I love roasting broccoli is that I can never get stir fried broccoli quite right – it's always either underdone or mushy, never as delicious as at a Chinese restaurant or my mom's house. (Mom! What is your secret!) But broccoli stalks – being flatter and more uniform than florets – are a cinch. They make a delicious stir-fry with Chinese flavors – soy sauce, garlic, and five-spice powder are a favorite combination of mine – and cook to a delicious combination of golden exteriors with creamy insides.

5. Soup. Once your favorite cream of broccoli soup (vegan or dairy) is pureed, no one will know if it started as tiny trees or trunks. Ditto chopped up in a quiche or casserole.

That's what I've got so far. (I've also heard that some cats love broccoli, and so also broccoli stalks, but unfortunately my creature isn't inclined to any such adorable predilections.) Do you use – and enjoy – your broccoli stalks? Are there any other often discarded parts of vegetables (or animals) you've got a great use for?

Green Kitchen: Roasted Sunchokes and Broccoli

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Ever since The Glorious Return of Gas to My Oven, I have been making good use of my fully functional kitchen. I've been boiling water on the stovetop for tea, marvelling at how quickly the kettle whistles. I've roasted a chicken (you know, what with eating meat again). I've baked two versions of Chickpea Cake and even broiled salmon when my fish-allergic boyfriend was out of the house. But my favorite thing to do, the thing I missed most in my oven's time off, is to roast broccoli.

I am a full believer in the power of oil, salt, and high heat to transform almost any vegetable into a delicacy. Sauteed Brussels sprouts, roasted root vegetables or cauliflower, even oven-roasted kale – these methods all move their produce from tasty enough healthy choices to mouth-watering heaven, as if heaven is a thing you eat. And broccoli perhaps benefits from this treatment best.

This is a variation on Ina Garten's recipe, which I learned by way of The Amateur Gourmet (where it is called, accurately, The Best Broccoli of Your Life). It is rich and hearty, a little sweet from caramelized edges, good and salty from... salt. It's also super easy – you toss broccoli with salt and oil and throw it in the oven. Set it and forget it, basically. And then, after all that zero hard work, you get something amazingly, addictively delicious that is also, lest we forget, broccoli.

This weekend I took my dear broccoli to a new level, by way of a little greenmarket desperation curiosity. While strolling through with my friend J. for eggs, onions, and heavy cream (my new obsession) – the only good things to find in a February farmers market – I saw something intriguing between the onions and ten kinds of potatoes: Jerusalem Artichokes. They are neither Israeli nor artichokes, but rather knobby little roots that I conveniently – thank you for writing seasonal recipes, fellow foodbloggers – had read about just a few days before. (You can swing by that very Mark's Daily Apple post for more history of the sunchoke, and a couple more recipe ideas.)

Let's see. Roasted sunchokes, roasted broccoli. Creamy and nutty, toothsome and savory. Roasted, roasted. In my fridge, in my fridge. It obviously took a great feat of culinary inspiration and general genius for this combination to be conceived. (Thanks for sending me to college, mom!)

Note: Make sure to dry your broccoli and sunchokes THOROUGHLY. I'd even recommend not washing the broccoli. It's going to be in a hot oven for a long time – anything bad on there's gonna get killed, and anything that doesn't get killed in the oven is some sort of superpowerful freak germ that was going to get you anyway.

~~~

If this looks nice, you'll surely appreciate:

• Broccoli-Cheddar Soup
• Broccoli Quiche
• Broccoli with Roasted Red Peppers

~~~

Roasted Sunchokes and Broccoli
Serves 4
Adapted from Ina Garten/The Amateur Gourmet and Mark's Daily Apple.

1 ½ lb broccoli (about 5 cups of florets)
1 lb sunchokes (about 4 cups sliced)
2 T olive oil, divided
salt to taste

1) Preheat oven to 400. Line two baking sheets with aluminum foil.

2) Chop broccoli into florets. (Put the stems aside for another use.) Toss in a large bowl with 1 T oil and a sprinkle of salt. Spread in a single layer on one baking sheet. Sprinkle with a little more salt if you like.

3) Slice or quarter sunchoked into relatively uniformly sized chunks, a little less than an inch thick. Toss in your large bowl with the remaining 1 T of oil and a sprinkle of salt. Spread on a single layer on the other baking sheet, ideally with each piece lying flat on a cut side (for optimal browning).

4) Cook broccoli and sunchokes for 30-40 minutes, until golden brown (or a little darker). Half-way through, swap them between the top and bottom racks, and stir/move around the veggies, adding salt if desired.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Cost Per Serving:
211 calories, 7.5g fat, 5.4g fiber, 6.2g protein, $1.41

Calculations:
5 cups broccoli: 155 calories, 1.7g fat, 11.8g fiber, 12.8g protein, $3.00
4 cups sunchokes: 438 calories, 0.1g fat, 9.6g fiber, 12g protein, $2.50
2 T olive oil: 252 calories, 28g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.12
1 t salt: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.02
TOTALS: 845 calories, 29.7g fat, 21.4g fiber, 24.8g protein, $5.64
PER SERVING (TOTALS/4): 211 calories, 7.5g fat, 5.4g fiber, 6.2g protein, $1.41

Green Kitchen: Roasted Leek and Mushroom Salad

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

In the three-and-a-half months my kitchen has been without gas, I’ve gotten creative. I’ve learned the moods of an electric cooktop. I’ve almost set my toaster oven on fire with parchment paper. I’ve microwaved a lot of tea. It’s been an adventure but I can’t say it’s been good, or easy, or fun.

So when my boyfriend, working from home on Friday to let the utility guys into the apartment (and make sure the cat ever came out from under the bed), texted me that we had gas, I was EXCITED! All-caps EXCITED, here. Cookies! Cake! Roasted broccoli! I did not pass many waking hours this weekend without the oven running. (As the temperature’s been hovering around six degrees farenheit today, I don’t feel very bad about that.)

