Picnic in the Park with our Last Local Salmon

We had a lovely picnic in the park with out of town family yesterday, and the menu featured what will be a rare treat this year: local salmon. I had a bit of local salmon in the freezer from last summer and pulled it out to defrost just as the radio was announcing that salmon fishing will be closed in California this year. Record low numbers of salmon are returning from the Sacramento river delta, from 800,000 six years ago to just 68,000 this year, and halting salmon fishing for the season will give them a chance to try to recoup their numbers.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has pointed to a sudden lack of
nutrient-rich deep ocean upwellings caused by ocean temperature changes as a
possible cause. But most biologists say it is a combination of factors,
including agricultural pollution, water diversions from the delta and damaged
habitat.

So we will not be buying any whole salmon this season, obviously, and I'm glad we made the best of what we had left. I'm also glad that measures are being taken to protect the salmon. Hopefully a year off will make a difference; otherwise, we'll be looking at a salmonless future, and how sad that would be for all of us.

For our picnic, I made salmon salad sandwiches (made with fat free plain yogurt), Mexican cabbage salad, horseradish devilled eggs (made with fat free plain yogurt), and sliced watermelon. My mom brought a Waldorf salad and a friend brought hummus with goat cheese and tasty green olives. What a treat the spread was! So many great flavors, such good company, and yummy, CORE leftovers in my fridge!

Egg and Lentil Curry for Meatless Monday... And exciting news!

First, the exciting news: I'm having a girl! I had an ultrasound and everything looks healthy. My due date was pushed back to August 15, but I'll probably go late since Jax was two weeks late, my brother and I were both two weeks late, and my family has a history of late babies.

I have been eating more junk food lately as cravings hit and I definitely need to pay more attention to getting my 8 healthy guidelines every day. It's too easy to have French fries and pickles for dinner, which offers little in the way of nutrients to either me or the baby.

So for dinner tonight, we'll be enjoying an egg and lentil curry with sauteed garlicky greens and barley. It's my first time trying this recipe and if it comes out well, I'll post it (and a photo) this evening.

Daily Menu for March 24

We won't be having a Meatless Monday today as I defrosted a ham steak for Easter and we didn't end up eating it, so it needs to be eaten today lest it go to waste. We'll have a Meatless Tuesday instead. This week's veggie box was full of spring goodness, including fresh oregano, baby potatoes, beets, carrots, lettuce, leeks, and a variety of greens. I'm making the same potato-beet salad that I did last week since the main ingredients were all in the box this week and it was just so tasty.

We'll be planting a garden this week, and four small (dwarf) fruit trees are in pots on the porch awaiting transfer in our front yard. We have meyer lemon, Persian lime, espaliered Fuji apple, and Dorsett apple (not dwarf), and I think we're going to pick up a dwarf mandarin orange to round out the bunch. It will probably be a few years before they bear fruit, but I'm very excited to be planting them! In our tiny garden, I'm just planting a few veggies this time around. I'll be having the new baby in August and don't want to get in over my head with gardening while I'm hugely pregnant or sleepless with a new baby.

Breakfast
Applesauce oatmeal (this is easily my favorite breakfast - it keeps me full all morning and is so healthy)
2 c. milk

Lunch
Hard cooked eggs and smoked trout with
Green salad, olive oil vinaigrette
1 c. milk

Snack

Dinner
Grilled ham steak
Potato-beet salad (all veggies from my Full Belly veggie box)
Steamed carrots
Watermelon

Daily 8 - the 8 Healthy Guidelines

1. Fruits and veggies, 5-9 servings a day - yes
2. Whole grains - yes (oatmeal, )
3. Milk, 3 servings a day - yes
4. Healthy oil, 3 teaspoons a day - yes
5. Protein - yes
6. Limit sugar and alcohol - yes
7. Water - 8+ cups
8. (Prenatal) Multivitamin - yes

Strange pregnant lady cravings

I read an article recently that talked about how a fetus develops a taste for the foods the mother is eating regularly while pregnant - it swallows amniotic fluid, and that fluid takes on the dominant tastes of the diet like salty, sweet, bitter, garlicky, etc. If this is the case, our baby will come with a pre-destined love of all things sour and pickled. I have had a surprisingly strong craving for pickles lately and, in a single serving the other night, ate an entire jar of Italian Gardiniera, a slightly spicy pickled cauliflower, red bell pepper, carrot, celery, and onion mix. With a bowl of saurkraut on the side. Followed by a bowl of ice cream. Mr.M had to leave the room - the combination was just too disgusting for him to watch. I always thought the pickles-and-ice cream thing was a pregnant lady joke; I never had this craving while pregnant with Jax! But here I am, almost 5 months pregnant, and the stereotypical pregnant lady craving has hit. In fact, typing it out, I'm tempted to go buy more of the Gardiniera so I can have a repeat meal. Do pickled vegetables count toward the daily vegetable servings?

I'm also in search of a good pickled egg recipe if anyone has one.

Tonight, I'm delivering dinner to a woman from church with an injury, and I doubt she'd appreciate my wierd food combinations! so I'm making a perfectly normal meal - chicken cacciatore, roasted new potatoes, and broccoli.

Daily Menu for March 11

Jax helped me cook yesterday, so everything took twice as long, made twice as much mess, and was twice as much fun. He likes to scoop and stir, and taste. He ate part of a carrot, half a pickle, and a bite of raw potato as we were making the potato-beet salad, and even with ingredients that one wouldn't think are especially kid-friendly (like capers and strong green olives) he ate quite a bit of the salad. Getting your kids in the kitchen is fun and helps expand their culinary vocabulary, plus they're invested in the food so they may be more willing to try new things. They were HIS beets (he helped to put them into the pot to boil, then scooped the cooled beets from the cutting board into the salad bowl), so he was darn sure going to eat them!

