A new stove, and my winter diet

Upon returning from Texas I was greeted with the best present a man in his 20s can receive --- a new oven and range. It looked almost the same as my old one, however, this new GE (YAY!) stove is a million times better. Firstly, it has four working burners. Also the dials for the burners are clearly labeled and are not sticky. This means that I can smoothly control the intensity of the flame --- something which previously required great luck and hand strength. Perhaps the biggest change however is that the oven has actual temperature control. If I set it to 400, the gas will go until it gets to about 400, then it will turn off/on as necessary to maintain the right temperature. My previous oven had two temperature settings: On and as hot as ovenly possibly; and on without a flame, filling the room with gas. I appreciate the new settings available to me. Its also pretty and clean (for the moment).

Having a working oven is going to open up the whole new world of baking to me. This is slightly unfortunate because I really suck at baking. I am unable to carefully follow the directions, resulting in pretty bad products. Still, the moderate temperature oven was very convenient for making granola last night.

The other thing I wanted to address in this post is my winter diet (just what I'm eating, not my attempt to lose any weight). Yesterday I walked down to Chinatown to make my monthly (in fact is been about two months since my last trip) trip to purchase vegetables. I braved the 10 degree weather and wind and walked the mile or so with my hiking backpack tightly hung from my back. Just before my outside marketplace came into view a scary thought crossed my mind --- what if there was no market today? What if it was too cold, or if the vegis had all frozen? I resolved that if this was the case, I would buy a lot of frozen cabbage and make sauerkraut (or, as my aunt pointed out, I could use the frozen cabbage to make stuff cabbage). Upon actually reaching the marketplace, my worst fears turned out to be bested. Where there were usually ten stalls, there were only two; one of the stalls was essentially just oranges; and the one reasonable stall had a line of about a hundred people.

After just a few minutes in that line I had a realization: Why should I expect to be able to make the same purchases of fruits and vegis in the middle of January as I do in the other seasons? It is true that basically any fruit or vegetable is available year round (for the right price) but this doesn't mean that I should eat them year round. Eating foods which need to be grown in other continents due to the season is pretty wasteful (or at least I think it is). So I realized that in the winter I should try to eat more traditional winter food.

This realization actually had been percolating for a few days before surfacing. In fact, over the two days before my Chinatown trip, I had made a number of large purchases of winter food. At Trader Joes I purchased about ten pounds of dried fruit and twenty pounds of dried nuts. At the Associated market I bought about twenty five pounds of dried beans, plus a few pounds of oatmeal and some canned beets for what will be my first attempt at Borscht (stay tuned to a later post once I've done this). At the Indian store I bought some new bulgar and quinoa to complement my store house of rice and grains. At the MET market I bought a number of boxes of frozen kale (for soups).

My winter diet will mostly draw on those things which can be dried, canned, or frozen. In addition I'll use tubers and root vegetables. But I'm really going to shy away from foods which are not easily grown or stored during the winter. This is partially precipitated by the cost of these non-winter foods, but also due to my interest in exploring winter foods. Only recently have I begun making my own soup. I want to try to learn some new soups (probably from my mother). I want to work on baking, maybe make some nut/grain breads. I'm not sure how strictly I will be able to follow this diet. Luckily I seldom go shopping for single ingredients, so since I don't have any non-winter food in my apartment, I can't imagine I will make much with it. Maybe... I will even get into cooking with dried or salted fish... When in Chinatown I was very tempted to buy a large salted Mackerel. Perhaps this diet will open up new (cost/energy-effective) types of cuisine to me.

Any advice on winter meals?

Quick and easy Indian green beans

I was just reading my friend's cooking blog (http://themistaskitchen.blogspot.com/) and she gave a very nice recipe for roasted green beans (when you make my recipe and it turns out terrible and you are left with a pound of untarnished green beans, you should look at here recipe) prepared in an Indian, or dare I say Bangladeshi way. I, of course, can not claim that these are really authentic Indian or Bangladeshi, but I'll give my best rational for why I think they are. First, I have a vague memory of one of my close elementary school friend's (he was Indian) mother preparing a meal which included a spicy green bean dish; and second, I had a roommate last year whose fiance was Bangladeshi, and many of the recipes she made included the very nice mixture of sweetness and sourness which figures into this dish.

Well enough storytelling:
A few handfuls of green beans (if you want an exact number 87 will do)
Between a cup and half a cup of slivered almonds
A cubic inch of fresh ginger
A few cloves of garlic
Curry Powder
Honey
Balsamic Vinegar
********
Take you favorite cast iron pan and roast the almond slivers until they get a little toasted, but not burned. Let them cool (I usually let them cool on the pan). Then take you second favorite cast iron pan and heat a little olive oil, then add the ginger and garlic (which you should dice before hand). After cooking for a minute or so add the beans (make sure they are not really wet when you add them). While this cooks add in the curry powder to taste, plus some salt might help. Cook until done and then transfer to a glass bowl. Add in the now dried almonds (when you roast almonds they get a little soft, so letting them cool keeps them crunchy in the mix), and then give the mixture a few splashes of Balsamic plus a few squirts of honey. Mix thoroughly and taste.

I really like this dish and often when I make it I end up making a meal out of it. Yeah... I'm pretty lame, but it tastes good, so why not.