I’ve resigned myself to a nonlocal winter, weighing good Whole Foods produce against its price, against the kinda dodgy broccoli I can get from the supermarket near me. (After nearly four months without roasted broccoli, I’m a little obsessed right now.) But even though it’s, did I mention, six degrees farenheit out, my farmers market is year-round, and not entirely produce-free!

In a month or two it will really be just jam, bison jerky, and onions, but a last few vegetables are still hanging around. The leeks I brought home were maybe a little soft, but once they’re roasted and carmelized and golden, are you drooling yet?

This meal came together by a bit of kismet, and a bit of what-I-had-around. When I was in Whole Foods with my friend J, I think it was as I was bagging these mushrooms that I complained about winter meal planning – in the summer I buy whatever’s cheap and pretty and in-season and build my meals around that. The rest of the year, when seasonal eating shuts down and I hit the supermarket produce aisles, it’s almost like there’s too much choice – everything’s there, everything’s an option. I bought the greenmarket leeks because they’ll probably be gone soon; I bought supermarket mushrooms because, I dunno, because it’s cold? Whatever, it worked out.

I decided to roast the leeks and mushrooms together, and the oniony and rich carmelized flavors do go well together, but it was all a bit savory and heavy. I looked around my fridge and kitchen, brightened things up with some tangy goat cheese and a crisp apple, and voila! It all felt fancy and chic, despite the fact that I ate it from a chipped bowl, in pajamas, on the couch, in front of the TV.

~~~

If this looks tasty, you'll love:

• Mashed Potatoes with Leeks and Sour Cream
• Potato Leek Soup with Kale
• Swiss Chard with Mushrooms

~~~

Roasted Leek and Mushroom Salad
Serves 3-4

1 bunch leeks (5-6 large, 8-10 small)
1 package crimini/baby bella mushrooms
1 Tbs olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
2 oz goat cheese (herbed or plain)
1 medium apple (I like Gala or Empire, nothing mushy or too tart)

1) Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

2) Trim ends and dark green bits from leeks. Cut into about 6” pieces, and then in half lengthwise. Soak in a bowl of cool water to remove any grit or sand. Pat dry.

3) Rinse mushrooms and trim ends. Cut any big ones in half.

4) Spread leeks and mushrooms on baking sheet (covered with aluminum foil, perhaps) in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt (about ¼ tsp) and pepper (a few grinds or shakes). Toss to evenly coat, then make sure leeks are all cut side down.

5) Bake leeks and mushrooms for 20-30 minutes, until mushrooms are done and leeks are tender and caramelized. Toss once halfway through.

6) Core and quarter the apple, then cut into very thin slices. Use a mandoline if you like.

7) Plate leeks and mushrooms. Add crumbled goat cheese, then arrange apple slices on top. Pretend this is Iron Chef: Battle Leeks.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Price Per Serving
3 Servings: 278 calories, 11g fat, 5.1g fiber, 10.6g protein, $2.48
4 Servings: 208.3 calories, 8.3g fat, 3.9g fiber, 8g protein, $1.86

Calculations
1 bunch leeks: 271 calories, 1.3g fat, 8g fiber, 6.7g protein, $3.00
1 package crimini mushrooms: 135 calories, 0.5g fat, 3g fiber, 12.5g protein, $2.50
1 Tbs olive oil: 126 calories, 14g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.12
¼ tsp salt: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
¼ tsp pepper: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
2 oz goat cheese: 206 calories, 16.9g fat, 0g fiber, 12.2g protein, $1.50
1 apple: 95 calories, 0.3g fat, 4.4g fiber, 0.5g protein, $0.30
TOTALS: 833 calories, 33.1g fat, 15.4g fiber, 31.9g protein, $7.44
PER SERVING (TOTALS/3): 278 calories, 11g fat, 5.1g fiber, 10.6g protein, $2.48
PER (smaller) SERVING (TOTALS/4): 208.3 calories, 8.3g fat, 3.9g fiber, 8g protein, $1.86

Green Kitchen: Five Ways to Eat Healthier, Cheaper, Tastier, and Better for the Planet in 2011

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Is it too late to still be wishing happy new years? Well, it’s my first column of 2011, so I hope no one will mind if, two weeks into January, I’m still talking about it.

From Flickr's apocs

Two weeks into January, you say? And how many broken resolutions?

I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s Resolutions. I think January 1 is an arbitrary start date that might not match up with actual good timing. Take the chestnut of a resolution to eat better and work out more – why not time this with the time of year that’s actually conducive to activity and healthy eating? In the depths of winter our bodies want to store fat, it's cold and snowy outside and, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, vegetables are wan and flavorless. You want to lose weight? Talk to me in June.

Waah, but I need to be bikini-ready already by then! Who exactly is telling you you’re not bikini-ready now? That’s another problem with New Year’s Resolutions – the outside pressure. We’re told it’s the time to make commitments, and so we leap in, and then berate ourselves for falling short. But what else should we expect when the drive to change hasn’t come from within ourselves?

Also it’s an easy way for gyms to sell more memberships.

On the other hand, though, sometimes we need an arbitrary impetus for change. Something that says, Hey, evaluate! And change what needs changing! One of my good friends made a resolution two years ago to set aside at least one night every week as a free night – no plans, no commitments. (This friend works in the music industry, where nighttime commitments are rampant, and is a generally popular guy.) Not only did he keep this resolution but it so improved his life that now, years later, the free night is a solid institution.

Don’t make resolutions for resolutions’ sake. But if the swooping tide of reevaluation and reinvention that comes with the new year inspires you, go for it! Just make sure you’re excited and inspired about your plans, and that your goals are not unattainable. Impossible or awful goals – to drop 20 pounds in a month, switching from a McDonalds diet to strict raw foodism – are just a set-up for disappointment and self-flagellation down the line.

In the spirit of positive, attainable change – and the spirit of this column! – I’ve put together what I hope will be a helpful and inspiring list. These aren’t commandments or edicts, just steps you can choose to take. You can choose a couple of items on the list as goals for yourself, or just keep them in mind next time you hit the supermarket (or farmers market). Figure out what’s important to you, what you might want to change, and how you can reasonably reach those goals.

