My Class at Jamie Oliver's Big Rig Kitchen

After watching the television program "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" back in June of 2011, I wrote this evaluation of local school lunches. Then one day last month, I was reading the newspaper published by the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op and saw a blurb that made my heart jump. Jamie Oliver's Big Rig Kitchen, it said, was doing a tour of California cities and would be stopping in Sacramento in January and February. As a long-time fan of the chef and fan of the Food Revolution, I knew I had to sign up for a class.

 

The Big Rig Kitchen is a mobile kitchen that has been offering free classes as it has made its way through our great state, thanks to donations from the places listed below (on the side of the truck). I hopped onto the website and saw all sorts of free cooking classes being offered, with menus including fish, Mexican and Italian fare, and the one I ended up signing up for - "Fast Food Now", featuring barbecued chicken.   

 

I arrived for my class at 5:30pm on a Friday night, pulling into the parking lot of Sacramento High school, the same fortunate school that recently enjoyed a visit from Alice Waters to their edible school garden. After a few minutes of waiting outside the closed door of the Big Rig, the door opened and I was welcomed in to don a name tag and a white apron.

At the front of the mobile kitchen was a demonstration area where Everett, our demo chef, showed us the ropes. After the demo, we washed our hands and retreated to one of the three kitchen stations where we would try our best to replicate what we had just seen.

 

Our kitchen stations were well-stocked with the necessary ingredients, donated mostly by the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op just down the street. (Thanks, Co-op!) Everything was ready for us to attempt to make a homemade BBQ sauce, a French-style vinaigrette dressing, and oven-baked Potato Wedges.

 

In addition to the ingredients, our kitchen station also came with a local food expert to assist us as needed. Joe helped oversee our group of four as each of us tackled one of the elements of our final meal. He was quiet at first, but once it came out that he was a certified BBQ judge, he was brimming with stories of his travels and experiences. That weekend, he confided, he was headed down to Brentwood, CA for a rib competition. A lucky man, that Joe!

 

 

With a little help from Joe, our group completed the meal in a surprisingly short amount of time - the whole meal took us maybe 20 minutes to prepare from start to finish.(To speed up the baking time on the Potato Wedges, we sliced them super-thin instead of cutting them into chunky wedges.) 

The meal we enjoyed together at the end was both healthy and tasty, and just the kind of informal, kid-friendly meal that families should be sharing nightly. If you can't spot the purple potato slices on the plate, it might be because they are camouflaged against the mixed greens!

As I ate my meal, I imagined Jamie Oliver explaining that instead of chicken nuggets every night, parents might see what their kids say to this homemade barbecued chicken. Instead of French fries, see what the kids think of the Potato Wedges. And of course, the salad was made delicious by the homemade dressing, which contained no added sugar (unlike most commercial bottled dressings). It could truly be a revolutionary meal. Our community is so fortunate to have the chance to attend free classes like these!

My one disappointment (besides, of course, the absence of the celebrity chef himself) was a difference I noted between the cooking classes portrayed on the television show and the class I attended. On the show, all of the participants were required to make a pledge to share the knowledge they gained, by teaching at least one other person how to prepare the dishes they learned to make in the class. In this way, the Food Revolution could spread throughout the community. 

In the class I took, we were not required to make such a pledge. But I still want to do my part to help the Revolution spread, by sharing the recipes from the class I took. Viva la revolution!

French Dressing:

1/4 of a clove of garlic

1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons of white or red wine vinegar

1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil

Peel and finely chop the garlic. Put the garlic, mustard, vinegar and olive oil into a glass jar with a pinch of salt and pepper. Put the lid on the gar and shake well.

Potato Wedges (serves 4):

1/4 tsp. sea salt

freshly ground black pepper, to taste

2 medium (about 10 ounces) baking potatoes

1 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat your oven to 400F. Scrub the potatoes clean and get rid of any gnarly bits. Cut the potatoes into chunk wedges (about 6 per potato). Transfer to a roasting tray and add a good lug of olive oil and salt and pepper. Toss together so all the wedges are coated in the oil, then spread out in one layer, skin-side down.

Cook in the hot oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden, crisp and cooked through. To tell if they're cooked, poke one or two with the tip of a paring knife- you should meet no resistance.

