Eat All About It

Egg crack/Rebekah Denn photo

An old friend was in town Monday, and I missed the regular meetup of former P-I employees at Aster coffeehouse. I didn’t skip it because of the United Way Hunger Challenge, but it did occur to me that I’d blow an uncomfortable percentage of my challenge budget if I did scramble to make the meeting. I missed the company as well as the coffee, though. Financial planners collectively ding the daily latte, but it’s a very enjoyable social ritual. And I came in enough under my $22 budget yesterday to loosen up and make some different choices today. At my beginning photography class, for instance, where I brought this egg picture today for an assignment, students often walk to Stumptown before class or during the break, and I decided to go ahead and join in. I used $2.75 of today’s food budget on that cup of French press. I enjoyed it more than caviar.

And the eggs? I invested eight of them in tonight’s dinner. Eggs cost more than they used to cost, but they’re still admirably inexpensive  and versatile, and I was pleasantly surprised to see I didn’t have to fight my ethics to keep them on the menu this week. A dozen cage-free, Certified Humane eggs from Stiebrs Farms were on sale for $1.99 at PCC (regularly $2.39), or 17 cents apiece — no more than the cut-rate eggs I had guiltily picked up earlier for the photo shoot. Normally, I spring for organic eggs, at double the price, but I was satisfied by the description of the Stiebrs eggs to go for these. (Wilcox Farms, also local, is Certified Humane as well.) 

I’ve been flipping through Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid books for ideas, and tonight’s dinner was a from-memory adaptation of their stir-fried cellophane noodles and eggs from Hot Salty Sour Sweet. (If you’ve got that wonderful book, you can let me know if I missed any key ingredients.) I sauteed two chopped shallots and a clove of garlic in olive oil in a big skillet, added eight lightly beaten eggs, and sprinkled on a few dashes of fish sauce. When the eggs were nearly scrambled, I added about 8 ounces of soaked cellophane noodles, and stirred it all together. I squeezed a lime on top and added a sprinkle of chopped bulk-bin peanuts.

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For years, I’ve been saying that we could cut the chaos in our lives in half just by planning and cooking meals ahead of time. The first day of United Way’s Hunger Challenge proved me right in the worst way. Let me just confess up front that my kids had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner, even though the adults did — well past the children’s bedtime — get a nice vegetarian stew. No one went hungry, but the diet could have been far better balanced.

(I know this isn’t a contest, but, sheesh, Gastrognome — you made mayonnaise?!) And Lara, you’re roasting your own espresso? Clearly I need to take some notes here.)

I had a vague idea of what to cook for the $7/day challenge ($22/day in my case, for a family of four) but decided to food shop before making firm plans, under the theory of cooking whatever was on sale. I visited Fred Meyer, PCC, and Trader Joe’s for supplies, and later this week I’ll probably restock at Ranch 99. This is actually no more insane than my usual weekly shopping routine, but I realize it’s a luxury in itself — the time to visit multiple stores, for one thing, and a reliable car to get to them. When doing the actual cooking, though, time is a substitute for money in a lot of ways: Soaking beans, braising meats, baking bread… oh, the bread, which I put it out of my mind until Sunday night.

I had planned on making a 3-loaf batch of Robin’s Bread to get through the week on budget. That was a problem. The bread needs to rise overnight before a second rise and bake. No way could I get it done in time for lunch sandwiches on Monday. My faster standby, the Buttermilk Honey Bread, called for, well, buttermilk and honey, and I didn’t want to incur the extra cost. So I went searching on the King Arthur Flour site Sunday night for a basic, reasonably fast recipe, and wound up with this “Classic Sandwich Bread,” then stayed up until 1 a.m. for it to come out of the oven. I briefly panicked when it barely changed shape on its first rise — it’s never a good idea to test a new recipe when you really need something to work — but it did fine on the second rise, and came out of the oven lovely and toasty and tasting great. I’ll be making it again (note that I used vegetable oil instead of butter, and substituted whole wheat flour for half the white flour). Total cost: About $1.50 per loaf, including 65 cents worth of flour from the bulk bins at Fred Meyer and 40 cents worth of organic milk I feel good about. Throughout the day, as expected, the fresh and organic ingredients wound up costing the most.
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I don’t live in Ballard, but I sure like to eat there, which makes it personal good news that My Ballard is now offering coupons. The first ones on the page include Ballard Brothers Seafood and Burgers and Surfin’ Seafood fish delivery. Hey, Geeky Swedes! I’ll break down and buy some new printer ink if you add Lunchbox Laboratory, GreenGo, Honore, Besalu, Volterra, India Bistro, or La Carta de Oaxaca to the list.

Speaking of GreenGo, I’ve been rooting for the “Fast Food With A Conscience” restaurant since I first found their audaciously good, carefully sourced foods at the farmers markets last year. They’ve got a little storefront in Ballard now, and I worry when I see blog posts like this on their site:

“Are we just setting ourselves up for failure by refusing to compromise on the integrity of our ingredients?” Should we just sell industrial food and make a big profit like everyone else?… Neighborhood places serving dressed up crap are always busy, and we’re barely making it.”

I wish a restaurant serving what they serve didn’t have to ask those questions, and I need to go eat there and support them. Care to join me? Check out the menu here — and, actually, they’ve got a built-in coupon. Reuse a container, and get 50 cents off.