1. Rethink Your Meat.
One of the strongest environmental impacts you can make with your food choices is what meat you eat, and how much. Conventional industrial meat production is, in a word, not-so-good. It’s not-so-good for the environment, it’s not-so-good for workers, and it’s not-so-good for animals. (I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with killing animals for meat; I do think it’s horrible to make animals live miserable lives of suffering leading up to the slaughter.) And yes, human beings evolved to eat meat. But not miserable chickens that live immobile in cages, pecking out their own feathers, eating nothing but cornmeal and animal byproducts.

From Flickr's stickeresq

Industrial meat also has a markedly different nutritional profile than wild or pastured meat – the balance between Omega-3s and -6s swings way towards the 6s, which is not what your body wants – and animals who eat real food, rather than food-like sludge, taste better, too! Pastured, humanely-raised meat is, yes, more expensive. As it should be! Don’t skimp here. Buy less meat, and choose to spend your money on higher-quality, tastier, more ethical stuff. Dairy and eggs (also from happy-animal farms!) and plant proteins are cheap, good for you, and delicious.

2. Process Food Yourself.
Think about what goes into processing a processed food. All of the ingredients must be collected; any additives, preservatives, flavorings, or nutritional enrichments must be either derived or created themselves. The food is processed – mixed, cooked, prepared – in a factory. The food is packaged – plastic is made, trees are turned into cardboard, paints are applied to the label. The food has to be tested – the recipe was devised in a lab, and nutritional information has to be determined for the label. Odds are the food is marketed – someone designed its package and a marketing campaign; time is bought for television commercials, ad space is purchased in magazines, coupons are sent to you in the mail. Then the food is packed and driven – possibly in a refrigerated truck – to a warehouse, and then to your supermarket. Now think about how much of the dollars you spend on that processed food is going toward quality ingredients, and how much of your money is going to… everything else.

There is no question that for a little more time in the kitchen, you get so much more bang for your buck with unprocessed foods. And I mean your literal buck, but also your nutritional buck and whatever metaphorical bucks this is all costing Earth. Unprocessed foods are closer to what our bodies evolved to eat. They are more nutritious, and their nutrients – naturally-occurring rather than added later on – are in better forms for our bodies to absorb. Also, who knows what undiscovered chemicals and compounds are in kale that haven’t been discovered yet and distilled into vitamins?

Eat real food and your body will thank you. You’ll notice a difference in your wallet, too. Even something as simple as shredding your own cheese rather than buying a bag already done – it’s cheaper per ounce and you skip the weird powdery coating that stops shredded cheese from sticking – makes a difference on every count.

3. Cook
So what do you do without processed food, just a pile of raw ingredients in your kitchen? Cook! There’s no better way to control what you eat than to cook your food yourself. Don’t trust the folks at Lean Cuisine to do it for you. Not only will you save money by starting with raw ingredients, but you’ll have way more control over exactly what you put in your body. Do you feel best eating a high-fat, grain-free diet? (Lots of people do!) Then pour on the coconut oil and enjoy! Would you rather focus on fresh fruits and vegetables? Bust out the blender and skip the Jamba Juice smoothies. You can decide if your home is powered with wind energy – no promises for the restaurant down the street. And how much salt did they put in your soup? When restaurants serve us giant portions, we’re inclined to finish them. Take responsibility here by taking control. And then have the satisfaction of knowing that you can make your own food.

From Flickr's Nataliemaynor

4. Eat with the Seasons.
I love shopping at the farmers market, but it’s not for everyone – it takes time, can be crowded, and seasonal eating can be limiting. (I’ll sing the greenmarket’s praises in August, but let’s talk about the onions, apples, and potatoes we’ll be seeing all winter.) Luckily, this is not an all-or-nothing deal. You can eat seasonally with supermarket produce and still do good for your bank account, body, and tastebuds. Compare a January tomato with one in July – even at ShopRite there’s a huge difference. And that taste (and color!) is indicative of more nutrients, too. If there’s no local food this time of year for you, consider just eating food from within your country, or your own hemisphere. Food’s cheaper and tastier in its proper season, and when it comes from closer by as well.

5. Enjoy!
It's frightfully easy to get so caught up in worrying if our food is healthy, cheap, and good for the planet that we forget what else food is supposed to be: delicious! A meal is more than calories and nutrients, more than a grocery store receipt. A meal is a sensory pleasure, and a social one as well. If your approach to cooking is pure drudgery, it'll never last, and you'll find yourself at the drive-through before you know it.

Figure out how to incorporate what makes you happy into your healthy eating plan. Once in a while, round out your healthy protein and veggies with some Doritos. Give yourself permission to enjoy that occasional Chinese food delivery, or splurge on a delicious meal out. Buy an avocado even if it's come from halfway around the world.

