Peach gaspacho

Before mixing together blended ingredients

I like to force on summer usually but this one has snuck up on me.  May wasn't cutting it, June just didn't feel right and then all of a sudden I was sweaty and irritated but berries started to appear. AAAAH There you are summer.  I was mad at you but I can forgive you for all the fruit you bring.  Until I'm sick of that too and then we will be on the outs again.

Gaspacho doesn't take much effort at all.  Best of all it doesn't take much cooking at all.  Recipes without the stove are a favorite.  This one requires light stove top activity.  When you use mango, peaches or any delicate fruit it is best to let it sit overnight and have the fruitiness infuse the entire soup.

This recipe yields approximately 5 cups.  It fed 4 people with veggie and fruit sides well.  It will feed 2 people like kings.

• 3 ripe tomatoes
• 3 ripe peaches (the sweeter, peachier the better)
• 1 jalapeno
• 1/2 Medium onion
• handful of cilantro
• salt to taste
• sometimes I'll add some pepper seeds to up the heat
• fresh zucchini slices on the side
• avocado slices on the side

You can add garlic if you wish at any point (simmer it with the tomatoes if you want it a little more mellow) I did not this last time, and it was delicious without it too.

 Cut tomato in their middles the top and bottom facing out and the side on the cutting board and the knife slicing the other side which should be facing up.  By slicing it in half this way you can expel the seeds with one light squeeze.  I'm not too nutty about the seeds remaining, survivors will be eaten at no real cost.  But it is best to not have a very seedy gaspacho.  Roughly chop tomato pieces and put into a pot with a little olive oil enough to prevent sticking and cook just until the tomato has softened and turned bright red-orange.

Finely chop onion and jalapeno, rough cut cilantro and peaches.  These all go into the food processor until small bits remain (which is fine).   I pour everything into a container with a sprinkle of salt and put it in the fridge.

When you are getting ready to eat it just take it out of the fridge for an hour or two and serve it up with avocado slices and big fat salad. This soup travels really well for potlucks. Crostini is awesome with it. Toasted tortilla wedges too.

Cherimoya

 If you're new to discovering this fruit then you're at least in my company.  To learn about the cherimoya for me is to gain the knowledge that if things turned castaway I would search the island praying it had these growing on it.  The fruit is not just delicious but also full of vital stuff as well: fat (none of it saturated), fiber, carbs, and protein.  It is one of those fruits that's a meal which can sustain you.

On it's flavor; it is a combination of tastes which can only be described as cherimoya.  It tastes like a pina colada if it were one fruit - banana, yogurt, vanilla custard wrapped in pineapple.  It is an experience for sure.  It can be blended with a tea, it can be turned into sorbet, eaten straight.  I would not recommend heating this fruit as it would lose a lot of the qualities it is coveted for.  It is a very impressive fruit which makes entertaining absolutely within everyone's grasp.  It is at it's best raw, cooled and/or straight up.  I do think it is a good raw dessert.  A nice filling for a pie crust.  A nice accompaniment to strawberries, blueberries and I'm sure others.  It's a king among the fruits for sure.  The wiki for Cherimoya.

I'm looking into some cherimoya ice cream!

Oat Flour Oil Pastry crust fresh from the oven

Cherimoya with yogurt cheese, ready to blend

For good pie crusts I recommend three kinds in order of favorite first:

1. An oil pastry.  Which is flaky, delicious and alright for those avoiding cholesterol or animal products.  My favorite being rolled oats blended in a food processor into a flour and using:

• 1 heaping Cup of oat flour
• 1 shallow cup of whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/3 Cup -1/2 Cup olive oil
• pinch of salt

Blend all in a bowl until well combined the oil makes the flour stick to itself and you can pat out 4 small tart shells or one large one.  Preheat oven to 450 bake 15 minutes checking to make sure not over browning.  Take out let cool and fill shell with blended Cherimoya.  I like to blend a little yogurt cheese into it to amp up the creaminess. Chill in the fridge for 15 -60 minutes and top with strawberries.

2. A blend of oats, whole wheat flour, butter and sugar like a "crisp." Or brown Betty.  Which is lightly toasted until crisp then fill with raw cherimoya or top the cherimoya after baking the crisp parts. 

3. A raw crust of hazelnuts or almonds ground and blended with just enough of either honey, maple syrup, or agave nectar to bind the nuts and pat into a pan and fill with spoon blended cherimoya and top with other fruits.

Cherimoya seeds have a very high germination success rate and seeds remain viable for a few years after cleaning, drying and packaging (jar or envelope).

Bunny tails

A friend of mine requested more dessert entries for their Jer-Bear to eat, so here it is!  Bunny Tails made to order.

For those who make candy this is better because you don't need a friggin' thermometer to make it and nearly anyone can have them.  Allergies? simply change ingredients depending.  Diabetic?  Use a sugarless jam or preserves in place of the ultra sweet gooey ingredient and agave for the binder.

These are dates, peanut butter, honey and coconut.