Barbecued Chicken (Serves 4):

1 orange 

1 dried chile

1 1/2 heaped teaspoons smoked paprika

1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon or English mustard

3 tablespoons honey

3 tablespoons ketchup

1 teaspoon olive oil

1/16 teaspoon sea salt and

freshly ground pepper

4 x 5-ounce boneless skinless chicken breasts

If you're barbecuing, light the grill now so the flames have died down and it's ready when you're ready to cook.

Finely grate the orange zest into a shallow bowl. Crumble in the dried chile. Add the paprika, mustard, honey, ketchup, and a splash of olive oil. Season with a small pinch each of the salt and pepper and mix well. Spoon out a few tablespoons of the marinade and set it aside.

Add the chicken breasts to the bowl with the remaining marinade. Turn them over in the marinade so they're well coated, cover with plastic wrap and leave to sit for 5 to 10 minutes or until the grill is ready.

If using a grill pan, put it over high heat now to get it screaming hot.

Use tongs to transfer your chicken breasts onto the grill or grill pan. For chicken breasts about 1 inch thick, cook for about 5 minutes on each side, turning every minute and basting as you go, or until golden and cooked through. Spoon a little of the reserved sauce over each breast.

Megan's Bake Shop

Today I investigated West Sacramento's first cupcake bakery, Megan's Bake Shop. Located in the shopping complex right off of 50 and Jefferson (across from Chevron), you can't beat the location for convenience.

 

Daily flavors are posted on the Bake Shop's Facebook page, as well as on the board outside the shop.

 

 

Today, the cupcake flavors included Maple Bacon, Almond Raspberry, Churro, Reese's, Banana Chocolate Chip, and several more. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that not only cupcakes are sold here, but a wide variety of cake- and candy-making supplies. Classes on a variety of cake-making skills are offered as well. The beginner's class is 4 weeks long and $45, and sounded like a good deal to me.

Recent college graduate Megan told me that originally her plan was just to teach the classes and sell supplies only, but her grandmother (the famous Carol of Carol's Restaurant on West Capitol) convinced her to do the bakery as well. 

 

So... how about those cupcakes? 

 

I tried three cupcakes today: Churro (cinnamon cupcake and frosting), Reese's (chocolate cake with chocolate and peanut-butter frosting), and Maple Bacon (chunks of bacon in the cupcake, topped with maple frosting and crumbled bacon mixed with maple syrup).

I thought the flavors were creative and liked that the cupcakes were moist and freshly-made from scratch that day. (Yes, I asked.) With the cupcakes plus the versatility of the store with the supplies and classes, I'm very happy to welcome this new addition to the neighborhood.

Finally, I am a sucker for filled cupcakes (think lemon cupcakes with lemon curd filling), and I hope that soon some of the offerings will be filled with delicious goodness. I will be back to try more flavors as they change regularly!

What I Learned from My Month Without Sugar

I might have been happier before I saw this picture and 
knew how much sugar is in Thanksgiving dinner.



In the past month, many people have asked me why I was going a month without sugar. The answer I generally gave? “For a challenge”. The real answer is a little longer.

Last year, two of my friends from college shared their “30 before 30" lists and I noticed that they both included one particular goal in common. They both wanted to go for one month without sugar. They inspired me to develop my own “30 before 30" list, and I decided to add it to my list as well. I didn’t really give much thought to this, but thought it sounded cool.

Flash forward to September of this year, as I’m reviewing my list to see what remained to be done before my birthday in December. My first impulse was to just ignore this item and not even try. I didn’t think I could do it even if I wanted to. In fact, I challenged the possibility that anyone could do it. I messaged my friend Jodie on Facebook to see if she had attempted this item from her list, expecting a negative reply. Instead, she informed me that yes, she had done it several times, and it helped her lose the pregnancy weight.

Ouch. What was I going to say? “No, my body really needs sugar to support all of this weight I gained during pregnancy...”  It was on. I wanted to do this before the holidays, so I jumped right in. I limited myself to eliminating refined sugar. Here are some of the things I learned during the past month:

-First, sugar is in everything. Reading labels is essential because it is in seemingly healthy items too. Almost all of our cereal, our balsamic dressing, even our natural peanut butter had sugar in them.

-Cravings for sugar supposedly go away after 2 weeks. Not true for me. Constant craving went away after about 10 days, but then cravings came and went throughout the month. Some days I was glad I was doing this no sugar thing because I felt I didn’t need it. Some days I thought it was the stupidest thing ever and I was irritable because all I wanted was a brownie with walnuts or a slice of apple pie. I suspect hormones have a lot to do with why we as women crave what we crave and the timing of our cravings.