Don't beat yourself up for failing to meet some lofty goal. Recognize and celebrate the ways you're good to yourself – do you nourish yourself with healthy food, are you conscious of spending, do you take responsibility for how your choices impact the environment? Awesome. Now make sure you're enjoying yourself – and your food – as you go.

~~~

If you liked this piece, you'll surely dig:

• Food Money Matters: Why Healthy Eating Doesn't Have to Be Expensive
• Spend Less, Eat Healthier: The Five Most Important Things You Can Do
• Vintage Cookbook Hoedown: The Quick Cook Book (1961)

Green Kitchen: Local Going Into Winter

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Ignore the fact that it's snowing outside-- Wait, don't ignore that. Take a moment to enjoy that. It's snowing! But ignore it in terms of the point I'm about to make.

Ignore the fact that it's snowing. Ignore the fact that it's about 50 degrees in my apartment, that I'm wearing sweatpants and a hoodie and my hat. Ignore the down comforter on my bed, the cold toes, the date on the calendar.

How do I know it's winter?

Let's take a look at what's recently come out of my kitchen. Breakfast Sunday: an improvised take on what I remembered of Kris' Shaksouka – canned diced tomatoes, half an onion, a carrot, and eggs poached therein. Lunch today (and for the rest of the week, and taking up some space in the freezer): lentil soup made with dried lentils, canned tomatoes, frozen spinach, and an onion. Breakfast tomorrow's looking like a smoothie with frozen cherries and blueberries.

Where have all the fresh veggies gone?

Winter is rough on lots of people – the sun's gone, it's hard to spend time outside, and winter coats are uncomfortable and bulky. Snow is lovely and sweaters are cozy, but this time of year can bring your mood down. (I always wish, walking past Christmas decorations in December, that our holiday of sparkly lights took place a few months later, when even the snow is dreary and we could really use a little extra glitter.)

Winter's an extra downer for local eaters, though. I'm not even a 100% locavore. Not at all - I love bananas and avocados and cans of coconut milk. I do appreciate the environmental and economic repercussions of shopping at the farmers market, but I keep doing it because I love how it feels. Meeting farmers, knowing where my kale comes from. Even just the ritual of the market – walking between stalls, comparing produce, and the week-to-week cycle of the growing season. From asparagus to tomatoes to butternut squash, that's how the year goes.

But now we've, like we do every year, come to the end. The farms are mulched over and resting for the winter, and just about every night brings a freeze. We have a few more weeks of the real hardy stuff – kale and leeks and Brussels sprouts – and food that stores well lasts a little longer. Apples and onions and winter squash stick around basically until springtime at the year-round greenmarkets (so do bison meat and eggs). But the growing season is drawing to a close, and with it goes a big part of what I love about cooking.

From Flickr's stevendepolo

So many of my culinary decisions in the warmer months are based on what I find at the market – radishes are cheap or the parsnips look nice, and I get inspired and try something out. (Maybe this is just a relief from my usually agonizing decision making process.) But in winter I don't think I get down cause the food's not local – the problem is that, for the next five months, all of the food is the same. Cheap and mediocre at my local supermarket, or pricier and lush at the Whole Foods downtown, it's shipped in from wherever, in-season in California or Chile or Taiwan, and nothing changes from one week to the next.

What do you do when your local veggies dry (or freeze) up? Do you come up with new, slightly less local, guidelines? Maybe food from your country, or hemisphere, rather than a 300-mile greenmarket radius? Maybe I can let sales direct me in winter the way the seasons do the other half of the year. Do you transition to canned and frozen foods? Canned tomatoes beat fresh ones seven months out of the year, and frozen kale – flash-frozen when it's fresh – is looking mighty good, and cheap, compared to the produce section at Whole Foods.

I've got my freezer supply of mashed cauliflower and apple sauce, and there's always room for soup in there, too, but it's not enough to make it through until spring. What's most important about how you choose where to get your food? Is it price, convenience, localness, or just the experience of it all? And how do you make the second-best choice feel good?

Green Kitchen: Vegan Creamed Kale

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

There are lots of reasons one might want to avoid dairy. One might be allergic. One might be vegan. One might be omnivorous but prefer dairy from happy, grass-fed cows, which can be expensive or hard to come by. One might be lactose intolerant and rationing those pricey lactase pills.

Or one might like that experimenting with non-dairy versions of usually-dairy meals can lead one to delicious dishes one might never have eaten otherwise.

A little of column A, a little of column B.

I ended up at creamed kale the other night by an internet/culinary odyssey – my original plan for cold sesame broccoli was thwarted by the fact that it was about thirty degrees outside, and maybe five cooler in my apartment. Next thought: cream of broccoli soup, but Leigh already has us covered there. So what else is in my fridge? Kale! Cream of kale soup? Creamed kale? I love creamed spinach – is creamed kale a thing?

Thank you, internet, because you showed me that it is.

(Have I ever mentioned how much I owe the internet for my cooking? Other people have cookbooks; I have a netbook and WiFi.)

I read a few recipes, and started to get an idea of how one might make creamed kale at all; creamed spinach, love of my life, has always come to me frozen in a little cardboard box. I eliminated recipes that called for whisking flour into broth, to keep things totally grain- and gluten-free. I found a recipe calling for a cashew cream for the sauce. That sounded intriguing, and while I didn’t have any cashews, I’ve been working through a bag of slivered almonds (after some unsuccessful almond meal pancake attempts) that could do with being polished off.

What’s amazing about this dish isn’t that it tastes like it’s made with dairy – it doesn’t. It’s saltier, more savory and complex, and, to be fair, not as smoothly creamy. But, and maybe even more excitingly, this dish is amazing in its own right. It scratches the creamed spinach/kale itch – hot, creamy, savory comfort food, totally addictive despite being packed with super-healthy greens – but without pretending to be something it’s not. The sauce is nutty and has a hint of oniony taste, not quite cream but just as good.

And I can save my lactase pills for the Seabrook Farms creamed spinach hanging out in my freezer. Maybe in February, when local greens are truly, totally gone. Late November? Still total bounty.

~~~

If you like this recipe, you might also enjoy:

