Article --- Eat Shoots and Leaves

My name is Ashleigh and I admit to once being the sort of person who lobbed off the tops of mushrooms and tossed the stems into the trash.

These days I try to incorporate as much of the whole vegetable as I can stomach - including the fragrant but tough tops of carrots into my cooking with inconsistent success. When eating leafy collards, turnip greens or kale, I chop the stems into tiny pieces and throw them into the pot with their leafy sisters. Intellectually, I know consuming every scrap would eliminate waste, but I can't bring myself to eat the tops of turnips or tomatoes. I can be counted on to give my full throated support to eating the skin of any potato. However the waxy skins from apples were peeled so I could bake the apples, were later banished.

I wish the author of this article talked more about eating skins, stems and more undesirable parts than eating the greens that sprout from one's beets or turnips. Isn't that Whole Hog 101? What do I do with apple cores or squash skin or the stems of a tomato which smell like heaven but taste bitter? Does any one out there have any thoughts? What are your techniques for reducing kitchen waste?


Eat Shoots and Leaves: A Case for the Whole Vegetable

Carol Ann Sayle - Carol Ann Sayle is co-founder and co-owner of Boggy Creek Farm, a five-acre urban, organic farm in Austin, Texas.

Risking sounding like "a broken record"—and I do remember the click click click of a 1950s phonograph needle repeatedly hitting the inevitable scratch mark on a well-loved record—I find myself suggesting to just about anyone who buys a vegetable that is connected to its greens to eat the leaves. Please.

That is my mantra, along with "eat the skins, the roots, and the stems," as I converse with customers in our farm stand. Generally most folks respond with disbelief. "You mean these are edible?"

Yes, and typically, they are just as, or more, nutritious as the vegetable they grew. Throwing the "extras" away, or even composting them, is a waste of potential health and money. Of course, if they are being shared with backyard hens, then that's okay ... But I want the customers to get the most nutrition and value from their purchases, and if they discard the stems and greens they won't. ... Keep reading here.

Failing ... to eat at home

Tonight I ate a sandwich from Potbelly for dinner. It was the big chicken salad on wheat with everything - no mayonnaise, no lettuce, extra peppers. I asked the sandwich maker to cut my big chicken salad into three pieces instead of two. They always forget. I ask for it knowing that by cutting time, they will have forgotten.

Ten minutes earlier I left Target with tomato sauce, manicotti shells, ricotta, three granny smith apples and a plan to make dinner. (As I write this those items sit on my bedroom floor buried beneath my coat and the clothes I wore today.) Manicotti was to be stuffed with spinach and cremini mushrooms and the aforementioned ricotta. Maybe sausage and purple kale too, I had not decided. Parsnips, mashed with butter and soy milk would make a respectable, simple side dish. Ridiculously easy tartlets could be made with the apples for dessert.

At 4:34 pm something happened. I won’t go in to it. Same Old Shit, actually. Nothing that hasn’t happened at least 147 other times, yet each and every time I am caught off guard, like opening a dirty lunch container that’s been sitting with food in it for three weeks and feeling tremors of shock and disgust when the remnants of coconut chicken soup have green and white spores spreading on all six sides of your bootleg tupperware. What should you expect.

Cooking represents a sense of optimism and control over my life. A pot of acorn squash, cilantro and chicken stew means that the future has something worthwhile in it - even if it’s just bright orange-gold and wild green in my bowl. Moreover, it’s a small bundle of wonderful that I conceived. Cooking connects me to qualities I’m not completely sure I have, but like to think I possess: independence, intelligence, creativity. When I open my homemade lunch, even if it’s a simple spaghetti, or a modest couscous with canned beans and wilted greens on top that I threw together in the morning, fifteen minutes before heading to work, I pride surges inside of me like a tidal wave the moment before it breaks.
You made that? I made this.
These are the reasons I cook.

But there are days when I don’t know whose life I’m living, but it cannot possibly be mine. Today I wondered - not for the first time - if God really exists because He could never make anyone as stupid as me. No matter how many moves ahead I try to plan, everything ends the same way. It’s as though I took a turn into a labyrinth and every door I enter just takes me back to where I was or somewhere else equally pointless.