Small to large: Raw tapioca pearls, soaked tapioca, tapioca pudding/Photo by David Dickey

My mother never made tapioca pudding. I never ordered it in restaurants (if any restaurants even offered it) or bought it from Kozy Shack. Some recipe somewhere must have called for tapioca pearls, though, because I had a half-opened bag in the pantry the night I inexplicably got a craving for a bowl. Maybe I just finally got enough exposure to bubble tea that the texture of tapioca began to seem alluring rather than odd.

The night after eating the sweet, comforting, surprisingly light treat, I made another batch. I’ve gone through another bag or two of tapioca pearls since then. And I’ve decided not to toss the half-opened bags of hazelnut flour, ground flaxseed, almond meal, and more on the pantry shelves. I have a feeling they could come in handy for something good again.

For my tapioca pudding, I tinker with the recipe on the back of the Bob’s Red Mill bag. I double or even triple that recipe, to start with, because it’s hard for my mixer to whip the two egg whites called for in its single batch, and because I like having leftovers. I use whole milk instead of 2%, and simmer the tapioca with vanilla bean and cinnamon sticks. It usually keeps its lift and texture for about 48 hours.

Tapioca Pudding

2/3 cup small pearl tapioca
1 1/2 cups water
4 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean
2 cinnamon sticks

 1. Separate eggs

Sunny separated yolks

2. Soak tapioca in water in a pot for 30 minutes. The pearls will quickly swell up.

Soaked tapioca pearls

3. Slit vanilla bean and scrape out seeds; add the seeds and the scraped bean to the pot (alternately, just add a teaspoon of vanilla extract).

Scraping vanilla bean

4. Add milk, salt, lightly beaten egg yolks, and cinnamon sticks to tapioca and stir over medium heat until boiling. Simmer uncovered over very low heat for 10-15 minutes.

Seattle Spice Company cinnamon sticks

5. Beat egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form (the original recipe calls for soft peaks, but I like them better a little farther along).

Whipping egg whites

6. Fold 1-1/2 cups of the hot tapioca into the egg whites, then gently fold mixture back into saucepan. Stir over low heat for about 3 minutes. Cool.

– Adapted from Bob’s Red Mill

Welcome back to the occasional product reviews I enjoyed doing on the P-I’s pages. Our motto: We try it so you don’t have to.

I was inspired to start up the theme again after a lunch of “American Style Kobe Beef Gourmet Hamburger Patties” produced by Idaho-based Snake River Farms ($7.99 for a package of two at QFC). I hadn’t bought a frozen hamburger patty since reading Fast Food Nation, but I was too curious about these not to try them, and felt a company using words like “traceability” on its web site would at least be more acceptable than most.
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Kristin Zwiers for Spur Gastropub

The last time I had anything to do with an ice cream contest, I saw flavor suggestions like “candied green tomato swirl in Beecher’s Flagship ice cream,” and “Double-churned Gooeyduck Microbrew Tidalslide Surprise.” And we were operating on a completely different level of creativity than the fellows at Spur, who are opening up a competition to create an outstanding ice cream flavor for the Belltown haute spot.
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I’m used to thinking of the fall as time for the Puget Sound Mycological Society’s big mushroom bash, but now there’s a spring event just in time for the first morels, a “Mushroom ‘May’nia fest from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 3 at the Burke Museum. Organizers promise recipes, cultivation and cooking tips, family-friendly crafts, and answers to pressing foraging questions such as “How do I know if a mushroom is poisonous or not,”  and “Do I need a permit to harvest mushrooms in Washington state”?  More information here – and, while you’re at the Burke, you can visit the “World In Your Cup” coffee exhibit too.

Forgive me for mashing together an author appearance that’s already happened with an upcoming event. I think I’ve got to do it, though, because seeing Steven Rinella discuss his “American Buffalo” book at a recent Kim Ricketts event is part of why I’m so excited to hear that Nina Planck is coming to town. 

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Those bright guys over at TechFlash, my former colleagues Todd Bishop and John Cook, have set up a news feed that puts the far-flung Seattle P-I reporters back together in a virtual way. It’s a real-time feed combining stories from the new Post Globe with blog posts from journalists like investigative reporter Andrew Schneider and art critic Regina Hackett and even rhyming tweets from former editorial page editor Mark Trahant. They also bring into the fold our few colleagues who remain at the online pi.com, as well as their own TechFlash posts. 

I love it, and I have to echo what Todd wrote: “Of course, it’s not exactly the same as the real thing. But it is pretty cool to see everyone on the same page again.”

You can check it out and “subscribe” here.

Financially, food has always been my great luxury. My kitchen table came free from a friend and my 15-year-old couch was a gift from my grandmother; I get my clothes at consignment shops and most of my books at libraries… and yet I also jumped last week at the chance to order two jars of wonderful $14 marmalade. 

I’ve also always known I need to spend less on food, and I certainly know ways to eat frugally and still eat well. So I was glad at the invitation to join United Way of King County’s  ”Hunger Challenge,” asking participants to eat for five days on $7 per day, the maximum food stamp benefit for an individual. The challenge starts April 20, and individuals are encouraged to sign up here and share your experiences on the United Way blog. Several other bloggers will be joining in and sharing stories, including Cook and Eat, Family Friendly Food, Foodista, and GastroGnome.

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