• Kale with Mushrooms and Polenta
• Potato Leek Soup with Kale
• Vegan Ginger Cookies

~~~

Vegan Creamed Kale
(adapted from Whole Foods)
Serves 4

1 bunch kale, torn into smallish pieces (5-6 cups, torn)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon margarine
1/2 cup vegetable broth (I used Better than Bouillon)
dash salt
1/3 cup unsweetened soy milk
2 tablespoon soy creamer (or more milk)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/3 cup blanched, slivered almonds (or ½ cup whole raw almonds, or cashews)
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
a few grinds of black pepper

1) Steam kale until bright green and tender, about four minutes. (You can also blanch it.)

2) Drain kale and rinse under cool water.

3) Melt 1 T margarine in a sautee pan over medium-high heat. Add onion and a dash of salt, and sweat until translucent, about five minutes. Add garlic; cook one minute more.

4) Combine onion mixture, broth, creamer, milk, lemon juice, soy sauce, almonds, nutritional yeast, red pepper flakes, and nutmeg in food processor or blender, or use an immersion blender, to puree smooth. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.

5) Return mixture to sautee pan and simmer over medium-low heat until it thickens slightly, stirring often, about ten minutes.

6) Stir in kale and cook, tossing often, until kale is cooked and sauce is thickened to your liking, 5-10 minutes more. Top with ground black pepper.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein and Price per Serving:
155 calories, 8.6g fat, 4.2g fiber, 7.2g protein, $0.83

Calculations
1 bunch kale (5-6 cups, torn): 184 calories, 2.6g fat, 7.4g fiber, 12.1g protein, $1.50
1 medium yellow onion: 42 calories, 0.1g fat, 1.8g fiber, 1.2g protein, $0.50
2 cloves garlic: 9 calories, 0g fat, 0.1g fiber, 0.4g protein, $0.04
1 T butter: 102 calories, 11.5g fat, 0g fiber, 0.1g protein, $0.13
½ cup vegetable broth (Better than Bouillon): 2 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.05
dash salt: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
1/3 c + 2 T unsweetened soy milk: 35 calories, 2g fat, 1g fiber, 3.5g protein, $0.45
1 T lemon juice: 8 calories, 0g fat, 0.1g fiber, 0.1g protein, $0.07
1 t soy sauce: 4 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0.6g protein, $0.02
1/3 c blanched, slivered almonds: 207 calories, 17.8g fat, 4.4g fiber, 7.6g protein, $0.33
1 T nutritional yeast: 27 calories, 0.3g fat, 1.7g fiber, 3g protein, $0.19
1/8 t red pepper flakes: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
1/8 t nutmeg: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
a few grinds of black pepper: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
TOTALS: 619 calories, 34.4g fat, 16.6g fiber, 28.6g protein, $3.32
PER SERVING (Totals/4): 155 calories, 8.6g fat, 4.2g fiber, 7.2g protein, $0.83

Green Kitchen: Mashed Cauliflower and Freezing Food

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Oh man, guys. I just had the best/worst idea for how to start today’s column.

It’s getting icy.

Brr, y’know, cause winter’s coming? But also because I want to talk about freezing food. Like, for storage.

I know, it’s awful. My dad would be proud.

I could also aim this in the direction of Thanksgiving sides. The recipe herein is an amazing Thanksgiving side, and I will be making it for my family next week. (Oh crap, next week?!) But the food-blog corner of the internet is already overflowing with Thanksgiving recipes right now, and they really just serve to make me panic about the fact that Thanksgiving is next week and how am I making two pies and four side dishes and cranberry sauce in half a day in my mom’s kitchen??!?

So, back to freezing.

As fall starts hinting that winter’s on its way, my mind turns toward my freezer. Not for the popsicles and other frozen goodnesses of summer, but because, like a squirrel with its acorns, I’m suddenly compelled to start putting food away. Every week in fall brings another visit to the farmers market, another fearful peek at the produce for sale, to see what’s gone out of season next.

In spring and summer, vegetables go out of season to be replaced by the next round of tasty produce – we go from asparagus to bell peppers to broccoli to kale, strawberries to raspberries to stone fruit to apples – but once we get to fall, foods end their season unreplaced. Or replaced by apples, onions, and potatoes. Piles and piles of apples, onions, and potatoes.

Now’s when I start to panic. What can I freeze? What can I save? Come February I’ll be wandering the supermarket aisles, pallid under the fluorescent lights, trying to decide between California kale and Mexican Brussels sprouts. I’ll make eggs with frozen spinach. I’ll mix frozen cherries into my yogurt. And I will feel sad, disconnected from my local growing season, like a poor steward of the Earth, and broke.

So I’m trying, this year, to shore up my stores of local, seasonal, cheap vegetables, to pack them away in ways they can last, and last tastily. (Let’s not talk about the frozen beet greens fiasco of 2009.) Sure, just about any home-frozen vegetable can feature passably in a soup, but I want food that actually tastes good.

The trick to freezing most vegetables is blanching. When you freeze raw vegetables their cell walls burst – thanks to waters magical expands-as-it-freezes-ness – and burst cell walls equal mush. Blanching vegetables – a quick boil or steam – eases that problem and neutralizes enzymes that can wreak havoc on icy goods. Unfortunately, I don’t like a lot of vegetables blanched – I rely on hot sautéing to make things like kale and Brussels sprouts delicious, and once you’ve blanched, you can’t go back. (Sorry, is that not an awesome new catchphrase?)

So far I’ve found two awesome recipes that freeze well. They’re easy to make in large batches, defrost without any degradation, and are preparations of these foods that I actually love. Points there. One is the spiced applesauce I wrote about a little while ago.

The other is mashed cauliflower.

Ignore any bad connotations it carries as a sad low-carb substitute for mashed potatoes; mashed cauliflower is delicious in its own right. It satisfied the creamy, salty, comfort food part of your heart/stomach/brain, but with a bit more flavor than plain potatoes. It’s still a great vehicle for anything mashed potatoes play with well, and, oh right, it’s a giant pile of super-good-for-you vegetables.

This is the time of year for cauliflower. At the big Union Square farmers market in New York City, giant 5-pound heads are going for two or three bucks each, and they’re fresh and gorgeous. I’ve got a stack of little one-cup containers of this stuff lining the back of my freezer (interspersed with apple sauce, of course). A few more weeks, a few more massive cauliflowers, and I should be set for winter.

I mean, set in terms of cauliflower. I can’t quite live on apples and cauliflower alone, though. So I ask you, dear readers – how do you freeze or store fall produce to last into the winter? Jaime-in-February-without-vitamin-deficiencies thanks you.

A note on this recipe: This is a very basic version. The options for embellishment are nearly endless. Anything you can do to mashed potatoes, you can do to this. Possible additions: roasted garlic, red pepper flakes, nutritional yeast, shredded cheese, olive oil, a little milk (cow, soy, or otherwise), paprika, scallions, roasted kale, sautéed zucchini, baked tofu, bacon, bacon bits, etc. I find that, just as with potatoes, a little fat goes a long way as long as the food’s thoroughly salted.