In this dank, dark place sometimes kale goes brittle, radishes develop a slick white coat and parsnips shrivel and harden. I don’t want to be self-reliant. I don’t want to do for myself; I crave being done for. I don’t want to be creative or puzzle out the best ratios of water to quinoa or tofu to ground pork or lemon zest to butter. I want the structure that comes from a place that replicates hundreds of the same meal every day. Devolve into a passive ball of emotions and instincts. Take this useless brain and insulate it with inexpensive quickly prepared food. Instead of Trying to Eat At Home, I willfully eat out.

Or rather carryout, since dragging food back to my cave is far preferable than the ritual of civilized public eating.

When it's not Potbelly, it might be Sbarro's, with their Bedrock sized pizza slices and individually constructed al dente purses stuffed with meat, tomato and cheese, also known as lasagna. When eating it, sometimes I slip back to my childhood and Saturday excursions to the mall with my mother. I remember dazzling her with witticisms I had acquired during life in the single digits such as: Mommy, I think ricotta cheese has a chemical in it that makes us sleepy." Sometimes I feel a mild jolt that comes from that moment after you've bought (or have had bought for you) new clothes or shoes and the moment before you actually get to wear them.

Or I might stop by the jerk chicken place at the end of my block for a smokey, spicy sweet dinner with callaloo or cabbage on the side and that sauce that has an ingredient that's so familiar yet so unidentifiable my brain itches whenever I taste it.

But most of the time it's the fried chicken meal from the grocery store Jewel. Their wedges of steamy, creamy potatoes - with the unfortunate moniker Tater Babies - are the star of the show, with the two pieces of chicken playing a supporting role. (By the way, why don't places that sell fried chicken, team up with these places that sell skinless chicken breasts, take the discarded chicken skin and sell the fried chicken skin by itself. Everyone knows that's the best part, right?)

Whatever I choose to bring home often results in a mild food coma from which I awake in the middle of the night thirstier than I have ever been. Perhaps thousands of milligrams salt and adult beverages don't mix. But some how things seem a little better, even if it's just from being washed over by the solitude of night.

Someone in my life who is becoming a good friend said to me that we eat an elephant one bite at a time and we change the direction of our lives one thought at a time. My thoughts are such a leaderless swarm, how can they rally in a coherent, linear direction.

There are many more nights of carryout in my future. But if anyone is looking for me tonight. I'll be stuffing manicotti ... hopefully.

Maybe I shoudn't 'like' cooking so much

I found a website that generates 'clouds' from frequently used words in a block of text. I created one from this blog. Check it out.

Try to eat at home - Wordle

Grilled Vegetable Salad

A Chicagoan I know calls California Pizza Kitchen‘yuppie pizza.’ Hailing from the land of deep dish makes one finicky, I suppose. Of course this same Chicagoan seems to find Dominoes incredibly satisfying (which I stipulate it is every one and a while). But given a choice, I would prefer California Pizza Kitchen. But this post is not about pizza. It’s about salad!

The one thing I must eat whenever I visit the California is their grilled vegetable salad.



Grilled asparagus, Japanese eggplant, zucchini, green onions, roasted corn, avocado, sun dried tomatoes - all separated into colorful quadrants over a bed of lettuce. It’s such an ideal combination of flavors and textures - even sun dried tomatoes cannot ruin this dish. (Yeah, I said it. Just because we can make raisins with grapes does not mean we should do the same thing with tomatoes. No. No. No.)

I can never think of anything inspiring to do with the salad greens I get, but I decided to try an recreate some version of this salad. I had mixed salad greens, zucchini, garlic, avocado ... and bacon (left over from my Great Beet Experiment). I quickly abandoned the fantasy that my vegetables would bear the marks of a professional kitchen - straight, black grill marks - and sauteed the garlic, zucchini, and bacon on the stove top. After It was done I tossed with the salad greens and topped it with a few chunks of avocado. Poured on top, the balsamic vinegar was supposed to trickle over the greens and unify the flavors. Unfortunately when I tasted it, the vinegar pushed away all the other flavors like a child demanding its parents attention.

The next day I tried again with Caesar dressing. Just right. It didn’t really taste like the food doppelganger I initially tried to create, but it was definitely something I would like to make again.