-My lifesaver was a smoothie made with frozen bananas, unsweetened almond milk, and cocoa powder. I'm not sure I could have gotten through some days without this pick-me-up!

-I have a big fear of failure. I had many dreams in which I unthinkingly indulged in dessert and then felt horrified that I had fallen short of my goal.

-I have a food addiction, like most Americans. I love flour+sugar. It makes me happy. It also makes me fat when indulged in too often. At the same time, baking and sharing is part of how I nurture and connect with other people, and I don’t think I need to give it up permanently. There do need to be limits, however, and I have been thinking a lot about what those limits should be in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. When I return to eating sugar, my new goal is to only indulge on the weekends or special occasions.

Conclusion: I  can't say that giving up refined sugar improved my mood. I may have felt more stable on average, but I also felt irritable a lot. Going without refined sugar did help me lose weight. So far, I’ve lost over 40 pounds since I gave birth about 3 months ago. I have more I want to lose, and I hope that my new sugar limitations will serve my purposes well.

Winter Squash and Sage Pasta

Two weeks ago, I was visiting one  of my favorite farm stands at the West Sacramento Farmer's Market, Moon River Farm. The farmer, Sara, was selling some beautiful, smooth-skinned butternut squashes. It was a hot August day and I thought it seemed a bit early for me to be making squash, which seems so autumn-y. After all, tomato season seems to last through September in Sacramento. But the squashes were so lovely, and the farmer, Sara, told me that it would keep on the counter for several weeks.

Sure enough, my squash was still in good shape today when I got around to chopping it up. I've been wanting to try a certain winter squash recipe ever since I read The Quarter Acre Farm by Spring Warren, who lives about 30 minutes away from me in Davis, CA.  The dish is a deconstructed version of butternut squash raviolis, only much simpler. For my take on it, I attempted to make it healthier, too, by cutting back the butter and cheese and using whole wheat, organic noodles. To add more flavor, I roasted my squash extra long, until the edges were brown and the squash was decidedly caramelized. The end result of my experimentation still felt indulgent and was totally delicious.

And can I just say-  roasted, caramelized butternut squash, where have you been all my life?! Oh... probably sitting on the shelf because I was too intimidated to cut you up and too lazy to prepare you.  I'm just glad that I've found you now, especially with fall and winter coming up. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

 

Winter Squash and Sage Pasta

4-6 cups any winter squash, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

1-2 cups sage leaves

8 oz. whole wheat pasta (I used penne)

1/2-1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

1/2 cube butter

2 T. brown sugar or honey

olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place the cubes of squash into a bowl. Drizzle squash with olive oil and sugar or honey. Stir until the moisture from the squash and the other ingredients form a thick juice to envelope each squash cube.

Pour the squash onto a lipped cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil, spreading the squash into a single layer. Place in oven and roast until squash is tender on the inside and browned on the outside, about 40 minutes. Put squash on the counter to cool slightly.

Melt the butter in a saucepan, adding your sage leaves. Allow the butter to barely bubble and cook the sage leaves until crispy, about 15-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta as the directions indicate. When the pasta is cooked and drained, place it in a large bowl. Add your butter/sage and a large handful of Parmesan. Toss together. Place the squash over the top of the pasta (to avoid having it gravitate to the bottom of the bowl). Serve with a green salad if desired. Mangia!

Summer Highlights

The last time I blogged, summer was just beginning. Now it's (more or less) over!  I can honestly say that it has been a summer unlike any other. Here are a few of the highlights of my summer, beginning where I left off: with tomatoes.

We got so many tomatoes from the garden this year! Here's a picture of one early harvest:

 

 The tomatoes would become salads, like the one below (with basil, peppers, and garlic from the garden, and olive oil, chevre and sea salt from the Farmer's Market):

And, more recently, when we had too many tomatoes to eat them all fresh and wanted to store some for later, we experimented with homemade sun-dried tomatoes on the dehydrator:

 We got an unexpected first harvest of golden raspberries (since we didn't expect any berries until next summer on our still-young raspberry canes):

 

  One fun aspect of maternity leave was having a few (very few) opportunities to experience things that go on during the week when I'm usually stuck at work. For example, the Capitol Farmer's Market, which was scenic and delightful:

 

  Another rewarding aspect of maternity leave was having an adorable baby (see below). This, by the way, was my #30 on my "30 before 30" list. I didn't do much else on the list this summer; this item was a full-time job! :-)

 

 

 Finally, I couldn't let summer end without making a peach pie. We're headed to Apple Hill this weekend, ready to usher in fall with some apple picking! 