~~~

If you like this, get a load of:

• Cauliflower with Ginger, Garlic, and Green Chilies
• Miso Mashed Potatoes
• Swiss Chard with Pinto Beans and Goat Cheese

~~~

Mashed Cauliflower
Serves 4
NOTE: The picture didn't come out too great, so this is an amazing facsimile taken from Flickr Creative Commons user roolrool. Needless to say, it's the stuff on the left.

1 large head of cauliflower (about 8 cups chopped)
1 Tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper, to taste

1) Chop cauliflower into florets.

2) Steam cauliflower until very tender, about 8-10 minutes. (Alternately, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add cauliflower, and boil until tender. Timing here depends on the power of your stovetop to bring the cauliflower and water back up to temperature. Maybe 15-20 minutes? Or maybe my stovetop is weak.)

3) Drain cauliflower, and let cool until not too hot to touch. Pat cauliflower dry with paper towels.

4) Return cauliflower to pot, or to a big bowl, add butter, and puree with an immersion blender until creamy. (Alternately, puree in food processor.) Add salt and pepper to taste.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Price per Serving
76 calories, 3.1g fat, 5g fiber, 4g protein, $0.54

Calculations
8 cups cauliflower: 200 calories, 0.8g fat, 20g fiber, 15.8g protein, $2.00
1 T butter: 102 calories, 11.5g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.10
1 T salt: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.03
1 t pepper: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.02
TOTALS: 302 calories, 12.3 g fat, 20g fiber, 15.8g protein, $2.15
PER SERVING (Total/4): 76 calories, 3.1g fat, 5g fiber, 4g protein, $0.54

Green Kitchen: Golden Shredded Brussels Sprouts

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

Dear readers, for those of you not living in the Northeast, let me tell you something I just learned: it is FALL! Sure, Utah was having snowstorms two weeks ago, but whatever. In my little world, the seasons just started changing, and hard.

When I told my boyfriend that I could see my breath this morning he was like, “Why are you so excited about it being freezing out?”

“I don’t know.” I thought for a moment. “I guess I really like November?”

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Two weekends ago I texted a few friends a picture of the fall’s first Brussels sprouts at the farmers market, along with the word, “first!”

I know that summer is the season of produce bounty or whatever, and I have enjoyed it. I ate sweet cherry tomatoes like grapes, munched on every color of bell pepper, enjoyed berries and peaches and plums. It was great.

But fall is my favorite season for produce. The first few apples I saw just reminded me of late-winter apple fatigue, but now I’ve been making batches of spicy apple sauce that I’m frankly addicted to. I’m roasting sweet potatoes and sautéing broccoli and there’s a butternut squash on my kitchen table with a date with a (hopefully) sharp knife.

And then there are Brussels sprouts. O, Brussels sprouts, I love them so. I can’t tell how far into the popular consciousness their adoration has spread. It’s like a rumor, passed friend to friend, or admission to the Secret Brussels Sprouts Appreciation Society. “Have you tried roasted Brussels sprouts?” “If you brown them in a pan, they’re better than bacon.” “My mother used to steam them and they smelled like trash, but cooked hot and salty they’re— Oh, sorry, I’m drooling down my shirt.”

So, I want to make sure you’ve heard. When steamed or boiled, Brussels sprouts are gross, deserving of their putrid reputation. But roasted or sautéed, browned and salted just right, they’re— Oh, sorry, I’m drooling down my shirt again.

Beyond that, Brussels sprouts are also a good source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Thiamine, Folate, Iron, and fiber. They come into season (at least in the Northeast and other similarly climated regions) in mid-October, and last past the frost. Their relatives include cabbage, collard greens, broccoli, and kale, and they do indeed look like tiny cabbages (or brains). They grow on stalks, and sometimes you can buy them that way at the farmers market, and it looks CRAZY.
And that was Brussels sprouts fact-time! Yay!

My go-to Brussels sprout recipe, and what originally converted me to their cult, is Heidi Swansson’s Golden-Crusted Brussels Sprouts. The cheese is superfluous but the method is perfection – cook halved sprouts with oil and salt, sautéing until they’re carmelized and browned. Crispy outsides, melty insides, addictive throughout. I served them as a side dish when I cooked Thanksgiving at my mom’s house a couple of years ago (everything but the bird), and converted my family in one go.

Sometimes, though, I just don’t have the patience to make sure the cut sides are browned, to find the right balance between thorough cooking inside and out. (Cooking Brussels sprouts too slowly lets the insides steam, giving you that nasty, almost horseradishey flavor.)

(You can also roast these babies in the oven – tossed with oil and salt, laid out on a baking sheet, shaken around once in a while, until browned and delicious. But I’m still living in the land of No Gas to the Kitchen, and a meager few toaster oven-roasted Brussels sprouts is just not enough for my fix.)

So here’s my new favorite way to cook Brussels sprouts – it gives you the pan-sautéed flavor without any of the finicky work.

You shred some sprouts. You heat oil in a pan. You sautee them until they’re done.

Oh, you wanted an actual recipe? Okay. Enjoy. Welcome to the club.

~~~

If you think this looks good, yer gonna love:

• Chopped Salad
• Escarole and White Beans
• Roasted Brussels Sprouts

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Golden Shredded Brussels Sprouts
serves 2-3

1 lb Brussels sprouts (3-4 cups shredded)
1/8-1/4 t salt
dash of red pepper flakes (optional)

Note: if increasing recipe, cook in batches – an overfull pan of sprouts will steam rather than brown.

1) Trim ends and loose leaves off of sprouts. Cut (lengthwise) into thin shreds.

2) Heat olive oil in a wide sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add sprouts and toss with salt and red pepper.