Little sneak that he is, though, wanted in to cook after we were done but couldn't get past the kiddy gate to the kitchen. He tossed his beloved stuffed doggy over the gate then came to get me to rescue it. Once the gate was open, he tore across the room and climbed his stepstool to reach the counter, grab a wayward stirring spoon, and told me he was cooking!

Today is a lot of leftovers - both lunch and dinner made a lot of food! I have some leftover ham that needs to be finished, so I'm serving that with lunch.

Breakfast
Applesauce oatmeal
2 c. milk

Lunch
Potato-beet salad
Ham

Snack
Carrots and hummus

Dinner
Spanish rice and beans
Mexican cabbage salad
1 c. milk

Daily 8 - the 8 Healthy Guidelines
1. Fruits and veggies, 5-9 servings a day - yes
2. Whole grains - yes (whole grain bread, brown rice)
3. Milk, 3 servings a day - yes
4. Healthy oil, 3 teaspoons a day - yes
5. Protein - yes
6. Limit sugar and alcohol - yes
7. Water - 8+ cups
8. (Prenatal) Multivitamin - yes

Rice Cooker Spanish Rice and Beans for Meatless Monday

Tonight we're having Spanish rice and beans for Meatless Monday. I made this last week one night and it was delicious, very easy, and a hit with the whole family. The Mexican cabbage salad on the side made for an especially delightful combination - warm, savory and spicy beans and rice with cool, crisp, vinegary salad. My husband put a bit of each on his fork for both flavors in one bite.

I don't know if the salad is at all authentic. I was trying to recreate a mayo-free cole slaw that I had over the summer at Duarte's Tavern in Pescadero, and this came reasonably close and just as tasty.

Rice Cooker Spanish Rice and Beans

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups uncooked brown rice
1 1/2 cups dry beans, soaked overnight, picked over and drained (Pinto, black, kidney, or a mixture of beans would work well)
1 onion, chopped
1-2 clove garlic, minced
1/2 green bell pepper, chopped
1 carrot, diced
6 cups vegetable stock
14 oz. can diced tomatoes, not drained
1 teaspoons chili powder OR 1-2 chipotles in adobo, minced (more if you like it spicy)
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon salt

In a medium-hot skillet, saute onion, bell pepper, carrot, and garlic in 1 T olive oil until onion is translucent. Add 1 T. olive oil and the rice and cook until the rice browns slightly. Transfer mixture and all remaining ingredients to the rice cooker and set to cook. (My rice cooker has a "cook" setting with no other functions.) Fluff with a fork and serve.

Mexican cabbage salad
1 large head cabbage, shredded
2 carrots, grated
1 red onion, diced fine
1 tomato, seeded and diced
1/4 c. cilantro, chopped

Dressing
1/4 c. apple cider vinegar
juice of 1 lime
2 t. canola oil
1/2 t. dried oregano
1/2 t. dried basil
pepper to taste (I used quite a bit, but I like the peppery taste)

Put all of the dressing ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid; shake to combine. Pour over the vegetables, toss well, and serve.


Daily Menu

Breakfast
1 c. milk
banana
toast with plum butter (local bread and plum butter - yummy!)

Lunch
Potato-beet salad with olive oil vinaigrette (using Full Belly potatoes and beets from this week's CSA box and my own vinaigrette recipe)
served with lettuce and a hard boiled egg
1 c. milk

Snack
Orange

Dinner
Rice Cooker Spanish Rice and Beans (using Lundberg rice and Phipp's Buckskin beans)
Mexican cabbage salad
1 c. milk

Daily 8 - the 8 Healthy Guidelines
1. Fruits and veggies, 5-9 servings a day - yes
2. Whole grains - yes (whole grain bread, brown rice)
3. Milk, 3 servings a day - yes
4. Healthy oil, 3 teaspoons a day - yes
5. Protein - yes
6. Limit sugar and alcohol - yes
7. Water - 8+ cups
8. (Prenatal) Multivitamin - yes

Cooking for my sick boy

Jax has yet another ear infection, his third in less than two months, and we were recommended a dairy-free diet for him as a potential fix for his constant congestion (and runny nose, eye crusties, puffy circles under his eyes, persistent night time coughing.) He may need ear tubes if the ear infections won't clear up, and I'm willing to try any reasonable options to help him feel better, since he's been just miserable since the beginning of January.

Last night I made ham and bean soup with vegan cornbread and collard greens. The vegan cornbread wasn't bad, and Mr.M, his mom, and Jax said they liked it fine, but the texture was a little off for me and it just didn't taste like Grandma's cornbread, the standard keeper of cornbreads. I think I'm going to have to play with that a bit before finding a recipe I really like. Either way, dairy or no, cornbread isn't Core. It is the perfect side for ham and bean soup with collard greens, though - definitely a meal my Southern Grandma would have made!

The ham and beans were delicious. It was also easy-peasy since everything was just tossed into the pressure cooker.

Ham and Bean Soup

1 cup dry beans, soaked overnight, drained and rinsed (I used Desert Pebble beans from Phipps Country Store, but you could use Great Northern, Cannelini, or even Pinto beans)
1 lb. cooked ham, diced
1 onion, diced
1 c. carrot, diced
1/2 c. celery, diced
4 c. vegetable stock
2 c. water
1 t. dry mustard
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
2 T brown sugar

Put everything into the pressure cooker. Cook under high pressure for 25 minutes or until the beans are tender. The ham made it salty enough for me, but you might want to add salt to taste.