Homemade Salsa

When Oliver asks for dinner ideas classic Latin American dishes are always the first to come to my mind. Tacos, enchiladas, moles and mojos (oh my)! There is no denying these are my favorite foods.

Oliver's guacamole is by far the best I've ever tasted (and I have tasted many gaucamoles). It's heavy on citrus and fresh ground cumin. So this week, when he announced that he planned to also start making his own salsa, I was very excited.

The salsa recipe combines fresh tomatillos, several types of dried peppers, onion, garlic and a dash of salt. After quartering the tomatillos and onions he tossed them in olive oil roasted them in under the broiler. The peppers were cut with kitchen scissors, seeded and soaked in hot water. Then it all went into the blender together. The result was a smokey, hot, delicious homemade salsa.

What's for lunch? Arugula with lemon and parmesan

This has been one of my favorite salads for at least five years: fresh arugula, the juice from one lemon, a drizzle of olive oil, a small pinch of salt and parmesan cheese. Its an easy lunch to make in the office too. I keep all of the ingredients in the office fridge or in my desk drawer so I don't have to worry about finding time to make a lunch at home in the morning. It beats the pants off a can of Slim Fast!

This arugula came from the Grant Park Farmer's Market on Sunday. When I got  home and put my bag down Topher went straight for it. He rubbed against it incessantly until I pulled the arugula out. I finally gave in and let him have a leaf...because Topher wants a healthy heart too! The video is posted below.

Dinner from the grill

On Monday we picked our last two eggplants. Oliver paired them with Amber Jack and asparagus and threw it all on the grill. Simple, fairly fast and healthy. We ate in the backyard and enjoyed the cool autum weather.

Also, check out the great comic from Mom:

Thanks Mom!

Atlanta's impressive intown coops

Over the weekend Oliver and I participated in the Atlanta Urban Coop Tour. It's a tour of 28 in-town chicken coops with the proceeds going to Georgia Organics and the Oakhurst Community Garden Project. We couldn't afford the $20 tickets so we spent three hours volunteering at the will call booth and each earned a free ticket. And I'm so glad we did! The coops and chickens we saw were all so different and so interesting. Impressive doses of ingenuity.

In addition to the coops on the tour I can think of five more friends or neighbors who also keep chickens. That means there are at least thirty three people within an eight mile radius raising city chickens. I can't speak for the owners we met over the weekend but one of the reasons I want to raise my own livestock is to bypass the CAFO meat system.


CAFO is an acronym for concentrated/confined animal feeding operation. Georgia is one of the nation's highest chicken CAFO producers. Growing up in Dunwoody I'd seen and smelt the coops during trips to Lake Lanier but it wasn't until I saw the documentary "Our Daily Bread" that I realized what was going on inside the buildings. If you don't know what I'm talking about then this four minute clip is worth watching: click here. I've seen it dozens of times  and the scenes of live baby chicks dropping along conveyor belts still leaves me in awe.

There is such a stark contrast between the factory chickens' environment and that of the family backyard chicken. All the homes we visited felt effortlessly idyllic. As if adding chickens to ones home helps emphasize a slower pace of life and appreciation for basic human needs. All the coops shown here are located in Grant Park, Ormewood or Inman Park (neighborhoods in the center of the city of Atlanta's perimeter). Thank you to all the owners for letting me photograph their yards! 

Side note: "Our Daily Bread" planted the no-CAFO diet idea in my head but Robert Kenner's "Food Inc" solidified it. Many of my friends have given up meat entirely; while I understand their choice I do not think it's a solution to the problem. I believe in using my shopping dollars to support those who are raising animals the right way. We still eat meat but we make an effort to only buy meat that has been raised in a healthy, ethical way. More about this in a future post. 

Fall Planting - Round One

Fall planting has begun! This year we're trying a few new things. For starters, we're planting our leafy greens in bi-weekly waves. The last few seasons we've found ourselves with more ready-to-harvest greens then we could eat while they were ripe. After the perfect month of greens had passed there wasn't much left in the garden to eat. By planting new greens every few weeks we will hopefully spread out the harvest time thus providing garden fresh greens throughout the fall and into the winter. We're starting with Bibb lettuce, Romaine lettuce, and bok choy. We'll be adding kale, arugula and spinach.

We're also trying a new fertilizer recommended by an organic vendor at the Grant Park Farmer's Market. It's a liquid fish emulsion. Smells terrible but supposedly produces great results.

And finally, onions! We've never tried growing root vegetables because frankly - how are we supposed to know when they're ready to be picked? These onions were an impulse buy at Home Depot. They were cheap so we decided to give them a try.  Oliver planted them in the raised bed that previously held cucumbers.

 

What's for lunch? Pinto beans!

In an earlier post I explained my weekday breakfast goal is to eat a cereal high in fiber, low in sugar and made of real food ingredients. My goal for weekday lunches is just as simple: beans or greens. Beans means a bowl of homestewed black or pinto beans. Greens is a salad of spinach or arugula (depending on the season).

It's true what the kids say: beans, beans they're good for the heart. So today I'll highlight a few of the reasons beans make the MVP list of heart healthy eating.


1. Beans are an excellent source of cholesterol-lowering, heart diease preventing, fiber! In fact "a cup of cooked pinto beans provides 58% of the recommended daily intake for fiber". 
2. That same cup of beans fulfills 23% of a body's daily need for magnesium. What does magnesium do for the heart? It "improves the flow of blood, oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. Studies show that a [lack] of magnesium is...associated with heart attack". (Full article here: WH Foods)
3. One cup of pintos also provides 73% of the recommended daily intake for folate. Top 5 Health Benefits of Folate (Folic Acid) listed here. 
4. Besides, your colon just loves pinto beans! My Dad would refer to them as "roughage". (As in, "You need to make sure you're eating enough roughage".)

Beans! The more you eat the better you'll feel. Beans, beans - well maybe not at EVERY MEAL - but how about four times a week? Your body will thank you (but your significant other may not).

Side note: A pot of stewed beans is a very cheap meal that requires four hours of stewing and returns many days of eating. We purchase our dried beans in quart containers from YDFM. Costs about $2.50. Stewing them is a day long process. (Historically stew day coincides with wash day, Monday, and the left over meat carcus from Sunday's meal). A big pot will make more then enough for Oliver and I to eat Tuesday through Friday as lunch. By Saturday we're both tired of them and what's left tends to be thrown out. Picking up a bag Vigo beans and rice at the grocery is a tempting alternative but high sodium content counters some of the health benefits.

Atlanta's Urban Coop Tour

We're excited to be volunteering with the Atlanta Urban Coop Tour this Saturday. Buy a ticket and come visit us in Grant Park! More info here: http://urbancooptour.com/

Photo ©2011 Jimmy Clemmons 

Works in Progress

It was a great weekend for drawing, painting, exercising and eating well. On Saturday we rode our bikes to the East Atlanta Village Strut (a neighborhood festival). The ride is a little over 4 miles round trip with quite a hill in the middle. Thanks to the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition for the free bike valet!

Blog writing is still on hold while I generate goods for the upcoming Etsy shop but I wanted to share a sneak peek at my progress. Everything painted has been scanned in. I'm now working on creating papergoods featuring the drawings and paintings.

Also, the stuffed poblano peppers (made with the previously blogged pig butt) were INCREDIBLE. Oliver drizzled them with a mixture of sour cream, lime and cilantro. Just a small amount but it really made the all the flavors pop. So good.