3) Sauté until sprouts are browned in places, about ten minutes.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, Protein, and Price Per Serving
129 calories, 7.5g fat, 5.6g fiber, 5.2g protein, $1.51

Calculations
1 lb Brussels sprouts: 132 calories, 0.9g fat, 11.7g fiber, 10.4g protein, $3.00
1/8-1/4 t salt: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
dash of red pepper flakes: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
TOTALS: 258 calories, 14.9g fat, 11.7g fiber, 10.4g protein, $3.02
PER SERVING (TOTAL/2): 129 calories, 7.5g fat, 5.6g fiber, 5.2g protein, $1.51
PER SERVING (TOTAL/3): 86 calories, 5g fat, 3.9g fiber, 3.5g protein, $1.00

Green Kitchen: Kale and Balsamic Tofu Salad

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It's penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

I’d like to thank the internet for some recipe kismet.

Last Monday, there was a fire in my apartment building. I, and my apartment, are fine. I am grateful. I am signing up for renters insurance. But even though the fire was half a block from my actual flat, the repercussions have been felt throughout the building – no electricity for an evening, no hot water for a day or two. And no gas, still.

So there I was, two days after a greenmarket haul, with a fridge full of vegetables, and just a microwave and toaster oven to cook them in.

I didn’t know how long this would last, so I made due. I splurged on some frozen creamed spinach, which is one of my favorite things in the world. I baked tofu in the toaster oven. I poached eggs in my microwave, which worked well for the first try, but then inexplicably gave me nothing but exploded eggs and a microwave to wash. I steamed broccoli in the microwave, and remembered why lots of people don’t like vegetables.

By midweek I was growing weary, and starting to worry about my produce. I had a beautiful bunch of lacinato kale, a new vegetable for me, waiting – I hoped patiently – in the crisper drawer. I know kale can last a week or two, but I was also getting really sick of steamed broccoli. I seasoned the heck out of it, added butter and oil, but still.

So when, four days into this adventure, Heidi Swanson posted a recipe for a raw kale salad, I knew I was in luck. It even called for exactly the kind of kale I had! Tuscan, aka lacinato, aka dinosaur, kale. With a few tweaks I could turn it into a healthy, fresh, satisfying full meal, requiring no cooking implements larger than a wee toaster oven, powered blissfully on electricity. (Wind-generated, natch, and its tiny size means it spends less energy just heating air than a full-sized oven.)

[Of course, when after days of calls to the super and building manager I finally got through to my super, he was like, Where’ve you been? (Um, here?) You didn’t answer my calls! (What calls?) I have a hot plate for you! (Ooh, yay!) So now I have two burners and the smell of vaporizing plastic chemicals mingling with aromas of sautéed kale and broccoli.]

I love how healthy this salad is – kale is a powerhouse veggie, full of vitamin A and high in protein for a plant. There are no empty carbohydrates here, and no gluten if you use wheat-free tamari. The fat content looks high, but it's all healthy and good-for-you, helps your body absorb the nutrients in the kale, and makes a pile of raw greens taste almost decadently rich.

But what I really love about this salad is that it's so dang good. The strong, sweet, savory tofu plays perfectly off the bright, lemony dressing (which I kept licking off my mixing spoons). A few simple ingredients, no cooking implements bigger than a toaster oven, and you get a surprisingly sophisticated, addictive salad. That's right – an addictively delicious raw kale salad. You're welcome. (And Heidi Swanson, the farmer who grew my kale, New York City firefighters – thank you.)

~~~

If you like this, these will also set your taste buds (but not your apartment) on fire:

• Potato Leek Soup with Kale
• Relaxed Kale and Root Veg Salad
• White Bean and Kale Soup with Turkey Sausage

~~~

Kale and Balsamic Tofu Salad
serves 3
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks and The Vegan Foodie.

1 lb extra firm tofu
3 T balsamic vinegar
3 T soy sauce (wheat-free tamari for a gluten-free meal)
2 T olive oil
2 t honey
2 cloves garlic, smashed

1 bunch Tuscan kale (aka lacinato, aka dinosaur) about 4-5 cups cut up

½ garlic clove
¼ t salt, plus a pinch
¼ c grated pecorino cheese
3 T olive oil
juice of one lemon (a scant half-cup)
1/8 t red pepper flakes
ground black pepper, to taste

1) Press the tofu for at least 30 minutes.

2) Whisk together vinegar, soy sauce, 2 T oil, and honey (or combine in a sealable container and shake. Add smashed garlic cloves.

3) Cube tofu. Add to marinade. Marinate for at least 30 minutes, or overnight.

4) Preheat oven (or toaster oven) to 375. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Arrange tofu cubes in a single layer.

5) Bake tofu 30-40 minutes, flipping after 20 minutes, until browned and cooked down. (Tofu can be made in advance and refrigerated for up to a few days, until you're ready to make salad.)

6) De-vein kale and cut into ribbons. (Kitchen shears are good for this.) Put in a big bowl.

7) Smush garlic and ¼ t salt together (in a mortar and pestle or in a small bowl with the butt of a knife or something). In a small bowl combine garlic/salt paste, cheese, olive oil, lemon juice, red pepper flakes, black pepper, and a pinch of salt. Whisk together.

8) Add dressing to kale and toss. (Swanson warns, “The dressing will be thick and needs lots of tossing to coat the leaves.”) Add tofu, and let sit for at least 5 minutes before serving.

9) Garnish with a splash of oil or a sprinkle more of cheese if you like.

Approximate Calories, Fat, Fiber, and Protein per Serving
391 calories, 28.6g fat, 4g fiber, 18.4g protein, $1.71

(A note on calculations: This amount of tofu marinade is required to get good coverage so the tofu soaks in in, but it's much more than gets absorbed. So I'm including the full price for those ingredients, but only ½ the nutritional impact, because it doesn't all get eaten.)