You can make these out of :

A nut butter: Peanut, sunflower (which is exquisite but since it is thinner it needs to be combine with a little bit of another nut butter to help hold it's shape), almond butter, cashew butter but the best is anything ground FRESH.

A paste like dried fruit the larger the better: Dates, prunes, figs, raisins, currants... the gooy-er the better.

A sweet binder to aid in spreading and chopping:  Honey, Agave, Maple syrup a jam, preserves sugarless if you like or need.

A powder coating of: Coconut, ground nuts, cocoa powder/nibs.

The ratio is:

• 1 heaping cup dates (or what you are using) approximately 10 -12 dates.
• 1/2 Cup heaping peanut or other butter
• drizzle of honey

Spread on a cutting surface.  Chip chop chip.  Hip hop hip. Dice slice dice.  And mix the spread bits into one another.  Sprinkle with coconut or whatever OUTER covering to be contained within the little candy balls.  Then blend again.   With very slightly damp hands roll little balls out and set aside.  In a shallow dish have your coconut or whatever your outside layer will be.  Roll the little balls into it and voila.  Again you've done it, you've made something that costs a million dollhairs in the grocery store and all of 3 -5 bucks out of things you gathered in your home.  They keep in the fridge for a long time.  I haven't timed because nothing this tasty ever has time to go bad.  These are AWESOME for after school snacks, when you can't catch a moment to eat they're in the fridge awaiting you or when you want a sweet fix but don't want to house some nasty crap.

For adults these pair AMAZINGLY with a spicy, fruity soft tannin wine.  I'm writing this entry drunk in fact.

For kids this pairs well with milks. Like PB&Js.

Traditional eating?

With a lot of fad diets steadily replacing actual healthy eating it is easy to get confused, swamped and totally overwhelmed by what is healthy.  Moderation we've always known is healthy.  Variety we've always known is healthy.  But what amounts really are healthy?  If you eat a meal bigger than your fist you are over eating to which I say YEAH, DELICIOUS! I try to make meals that are just as tasty bite 60 as they are in the first taste.  I am an overeater.  I also have a sizable butt.

Okay, so there are so many diets which one can choose from and still be healthy.  The basic ones are omnivore (meat and vegetable and if it's tasty period), vegetarian - no animals in diet* but products of animals may be consumed (*under which a lot of microlabeling gets folks all the more confused so I've separated the main categories), vegan - no animal products, raw food (eats living foods but not cooked meaning nothing that's gone over 150 degrees usually and so dehydrated or smoked meats are in some raw diets), and so all of these diets can yield healthy, happy results as long as additives and MSG (in all its names) are avoided.

So NOW... there are so many diets it is astounding.  With Gluten free to worry about, High protein... Lets just think about how SLOW evolution is. (I'll call it evolution because no matter what you believe God or otherwise it sounds a lot better to call a natural process slow than to blame God for us not changing rapidly with our environment.)  In the most natural state a human would never have the luxury of opportunity we have now.  You wouldn't as a simple woman or man living off the land encounter a deer kill it and then bring it to the firesite to rub it in a rosemary, lemon, garlic marinade to have it sit cooling overnight.  You would IF lucky rub some salt on it and fricassee up that bad boy.  And more likely is you wouldn't encounter a deer to kill and you'd subsist on a handful of berries or some wild leafy edibles.  In our day and age not only can we encounter things from the entire globe without leaving the heartland but we can now for the first time consciously select the vital things we need in our diets and remove them- at a whim.  Just take out something that is crucial to proper brain function,  or muscle growth.  Deem what is needed as bad.  And what is bad as good.  The ways in which a fad becomes harmful is the whole dropping the word moderation... If a diet is severe in that it removes certain foods because they are "bad"  then what does that diet replace for the things you once ate to get its value?  A vegan can be healthy with taking away butter, but should replace it with olive oil not margarine.  (margarine isn't healthy for anyone)  There is a simple way of looking at food.  There is nothing NEW in FOOD.  Its food! Intake for energy.  Take it and change it to lack the properties of food and then it just becomes EDIBLE and not straight poison. You CAN eat erasers off pencils and NOT die, but why would you do that?  Factories can't make the next best thing in food.  Nature makes food.  Man either cultivates it or destroys it.

Traditional eating is a term that is circulating, although I am not certain what that means for a lot of people - even those who eat traditionally. This notion of what it actually means changes with inference.  So where you came from, how you were raised and what you think of food would impart something when you hear "traditional eating."

I take it to mean eating closely with nature as our ancestors did.  I also think that eating together is an important part of eating well.  Eating as a couple, as a family, with friends.  Sharing bounty when it is there.  I take it to mean a really compassionate form of eating as well.  If you eat animals then what they eat is important, how they live is important.  I will wax on later about what a noble and great creature the chicken is. So I take traditional eating to be a lot like the philosophy of slow food. 

And I don't get paid for saying it!  So cultivate it, or destroy it. Your choice!