June 8th Garden

Here are some shots from the garden as of today. This year my focus was on tomatoes, as you will see, and many of them are doing well.

I do have some pole beans growing up some chicken wire - here's a future bean:

 

And some cucumbers also growing up the chicken wire:

And now for the tomatoes: San Marzanos -  

Green Zebra tomatoes-  

 Black Krims, always excellent producers:

Jaune Flamme tomatoes, looking gorgeous and turning color already (they'll eventually be orange):  

I don't even know what this is is because I lost the label in the transplantation process... but look how huge it is already!

And that's the state of the garden today!

Napa and Sonoma: One Last Trip for Two (For Awhile)!

We spent a glorious day in Napa and Sonoma this weekend. It was one last trip we wanted to take with just the two of us, since I am officially due this month! We already did the olive oil tasting and vineyard thing back here, so this time we went with a more historical focus, included Sonoma and Glen Ellen this time, and plenty of good food too.

We started at Napa Valley Biscuits, which opened last year and was featured in this month's Sunset magazine.

The place was hopping on a Saturday morning, and for good reason. Everything we had was delicious, and what we saw that we didn't get, we wanted to return and order next time. We split the Yardbird (biscuit, fried chicken, bacon, and gravy):

and the Pappy (crispy waffles, fried chicken, bacon, red pepper jelly, and maple syrup for dipping):

When we come back, we would love to try some of the other menu items like homemade cinnamon rolls and a from-scratch twist on a ding dong. On to Oxbow market, which was looking lovely and had a Farmer's Market in the parking lot (where we bought the sweetest Sugartime peaches and apriums to take home).

Also, we wanted to try the famous English muffins at Model Bakery. They are supposed to be the world's best, and we plan to see how they taste tomorrow at breakfast.

The Fatted Calf, because my husband can't resist artisan cured meats:

From there, we took off for Sonoma through the vineyards:

Once we arrived, we started by visiting the Sonoma Mission, the most northern of all the missions in California:

In the garden, they had this prickly pear bush. The fruits didn't look very prickly but I discovered that they in fact are covered in little tiny, microscopic thorns. Look, don't touch, people!

Then we walked to what had sounded like a nearby historical site, the Vallejo House, but which turned into a 2-mile trek in blistering heat. I recommend driving there, especially if you happen to be 8 months pregnant. No pictures because I was too focused on not getting heat stroke, but after my husband rescued me by fetching the car to retrieve me, and reviving me with ice water and AC, we moved on to our next destination: Jack London State Park in Glen Ellen.

I remember reading "To Build a Fire" in school, and of course I'd heard of "Call of the Wild" and "White Fang", but I didn't know much about Jack London before today. Turns out, Jack London was quite an interesting and ambitious character, his life colorful and thrilling, though brief. After reaching commercial success through his writing of adventure books and short stories, he bought over 100 acres of land in Glen Ellen, including this old winery building:

Besides using the cottage next door as a country escape from city life in his hometown of Oakland, London sought to create a self-sustaining agricultural model here, including terraced vineyards, pigs, horses, cattle, winery, blacksmith shop, you name it! Here are some of the grounds of his old property today:

We also got to tour the cottage where he died of kidney failure at the age of 40. He had picked up a tropical disease while sailing the South Pacific islands (cause that's how he rolled) and used mercury to treat it, which destroyed his kidneys. His heavy drinking and smoking didn't help either. But he certainly had an impressive life, and it was fascinating to learn more about him at this park.

Hungry after hiking around all of these sites, we returned to Sonoma for an early dinner at the famous restaurant in Sonoma Plaza called The Girl and the Fig, where we ordered this amazing cheese and fruit platter:

I felt justified in ordering this wonderful sirloin burger with housemade pickles and aioli for the French fries. All that hiking, you know.

And for dessert, we split the vanilla bean profiteroles with bittersweet chocolate sauce.

Conclusion: Flawless food and great ambiance at the Girl and the Fig. It's acclaimed for a reason and I would love to return again.

With that, we returned home to take delightfully cold showers and ponder how trips will be different when there are three of us, and look forward to the day that we can share all of the wonderful culture and beauty of Northern California with our daughter.