Calculations
1 lb extra firm tofu: 365 calories, 22g fat, 5.8g fiber, 39.8g protein, $1.79
3 T balsamic vinegar: 21 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0.1g protein, $0.12
3 T soy sauce: 11 calories, 0g fat, 0.1g fiber, 1.9g protein, $0.12
5 T olive oil: 504 calories, 56g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.20
2 t honey: 23 calories, 0g fat, 5.7g fiber, 0g protein, $0.55
2 cloves garlic, smashed: n/a, since you don't eat them, $0.06
1 bunch Tuscan kale: 134 calories, 1.9g fat, 5.4g fiber, 8.8g protein, $1.00
½ garlic clove: 2 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0.1g protein, $0.03
¼ t salt, plus a pinch: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
¼ c grated pecorino cheese: 80 calories, 6g fat, 0g fiber, 4g protein, $0.75
juice of one lemon: 30 calories, 0g fat, 0.5g fiber, 0.5g protein, $0.50
1/8 t red pepper flakes: 1 calorie, 0g fat, 0.1g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
ground black pepper: 1 calorie, 0g fat, 0.1g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
TOTALS: 1172 calories, 85.9g fat, 12g fiber, 55.2 g protein, $5.15
PER SERVING (TOTALS/3): 391 calories, 28.6g fat, 4g fiber, 18.4g protein, $1.71

Green Kitchen: Chunky Spiced Unsweetened Applesauce

Green Kitchen is a bi-weekly column about nutritious, inexpensive, and ethical food and cooking. It’s penned by the lovely Jaime Green.

I'd like to take a moment to think on the lessons of zucchini.

I greet the first greenmarket zucchini with excitement – just like every vegetable's first seasonal appearance, this is a momentous occasion. Fresh and bright and less than $2 a pound, I take them home in big bundles, sauteeing them simply for the sweet zucchini flavor.

Fast-forward to August and we're like, Uggh, please, no more zucchini! I know you are cheap, summer squash, but I am sick of you.

Friends, let us not let the apple fall prey to the same late-season disenchantment.

We must take action now, at the start of apple season, to ward off an early winter apple fatigue. Apples, like zucchini, are cheap. They are delicious. They are healthy. But they also survive storage really, really well, and will still be around in cheerful piles come, like, February. Fruit in February! It seems amazing now, but the midwinter farmers market devotee looks at apples like cockroaches after a nuclear winter – their fortitude is admirable, but what you wouldn't give for a delicate berry.

So I say to you now, stop apple fatigue before it starts! Don't binge on raw honeycrisps for the next two months, only to fight tears and a slight gag reflex when they're the only non-potato thing at the greenmarket this winter. Bring to the start of apple season the creativity that usually marks the end of a fruit or vegetable's yearly time, but with excitement and ingenuity rather than bleary-eyed desperation.

We must take advantage of the autumn's apple bounty, lay in stores of this cheap, healthy, delicious fruit, and get creative with it!

Also I've come up with an apple sauce recipe that's really, really good. Like, I just had to take a break from writing about it to go get some from the fridge good.

Awesome things about this apple sauce, other than it being so tasty:
—No sugar! Apples are plenty sweet on their own.
—No milling, grinding, processing, or whatever! This sauce is nice and chunky, which also makes it more versatile than a smooth puree. I've been mixing it in with Greek yogurt all week.
—So cheap! I got my apples for $0.37/lb in a big 4lb bag. Applesauce apples don't need to be pretty, or even the tasty, crisp, sweet apples you'd choose for raw eating. Get 'em cheap.
—It freezes well! I spooned some into a quart freezer bag and used this method for rice-freezing to separate it into individual portions. Come March when the memory of fresh apples grows fond and crappy supermarket produce beckons, I'll have this tastiness stowed away, ready to defrost.
—You may feel like a prairie homesteader while making it, which is silly, because apples are not a prairie thing, but it feels good old-timey domestic. Or maybe that's just me. But it was fun.

(PS: Do plumped-up raisins remind anyone else of Danny, the Champion of the World? God, that book is the best.)

~~~

If you like this recipe, you may enjoy:
All Night Apple Butter
Maple-Ginger Applesauce
Autumn Apple Salad

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Chunky Spiced Applesauce (Unsweetened)

makes approximately 1 quart, or 8 1/2-cup servings

4 lbs apples (about 10 cups chopped)
1 cup raisins
3 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp nutmeg
a few dashes cayenne
a dash of salt

Instructions
1. Core and chop the apples. The larger your chunks, the chunkier your sauce. Unevenness is fine, too.

2. As you collect your chopped apples in a large bowl or whatnot, add a tablespoon of lemon juice every few apples. This keeps the apples from browning and is good for the sauce.

3. Heat a large pot over medium heat. Add the apples, stirring to get them all hot.

4. Once the apples start to release some water, add raisins and salt.

5. Cook 20-30 minutes, until apples reach your desired mushiness, stirring every so often. If things look dry, add a half cup of water.

6. Stir in spices; taste. Adjust as necessary.

7. Try not to burn your mouth.

Approximate calories, fat, fiber, protein, and cost per serving:
128 calories, 0.4g fat, 4.1g fiber, 0.9g protein, $0.35

Calculations
4 lbs apples: 567 calories, 1.9g fat, 26.2g fiber, 2.8g protein, $1.50
1 cups raisins: 433 calories, .5g fat, 5.4g fiber, 4.5g protein, $1.19
3 tbsp lemon juice: 3 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.04
2 tsp cinnamon: 2 calories, 0g fat, 0.5g fiber, 0g protein, $0.02
1 tsp ground ginger: 6 calories, 0g fat, 0.2g fiber, 0.2g protein, $0.03
1 tsp nutmeg: 12 calories, 0.8g fat, 0.5g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
a few dashes cayenne: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01
a dash of salt: 0 calories, 0g fat, 0g fiber, 0g protein, $0.01

TOTAL: 1023 calories, 3.2g fat, 33.1g fiber, 7.5g protein, $2.81
PER SERVING (TOTAL/8): 128 calories, 0.4g fat, 4.1g fiber, 0.9g protein, $0.35